Are you missing out on traffic because people aren’t searching the way you think they are?

If your website isn’t optimized for voice search, then this could be the case. These six timely SEO strategies and resources for voice search will not only help you get more traffic from people using Siri and Alexa, but they will also become important pillars of your entire SEO strategy.

What Is Voice Search?

Voice search is a way of searching the internet through speech. Using artificial intelligence, a device can recognize your voice and put the query into a search engine.

Voice recognition has been around for a long time (since the early 1950s), but it wasn’t until 2011 when IBM’s Watson (you may remember it beating contestants on Jeopardy!) came out that it had practical real-world significance.

Today, voice search is everywhere. An eMarketer’s survey revealed that almost 40 percent of internet users in the U.S. use voice search, which highlights the ubiquitous nature of voice search-enabled devices.

Popular Voice Search Devices and Search Engines

If you look in your pocket or on your desk right now (perhaps even on your hand), there’s a good chance you’ll find a voice search device. One reason voice search is so popular is because the technology is in almost every device we use, making it super easy to access.

Here are some of the most popular voice search devices and the search engines they use:

• Google Home: Google
• Amazon Echo/Alexa: Bing
• Google Assistant: Google
• iPhone/Siri: Safari
• Android phones and devices: Google
• Microsoft Cortana: Bing

This means whether it’s your phone, TV, portable speaker, or any other device, it’s got the ability to search the internet through speech.

How Does Voice Search Affect SEO?

When you type a query into Google, what do you want it to do?

First, it’s got to understand what you mean by your query (helping it to understand the type of results you want to see), and then show you the best results that match your search query.

The way we type queries into Google is quite different from the way we talk to our voice assistants. For example, if you’re looking for a local restaurant to dine in, your searches might look a little like this:

• typed: “Restaurants near me”
• voice: “What are some good restaurants in my local area?”

When we type, we tend to use very keyword-based searches, but when we use voice search, our searches become much more conversational. This means search engines have had to become very good at semantics: understanding the meaning behind words.

The way we use language is complicated, and it’s not easy for machines to understand the meaning behind words (just think how many words have multiple meanings). Voice search has forced search engines to get much better at this though, and Google has led the way with key updates like Hummingbird.

This update and other previous ones have changed SEO, taking the focus away from keywords (in the early days, people would simply stuff keywords into their articles) and much more toward user experience.

Voice search has played a part in this shift, and it continues today, with a consistent focus on experience, rather than just keywords.

6 Ways to Optimize for Voice Search

Voice search is here to stay. Everywhere you look, there are voice search-enabled devices, and the percentage of voice searches as a share of total searches continues to grow (usage grew by eight percent between September 2018 and early 2019).

The good news is you don’t have to tear up your current SEO strategy to optimize for voice search. Voice search plays into the overall trend of matching user intent and providing the best possible user experience, so the tactics you use to optimize for voice search will benefit your SEO in general.

1. Optimize for Local Search

Many voice searches are for local information; they are three times more likely to be local searches than text-based ones.

If you think about it, this makes sense. When you’re out and about, and want a quick answer to your question, it’s easy to get out your mobile device and ask a question. This means it’s important you focus on the local element of your SEO.

For many businesses, local SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing anyway. Local searches make up around 46 percent of total searches, and these are extremely engaged buyers. Local people are the people who will drop into your store and make a purchase there and then, and this means showing up in the local search pack is essential, especially if you're a brick and mortar business.

Local SEO follows the same principles as regular SEO, and the key thing (that many websites neglect) is consistently telling people you’re a local business. Make sure you’re creating content that’s relevant to your local area and integrating local keywords into your copy.

Check out Ubersuggest to get local keyword ideas and make sure you’re answering the questions local people have:

• phrases people use to describe the neighborhood around your location
• “near me” in your title tags, meta description, internal links, and anchor text
• landmarks around your business location
• the titles of local institutions that are relevant to your business

Focusing on your local SEO will help your voice search, so check out my Definitive Guide to Local SEO.

2. Create Conversational but Concise Content

The days of stuffing your content with keywords simply to please crawlers are long gone. To be successful with SEO, you’ve got to be authentic, use language naturally, and offer valuable content.

Essentially, you have to be human (we all are, so this shouldn’t be a problem).

Voice search typifies this because when people search through speech, they tend to talk in a more natural way than they do when they’re typing a query into the search engines. Your content should match the conversational way people ask questions to their voice assistants, but not just for voice search reasons.

Today’s rankings are user experienced-focused. The pages that answer people’s questions in the best way while sharing the best experience, will rise to the top of the rankings.

To do this, you’ve got to give people quick access to the information they need (being concise) and do it in an enjoyable way (natural, conversational language). When you’re doing this, you’re not just matching the language people have used in their voice search (user intent), but you’re also driving engagement through your authentic brand voice.

3. Use Structured Data

Ask your voice-controlled device this question: “Who was the first President of the United States of America?”

What happens?

Chances are your device will start reading out an answer about George Washington.

This information is taken from a long page about George Washington though, so how does it know which bit of text to read? The answer probably lies in structured data.

Search engines look at a bunch of factors besides content to determine a page’s relevance and position in their search results. Professional SEOs leverage these additional factors to further optimize their content for search engines.

Schema markup, also known as structured data, is one such factor. It does not affect the rankings directly, but it can give you an edge over your competitors, particularly when it comes to voice search.

Essentially, it is metadata: data about the information on your site. It goes into your site’s source code. The visitors don’t see it, but microdata helps search engines to organize and classify your content. It is an underutilized strategy because it requires work.

Do you want an example?

The following markup classifies your contact details page as containing contact information.

Now, let me guess your next question: How is microdata relevant to voice search?

When users search for local businesses, they often look for operational hours, contact information, address, directions from highways, and the like.

You can use microdata to ensure that search engines classify this information.

Let’s search for the population of Dubai.

Google quickly retrieved the figure because of a markup.

Need another reason to work on your structured data?

A study found that over 40 percent of voice results were pulled from the featured snippet. Just like with voice search, featured snippets need to pull the exact information you’re looking for, so it’s likely they look at structured data to decide what information should be shown.

If you want a step-by-step guide on implementing schema markup, check out my guide to using Schema Markup.

4. Claim Your Google My Business Listing

Your Google My Business Listing is an essential part of local SEO and voice search.

Because voice searches are often used to find out important details about your business, such as contact number, address, and opening hours, Google must have accurate information on these details.

Your website and structured data go a long way in making sure Google has the right information about your business, but Google wants to be super accurate, and the way it does this is by looking at your Google My Business listing.

This will give Google all the information it needs to understand what your business does, who it’s for, when it opens, where it is, and much more. This is the exact information voice searches are asking for, so it’s a quick way to get accurate results to people’s questions.

5. Be Mobile Friendly

How are most voice searches made?

You want to show up in results through mobile devices, and you’ve got to offer a good mobile experience. This is a key part of Google’s algorithms, but there are still websites out there that aren’t optimized for mobile.

If this is the case with your website, people are going to click on your site and leave immediately because the page doesn’t work properly on their device. This is a big sign for Google that your page isn’t worthy of ranking, and it’s going to hurt you for both voice search and traditional queries.

I mentioned modern SEO is all about user experience and with the majority of traffic (and virtually all voice traffic) coming from mobile devices, this is something you have to be on top of.

There are lots of little things you can do to make your site more mobile-friendly, so make sure your website is offering the right experience for people who use voice search.

6. Create Content Answering Your Audience's Frequently Asked Questions

People tend to use questions when making voice searches.

The great thing about this is Google gives you a great insight into the questions people are frequently asking.

Type a question that relates to your website, and take a look at the results. The chances are, you will see a box titled “people also ask.” The FAQ’s feature displays for many queries, and it shows you the questions your target audience is regularly asking.

With a clear picture of the questions people are using to search for information, you can start creating amazing content that answers those questions. As I’ve said throughout this article, it’s all about user experience, and the first thing you need if you’re going to give someone the right experience is valuable content.

Answer people’s questions, help solve their pain points and make it enjoyable. If you can do this better than all the other websites, then it’s going to give you an excellent chance of ranking.

Voice Search FAQ’s

Voice Search Conclusion

If you want to grow your organic traffic, then you should be aiming to rank well for voice searches. Not only are there a huge number of voice searches happening every day, but the techniques you use to optimize for these queries are a fundamental part of modern SEO.

Voice search has changed the way people search for information, and search engines have responded with updates to their algorithms. You need to respond as well, and by matching searcher intent and providing the right user experience, you can make sure you’re getting more organic traffic through voice search.

Are you optimizing for voice search yet?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: 6 Timely SEO Strategies and Resources for Voice Search
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/seo-for-voice-search/
Published Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2021 18:00:00 +0000

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

More people blog on WordPress than any other platform. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need the right theme.

WordPress themes determine the layout of your blog, the impression it has on visitors, and how easy it is to navigate.

There are a lot of WordPress themes to choose from. Over the years, I've experimented with dozens of themes across my sites. As one of the internet's most successful bloggers, I know what works.

Here's my latest take on the seven best WordPress themes for blogs. This page is always getting updated as new themes come out and others outlive their use.

Keep reading to find my top picks along with a buyer's guide that will help you make sense of your many good options.

#1 – Olsen Review – The Best WordPress Theme for Lifestyle and Fashion Blogs

If you are a lifestyle or fashion blogger looking for a place to store all of your content among a focused layout with crisp fonts, Olsen is the perfect theme for you.

It takes very little work to pull off a very professional blog. You're not going to break the mold with something people have never seen before–Olsen's strength is in it's familiarity. Readers will immediately be comfortable with your layout, knowing how to navigate and share your content.

Providing a fluid and peaceful reading experience, Olsen is the theme for anyone who wants their images to stand out next to their content. Tell a story with more than just words.

Olsen is completely customizable and is the perfect place to show off your best work.

Two unique elements this theme offers are a  Featured Content slider and an Instagram footer widget. Both elements are great for sharing your work with readers.

The Featured Content slider is a little different from the average Featured Content add-on. This element allows you to pick up to six images or posts and include them at the front of your blog. The reader can navigate this slider by clicking the left or right arrow.

The Instagram footer widget is unique and doesn’t appear in any other theme on this list. This is the perfect add-on for a fashion or lifestyle blogger who wants to showcase their photos. It shows the widget at the bottom of your blog and features your most recent Instagram posts in a large single row.

The downside is for people who want the Instagram feature for free. Unfortunately, you must pay for the theme or buy a plan to use it, but we think this trade-off is worth it.   

You can get started with Olsen today for free. Upgrading to Olsen Pro is only $34.30 for a full year. There is also a Club Membership, which gives you access to many more themes and plugins, and it's only $48.30.

#2 – Extra Review — The Best for Most Standard Blogs

If you are looking for a WordPress theme that lets you do it all–and have an easier time doing it–then Extra is my top recommendation.

With some themes, you can get pigeon-holed into a certain style or format. With Extra, you never have to worry about limits or boundaries.

Blogs of any type, digital magazines, portfolios, online stores–really any kind of blogging experience you are looking to deliver is possible with Extra.

Extra is from Elegant Themes, the same people who make Divi, which is the most popular WordPress theme in the world. If you are looking to build a unique website on WordPress, Divi is a great choice. 

However, if you are specifically focused on finding a theme for WordPress blogging, go with Extra. It gives you the same foundation as Divi, but it’s been optimized for bloggers.

The most important aspects are the new modules within the Divi Builder that help you curate your content for readers, including post feed, post carousel, post slider, and tabbed posts. All of these are tied to the categories you set and easy to arrange in an appealing layout.

Publishing the striking blog on the left is as easy as filling in the intuitive layout on the right.

With Extra you get the Divi Builder ability to create everything visually, but it’s within a framework that makes blogging easier. It’s a true drag-and-drop editor that lets you build elegant posts and pages very quickly. 

Start from one of more than 800 pre-made layouts and customize virtually every aspect from there. Colors, fonts, sizing, spacing, sizing is easy to adjust with clicks, not code. Whatever you design is fully responsive to any screen size. No extra work or double-checking on your part.

Here are some of the other ways that Extra helps people take their WordPress blog to the next level:

• Built-in ratings and review system
• Customizable menus and headers
• Automatic WordPress updates
• 24/7 customer support
• Optimized for WooCommerce
• Social media integration

All of these features work together beautifully. Your blog readers are greeted by an enticing layout and your site is effortless to navigate. They can read, review, rate, and share your posts across other channels.

Extra is available for purchase through a membership to Elegant Themes. That means for one price, you get access to Divi, Extra, as well as Bloom (email plugin) and Monarch (social media plugin).

This is a complete set of tools that can power your entire website with a modern and integrated blog.

Elegant Themes memberships are $89 per year, or $249 for a lifetime subscription. This includes 24/7 premium support and unlimited usage of every product.

The company is constantly adding new features. I’m talking about fresh layouts every week and new tools to help your blog stand out.

Try the whole suite of Elegant Themes products risk free for 30 days.

#3 – Newspaper Review — The Best for Breaking Stories

Some people need a simple blog that showcases their portfolio. Others need a platform that delivers new content to their readers on a daily basis, whether they are breaking stories about their brand or community.

I’m talking about a blog experience where visitors show up to find a new arrangement of content every morning. If this describes you, then Newspaper is the WordPress theme for your blog.

It is the number one bestselling news theme of all time, and for good reason. You can use any kind of content or social media integration–it’s all going to look sharp. 

Beginners and professionals will love how easy Newspaper is to use. Whether you want to get set up in minutes or craft a trendsetting design, you’ll find the theme very accommodating.

Include sound, moving images, and other features to engage your audience with no more than a few clicks. And, you can rest assured that none of the changes you make will slow your site down.

This is true even if readers are on their phone, as Newspaper is completely integrated with the Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) plugin. 

Instead of a slow, cluttered experience–as you might get with another news-style WordPress theme–all of your readers can enjoy what you publish. Given how much traffic comes from mobile-users, this is a big deal.

None of this will require coding, so your whole team can take advantage of the theme. No graphic design degree necessary to edit images. With Newspaper, it’s a snap to create eye-catching, on-brand images that develop your story.

This means less steps to make sure your content, logos, headers, and footers are all working together to deliver a positive blog experience for your readers. And if you are constantly updating, the time-savings adds up quick.

With Newspaper, you can eliminate hours from your monthly workflows and free up your team to create.

Despite being able to do so much, management remains quite simple. Quickly gain mastery over your blog and use the great features included with Newspaper like:

• 100+ pre-built websites
• 1,000+ pre-made templates, pages, posts and sections
• Unlimited sidebars
• Live search display
• WooCommerce shortcodes
• Membership paywalls
• Rating and review system

Monetizing your blog is incredibly easy with banner ads, Google Ads, and Adsense. All ads are responsive, and Newspaper starts you off with 14 predefined and 5 custom spots. You can place ads where you want without disrupting the flow of your blog.

Pricing for Newspaper starts at $59 for a regular license. This includes free future updates and 6 months of premium support. You can extend support for a full year for $17.63.

There’s a ton included with the price, but if you want to add other plugins to optimize SEO, open an online store, or increase security, you can rest assured that Newspaper theme will integrate smoothly.

Get started with Newspaper today and start publishing a world-class blog every day.

#4 – Akea Review — The Best for Minimalist Style

Akea is a WordPress theme from GoodLayers, a company that empowers bloggers who live by the “less is more” mantra. 

Over the years, the company has released some of the greatest minimal blog themes. It’s best for people who don’t want too much information and stimulation a negative and expect readers with similar tastes.

You get total control over how your content is exhibited. Play with the spacing between items on your page. Tweak the size of thumbnails used for your blog. Use a single image to fit any screen size with the 100 percent fluid layout. 

Customize it until you get it just right. With Akea, you don’t have hundreds of templates, but you don’t have to squeeze anything into a pre-built mold. Instead, you get a relatively small selection of blog layouts and each one is an open field.

Upload your own font. Bring in any video, quotes, galleries in a slider. Make a bold impression using a few commanding content elements arranged just the way you like.

If you’re looking to jam the most content per square inch into your blog, this is not for you. 

This isn’t to say you can’t include sidebars, or menus, or give your readers tons of options. With Akea, that’s all easy to do. It’s just really focused on the minimal style, so all of these elements are unobtrusive and clean.

You get a floating navigation bar, so your readers always have quick access to more content, but you are never overloading them at any point.

That’s the spirit of Akea, which comes with a trim feature set designed for you to start making it your own immediately. Some of the essentials include:

• Drag-and-drop page builder
• Unlimited customizable sidebars
• 14 blog layouts
• Social media integration
• WooCommerce integration
• Custom skin colors for page sections

While you get comparatively few templates compared to other options, there’s a lot you can do with each one.

Akea starts at $54. It includes free lifetime updates and premium customer support for the first six months.

Because Akea is a newer theme, there are fewer reviews of the theme than some of the others I recommend. But GoodLayers has always done a solid job, and Akea works well with the latest plugins and WordPress updates.

This means less work on your end to make sure everything is running smooth, as the modern integration decreases problems and potential security issues.

It’s also fully compatible with the WordPress Gutenberg editor, which is now standard for all new sites. This is going to save a lot of time and make the final product look better with less configuration.

If you value simple, clean design for your WordPress blog, Akea is a theme you should check out today.

#5 – Pearl Review — The Best Corporate WordPress Theme

Pearl is an incredibly feature-rich and flexible WordPress theme that’s got enough options to outfit any business. 

I recommend this to people whose blog is part of a larger website. Pearl is kind of overkill if you just need a blog, though you could make an incredible blog with it. 

On that note, it might be a good option if you are hitting your limits with your current WordPress theme. If there’s features and functionality you can’t swing now, Pearl will help you get there.

To put it simply, with Pearl you’re not making compromises–you’re making a blog that’s tailored to fit the needs of your industry and goals. Pearl offers an astonishing range of demos for virtually every vertical: agency, beauty, ecommerce, law, music, software, and more.

Each of these demos has been carefully designed to include a suite of features and layout to meet the challenges businesses face.

The Pearl Viral demo, for example, showcases your posts according to how popular they are, with professional category tags to help readers find what they want.

For a business in the entertainment industry, the out-of-the-box power of this blog layout and styling is obvious. The same is true for everyone of the many industries Pearl supports.

And your blog will be totally tied into the rest of your site, which is a must if blogging is a part of your business outreach. Readers can react to posts, leave a reply, share it on social media, or get drawn further into your site and company offerings.

You can add more than 55 different types of shortcodes (UI blocks) into your posts. This includes things like a music player, calls to action, events lists, icon boxes, galleries, pricing tables, and a lot more.

This is huge for corporate users who need a range of ways to communicate and interact with their audience. Some of the other standout features include:

• Visual Composer drag-and-drop builder
• Mega menus with three drop down levels
• Customizable headers and footers
• 800+ fonts
• Custom icons
• Sidebar builder
• 24/7 with live chat

There’s really not much you can’t do with Pearl, and most of it can be accomplished without writing a line of code. 

And all of this is available for the price of $59 for a regular license with free lifetime updates. Six months of maintenance is included, with additional coverage available for purchase. 

If you need a high-functioning blog, bear in mind that Pearl includes a number of premium plugins for free. You get WPBakery, Booked Appointments, Ninja Popups–in total it’s about $325 worth of premium plugins based on the going rates.

Pearl is a very reasonable price for what you get, and you’ll have to spend less moving forward. 

Get started with Pearl today, and forget about limitation. 

#6 – TinySalt Review — The Best for Food Blogs

For as popular as food blogs are, they can be tricky to create if you are using a multi-purpose theme. 

You can do it, for sure, but it’s going to take a lot more work. And it’s probably not going to come out as well as if you had just started with a WordPress theme built specifically for food blogs..

TinySalt is just that. It’s got every feature and formatting capability you need to blog in this space. 

Where a recipe would be difficult to get the formatting correct with an ordinary WordPress theme, TinySalt gives you turnkey options to produce this niche type of content immediately.

Breakdown your most complicated dish into a series of simple steps. Include photos where you think it will help. Add a button early in the post to let readers jump straight to the recipe.

And you don’t have to spend any time getting all of this to flow on your blog. TinySalt has 12 demos you can import to your website. Mix and match to deliver the exact experience you are looking for.

Readers can quickly search through your recipes with a convenient filter, or browse your beautiful blog. When they find one they like, they can print, rate, and share them with their friends on social media.

If they decide against a certain meal, your blog can automatically recommend related recipes at the end of a post.

Don’t let the Tiny in the name fool you, this theme is packed with potential. You get:

• 32 blog variations
• 10 post templates
• Recipe videos
• Unlimited colors
• 900+ fonts
• Featured recipes slider on your homepage

All TinySalt is missing is your recipes and imagination.

TinySalt starts at the low cost of $39 for a regular license. Future updates and six months of premium customer service is included at that price. Ongoing support is available if you need it.

At that price, it’s not hard to turn a profit with TinySalt, even if it’s just a side-hustle for now.

You’ll be able to see your own products with WooCommerce, or promote items through advertising and affiliate marketing. It’s also compatible with MailChimp, which means you can turn your food blog into a newsletter to build your subscriber base.

Eliminate the complex configuration that goes into food blogging and take your site to the next level. Stop cooking with the wrong equipment and get TinySalt today.

#7 – ConsultingWP Review — The Best for Promoting Your Business

I really like ConsultingWP for businesses that want their blog to make a splash.

Whether you are looking to make connections for providing services, or to get your brand out to the world, this is an empowering WordPress theme for business blogs.

You get tools to build that anyone at your company can use on day one. You’re not going to have to hire out a professional or lean on a single person in-house to keep everything looking great.

Never touch code and never compromise on the finished product.

Simply browse through the hundreds of templates offered by ConsultingWP, find the one you like, and begin importing it. You’ll have complete control over what plugins and options you want to bring over to your new blog.

From there, you can customize the blocks, fonts, headers, layout, and so on on. Instead of having to mess around editing PHP or CSS files, everything is a few clicks.

Up to this point, what I’ve described is a very good WordPress theme for blogs, but where ConsultingWP steps away from other easy/powerful options is the business-focused feature set.

One of the most useful is the Cost Calculator Builder, which lets clients price out your services on your blog. Instead of having to call for a quote (which can be a tricky step to get people to take) people can investigate on their own using the simple calculator.

Normally, creating an interactive form like this would take some serious effort. And, if you wanted to make changes to your pricing, it might be a hassle to get it right.

With ConsultingWP, you have full control over this simple feature. Run promotional pricing without worrying it’s going to break your site and confuse potential clients.

Some of the other fantastic built-in elements include:

• eRoom Zoom meetings and webinars
• Professional booking for appointments
• 100+ page templates
• 500+ theme options
• Customizable menus
• Events manager
• 24/7 customer support

For businesses, the all-in-one feature set is really attractive. I mean, you can do all of this with a hodge-podge of third-party plugins, but there is zero guarantee they are going to work well together. At best, you’d have a lot of maintenance to keep things running smooth without slowing your site to a crawl.

With ConsultingWP, on the other hand, businesses get a toolkit that’s been designed to work in harmony. This means less work for better results.

Starting at $59 a regular license, this is a great deal. Trying to match the feature set by downloading individual plugins would be far more expensive and frustrating.

A regular license comes with six months of premium customer support. You can choose to extend support for an additional cost.

If you are looking for a professional blog that establishes your business as a leader in your space, I highly recommend ConsultingWP.

What I Looked at to Find the Best WordPress Theme

Now that you know our seven best theme recommendations, it’s important to understand what matters.

Make the right decision by following these considerations.

Know Your Blogging Niche

It sounds self-explanatory, but it’s relevant when choosing the perfect theme. Today we looked at the seven most common blogging niches, and how each theme suited for those niches is different.

When choosing a theme, you must know your blogging niche because you don’t want to install TinySalt if food blogging is your focus. Different niches require different themes with distinct features, layouts, and designs.

I would suggest creating a list of your most passionate hobbies and start there.

Customization is Key

Having a customizable theme is crucial for an easily-navigated blog.

It’s okay if you are not interested in investing money into your blog. However, many free themes have limits on customizing, whether for headers, colors, or layouts.

Every theme on this list is customizable to some extent, some more than others, so it’s important to look into the nitty-gritty before installing.

Features

Every theme listed here today has some incredible features that work best for its particular niche. However, some themes have more unique elements than others, and it’s critical to weigh whether you need them.

Paid themes are more likely to have more unique elements, such as Olsen with the Instagram footer widget, and the premium plugins that come free with Pearl.

If you know you won’t need an Instagram footer, it’s best to keep your money in your pocket.

Some basic features that are imperative for most blogs include:

• Custom colors
• Site logo
• Flexible display
• Classic menu
• Widgets

So, make sure you look for these when installing any theme.

Conclusion

Running a successful WordPress blog isn’t easy. Having the right theme helps a lot.

Here’s the complete list of my top recommendations:

1. Olsen – Best for lifestyle and fashion blogs
2. Extra – Best for most standard blogs
3. Newspaper – Best for breaking stories
4. Akea – Best for minimalist style
5. Pearl – Best corporate WordPress theme
6. TinySalt – Best for food blogs
7. ConsultingWP – Best for promoting your business

Extra is a great all-in-one blog solution that’s going to cover most people. No matter what direction you take, you’re always going to get the latest features to experiment and engage your audience.

Some of my recommendations work really well in particular niches, like Olsen and TinySalt, whereas others play to a certain style. Akea favors minimal content with maximum impact, whereas Newspaper is going to give readers dozens of posts to read at every turn.

ConsultingWP and Pearl are safe bets for any business blog. I’d lean toward the former if you are looking for something sleek for your company, and toward the latter if your blog is part of a more complex site.

What matters most, of course, is what you do with your WordPress theme. Even the best products can only get you so far. Check out my guide on how to get your blog posts to rank in Google’s top 10 search results.

Hope this helped. Happy blogging!

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Best WordPress Themes for Blogs
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/best-wordpress-themes-for-blogs/
Published Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2021 18:00:00 +0000

Internal links are a crucial part of a successful SEO strategy.

Small but mighty, simple yet complex, internal links help navigate users through your digital content and give search engine crawlers information about how your website works.

Internal links are found on almost every page on the internet. You’re probably already using them, even if you don’t know it. (Hint: there's a few included in this intro,)

If you want to optimize your content for SEO, you need to understand how internal links work, where to place them, and why they matter.

In this post, we’ll dive into internal linking and cover best practices.

What Is Internal Linking?

Internal links are links from one page to another within a single domain.

These are different from external links, which point to pages on a different website.

Every website with more than one page should be connected through internal linking.

Think of your website’s home page. In the top navigation, you likely have a menu that links to other internal pages. This could be your About, Shop, and Contact pages.

This internal linking structure is essential for SEO because it establishes a site architecture and improves your link equity.

Having multiple web pages attached to a singular domain improves your chances of being ranked by allowing search engine crawlers to index more content.

Internal linking is a simple issue of site design and architecture, and the search engines expect it. All websites have a design and architecture that keeps them structured logically, such as this common silo model.

Of course, site architecture and structuring can get far more complex.

But as long as you have a strong internal linking structure, your website will be crawled, indexed, and ranked by search engines.

Internal linking is also an important part of your user experience, as it allows users to uncover related information or find what they are looking for, which improves dwell time.

5 Reasons Internal Linking Is Good for SEO

Internal linking is one of SEO's most valuable weapons.

Why? Because it works.

Google’s machine-learning algorithm has come a long way since the early days of SEO. Nowadays, it’s nearly impossible to game the system.

As advanced as the algorithm is, there are still simple changes that will give you an immediate boost in SEO without gaming the search engines.

Internal linking is one of them. It’s not a trick or a gimmick, and it’s certainly not hard to do.

Here are some of the benefits.

1. Helps Google Index Your Site

Google’s crawler follows link paths throughout the internet to find and index websites.

If your website has strong internal linking, the Google crawler has an easier time finding new content you publish.

Google’s bots regularly crawl the web for fresh content. If your content is woven together with multiple internal links, crawling happens a lot faster.

As a result, your content will get indexed faster, too.

Improved crawling and indexing can boost your SEO.

2. Increases Backlink-Earning Potential of Deep Content Pages

Take a look at where most of your website’s backlinks are coming from. You’ll probably see a lot of links that send users to your homepage.

When you compare the homepage backlinks to deep page backlinks, this is what you usually see:

Unfortunately, too many home page backlinks are bad for SEO. We call this over-optimizing, and it should be avoided.

What you want to see is the pie chart reversed. The majority of your external links should point at deep internal pages, not your home page. That's because the homepage doesn't generally include the type of detailed information users search for.

When a website doesn't actively publish and promote new content, its link profile looks like this:

Most of the links on the website go to social profiles or standard pages such as “About” or “Contact.”

This provides very little SEO value to the site.

If you create a strong internal linking structure, you can boost the link juice earning potential of the internal pages, by creating clear click paths and indexation throughout the website.

Why? Because you are increasing the overall crawl priority throughout the site with better distribution of your links.

3. Internal Linking Spreads the Strength of the Site to Internal Pages

When your website receives a link to the homepage, some of the link value is passed on to internal pages.

This is often referred to as “link juice.”

If Page 1 then links to Page 2, the “link juice” flows from Page 1 to Page 2, helping it rank higher in the search engine results page (SERP).

The more tightly-knit a website’s structure (through internal linking), the better the overall site will perform in search.

4. Internal Linking with Optimized Anchor Text Is Good for SEO

An internal link is a simple string of HTML that links one website page to another. It looks like this:

<A HREF = “http://www.example.com/internalpage“> an article on cat food </A>

When you create an internal link with anchor text, as opposed to with an image or navigational text, however, the value of the internal link goes up.

Anchor text improves the value of the link by adding keywords and content to the linking process. Google isn’t just looking at an A HREF tag. They are also looking at the anchor text that is part of that link.

The days of keyword stuffing anchor texts are long gone. But, there is value in optimizing your internal anchor text.

Anchor text that flows well with the overall content, versus over-optimized anchor text, is best.

5. It Provides Value to Your Users

This is the most important point of all. Internal linking is an SEO technique, yes. But, it’s more than that.

Ultimately, internal linking is useful for users.

Think about it this way: When you’re researching a topic, do you check one source or multiple?

Do you enjoy exploring other content that reinforces your understanding of the topic?

Maybe, you just like the writing style of the article you’re reading and want to read more work by the same author.

Internal linking on a site increases the value of each piece of content by backing up claims and leading the user to related information.

While it may not drive conversions directly, internal linking does have a place within the marketing funnel—carrying people to a target destination.

As an added bonus, you can help readers stay on your site longer and increase their trust in you by using internal linking.

SEO is about user optimization, not just technical tweaks and sneaky tricks.

Even if you don't care about the technical value of internal linking, at least do it for your users.

Internal Linking Best Practices

Now, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. How do you do internal linking? What’s the best method for creating the biggest value with links?

There are two things you need in place first:

1. Written content on the site: Even if you have a single article, that’s okay. That’s your starting place. If you don’t have any written content but want to create some, check out our The Ultimate Guide to Writing Epic Content.
2. Continually writing new content for the site: Getting into a regular publishing schedule is important for internal linking to be effective.

Okay, let’s get into it.

Link to and From Content-Heavy Pages

The best internal links are those that connect one article to another. This creates a strong internal linking structure deep within the site.

If you have good site architecture, you’ll have enough links to the site’s main pages, such as the homepage, About page, Contact page, etc.

You don’t need more links to these pages.

Obviously, if you’re trying to drive conversions using a squeeze page or sales page and the opportunity is right, link to it.

For the most part, I recommend creating links in and among long-form articles. This automatically spreads your internal linking naturally.

Create Text Links Using Anchor Text

What kind of internal links work best?

It’s simple: Links with descriptive anchor text.

What do we mean by descriptive anchor text?

You’re familiar with anchor text, right? An anchor text is the word or words that link to another page. They typically appear as blue text to the reader.

This is anchor text.

Your internal links should use anchor text, but not just any anchor text will do. Include phrases that describe what the target link is about.

Here are some examples of strong anchor text:

If you wanted to link to an article about the 10 most important SEO techniques, you could do it this way:

Here are a few important SEO techniques you should be using.

If you wanted to link to an article about Google Hummingbird, you could do it this way:

Google’s algorithm has been updated with new machine learning capabilities.

Each of those examples is associating the subject of the link with relevant phrases. The first anchor text contains “10 most important SEO techniques,” which is the subject matter of the article you’re linking to. The second anchor text has the phrase, “Google’s algorithm has been updated,” and the linked article contains information about Google, Hummingbird, algorithms, and updates.

Here are three things not to do with your internal linking:

1. Do not try to create an exact match between the anchor text and the link target. This technique, known as “exact match anchor text” has been associated with SEO penalties via the Penguin update. Today’s search engines are sensitive to the regular use of exact match anchor text because it wouldn’t frequently happen in regular content. It appears unnatural because it is.
2. Do not use phrases like “click here.” This adds no value. Anchor text needs to be related to the linked page in some way.
3. Do not link more than one sentence. An entire hyperlinked paragraph is unsightly and makes for a poor user experience. Just stick to a few words or a phrase when using anchor text to point to an internal link.

Add an Appropriate Number of Links Per Page

When you write a new piece of content, you should include five or more links to old articles. This is really important to your internal linking strategy and how the search engines review and rank your content.

Why?

Websites have a “freshness value” that Google detects and uses as part of its ranking algorithm.

According to Cyrus Shepard, “links from fresh sites [or pages] pass fresh value.”

Pinging old pages with a new link helps to boost its likelihood of increasing rank in the SERPs. In the eyes of the search engines, readers who follow your internal links are actually “refreshing” your older content by showing it’s still relevant.

However, be careful not to over-stuff your content with links.

According to Moz, search engine crawlers have a limit of 150 links per page. After that, they stop spidering.

Overstuffing your page with links could negatively impact your SEO.

Be sure to link, but don’t overdo it. This will help both the search crawlers and your user experience.

Update Old Articles With New Internal Links

You’ll get the most power from internal linking if you combine it with another SEO technique—updating old content.

When you update old content, Google’s crawler sees it again, indexes it again, and may increase its ranking in the SERPs.

We always recommend updating your old articles regularly. Here is a good process to follow on your old blog articles:

• Add a new paragraph of content at the beginning, explaining your updates.
• Add several new paragraphs throughout, adding additional or updated information.
• Remove or replace outdated stats or information.
• Add several new internal links to content you’ve recently created.
• Add links in places where it’s logical and value-added.

Remember, internal linking isn’t only about linking new content to older content. It’s also about circling back to older content and creating internal links that connect to your newer work.

You’re accomplishing two things by doing this.

1. It updates old content, which improves its ranking value.
2. It creates an internal link between an old established page on the site and a new not-so-established page.

Add Links Where It Makes Sense

Now that you’ve learned so much about internal linking, you’re probably wondering where you should put your internal links?

It’s tempting to get lazy and throw them in at the end of an article: “For more awesome content, click here!”

Don’t do that, please. Or at least, don't do just that.

Instead, look for areas in the content where the subject matter overlaps. These are logical points of connection to create an internal link. For example, you can add links to define complex terms or explain a related topic.

Think of internal links as a reference point that improves the experience of the reader.

Only Add Dofollow Links

Don’t add a nofollow tag to your internal links. Nofollow links do not have any impact on the search engine rankings of the destination site.

On top of that, Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across nofollow links. It won’t even crawl them.

While some data from Ahrefs has shown nofollow links can be useful when used externally, there is no reason to use them in your internal linking strategy.

Link to High Converting Pages

Do you have pages on your website that convert visitors more than other pages?

If so, link to these pages.

Some articles in our blog have super high conversion rates. The content is compelling, and the CTAs are so powerful that users convert in droves.

We always make sure to link internally to these pages.

This is where internal linking has more than just SEO value. It can have revenue value, too. The more visitors you can drive to a high-converting page, the more conversions you’ll have.

Take Site Navigation and Information Architecture Into Consideration

Site navigation and internal linking go hand in hand.

Internal links define site architecture and hierarchy by creating funnels that direct users through your website.

Ultimately, this is an important part of your UX/UI and will impact how long people stay on your web pages and how often they come back.

When building an internal linking strategy, consider the most important content on your site and how you’re promoting it.

If you have a piece of cornerstone content that you want more eyes on, point more internal links to it.

Create Lots of Content

The best way to have a healthy internal linking structure is to have lots of internal pages.

When you create lots of content, you’ll have lots of linkable content. The more links to the more places, the better your internal linking strategy will be.

Remember, simply having a lot of web pages doesn't equal a robust internal linking strategy.

While internal links are essential to your website navigation, repeatedly linking to your homepage won’t move the needle on your SEO score.

Instead, consider writing a blog or creating landing pages that house resourceful content.

Whatever your strategy, do it well and do it often.

Internal Linking Practices to Avoid

Now that you know how to use internal linking correctly, let’s review some of the practices to avoid.

Adding too many links to your content can be detrimental to your score. Remember, Google does not crawl pages that have more than 150 links. It’s also important to note that your header, footer, and menu links are included in your on-page link count.

Don’t overdo it!

Keyword stuffing in anchor text is another internal linking practice to avoid. This black hat tactic was popular in the past, as SEO’s thought it would improve their chances of ranking.

These days, sophisticated search algorithms penalize keyword stuffing in anchor text. So, don’t do it.

Using internal links in header text should also be avoided. Links in headers signal spam to Google crawlers and can negatively impact your SEO.

Finally, be sure to check all of your internal links before posting them. Broken links don’t spread any link juice and signal to Google that your website is low quality.

Internal Linking FAQs

How many internal links should I include per post?

There’s no set number, but 5-10 for every 2,000 words is a good best practice. Remember, Google won’t crawl pages with more than ~150 links, so be careful about overstuffing your content.

Should I add internal links to my pages with more or less traffic?

According to Databox, internal links can spread link juice from low-traffic web pages to high-traffic ones. That being said, it’s also important to point as many links as possible to your cornerstone content so it benefits from increased traffic.

What is an example of internal linking?

Internal linking is a link that points to another page within the same domain. Internal links show up as hyperlinks, like this: Tips for building better evergreen links.

Are internal links backlinks?

No, internal links stay within your website domain, they do not come from an external source. Backlinks are external links that point to your domain.

Summary of Internal Linking Guide

Internal linking is a core part of a solid SEO strategy. When done right, it enhances the user experience and can help you rank higher in the SERPs.

While internal links are part of any strong website design, it’s important to find ways to include internal links in your content to ensure you’re getting the most out of your content. Make sure to use optimized (but not over-optimized) anchor tags, and add internal links that provide users with more information about a topic they're interested in.

What internal linking practices have you found to be the most effective?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Internal Linking Guide: Actionable Tips, Strategies, and Tools
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-internal-linking/
Published Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2021 16:00:00 +0000

Let’s talk about meta tags: what they are, why they matter, and how to do them better.

If you found this article via a search engine, there’s a good chance you found and clicked this article because of meta tags.

Meta tags are the foundation of SEO, and they are the first thing you’ll find yourself setting up when building a web page.

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are a type of HTML tag that provides search engines with information about a website page.

Let’s take a look at the basic elements.

The title and description tags make up almost the entire entry.

If not for these meta tags, all you’d see in Google SERPs would be my URL.

Title and description tags are the two most-used tags for SEO purposes, but SEO isn’t the only part of digital marketing.

Advanced digital marketing requires the use of even more tags that improve page rank and overall user experience.

Just like this search result, you’ll soon find out that these tags control how your entire digital presence is viewed and navigated.

Machines can read URLs just fine. If I wrote for machines, my website would look like this:

Google prioritizes certain tags because they provide context for people.

I built my website for people as well, so it looks like this:

This polish is what marketing is all about.

In this blog post, we will explore meta tags and see how they affect your overall digital marketing efforts.

While simple, the devil is in the details, and every detail counts.

How Meta Tags Affect Brand Image and Click-through Rates

You absolutely can judge a book by its cover. It’s what covers are designed for.

Your title and meta description tag create the cover for your web page. They’re your first impression on most visitors.

It’s not just about search engines, but how we view the Internet.

Reddit is a basic link-aggregation site that takes away all the bells and whistles.

Reddit depends on the title and image to entice conversations and clicks.

Using meta tags correctly is like using the correct format for a business email.

Sure, you can put whatever you like out there, but there’s a level of professionalism that’s expected at some point.

Even Amazon will only give you a picture, title, and short description to make your point.

Think of these tags as your elevator pitch.

You’re given about as much space as a Tweet to sell your entire brand and product.

This means you need to nail it.

You can’t just call in this detail and polish everything else. If you do, nobody will ever see the rest of what you polished.

We already know how meta tags affect SEO, but that’s not the only element.

Meta tags will make your email marketing and marketing automation efforts easier by providing information for emailed links.

Tags are a crucial element that determines what my automated social media posts look like.

When other bloggers, YouTubers, and social media influencers (and micro-influencers) share your content, tags make it easier.

Think of meta tags as the packaging for your product.

If your packaging isn’t spot-on, nobody will ever buy your product, no matter how great it is!

What are some best practices to implement for tags?

Meta Tag Best Practices

There are a TON of different HTML tags that can be used on a web page. We’re only going to focus on a handful of significant tags.

We’ll start with the one that might have brought you here today.

1. Title Tags

It’s not technically a meta tag, but it shows up in the header and is used as one.

As of July 2017, the character limits for title tags in Google search results are 78 on mobile devices and 70 on a desktop.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should use all those characters, and 60 is the generally recommended limit.

Long-tail keywords make a difference.

Here are the top meta titles in the SERPs for “How to make content marketing effective.”

By adding the year, we get an entirely new set of results for “how to make content marketing effective 2021.”

Some users will want basic information, while others will want the most current.

By adjusting our title tag, we can affect which of these searches we rank for.

Ultimately, the goal is to hit both, but that’s not always feasible.

Make sure your keyword is in your title, or you’ll find your articles buried in search results.

For example, when I search for the “best tacos in Tucson,” some restaurants are on page 9below, even Del Taco.

That’s a wasted opportunity for that taco capital of the country!

These small businesses could greatly improve their search results, sales, and ROI by simply adding “best tacos in Tucson” to their title tags.

Here’s a sample of the HTML required for a title tag located in your header.

<head>

<title>The Best Title Example I Could Come Up With</title>

</head>

In WordPress, it’s as easy as giving your page a title.

You really can’t miss it.

That’s all there is to it!

2. Image Tags

Like title tags, Image tags aren’t labeled “meta.”

They’re clearly used by search engines, link aggregators, and other sites to identify your site.

There are two image descriptions actually crammed into one tag.

Here’s what the HTML code looks like.

<img src=“image.jpg” alt=“image description” title=“image tooltip”>

Both the alt and title tags should be defined for the best experience.

The title displays on your screen when you hover your cursor over it.

The alt text displays when the image can’t be rendered (or is spoken to the blind and visually impaired).

When uploading an image to WordPress, you’ll be prompted to enter the title, caption, alt text, and description.

The more fields you fill out (even if you use the same information), the more searchable your images become.

It’s also a matter of ADA website compliance.

There are approximately 7.5 million people with some level of visual impairment in the U.S. alone.

That’s a huge segment of the population that wouldn’t have a great user experience without alt image tags.

Optimize your images for search engines and users.

3. Description Meta Tags

A meta description tag gives you a chance to provide an overview of the page’s content.

They’re limited to around 160 characters and aren’t directly tied to Google’s search algorithms at all.

Once again, the reason you need description tags is to improve the user experience.

Description tags encourage click-throughs.

Here’s what the HTML looks like:

<head>

<meta name= ”description” content=”This is an example of the text that will show up in search results. Read on to learn more about description tags.”>

</head>

Without a meta description, Google will default to whatever preview sentence it feels best encompasses the content.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

This post doesn’t have a meta description (I rarely use them), and it ranks well.

Of course, my blogs are filled with relevant content in short, sweet sentences. Most of them would work as descriptions on their own.

Still, there’s no harm in adding additional information to make your content more searchable.

4. Robots Noindex and Nofollow Meta Tags

Robot meta tags aren’t always necessary.

By default, all of the pages and links you create on your website are indexed as ‘follow’ by search bots and web crawlers.

Whenever you want to redirect them, you’ll need a robot meta tag.

Here’s the noindex HTML code:

<html><head>

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />

(…)

</head>

This would be within the header and indicate this page doesn’t need to be indexed.

It’s useful for syndicated and duplicate content that your customers/readers could use, but you don’t want credit in search indexes.

Here’s the HTML for a robot nofollow.

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”>

This is used for links you don’t necessarily want to endorse.

For example, readers leaving links in my comments aren’t exactly endorsed by me, so a nofollow tag above the comments section keeps my site clean for bots.

Here’s a great infographic on when and how to use nofollow tags.

Now we get to one of the most controversial meta tags.

5. Keyword Meta Tags

Keyword tags aren’t used by search algorithms to determine search ranking.

Here’s what the HTML looks like:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript”>

I coach my SEO clients to ignore keyword tags because they don’t affect SEO.

That doesn’t necessarily make them useless, however. They’re especially useful in WordPress.

Keyword tags and categories can help Google determine which page on your site should rank for a search.

They also create a page in WordPress that provides one more indexed page.

This means that, while your blog posts are focused on long-tail keywords, your tag and category pages have feeds covering the shorter keywords.

Categories can be used for the URL format, providing one more keyword to the page address.

This is accomplished under Settings > Permalinks in WordPress.

Adding this format provides context to your content.

Google loves context for search results!

Keywords also provide a big-picture overview of how many pages you have for each keyword.

You can use them to help plan your editorial calendar.

6. Viewport Tags

You don’t spend much time thinking about viewports, but they’re especially important in today’s mobile-first world of search.

On mobile devices, pages are shown in a popup window called a viewport that extends past the device’s border.

Here’s an illustration of what I’m talking about.

Developers can set the viewport size to increase mobile usability.

WordPress users can check this tag to learn this information for their templates.

You probably didn’t know that unless you’re already a web developer.

Since Google increasingly focuses on mobile-friendly websites, this meta tag could mean the difference between success and mobile failure.

Now that you have a basic understanding of meta tags and why they’re important, I’ll show you some of my favorite tools for manipulating them.

Free Tools to Add and Check Your Meta Tags

Don’t worry if this all sounds overwhelming—there are tons of tools to make it easy to get meta tags right. Here are two of my favorites.

Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress

Yoast is a powerful SEO plugin for WordPress and one of the most-downloaded SEO and meta tags tools.

With Yoast, all of the pages and posts you publish have back-end options to increase social sharing, optimize SEO, update tags, and other metadata.

With Yoast installed on your WordPress site, a few clicks and a few seconds of your time are all it takes to add meta-tagging to your process.

Yoast also allows you to enter a focus keyword that doesn’t get added to the meta tags, allowing the back-end program to analyze your post.

BuzzStream Meta Tag Extractor

If you need a quick chart of the metadata that’s being used by your competition, BuzzStream’s Meta Tag Extractor is a sleek and simple solution.

Copy and paste a list of URLs, and you’ll be presented with the meta tag information.

There’s even an option to download as a CSV file so that you can scrape large lists quickly.

It’s a quick and easy way to organize this data when you need it.

This free online tool does its job without all the bells and whistles.

Less Popular (but Still Useful!) Meta Tags

To be fully transparent, here’s a chart of HTML meta tags.

An author meta tag can be used to tell search engines who wrote a piece of content.

Authors have been used in the past for search results, but it’s not a factor anymore. However, you might use author tags if you run a multi-author blog.

WordPress does add this information to blogs when multiple users are contributing content.

It’s more a badge of honor for bloggers than anything else.

Most of the rest define parameters that should already be controlled on a server level.

While I ignored these meta tags, it doesn’t mean you have to. Feel free to add whatever information you’d like.

It doesn’t help search rankings, but it doesn’t hurt them, either.

Meta Tags FAQs

Meta Tags Conclusion

Meta tags are a basic part of HTML—and they can impact SEO.

Back in the early days of the internet, they were a signaling factor for search engines to understand what content is on a page.

The internet (and our relationship with it) has evolved exponentially since then.

Contextual search, AI digital assistants, and mobile devices are changing the way we view content.

Search engines are incentivized to provide the best search results possible, so meta tags are less important.

However, some, such as the titles and meta descriptions, are more important than ever before.

While less metadata is used, it’s still the first impression you’ll make on both robots and people.

What do your website’s meta tags say about you?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Meta Tags for SEO: Definition, Examples, & Best Practices
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/why-meta-tags-are-so-important/
Published Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

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Aside from free web hosting, DreamHost also provides US-based charitable organizations with the following:

• Free domain
• Free backups
• Free shopping cart installation so you can accept donations with ease
• Unmetered transfer and unlimited monthly visitors
• Free SSL certificate to keep online transactions secure

To create a free hosting account, DreamHost does not require any credit card details and needs just your billing address for verification purposes. 

You also need to attach a 501(c)(3) determination letter, a document from the United States IRS proving your tax-exempt non-profit status under the applicable sections of the tax code.

Since it’s a free account, you won’t have access to reliable 24/7 customer support. However, DreamHost’s dedicated help center and ticketing system offset this, which more than meets the need for straightforward troubleshooting solutions. 

Should you want more control over your account, nonprofit organizations can also avail themselves of a 35% discount off DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting plans. This means you can host your site under a paid plan for as low as $11 per month. 

#4 – WordPress.com Review — Best Free WordPress Hosting Service

Often confused with the open-source software WordPress.org, WordPress.com is the free platform where non-technical users can create websites. 

Since it is powered by the same robust and world-class infrastructure behind nearly half of the world’s websites, WordPress.com is the best place to learn how to manage a website while you’re still not ready or able to pay for a hosting service.

Setting up a website is easy. You can select a WordPress subdomain and choose from any of the available themes. 

Just like Wix, WordPress.com also displays ads to sustain its free platform. While the ads may sometimes be annoying, this is a small price to pay for all the other features that WordPress.com has to offer:

• 3 GB storage space so you can publish both text and beautiful images
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free SSL certificate for an additional layer of security
• Optional backups so you can save your files on your hard drive

While it has excellent performance for a free hosting platform, WordPress.com can’t beat the paid version in terms of flexibility. The WordPress CMS installed on websites in paid hosting plans gives you direct server access and freedom to install plugins and themes of your choice.

Still, WordPress.com is good for starters, especially if you only want a simple, stripped-down website to showcase your writing portfolio or personal diary. 

#5 – GitHub Pages Review — The Best Free Static Web Hosting for Developers

Anyone with basic coding skills is already familiar with GitHub, an open-source platform where developers store their coding projects. GitHub Pages is where you can take these codes from the repository, have them go through a build process, and turn them into a simple static website. 

A static website is ideal for those who prefer a small website that doesn’t need to be updated regularly. It’s also perfect for students who want a test site to play around with or present for their school projects. 

GitHub Pages is completely free, yet it comes with a range of outstanding features:

• One site per GitHub account 
• Unlimited project websites
• 1 GB of storage plus 100 GB bandwidth every month
• Standard github.io subdomain or custom domain name you own
• Free HTTPS to prevent others from tampering with your traffic
• Built-in integration with Jekyll, a popular static site generator, for more customization options

To build your static website, all you need to do is sign in to your account and create a new repository. You can then use the Jekyll Theme Chooser to pick from one of the pre-made themes. 

If you don’t like your theme or your static website’s content, no need to worry as changes are a simple edit and push away. You can make these changes either via the web or locally on your computer. 

Whether you’re a developer or a non-techy looking for easy-to-follow instructions, GitHub Pages has all the tools you need to create a free static site. 

What I Looked at to Find the Best Free Web Hosting

Before we proceed, you have to remember that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. 

In the case of a free web host, it has limitations that don’t appeal to everyone. 

Free web hosting is designed to meet the needs of a niche market like a new hobby blogger who doesn’t intend to earn from his website or a student looking for a free platform where she can test her web development projects. 

With that being said, you can’t use the same criteria in selecting a paid hosting plan when zeroing on the best free web hosting to suit your needs. 

Remember, you get what you pay for. And in the case of a free web host, you shouldn't expect to receive round-the-clock support, daily or on-demand backups, and 100% uptime guarantee, among others. 

However, some free options are a cut above the rest. Use the following parameters to figure out whether a free web hosting service is worth a try. 

Custom Domain

Most companies are willing to host your website for free so long as you’re also willing to use a subdomain. 

For instance, Wix is a popular website builder that requires its free users to use a subdomain (e.g., neilpatel.wix.com). 

A subdomain doesn’t look professional nor is it good for branding. So, unless you only want a stripped down website you can play around with, it would be better to opt for a company that can host your custom domain for free. 

A custom domain is one that you own (e.g., neilpatel.com). You can purchase it from a domain registrar or from any hosting provider that also offers domain registration on the side. Domains are inexpensive, and you’ll need to renew them annually.

If branding is your top priority, make sure to find a free web host that gives you the option to stand out in a sea of other freely hosted websites. 

Security

While advanced security features don’t exist in free web hosting platforms, they should at least offer a free SSL certificate.

SSL (secure sockets layer) is a technology that encrypts the information that passes through your website. It protects your site visitor’s sensitive data like passwords and credit card data from outside intruders. 

If you’re launching a basic ecommerce site on a free hosting platform, a free SSL certificate is non-negotiable. However, some free web hosting services only offer a self-signed SSL, which misleads users into thinking that it’s the same as the industry-standard SSL certificate.

A self-signed SSL is issued by servers and not by trusted authorities like Comodo, Digicert, and Let’s Encrypt. Since it’s not a standard version, websites with self-signed SSL will still show security warnings to visitors.

Hence, a self-signed SSL defeats the purpose of an SSL certificate even though it offers the same level of encryption. Especially if you’re planning to sell a product through your website, having a self-signed SSL is no better than not having an SSL certificate at all. 

Storage and Bandwidth

As a rule of thumb, never go with free web hosting unless you’ll use it for a basic website with little to no traffic. 

A free web host isn’t designed to handle huge traffic volume. This is why it’s important to read the fine print of the hosting provider’s terms and conditions before signing up.  

Unfortunately, a lot of free hosting providers tend to mislead clueless users by including “unlimited storage” and “unlimited bandwidth” in their list of features. 

Disk space or storage space is the amount of server space allocated to your website files, while bandwidth is the amount of data allowed to transfer from the server to your visitors in a given amount of time. If your website is hosted in a free platform, your disk space and bandwidth are best described as low and never “unlimited.”

“Unlimited bandwidth” is a promotional tactic by free hosting providers based on the assumption that sites on a shared server will not use up the available resources, which is rarely the case. 

Instead of being swayed by these superficial features, pay more attention specifically to file size limit and CPU limit. 

A file size limit is the maximum file size your website can upload, while the CPU limit refers to how much of the server’s central processing unit (CPU) your website is allowed to use. 

Free web hosting providers can temporarily shut down your site without warning, so make sure you know exactly what and how much your limitations are. 

Ads

The only reason why free web hosting continues to exist is because of the business behind it. And a business requires a source of revenue. 

Some of the more popular free web hosts sustain their platform through ad space. This monetization method may be effective, but it comes at the expense of your visitors.

You have no control over what appears on the advertisements or where they’re placed. Not to mention ads, in general, tend to be obtrusive and take the joy out of consuming your content.

If you want free hosting but care about your site’s aesthetics and user-friendliness, you can opt for a company that supports their free platform through other means, such as the sales of premium hosting plans. 

Customer support

Support for websites hosted in a free web host is limited at best. Unless you already have both the budget and need to upgrade to premium plans, there’s nothing else you can do. 

When looking for the best free web host to entrust your website, choose one with an active community forum. 

Check the latest posts and see how fast the response time is. The more active users the service has, the quicker you’ll get a resolution to any problem you might face in the future.

In addition to a community forum, some free web hosts also have a self-service knowledge base where users can quickly get answers to their most basic questions.

Conclusion

Nothing beats a paid hosting plan for all the extra support, features, and functionality. Still, if you need free web hosting or if you want to try out different web hosts before committing to an investment, there are some good free options available. 

These are my top choices if you are looking to get online without spending a dime:

1. Wix – Best free web hosting with website builder
2. Square Online – Best free ecommerce hosting platform
3. DreamHost – Best for nonprofits
4. WordPress.com – Best free WordPress hosting
5. GitHub Pages – Best free static web hosting for developers

The best free web hosting for you depends on what you’re looking for. Use the reviews and guide to help you narrow down your choices.

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Best Free Web Hosting
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/best-free-web-hosting/
Published Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2021 15:00:00 +0000

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Building that list of contacts is good–being overwhelmed by it is not.

The best contact management software goes beyond storing basic information, and helps your teams track every interaction. Turn prospects into leads and manage the handoff with ease. No more potential deals falling through the cracks.

Streamline your process so that you can close sales faster, keep your most valuable customers, and grow your business.

But how do you find the right contact manager to integrate into your sales system?

In this extensive guide, I review five of the top contact management tools on the market and walk you through the best features as well as their price points.

#1 – HubSpot Review — The Best Free Contact Management Software

HubSpot is a powerful free contact management system with tons of accessible tools to enhance your sales cycle from beginning to end. 

That's because HubSpot gives away a free version of its award-winning CRM (customer relationship management) software. Contact management is one of the foundational services included with this suite, but you will find tools for sales, marketing, and customer service teams.

The focus of HubSpot is inbound marketing–the company basically invented it–so you're going a lot of features designed to attract new leads to your website and products. Once you've got some interest, HubSpot's contact management features will help you build and track your audience.

For a free product, it's unbelievably rich.

Focusing in on just the list of contact management tasks you can do for free with HubSpot’s software still gives you a long list. You can keep track of contact website activity, deals, company insights, manage ticketing, manage ads, email tracking and notifications, and even messenger integrations.

HubSpot’s free contact management software is an excellent stepping stone toward more varied and growth-oriented contact management as your business grows since you can always upgrade to one of their paid CRM plans without having to migrate.

If you’re getting started with contact management and want to do more with your contacts in terms of sales strategy on a budget, I recommend you start onboarding HubSpot’s free tools for a strong beginning. 

Start using HubSpot for free here. 

#2 – Bigin Review — The Best For Simple Contact Management

A small or mid-sized business doesn’t always have use for tools built with enterprises in mind. Bigin (formerly Zoho Contact Manager) takes the prize for a simple yet reliable contact manager you can easily start with. 

A single dashboard unifies all your data points so you can make strategic decisions at a glance and manage everyone on your roster. It helps to think of it as your own personal yellow pages except for ten times more useful.

You can do things like adding your preferred tags to contacts to find what you’re looking for quickly, glance over at your expected revenue numbers, and see all your pending tasks.

Bigin makes it easier for you to close deals by scheduling follow-up activities and then closely monitoring results, all on an intuitive dashboard. 

Bigin’s simplicity bleeds into its pricing structure, too. Here’s a quick overview:

Free

• Single user
• 500 contacts
• One pipeline

Express – $7/user per month

• 50,000 contacts
• 5 pipelines
• Add 10,000 additional contacts for $1/month
• Up to 20 custom fields per module and 10 custom dashboards

It's that simple. One user with one pipeline can manage up to 500 contacts free, forever. And the paid tier isn't tough to stomach, either.

Get started with Bigin here to go beyond managing a simple list of contacts.

#3 – Pipedrive Review — The Best For Visual Contact Management

Pipedrive is loved not just for the wide array of CMS tools it offers but because it makes the whole contact management and sales process straightforward and visual. It’s been used by over 90,000 companies in more than 170 countries and business giants like Vimeo, Amazon, and Re/Max. 

Pipedrive is a highly intuitive system that easily updates and automates contact tasks and sales calls. The easy drag-and-drop features and their clean and approachable interface make them an easily adaptable and usable system. 

With a visual dashboard in mind, they don’t falter in the features department, as it offers plenty of tools for powerful contact management like task automation, lead pipelines, and smart lists that track the last time you contacted a prospect. 

You can always try Pipedrive free for 14 days. It doesn’t hurt to spend a few days trying out the software’s ins and outs to see if they’re a good company match. Otherwise, the ricing plans break into four tiers:

• Essential – $12.50
• Advanced – $24.90
• Professional – $49.90
• Enterprise – $99

#4 – Zendesk Review — Best For Reporting and Analytics

Zendesk is a dynamic CMS that emphasizes the analytical and reporting aspects of contact management. 

The last thing you want is to grow a robust list of leads and then have no idea what to do with them due to lack of data. Zendesk’s analytics make it possible for you to engage in better conversations with your prospects with their pre-built analytics features.

With them, you can track rep activities, call response times, and live chat interactions. Their rich reporting features ensure you keep a finger on every touchpoint of your sales cycle. This makes it easy to increase the ROI of each sales rep on your team. 

Zendesk’s price breakdowns can get specific depending on the solutions and features you’re looking for. The contact and relationship management tiers start at $19 per seat. 

Here’s a quick overview of the pricing tiers:

• Team – $19 per seat per month
• Professional – $49 per seat per month
• Enterprise – $99 per seat per month
• Elite – $199 per seat per month

Get started with a free demo of Zendesk here.

#5 – Salesforce Review — The Best Scalable CMS

Contact management software that scales with you and offers powerful tools to take you beyond the basics? There’s a tool for that. It’s called Salesforce.

The point of a CMS is to increase the efficiency of your daily operations, so you’re never blindsided by lost sales or missed relationship-building opportunities. 

Salesforce does that by offering the tools to build a good contact management base. This means contact history, survey answers, and email responses. But they take it a step further with their social data tool to keep track of what your customer is saying about products and services. 

Not only that, but Salesforce makes it easy to collaborate with everyone in your business. You can share documents, comments, analytics and insights, sales history, and any other information relevant to your ROI. 

On-the-go contact management is also possible with its mobile app. You can hop on a call armed with plenty of preemptive information about your customer from anywhere. This awesome array of tools makes Salesforce not only a contact management tool but a sales closing system, too, which is why it’s made it on my top five picks. 

Here’s a breakdown of each plan they offer:

• Essential – $25
• Professional – $75
• Enterprise – $150
• Unlimited – $300

Each plan comes with:

• Account, contact, lead, and opportunity management
• Email integration with Gmail and Outlook
• Access to the Salesforce mobile app and all it’s features

The higher the tier, the more access to customizable features and tools you’ll have. Thankfully, you don’t have to jump right into a plan without testing how they work first.

Salesforce also gives you the option of testing any pricing tier first before committing. 

Try Salesforce for free first here and see what plan fits your contact management needs the best. 

What I Looked at to Find the Best Contact Management Software

Choosing the best contact management software goes beyond making sure they provide the standard contact management software (CMS) tools like sales tracking, customer notes, emails, and sales history.

Your business is unique, which means your CMS needs are also unique. Because of this, it’s hard to pinpoint a one-size-fits-all CMS that you can use in any given sales scenario or industry. 

You also have to consider the size of your team, your plans for scaling and revenue growth, and what functionalities are non-negotiable in your given industry.

Beyond that, there are a few specific key factors to think through when trying to make the best choice in a sea of software. Use these criteria to ensure you’re making the best contact management investment possible. 

Reporting and Analytics Capabilities

Some contact management systems put more emphasis on sales reporting and analytics than others. This can prove to be a valuable asset or just an extra feature to your team, depending on how you handle your sales process.

These days, contact management software is increasingly robust in terms of the analytics it can gather to help you make the best sales decisions. Some of them can measure everything from live chat interactions to sales calls, email responses, and even what you’re prospective customers say on social media about you or your competitor’s product or service. 

Deciding how deep you need your contact management analytics to go will ultimately depend on your sales goals and budget. Consulting with your sales team can be a sound idea in the process of making a final decision. 

Sales Process and Software Fit

The sales process you use to sell printers isn’t necessarily the same one you’d use to sell premium car parts. This also means you’ll want to find a CMS that fits every unique point of sale your team goes through continuously.

If done right, this can mean higher ROI, shorter sales cycles, and more revenue. This is where it’s a good idea to take the time to test drive every prospective CMS that looks appealing to your sales team. Most of them have the option for a demo or a 14-day free trial.

These trials exist for a reason. I highly recommend you take advantage of them before you commit.

User Experience

The more scalable integrations and features a CMS has, the more likely it is to have a big learning curve. This is important to take into account when thinking about onboarding your sales team to the system successfully. 

Besides that, the user experience for both your front-facing customer features like contact forms and chatbots and the backend features your sales team will have to interact with daily is also a crucial part of the process as far as ease of use goes.

An array of powerful features is pretty much useless if your sales team continually runs into trouble using them, or if integrations prove too clunky to operate properly. 

This also raises questions about what support features your preferred CMS provides and whether they offer any accompanying training options like forums, live chats, or even training webinars.

Summary

Finding the right contact management system can make the difference between constant sales, shorter sales cycles, and more efficient business growth all around.

But it starts with figuring out what your sales needs are, how you go through your sales strategy, and what you need to optimize for higher ROI. Once you’ve figured out your key needs, you can start narrowing down your list of prospects.

My recommendations are all excellent products, but they each have their strong suit:

1. HubSpot – Best free contact management software
2. Bigin – Best for simple contact management
3. Pipedrive – Best for visual contact management
4. Zendesk – Best for reporting and analytics
5. Salesforce – Best scalable contact management software

My top choices for effective contact management are HubSpot, because of their extensive list of free tools, and Salesforce, because of how versatile and adaptable they are. Make sure to use this review as a roadmap to make your final decision. 

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Best Contact Management Software
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/best-contact-management-software/
Published Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2021 18:00:00 +0000

Marketing is important to your business.

Just call me Captain Obvious.

However, as customers evolve, so does the unpredictable marketing landscape.

This means you’re likely spending more and more time trying to keep up with the latest marketing tips and trends.

That's wasting your precious time that you could use for other tasks.

What if there was a way to simplify? Or even automate those tasks altogether?

No, I’m not just talking about emails.

Keeping up with what you should be measuring or targeting can be exhausting, difficult, and time-consuming.

But marketing automation tools make your job a little more painless, so you and your team can focus your time and attention on other efforts that drive revenue.

Luckily for you, I’ve compiled a list of the best marketing automation tools with countless features and automated workflows that will make marketing less of a headache.

Here are 20+ tools (in no particular order) that you should try out if you’re looking for new, easy ways to streamline marketing functions.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is the act of using software and technology to create and implement applications to automate repetitive tasks, such as (yes) email marketing, ad campaigns, tracking, and much more.

For example, brands could create an automatic lead generation funnel that gathers an email address, sends a recorded demo, then invites the prospect to schedule a live demo.

Marketing automation is not a nice-to-have strategy you can ignore — the industry is expected to be worth more than 25 billion dollars by 2023.

If you want to compete, you need to be using marketing automation.

The good news? Using marketing automation can save you time, money, and improve your marketing efficiency. Here are a few ways to add it to your strategy.

1. Use Customer.io to Automate Timely Emails

Customer.io lets you send targeted messages to your customers that you can craft based on how they interact with your business.

The best part about this tool is that it integrates with your mobile app or website so you can see data in real-time and triggers actions by adding in predefined rules.

Basically, it makes personalized messages simple.

Other features include A/B testing, conversion tracking, customer profiles, and in-context conversations.

Pricing starts at $150 per month for unlimited emails, SMS, tracking, and technical support. Their Premium plan costs $995 a month and includes all the basic features plus dedicated customer service rep, onboarding, HIPPPA compliance, and premium tech support.

2. Let Constant Contact Deliver Powerful Emails Simply, and Easily

Constant Contact is an extremely useful email marketing automation tool that has powerful automation capabilities to take your marketing beyond just the basics.

Its autoresponder is wonderfully adaptable. You can build welcome sequences, drip campaigns, and any other sort of automated email campaign with fine-tuned customization.

That applies to everything: timing, volume, subject matter, targeting, triggering, and even the content in your emails.

Plus, Constant Contact allows you to quickly embed custom forms on your landing pages. So, you not only get names and email addresses, but any other information you want to ask for.

Thus, you can send one welcome sequence to new senior VP-level subscribers, another one for sales folks, another one for regular Joes, and on and on. And that's just on the basis of job title. You could thin slice on anything from where they live to their favorite kind of beer.

Make it as granular and intricate as you'd like. Set long-tail, automated campaigns for each track and let Constant Contact do the hard work for you over weeks or months. All you have to do is look at the reports and keep a finger on the pulse.

You'll need Constant Contact's Email Plus plan to really reap the benefits of the platform's email automation. That starts at $45/month for up to 500 contacts in your list, scaling upward at increments of $25-$30 for each additional 2,500 contacts you need to accommodate.

3. Generate Leads, Close Seals, and Manage Your Pipeline on Auto-Pilot With HubSpot

HubSpot is an inbound marketing tool with the goal of turning outbound leads into inbound ones.

It’s perfect for content marketing.

Their Starter package is $45 a month for all the free tools plus simple automation, conversation routing, task queues, and email support.

Their Professional Plan starts at $450 per month, which provides everything in the Starter package, plus marketing automation, goal-based nurturing, and custom workflows.

You also get Salesforce integration, smart content, attribution reporting, user roles, A/B testing for CTAs, and A/B testing for emails.

Enterprise pricing is $1,200 and includes revenue reporting, custom-event reporting, custom-event automation triggers, predictive-lead scoring, contacts and company reporting, and event-based segmentation are included.

4. Supercharge Your Marketing Analytics Automatically With Pardot

Pardot, a Salesforce company, is a marketing automation suite perfect for boosting your revenue.

Amp up your engagement with CRM integration, email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and ROI reporting.

This tool is perfect for helping sales teams shorten sales cycles.

Their Growth plan pricing is $1,250 per month, and features include email marketing, in-depth prospect tracking, lead nurturing, and lead scoring and grading.

You also get ROI reporting, forms and landing pages, and standard CRM integration.

Their Plus plan is $2,500 per month and includes all standard features plus advanced email analytics, email-rendering preview, and spam analysis.

Email and landing page A/B testing, advanced dynamic content, and Google AdWords integration are all included.

You also get API access, multiple scoring categories, an integrated marketing calendar, and social profiles.

Advanced pricing is $4,000 per month and includes pro features as well as customer-user roles, custom-object integration, and API access for up to 100,000 calls per day.

It also includes a dedicated IP address and phone support.

5. Use AdRoll to Automate Ad Campaigns

AdRoll is helpful for retargeting customers through re-engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and the web.

With cross-device and cross-platform retargeting capabilities as well as flexible segmentation, you can provide customized experiences that dramatically improve marketing efficiency.

Key features include retargeting across devices and platforms, dynamic LiquidAds, flexible segmentation, transparent analytics, and expert optimization and conversion reporting.

AdRoll offers a free plan with limited features, or you can get their Growth plan for $19 a month.

6. Automatically Nurture Leads With Marketo

This marketing software lets you drive revenue with lead management, mobile marketing, and more.

Marketo, an Adobe company, is a cloud-based tool for companies large and small that not only helps build customer relationships but helps you sustain them.

There are no set-up fees, and the tool comes with a free trial, so you don’t have to commit until you’re sure it’s right for you.

Their first product was “Lead Management” in 2006, but the company has grown tremendously since then and now offers a larger variety of features.

7. Automate Inbound Call Analytics with Dialog Tech (Invoca)

Dialog Tech (now called Invoca) is great for voice-based marketing automation so you can boost ROI with call automation and analytics.

You can optimize voice interactions with Dialog Tech’s tools by measuring your success and adjusting accordingly.

Features include keyword call-tracking, phone surveys, caller-profile data, reverse lookup, conversation analytics, in-call scoring, geolocation routing, voice broadcasts, SMS, and more.

Keyword call tracking is a game-changer for voice interactions.

Otherwise, you really have no way of tracking that kind of data over the phone yourself unless you’re manually recording calls and playing them back later.

Even then, you’d have to manually track how those customers reacted after hearing certain keywords.

Unfortunately, they don't publish their pricing. So you'll have to get in touch with them to get a quote.

8. Deliver Personalized Campaigns Across Multiple Channels With Oracle Eloqua

Oracle’s B2B cross-channel marketing solution Oracle Eloqua lets marketers plan automated campaigns while simultaneously personalizing them.

The company was launched in 1999 with the goal of boosting lead generation.

Now, the tool has grown into an effective personalization device across various channels like email, video, and mobile.

Oracle Eloqua will give you all of the lead-management tools you need and segment your audience in specific ways to get them to buy.

Plus, you can track reports and insights into a buyer’s journey with just a few clicks.

They no longer list their pricing online, but previous plans started around $2,000 a month.

9. Track Marketing Interactions Across All Channels With Bizible

Bizible closes the gap between sales and marketing.

You can maximize AdWords ROI and use multichannel tracking to get a full picture of both sales and marketing metrics.

Big features include keyword-level metrics for AdWords as well as metrics for campaigns and ad content, UTM parameters, detailed lead history, custom reports, and integrations.

Bizable was purchased by Adobe, and now exists as a product under Marketo. You'll need to reach out for a quote and more information.

10. Let Act-On Seamlessly Nurture Inbound and Outbound Leads

Act-On’s cloud-based platform lets you connect inbound and outbound leads to manage your nurturing programs. There are tons of other helpful features too, like landing page design.

With this tool, you can take your revenue to the next level.

The company was founded in 2008 and first sold software through Cisco exclusively.

The professional package starts out at $900 per month for 2,500 active contacts, 3 marketing users, and 50 users in sales. You’ll get 30,000 API calls-per-day.

Enterprise pricing is $2,000 per month for 2,500 active contacts, 6 marketing users, and 100 sales users. You’ll also get 30,000 API calls-per-day with this feature.

11. Automate the Customer Journey With LeadSquared

LeadSquared, founded in 2012, helps small and medium companies align their marketing and sales efforts.

Capture leads from inbound email, online campaigns, phone calls, your website, chat, and more with this tool.

LeadSquared offers a free trial, and pricing for automation plans starts out at $400 for the basic package (10,000 contacts).

The cost is $1200 for the standard one (20,000 contacts) and $2500 for the enterprise package (200,000 contacts).

12. Get CRM, Sales, and Marketing Tools Automated Together with Keap

Keap (formerly Infusion Soft) is for you if you want to get organized, increase sales, and save time.

Don’t we all?

If you’re a small business owner or blogger, this tool is perfect for you.

Keap makes it simple to create a new sales or marketing strategy and execute it so that you can capture and close sales more quickly.

Save time by automating repetitive tasks like follow-ups, billing, contact management, and payments.

Pricing starts at $79 for Lite plan, $159 for their Pro plan, and $199 for their Max plan. Each package covers 500 contacts, with additional costs for additional contacts or users.

13. Grow, Engage, and Acquire Customers with Genoo‘s WPMktgEngine

WPMktgEngine is a WordPress plugin designed to help small businesses implement marketing automation.

Capture lead forms, profile customers, and create new landing pages to drive results fast.

Key features include a centralized lead database with unlimited leads, landing page design, CMS, lead activity tracking, SEO analysis, and more.

Their Conversion Pro package starts at $166 per month for up to 15,000 leads. The Engage Pro package starts at $83/month for 5,00 leads, and their Inbound Pro packages starts at $44 per month for up to 2,500 leads

14. Attract, Capture, and Streamline Leads With Sugar Market

Salesfusion (now called Sugar Market) is another tool that helps B2B companies link sales and marketing more closely together.

The truth is, 70 percent of the buying cycle is complete before the customer ever contacts sales.

Sugar Market helps businesses build revenue funnels by creating custom digital conversations that marketing and sales representatives can use to convert customers.

The tools help your team say the right thing to the right leads at the right time and includes all the CRM features you could ever need.

Pricing depends on the number of contacts you want but begins at $1,000 per month for 10,000 contacts.

15. Segment and Automate Customer Experiences Using iContact

iContact provides marketing-automation software, email marketing services, and more so that your team can drive successful results every time.

Integrate landing pages, email marketing, social media management, and analytics together to outsmart your competition and reach more contacts.

Plus, you’ll have access to strategic advisors who can help you “optimize your sending strategy and inbox delivery for maximum conversions.”

This is the tool for you if you’re looking to grow your business and become notable in your industry.

Pricing depends on your number of contacts, but you can easily select your list size.

iContact is a minimum of $15 per month for 1500 contacts for the basic Email Marketing package, and $30 per month for 500 contacts for the Pro package.

The Pro package includes features not available with the basic Email Marketing package, such as:

• Email, automation, and landing page reporting
• Unlimited landing page creation
• Custom API
• Smart sending
• Automation followups
• Welcome, birthday, and event eries
• Segmentation
• Behavioral targeting
• Social monitoring

16. Get BuzzBuilder Pro to Automate Cold Email Campaigns

BuzzBuilder Pro is useful for entrepreneurs, sales teams, and marketers. Find prospects, generate leads, and nurture them more easily.

Key features include advanced email marketing automation, a website form builder, tracking and analytics, lead nurturing, scoring and ranking, social media marketing, and hot-lead alerts.

You will need to call for detailed pricing information.

17. Create Automated Marketing Workflows With Net-Results

Net-Results helps to automate almost every kind of marketing task imaginable.

Their goal is to help you save time while allowing you to better uncover and nurture leads so that your revenue will grow quickly.

Features include an email builder, form builder, landing-page builder, campaign builder, and A/B-test builder. Nurture leads, automate workflows, and more.

Pricing ranges start at $800 per month for 2,500 contacts and go up from there.

18. Streamline and Simplify Marketing Automation With GreenRope

GreenRope is “the ultimate dashboard for your business.”

This tool is useful for completing marketing automation and CRM all in one place.

Manage operations, sales, and marketing all from one dashboard that will help you visualize your performance and make key business decisions.

Features include interaction tracking, event and project management, calendar booking, SMS marketing, surveys, video tracking, and predictive analysis.

You can also trigger automation, lead scoring, analysis, prediction, and engagement.

Pricing starts at $99 per month for 500 contacts and goes up to $799 per month for up to 50,00 contacts.

19. Deliver Automated Email Campaigns Using MailChimp

With intelligent email marketing features, it’s hard not to love MailChimp.

This tool is perfect for contacting prospects or customers who are vital to your success. If you need an effective email tool, this is one you should definitely check out.

Features include email marketing automation, personalized emails, automated welcome emails, behavioral targeting, engagement monitoring, and more.

With this tool, you can trigger emails based on actions like sign-up date and website activity.

The cost is free for up to 2,000 contacts, and upwards of $425 or more per month depending on your total number of subscribers.

20. Automate Marketing Processes with Gliffy

Create organizational charts, high-quality flowcharts, UML diagrams, network diagrams, technical drawings, wireframes, and more with Gliffy.

It works in your web browser to help you visualize workflows and boost marketing productivity.

Key features include workflow organization, an intuitive interface, collaboration with anyone with access to a web browser, and more.

The best part? They have a free trial!

21. Use Inbound Marketing Automation with Jumplead

Jumplead turns website visitors into leads and then nurtures them until they become paying customers.

Jumplead is a go-to source for everything from lead tracking to CRM, analytics, and automation.

Features include lead tracking, CRM, behavior-triggered actions, email marketing, landing pages, and analytics.

The cost is free for 200 visitors and goes up from there. The pro package is $199 per month for 20,000 visitors.

Bonus: Add fresh data to your marketing campaign with DataForSEO

DataForSEO provides “comprehensive SEO data via API at a predictable price.”.

While they mostly work with SEO providers, you can use their data to juice up your marketing efforts.

Here's a list of API's DataForSEO provides:

• Rank tracking API
• SERP API
• Keywords data API
• Competitor API
• OnPage API
• Keyword finder API

Marketing Automation FAQ

Marketing Automation Conclusion

Good marketing has the ability to set you apart from your competition.

However, it can be hard to keep up with what marketing strategies work and which ones don’t.

Even when you do, it’s hard to focus on all of them at once. You don’t always have the time or energy to do it. Neither do I.

Thankfully, marketing automation tools exist to make marketing easier for you and your team.

By automating, you can spend your time and attention focusing on other efforts that will increase your company’s success.

Try out some of these marketing automation tools based on your needs and budget.

Kick back as they streamline your processes for you.

Then, pick your favorites and stick with them.

What marketing automation tools are you using?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Marketing Automation: What is it, Examples & Tools [2021]
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/marketing-automation-tools/
Published Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2021 02:00:00 +0000

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

The best WordPress plugins make your site faster, increase traffic, and tighten website security for your visitors.

But you don't want to overdo it. Installing too many WordPress plugins can actually slow down your site. Using certain plugins together can cause conflicts that you definitely want to avoid.

I've got a good number of plugins on my blog, which gets millions visitors each year. You can fill out forms, sign up for membership content, and more–everything runs smooth. It's all about picking the right plugins that work together for your needs.

I've put together a list of the seven best WordPress plugins you can install right now to improve your site. After the reviews, I'll show you how to evaluate your options and avoid issues.

#1 – WP Rocket Review – The Best for Speed Optimization

A WordPress site can put a lot of strain on your server, which increases the possibility of crashing your web server. To avoid such unfortunate situations and ensure all your site loads super fast, you need a caching plugin like WP Rocket.

WP Rocket is a simple and effective plugin designed to boost your website speed and performance. It doesn’t wait for someone to request a page to save it to cache. Instead, it automatically builds your website cache, resulting in an immediate performance boost.

The plugin turns on recommended WordPress caching settings, such as page cache, gzip compression, and cache pre-loading automatically.

You can also activate other features like CDN support, lazy loading images, DNS prefetching, and minification to improve your page loading time and reduce bounce rate.

Starting at $49 for an annual license per site, WP Rocket is less than $5 a month. There are solid WordPress cache plugins available, but WP Rocket is still my number one pick in the category. It’s easier to use than some of the less expensive ones, which is probably why it is so popular.

There is no free trial, but WP Rocket does have a 14-day refund policy. So you can try it risk free to see how it impacts your site's performance. Learn more.

#2 – Yoast SEO Review – The Best for Increasing Organic Website Traffic

Users serious about search optimization trust Yoast SEO to reach their goals. All you need to do is select a keyword, and the tool will then optimize your page around it.

Not only does it help you improve SEO, but it also analyzes your content readability. It gives you real-time page analysis to optimize your content, images, meta descriptions, titles, and keywords.

No wonder it might be the most popular SEO tool in the WordPress plugin repository.

Further, Yoast checks the length of your sentences and paragraphs, whether you’re using enough transition words or subheadings, how often you use passive voice, and so on. It tells Google whether or not to index a page or a set of pages too.

Although there’s a free version available, you can upgrade to the premium version for $89 per year that comes with extra functions, allowing you to optimize your content up to five keywords, among other benefits.

#3 – Akismet Review – The Best for Spam Protection

Nobody appreciates the opinions of bots. Unfortunately, spam comments are an unavoidable price of website success.

With Akismet, though, you’ll be able to eliminate spam comments–no matter how genuine they look–effectively and effortlessly. After all, it’s the official anti-spam plugin developed by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress. 

There’s a possibility of the plugin missing out on a few spam comments or not identifying false positives. You only need to tell it about them, and the plugin learns and gets better over time.

The plugin also checks your contact form submissions against its global spam database to weed out unnecessary and fake information.

Although free to download, you will need an Akismet.com API key to use the plug-in. These keys are free for personal blogs, but businesses and commercial sites will have to opt for paid subscriptions.

#4 – Wordfence Security Review – The Best to Handle Security Concerns

Wordfence Security is a WordPress firewall and security scanner plugin. It offers your site full protection from malicious hackers, malware, spam, and other online threats.

It searches for malware and compares code, theme, and plugin files with the records in the WordPress.org repository, allowing it to verify their integrity and report any changes to you.

The plugin comes fitted with a web application firewall (WAF) called Threat Defense Feed that helps Wordfence identify and block malicious traffic. Plus, it prevents brute force attacks by ensuring you set stronger passwords and limiting login attempts.

Wordfence firewall and security scanner will give you security risk alerts before your website is hacked, keeping it safe and secure. It also comes with login security features that enable you to activate reCAPTCHA and two-factor authentication on your website.

A free version of Wordfence is available. But you can also buy the premium plan at $99 per year to get extra security features like the real-time IP blacklist and country blocking option, along with support from professional support engineers.

#5 – UpdraftPlus Review – The Best for Site Backup

Many people fail to consider the importance of having a backup plugin. Don’t make that mistake.

Thousands of sites get hacked daily. WordPress sites are a really common target for hackers because it is so popular and a lot of non-technical folks use it. Simply hoping you won’t be next on the list is just wishful thinking. You have to be prepared, which is where backup plugins come in handy.

There are plenty of WordPress backup plugins online, but only a few are as powerful and user-friendly as UpdraftPlus. It allows you to set up automatic backups and store your files on a remote location like Google Drive, FTP, email, and Dropbox.

Restoring your website from a backup is also super easy and can be done straight from the dashboard. Other features include advanced reporting, database encryption, additional storage destinations like OneDrive, Azure, SFTP, and backup scheduling. 

You have the option to either use the base version of UpdraftPlus or purchase its premium version that costs between $195-$399 a year, depending on the plan you choose.

#6 – MonsterInsights Review – The Best for Data Tracking

Data tracking is crucial for scaling and improving your website. Without facts, all you'll have are assumptions. MonsterInsights allows you to add, customize, and manage your Google Analytics-related web tracking services–all within your WordPress dashboard. 

Google Analytics helps you improve your website, content, and better user experience by giving you key insights about how every webpage performs and which online campaigns bring in the most traffic and conversions. 

Some of you may have heard of Google Analytics for WordPress. It was the former name for MonsterInsights. The name might’ve changed, but the purpose remains the same.

You can use it to view active sessions, conversion and bounce rate statistics, and keep track of outbound and internal links and downloads. Other details like your total revenue, top products, and top referral sources will also be included.

With all the information readily available, you can work on creating a data-driven strategy to grow your business.

MonsterInsights has a free version that allows you to install Google Analytics, track data, see metrics on the dashboard, and run reports.

There is also a premium version that is more of an investment but includes post and page tracking, custom tracking and reports, AdSense tracking, and more. The premium version starts at $99.50 per year with the Plus plan.

#7 – WPForms Review – The Best for Designing Contact Forms

You can use WPForms to create appealing and highly-effective contact forms rather quickly, thanks to its drag-and-drop builder. 

It comes with several cool features like smart conditional logic to ensure your visitors have an excellent customer experience, which, in turn, increases the chances of them submitting their contact information. 

Moreover, WPForms can integrate with all popular marketing and payment platforms.

The free plan lets you create a secure contact form with ease.

But if you want access to more templates and advanced features to boost your lead generation efforts, the paid version would be more appropriate. The paid version starts at $39.50 per year for one site.

What I Looked at to Find the Best WordPress Plugin

I’ve compiled a list of a few factors you should consider to narrow down your search to determine the right fit for your website. 

Every plugin’s page on the WordPress Plugin Repository contains detailed information about the plugin, its purpose, how to use it, and more. Refer to this information to decide whether a specific plugin is a good fit for you.

Search the plugin directory and pick a few options you think will suit your needs best. When it comes to making the final selection, use my tips below:

Free vs. Premium

We all like free things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better. WordPress plugins are no exception.

Free plugins can be great if you don’t want to spend money right away, and most of them are enough to get the basic job done. 

However, if you’re looking for more features or higher customization, most plugins will need to be upgraded to the premium version to unlock more features. 

Contrarily, premium plugins are designed to ensure compatibility with new WordPress versions and provide better security. On top of this, you get a more comprehensive selection of features to customize and enhance your site.

If monetary commitment is something you’re worried about, you’ll be pleased to know that most premium plugins are quite affordable. So you won’t be breaking the bank anytime soon.

In the end, it’s your call. Just make sure you make the right choice for the functionality of your site.

Overall Plugin Ratings

The overall rating of a WordPress plugin can tell you a lot.

Previous users can rate a plugin up to five stars based on their experience. Skip options that don’t have an average of at least (or almost) four stars. 

Plugins with a one-star, two-star, or three-star rating are mostly glitchy and create a lot of problems. Whereas higher-rated plugins are well maintained, work well, and offer adequate support. 

Otherwise, why would any user give them good ratings and reviews?

Go Through As Many User Reviews You Can

There's no better way to determine the quality of a plugin than directly from users. This way, you know precisely whether a plugin is successful.

I would also recommend looking at the total number of ratings. For instance, if a plugin has only been rated by five or seven people, it means it’s relatively new. If they give a decent review, the average rating will automatically be higher.

It's always better to download plugins with more users and reviewers.

So, not only should you read the user reviews, but also check the total number of reviews.

See How Active the Support Section Is

Every plugin on the WordPress plugin repository has a support forum.

Go through the support tab to check out the level of activity within these forums. Regular activity is necessary as it indicates the developer is responsive and wants to deliver an excellent experience to its users by solving user-reported issues.

If you’re evaluating a premium plugin, their official website should be your go-to instead of the support tab. 

Find out how easy it is to get support and whether it has the features you need. Send a test email to see how fast the developers respond to check out their efficiency.

If a plugin has several unresolved threads or you don’t get an answer to your test email, it probably means the plugin is abandoned or that developers are not responding to user issues. 

It could still work, yes. But you won’t get adequate support if you face problems.

Find Out the Frequency of Updates

The best plugins are updated regularly. If not, or if it has been a long time since their last update, they may not be well-maintained. 

Of course, there can be some exceptions, but regular updates are still an important consideration.

Ideally, plugin updates should be in line with WordPress’ core updates. This ensures optimal compatibility and a good level of active implication from the plugin developer.

You can check exactly when a plugin was last updated by visiting the WordPress plugin repository. 

Also, check out the Active Installations section. This will give you an idea of the plugin’s popularity and whether it’s still relevant to the ever-changing market trends.

Conclusion

WordPress plugins can do it all, from designing and maintaining a website to optimizing it for search engines to enhance user experience.

Get started today with my top recommendations. These are trusted products that can help you take your site to the next level. Here's the full list to recap:

1. WP Rocket – The best for speed optimization
2. Yoast SEO – The best for increasing organic website traffic
3. Akismet – The best for spam protection
4. Wordfence Security – The best to handle security concerns
5. UpdraftPlus – The best for site backup
6. MonsterInsights – The best for data tracking
7. WPForms – The best for designing contact forms

Use Yoast to keep your SEO on point, and block spam and bots with Akismet. Next, make sure your WordPress security remains uncompromised with Wordfence.

WP Rocket keeps loading times short, while UpdraftPlus can come to your rescue when you face compatibility issues or want to migrate your site.

Got a favorite plugin that I didn’t mention? Comment below to let me know!

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Best WordPress Plugins
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/best-wordpress-plugins/
Published Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2021 15:00:00 +0000

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Cloud web hosting is the right choice for websites that really value stability. If one of your products goes viral, you can weather the traffic spike fine without your users going through a sluggish checkout.

Unlike traditional web hosting, where you purchase a set amount of resources like bandwidth and RAM on a single server, cloud hosting spreads your website’s needs across a massive virtual server that lives on hardware in data centers all over the world. 

With cloud hosting, it’s incredibly easy to add more resources or cut back as needed. And cloud hosting is much less vulnerable to equipment failure issues as there are many servers to pick up the slack. 

If you’re looking for a cost-effective hosting solution to grow with your business, cloud hosting is definitely worth checking out. I’ll break down seven of the best cloud web hosting options and walk you through how to assess which is the best one for your needs.

#1 – A2 Hosting — Best For Speed & Flexibility 

A2 Hosting tops out this list for several reasons. First of all, they’re known in the industry for super-fast web hosting, and their cloud hosting plans have proven to be just as fast and reliable. 

What stands out about A2 is how adaptable they are. No matter what you want out of your cloud hosting provider, they are a good, solid option to get you where you need to go. 24/7 customer support is one feature that will be especially valuable if you’re slightly less tech-savvy.

There’s also a variety of price points, with their cheapest plan, Runway 1, just $4.99 per month, and the most expensive plan, Supersonic 8, starting at $29.99 per month. 

A2 Hosting also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee—not every provider offers this. 

Another notable thing about A2 is that you can host as many websites as you want, as long as you stay within the bandwidth you paid for. 

#2 – Hostgator — Best For Affordability

If you’re looking for budget-friendly cloud hosting that’s still reliable, Hostgator is the way to go. Because it offers unmetered storage and bills on an hourly basis, it can also handle a site with a lot of pages or significant variations in traffic without sacrificing their great 99.99% uptime guarantee. 

Their introductory discounts really set them apart, especially for their biggest plan. For your first year of hosting with Hostgator, you can get discounts of up to 70% depending on their deals.

The Hatchling plan is currently $4.95 per month, with the Baby plan starting at $6.57 per month and the Business plan at only $10 a month after the discount. All plans come with a 36-month commitment. 

Unless you choose Hostgator’s Business plan, you won’t get any perks like free backups or SEO tools, but that plan’s prices are still a great affordable option with the discounts. It’s also simple to use, including the ability to scale up your cloud resources as your business grows with just one click. 

#3 – InMotion — Best Customer Support 

InMotion is a fantastic option for small business owners who need a website, especially if they’re new to the digital world. 

InMotion makes it easy to scale your resources as you need to, and the fact that their plans include a free SSL certificate and cPanel makes them a good one-stop-shop option. 

But their customer service is what really sets them apart. InMotion offers 24/7 support via both live chat and phone, along with help tickets and a knowledge database with tons of resources to refer back to. If you’re a busy entrepreneur who’s not that comfortable yet online, this kind of high-support, all-in-one option is likely to be exactly what you need. 

InMotion is a more expensive option with the lowest-priced plan for small businesses typically $59.99 per month. But at the time of this writing, they are running a sale, and this plan is $17.99 per month and still includes free SSLs.

#4 – Bluehost — Best User Experience

Bluehost is a very well-known name in the web hosting space. While most people know them for their non-cloud shared hosting plans, they actually offer the option to upgrade any of their plans to the cloud by choosing the CloudFlare option.

This lets you bring the flexibility and scalability of cloud hosting to a simple, easy-to-use plan without making any changes yourself. 

Bluehost makes building your site really easy. They offer WordPress plans, which is a platform many people are familiar with, as well as their own simple, Weebly-based website builder. 

It’s a great way to bring cloud hosting advantages to a hosting and site-building experience that you might already be more familiar with. 

The Basic plan starts at $3.95 per month but is only for one website. The Plus plan starts at $4.95 per month and has unlimited sites and storage. Choice Plus is their most popular plan and is $6.95 per month, while the Pro plan is $13.95 per month.

All plan prices are for a 36-month agreement, and all come with 24/7 customer support, a free domain for one year, a free CDN, and a free SSL certificate.

#5 – Dreamhost — Best if You Know How to Code

Dreamhost is another great budget-friendly option, but it really shines if you already know how to code. Dreamhost is less expensive because you’ll need some technical know-how to really make your site your own. 

If you’re comfortable managing and customizing your website through a command-line text interface, you’ll love Dreamhost – you’ll be able to keep playing around with the web development tools you’re already using. Even better, Dreamhost offers an unmetered hourly rate. 

Dreamhost plans start at has a lot of different hosting options to choose from. In terms of cloud web hosting, the company offers two different solutions:

• Cloud Computing, which starts at $4.50 per month
• Cloud Object Storage, which starts at $0.95 per month

If you are looking to develop applications online, DreamHost's cloud computing plans give you a lot of resources for a great price. The same is true of Cloud Object Storage, which can scale up to more than a TB for less than $20 per month.

All plans give you a discount for annual billing over monthly payments.

#6 – Nexcess — Best for Ecommerce 

Nexcess is a cloud hosting solution tailored to the needs of ecommerce businesses. They offer Magento, WordPress, and WooCommerce integration, so you can start selling right away.

Paired with cloud hosting’s scalability, Nexcess is an obvious choice for an ecommerce business with big plans to grow.

They also offer a variety of plans depending on which ecommerce platform you choose, as well as 24/7 customer support—perfect for busy online shop owners.

Nexcess has many great features, including auto-scaling, PCI compliance, SEO tools, and a great deal of development tools for complete flexibility and customization. 

Because Nexcess has so many integration options, it is difficult to give a specific price you can expect. Your server will be optimized for a single application, like Magneto, WooCommerce, or WordPress, and the pricing varies based on what you choose.

If you go with WordPress as your platform, pricing starts at $9.50 per month for one site. There are seven other plan options, up to the Enterprise plan at $499.50 per month and includes up to 250 sites, 800 GB of storage, 10 terabytes of bandwidth, 30-day backups, and unlimited email accounts. 

WooCommerce has similar pricing to WordPress, but Magento starts at $49 per month for cloud hosting. 

#7 – Cloudways — Best User-Friendly Power Hosting 

If you’ve got a large, complex website that needs powerful hosting, but enterprise-class solutions are out of reach, Cloudways could be a perfect middle ground. 

Their cloud hosting comes from big providers that would usually only be accessible to big corporations but put it into an accessible format. Their simple dashboard makes using the service easy, and prices are on par with other entry-level cloud hosting options. 

Cloudways also has servers in over 25 cities worldwide, and they let you choose which one yours is located in. That means you can select servers as close to your physical location as possible, which is good for your website’s speed. 

When it comes to plans and pricing, even their least expensive plan, at $10 per month, comes with a lot of features, like 24/7 customer support, free SSL, free migration, dedicated firewalls, 24/7 real-time monitoring, auto-healing, and more.

What I Looked at to Find the Best Cloud Web Hosting

With so many hosting options available, it can be overwhelming to figure out precisely what you need.

With this in mind, here are a few specific factors to consider when choosing which cloud hosting service is the best option for you and your business.

Scalability

Perhaps the greatest advantage of cloud web hosting is its capability to grow with your business, whatever that looks like for you.

For example, you might be launching an entirely new venture but have detailed plans to grow quickly and need a website that can easily scale with you.

An alternate scenario would be a business with dramatic peaks and dips in traffic volume, like an online shop selling seasonal merchandise. 

In both of these scenarios, you won’t want to be constrained to a set amount of resources on one single server, like you would in a conventional web hosting package. With cloud hosting, you’re sharing space with hundreds of thousands of other websites on many servers all over the world, so it’s quick and easy for your cloud hosting provider to add more resources to your plan as needed.

Many of the providers I’ve included here make scaling up as easy as the click of a button.

Cloud hosting is the obvious choice if you’re planning for your business to expand quickly or if it often fluctuates significantly. But even in other cases, it might still be the right choice for you—keep reading to find out why.

Reliability and Security 

One major plus to having your site hosted in so many different locations is security. Because your website’s integrity isn’t connected to a physical object (a specific, designated server), that object doesn’t need to be protected from harm.

Public cloud hosting is formed by many data centers full of servers worldwide, and they’re generally highly secure and often in remote locations. 

Furthermore, physical equipment fails and experiences issues. But because the servers that form the cloud can dip in and out of hosting your website, physical problems with a server you’re hosted on won’t impact your site’s performance. 

Together, these two factors mean that many cloud hosting providers guarantee a really good amount of uptime, the time your site is online and working normally. Usually, they’ll guarantee between 99.95% and 99.99% uptime –  but it’s often more. 

So, if a website that functions extremely reliably and is secure from external threats is important to you, you’ll definitely want to go for cloud-based web hosting. 

Cost Efficiency

Because cloud hosting means you’re taking up a tiny part of a tremendous amount of server space with many other tenant sites, the amount of resources you consume is extremely flexible. As I mentioned, your provider can easily scale up the amount of resources you’re using, but if you use fewer resources, you often only need to pay for what you consume. 

In conventional web hosting plans, you’ll often end up paying for more resources than you use because you’re allotted a specific amount of server space, but with cloud hosting, that’s not a concern. 

If this type of cost-efficiency is important to you, be sure to choose a provider from the list below who charges on a per-hour basis, rather than a flat fee.

Conclusion

By this point, you probably have a pretty good idea of what your needs from cloud hosting are and which provider is the best choice to meet them. Just to recap, here are my top recommendations:

1. A2 Hosting — Best for speed & flexibility
2. Hostgator — Best for affordability
3. InMotion — Best customer support 
4. Bluehost — Best user experience
5. DreamHost — Best if you know how to code
6. Nexcess — Best for ecommerce
7. Cloudways — Best user-friendly power hosting

It’s important to remember that while some options are better than others, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You’ll want to be guided by your priorities, whether that’s cost, customer service, flexibility, or something else, and let that determine where you host.

It’s a decision that could determine the future of your website. But with so many great options out there, the future is looking bright. 

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Best Cloud Web Hosting
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/best-cloud-web-hosting/
Published Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2021 18:00:00 +0000

In the past, link building focused on quantity, not quality.

Today? Link building is a different ball game.

If you're building a link building strategy, it's important to know that it won't be instant. It's a gradual process—at least, if you do it right.

The pages where you build links, specifically the quality and authority of those pages, play a key role in determining how high you'll rank in search engine results.

This is where blogging comes in. You'll get 434 percent more indexed pages when you blog consistently, and your inbound links will grow by 97 percent.

Beyond blogging, though, there are other proven ways to build the best links and raise your ranking in the SERPs.

This blog post will show you 13 fool-proof link building strategies you can put to work today. They're especially helpful for busy marketers who have a lot on their plate and want to stay mindful of their standing with search engines.

Why Is Link Building so Important?

Link building is important for search engine optimization (SEO). It's one of the major factors search engines use to determine rankings, meaning who gets the first-page search result.

When deciding how to rank your website, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines look at how many links lead to your site (and the quality of those links).

The more high-quality, trustworthy, and authoritative sites linking to you, the higher your blog posts and sales pages will appear on search result pages.

Beyond that, links to your website help users find your site and can increase traffic and trust. After all, users are more likely to trust you if other sites think you know what you are talking about.

13 Link Building Strategies for Marketers

So, how do you get high-quality links from other websites? By following my link building strategies.

These are the strategies I've used over the last ten years to build up Neil Patel Digital and become an authority in the digital marketing space.

Experiment and find a strategy or strategies that work best for you and your business.

1. Use Strategic Guest Blogging

Is guest blogging dead? Yes and no.

The old way of mass guest blogging just for links is dead. You don't want to post an article on a site that's not relevant to your niche and has zero authority just to get a backlink.

That style of guest blogging won't cut it. The search engines are smart and can see you're not guest blogging to add value.

If you want to reap the rewards of guest blogging, you need to be strategic and authentic. Make sure you're creating a unique piece of content for the other site (for example, a case study) and that the site is relevant, authoritative, and attracts your audience.

When you guest blog selectively, you'll reap the rewards of higher rankings, increased traffic, and qualified leads.

2. Create and Distribute Infographics

Infographics still work today and can play a vital role in your link building strategy.

The good thing about infographics is you'll continually generate organic traffic to your blog and earn quality links without even asking for them. 

I found that articles with infographics earn 178 percent more links. This makes creating infographics a link building tactic that you can't afford to ignore. 

If you're ready to create and promote your infographic, see the links below:

• How to Create and Promote Infographics to Drive 5,000 Visitors per Week
• 35 Content Marketing Lessons Learned

3. Get Active on Social Media

Social media networks have revolutionized marketing and can be a huge boon for your link building plan and guest post efforts. If you're not active on social media, then you're doing your brand a disservice.

Become active by sharing new posts, images, and updates. Help your fans find what they want to see by sharing it in more places using social media.

When you get active on social media, you can easily boost engagement, even if you're new to it. Consequently, you'll expose your brand and site to more people who could share your best posts with their target audience.

This will improve your link profile and bolster your visibility overall.

See also:

• How to Boost Your Social Engagement (Even if You Have No Idea What You're Doing!)
• 16 Elements of High-Converting Facebook Pages That You Can Copy

4. Use Resource Links From Trusted Sites

It's time to start using resource links from trusted sites. A resource is like a guide that you create or compile for your target audience.

Some authority sites and blogs like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Jeff Bullas, Social Media Examiner, and Copyblogger have resource pages that you could tap into as you're creating yours.

If a leading site in your niche has compiled a list of blogs in your industry, their visitors can more easily find what they're looking for.

Here's an example from Copyblogger. 

If you can create an even bigger resource article than the one above, you'll get more backlinks. You can expand yours to 25, 50, or more.

Here are some fresh headline ideas that you can model for your resource:

• 25 Copywriting Blogs That Will Make You More Money
• 50 Copywriting Blogs You Didn't Know Existed
• 27 Copywriting and Content Marketing Blogs That Will Send You Free Traffic

This kind of resource can be a great tool for a marketing team. After it's written, get links through email outreach. Send a simple email to all of the people whose blogs you included.

I once sent emails to 30 bloggers whom I referenced in my resource post. Twelve of them linked to my resource page within ten days, and I got lots of social love.

Email outreach tends to work better than the typical broken link or link request email because you've linked to them first.

You've established a certain level of trust, and you've shown some appreciation to them as well. They'll be more inclined to reciprocate your generosity by linking to your web page.

5. Leverage the Broken Links Strategy

The broken link strategy may be the best way to go if you're too busy to write content for your blog or a guest post.

As a busy marketer, I know you've got limited time to write content. That's one reason why a large number of B2C content marketers struggle to create engaging content for their customers.

How does broken link building work?

This link building strategy is simple: Find pages on blogs with dead links (links that no longer work) and suggest replacing the broken link with a link to similar content on your own site.

If I linked to a particular web page from my Neil Patel blog and found the links to be dead, I could easily replace it with another relevant and high-value resource. If that high-value page belongs to you, that's both search engine optimization juice and a valuable link.

There are several in-depth guides to help you understand the concept of broken link building and how to get it right the first time. You'll find these resources really helpful:

• The Black Belt Broken Link Building
• Don't Let it Rot: 5 Strategies to Leverage Broken Links
• How To Use the Broken Link Strategy to Get Links

6. Grow Your Personal Brand

One of the top link building strategies is growing your brand. Your brand evolves from your thoughts, then begins to express itself externally.

When it comes to link building that works, recognize that people will naturally link to you as your personal brand grows.

What do I mean by that? Let's pause for a moment here.

While different definitions might circle through the marketing world, a natural link is a link that's a) editorially earned, and b) organic in the context it appears.

It's not part of a sponsorship or paid in any way. Often, a natural link gives credit where credit's due, and it's something every pro blogger should be after.

I've watched how powerful a natural link can be. Whenever I publish a new blog post, within 24 hours, I usually see new links from authority blogs.

Earning that comes back to the quality of your content and your brand. In a sense, your brand represents you. My definition of a brand is “your representative when you're not there.”

I've been marketing online for over a decade. Throughout this time, one of the most effective strategies I used to grow my personal brand was consistent blogging. When you blog consistently, you get more attention.

If link building is part of your strategy, get serious about blogging. You'll get 97 percent more inbound links, and that will also improve your search engine rankings.

7. Check Competitors' Backlinks

If your competitors are ranking higher than you in the search engines, they may be on the right track. You can be there, too.

There's nothing as powerful as spying on your competitors to know where their links are coming from.

Spying on your competitors helps you see what keywords they're ranking for, where their best links are coming from, and what they're currently doing that helps them succeed is called “competitive analysis.”

So how do you check your competitor's backlinks?

Follow these steps:

• Step 1: Go to Ubersuggest and type in your competitor's domain into the search bar.

• Step 2: On the results page, click on the backlinks box.

• Step 3: Scroll down to see a list of sites linking to your competitor.

When you know which sites your competitors are generating their backlinks from, you've won half the battle—now you can focus on sites that are yielding results instead of reinventing the wheel.

8. Replicate Your Competitor's Best Links

Now that you know where your competitors got their links, you need to answer the next question: How can you replicate their success?

For example, if you find several links are from related blogs, especially on the author profile, it's obvious that guest blogging is working for them.

If their links are from corporate sites, your competitors are probably getting links through outreach and networking.

On the other hand, if their links are from high-value sites such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, CNN, Huffington Post, and the like, then you should know that a columnist or editor is likely involved, and this might be a paid placement.

Use Ubersuggest to help you focus on the links with a high domain and page authority. You want natural links from websites that Google (and the rest of your industry) already view as a thought leader.

9. Create Link Building Roundups

If you want the right links, you've got to give first. Don't be selfish with your posts by linking to your internal pages only. Learn to link out to other useful blog posts.

Link roundups are a powerful method of networking and a great link building strategy. All you need to do is create a list of blog posts from other bloggers.

How do you create link roundups?

First, find blog posts that are relevant to your topic. For example, if you want to compile a list of 50 blogs that deal with headline writing, you'd simply go to Google and try this search string:

intitle: roundup “YOUR KEYWORD”

You also want to pay attention to your traffic and current link profile. More blogs in your industry may be linking to your posts. When writing your roundup posts, start with the blogs that have sent you traffic.

Remember when you do a roundup post, don't link solely to your internal pages. Site owners may not be inspired to link back to you because you didn't use the principle of reciprocity.

Link to their posts, and they'll be more likely to reciprocate by linking to your resource page.

10. Keep Track of Your Backlinks

Most people spend time and money to get new links, but they don't track their status.

If you don't track your backlinks, how will you know whether to build more or pause? You may have over 800 links pointing to your web pages right now, but when you check it after 30 to 60 days, some of the links might be gone.

Why?

You don't have control over the blogs and authority sites that link to you. The site owners can easily remove your link from their post or resource page without notifying you.

This is why it's important to monitor your backlinks.

If you're not sure of the number of backlinks your site currently has, here's how to find out.

• Step 1: Visit Ubersuggest, type in your site's URL, and click on “search.”
• Step 2: Click on the backlinks box.
• Step 3: Scroll down, and you'll see a graph detailing links you've gained and lost.

Besides seeing who is linking to you, the backlinks tool also shows each site's anchor text, DA, and page authority.

There's also a graph showing your backlinks over time. This is useful to see if your link building strategies are paying off or if it's time to try something new.

11. Establish Content Pillars

If you want people to take your content seriously, then you've got to write things that make people think. Create useful content, content that actually helps them do something, and the links will follow.

Content is the lifeblood of your online business. Whether you're selling information products, like e-books or software, or you're into physical products, like digital cameras and hard copy books, you've got to give people a reason to publicize you.

The challenge of creating content is frequency.

How often should you publish new content for your target audience?

Constantly bombarding them with one blog post after another may not be helpful, as it generally leads to information overload.

The real challenge is when and how often you need to publish new content for your prospects and customers. Some customers don't mind if you posted daily, but it seems like a boatload of work to others.

This leaves you with two options:

• ask your customers questions
• create pillar content once in a while

You'll likely get different responses from your email subscribers, blog readers, prospects, and customers if you follow the first option. This ends up complicating things.

The second option is a lot better. Instead of regularly creating and publishing new content, you can save yourself the hassle and create pillar content regularly.

What is pillar content?

According to Yaro Starak it is: 

“A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice…This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight.”

When you start creating pillar content, you'll no longer struggle to write and publish new posts every day of the week, yet your traffic will grow.

Instead, you'll bring in traffic from users and other sites that are interested in the valuable content you've created.

If you want to increase conversion rate, generate organic and referral traffic and improve your search rankings, spend more time creating pillar content. It's a great way to improve your link profile. 

You could format your content pillar using the “how-to” style, as in this example from Yaro Starak:

Alternatively, you could make your post a top list, like this one from Wordtracker.com:

12. Reclaim Links Through Social Mentions

Link reclamation is a popular topic in search engine optimization and the social media world. You can reclaim broken 404 links and name drops that don't link to your blog.

Check your Google Analytics for 404 pages that people link to, then point them to another active and relevant page while you fix the 404 pages. 

Alternatively, you could just go ahead and fix your broken page to reclaim your links.

However, we're particularly concerned about link reclamation through social mentions.

If you've been monitoring your brand and social media mentions using Google Alerts and not taking advantage of those mentions, then you've been making a mistake.

When you publish infographics with an attribution code below the graphic, your goal is to get people to embed the code on their blogs and link back to you.

How many of these people use your code or link back to the primary source?

I design and promote lots of helpful infographics. A lot of sites may decide to publish my infographics for their readers to enjoy.

They're supposed to credit my blog, but what if they saved the graphic and just uploaded it to their blog post? How do I reclaim what rightfully belongs to me, the link?

Follow these simple steps:

• Step 1: Use Google Images Search. Do a keyword search for the complete title of your infographic.
• Step 2: Click your infographic and visit the page. Check whether your link is attributed correctly or not.

You can see that Tomer Harel linked to my infographic page on QuickSprout.

Beyond infographics, you may want to know who is mentioning your blog URL. You can ask for the link once you discover that your name or URL was mentioned but not linked to your web page.

13. Earn Editorial Links

Editorial links don't happen by chance. You create them by providing value. This is what Google has been after since the first Google Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, and Mobile-geddon updates.

Editorial links are the most valuable and sought-after links because they're freely given by sites that aren't looking for anything in return.

The nature of editorial links is this: your content must be compelling before people link to it.

If all of your links are acquired or built manually, you'll struggle to retain all of them, and Google may penalize you because you can't be that careful all of the time. To avoid wasting time and effort, why not focus on producing great content?

Yes, I know that I've said it over 50 times in the past 30 days, but if it weren't important, I'd have ignored it. I create high-quality content every day, and thousands of people link to it. My link profile thanks me for it.

To earn editorial links, you can start blogging with a strategy. Write content that will help people move from Point A to Point B. Create more tutorials and pillar content and make sure that you include accurate data in all of your content.

Read this guide on how to create better content that will earn you editorial links. 

Link Building FAQs

Link Building Strategies Conclusion

Your website's link profile is one of the most crucial factors in ranking in search engine results. Remember, Google doesn't care so much about how many links point to your pages, but rather about the experience you create for users.

Be smart and strategic about blogging, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and any other marketing techniques you use to build links.  

Your real challenge isn't link building, but earning quality, trusted, and natural links. That's because it's no longer about the number of links—it's the quality that matters. 

Follow these fool-proof link building strategies, and you'll be on your way to building a successful blog that both users and Google will love.

Which of these link building best practices have you used?

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By: Neil Patel
Title: Link Building Strategies and Resources for Busy Marketers
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/13-efficient-link-building-strategies-for-busy-marketers/
Published Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2021 17:30:00 +0000