What does Usain Bolt have in common with CNN, Kim Kardashian with eBay, and Snoop Dog with GM? The answer is, they all run their websites on WordPress. In fact, according to a Forbes article, WordPress supports almost 75 million websites, which is more than 25 percent of all the websites in the world. It is the preferred content management system for many of the biggest brands in the world, including Disney, LinkedIn, BBC, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, News International, and others. Here’s why.
Content is King
These days, few buying decisions, be they car purchases, vacation bookings, or restaurant reservations, are made without checking online reviews first, last time I took a vaction when I went camping, I had to read reviews from Survival Cooking for about two days. As a result of this trend, Internet bloggers and online marketers have become the new thought leaders in the world. WordPress is so widely used today because it enables businesses and individuals to easily create and present useful information, opinions, and ideas to influence the buying decisions of consumers.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines rank webpages according to the quality and quantity of their content, as well as how frequently it is updated and refreshed. One of the main reasons to choose a WordPress hosting solution is its search engine-friendly nature. It was developed using standards-compliant high quality code and high semantic markup, which reinforce the meaning of information in webpages and web applications.
Other Benefits of WordPress
The popularity of WordPress stems from the fact that it is easy to use, without the need for expert knowledge. With more than 2,600 free templates and themes, as well as about 31,000 plug-ins available for download, there is almost no limit to its flexibility and functionality. WordPress is also safe to run on any website, and it uses open source software, making it widely supported by an extensive global community of content management system developers.
Choosing a Web Hosting Solution
To run WordPress, all you need is a domain and a web hosting service. There are numerous hosting services out there, and you can read some reviews and do some comparison shopping to find the best WordPress hosting solution for your purposes. Prices vary, but it is possible to find ways to reduce your cost, such as looking for a promotion or getting a WordPress coupon code.
Whether you have an existing website or wish to create your own site for the first time, it is worthwhile to give WordPress a try. After all, if it is good enough for Forbes and the fastest man on earth, shouldn’t it be good enough for you?
You probably know that creating backlinks for your website is really difficult, boring and time consuming. And yet SEO backlink strategy is the most important task you can do when growing organic traffic with search optimization.
It’s almost impossible (remember I said “almost”) to rank well in Google without a decent volume of backlinks to any given web page. (You can rank without backlinks on low volume keywords however.)
But any search keywords that have any kind of real traffic volume are likely to be competitive. So, you’ll need to build backlinks to rank well against your competitors.
MORE BACKLINKS = BETTER RANKING
That is because a backlink is a vote of confidence as far as Google goes. A webpage with a lot of backlinks gets a lot of votes, and so it gets driven up the search results.
If you analyze any of your website’s competition in the search results you will notice that in most cases, a site ranks higher than yours because it has more backlinks.
In rare cases, it could have fewer and that is only because the backlinks are going from websites that have more Domain Authority or Page Authority.
You can calculate a page’s DA or PA by using either Moz.com or our favorite here at Cyberwalker Digital a site called Ahrefs.com.
WHY DOMAIN AUTHORITY IS IMPORTANT IN SEO BACKLINK STRATEGY
The DA and PA values at Ahrefs.com are a score from 0 to 100 that tell you how trusted the site and page are. This correlates to how much traffic they get and how trusted – or “authoritative” – they are.
So Amazon.com has a DA of 87
While the Los Angeles used bookstore Samjohnsons.com has a DA of 41.
If one linked to your website and the other linked to your competitor who would benefit most?
The Amazon.com link. Why? Because the backlink is from a site and webpage that has more authority.
There are two more things you need to know about backlinks when you go hunting for them.
There are two more things you need to know about building backlinks when you go hunting for them.
A BACKLINKS VALUE MATTERS
1) A backlink’s value is amplified if it originates on a site and page that has similar topical content to its target site.
2) The page authority (PA) is as important if not more important than the domain authority (DA).
The first point is pretty self explanatory. A link from a industrial car parts manufacturing page to a knitting blog is going to be suspect as far as credibility goes. However, a link from northhouse.com (a knitting supplies manufacturer) with a DA of 53 to a knitting blog is going to be really credible and will boost the knitting blog’s authority.
When you pursue backlinks ensure that the page content and site category you get the backlink from is relatively consistent with the page you are optimizing for better ranking. A B2B site should be used for a B2B site. A fashion site or at least consumer trends site should be used to enhance a clothing store. You get the idea.
To the second point, you will want to test the page authority as well as domain authority of the page you are backlinking from. Use a tool like Open Site Explorer from Moz.com or our preference the Page Explorer tool at Ahrefs.com.
Pick one then there use it to evaluate the site and specific page you are trying to rank and also the site and page you are trying to get a backlink on.
As an aside the homepage of any site has both a PA and DA.
Here is an example using our two pages on our agency site using ahrefs.com:
https://cyberwalker.com (homepage) – DA: 35 PA: 37
https://cyberwalker.com/backlink-authority/ – DA: 35 – PA 8
Notice that a backlink from our Cyberwalker.com homepage would impart much more authority than a backlink from the page (ironically) about backlink authority. That is because many more sites link to Cyberwalker.com’s homepage so its page authority is killer high.
9 ways you can use the landing page tool to grow your online business
I thought was cool recently when in the same week I got two calls from two of our clients with three days asking – Hey Andy, What is LeadPages? In both cases the clients were looking to grow their online businesses. They had discovered that it was hard to change and customize landing pages for their web sites when driving traffic to a particular page. One client had concluded they needed a landing page tool and let to the question – What is Leadpages used for? I came across it and I am wondering if it is what is need?
The other client had heard it mentioned by a family member and was wondering if they needed it sight unseen.
In both cases I heartily recommended it because they both were driving traffic through ads. One client has a food business and was getting good traffic by ad placement on a niche food blogger. The other one was buying Facebook ads for its industrial products sold on a Shopify store.
The landing page tool that’s ‘waaaaay’ better
When I discovered LeadPages I had already tried a competitor and saw the value of creating landing pages for our company’s various online initiatives, but a colleague told me to dump the tool I was using in favor of LeadPages because it was “waaaaay” better. I am not ordinarily swayed by such surfer dude endorsements, but this guy is pretty successful in digital marketing so I usually follow his lead on such things. And in to use dude-ism: This Dude Abides!
And in turn this is my invitation to you to try it out and see what it can do for your business.
What is LeadPages?
Let’s start with a definition. LeadPages is an online tool used to capture email subscribers. That is the primary function of the landing page tool. It is a templated and hosted tool that you can use to give away lead magnets, register people into webinars, and design landing pages to drive people into your email list.
LeadPages also offers templates for things like squeeze pages, video landing pages, sales pages and thank you pages. We use it every day at Cyberwalker Digital in the digital marketing work we do.
Examples of some landing pages that can be created with LeadPages
What LeadPages is NOT
LeadPages isn’t an email marketing platform that you use to send emails from (although the company does offer a platform called Drip which does that and works with LeadPages).
If you use Infusionsoft, Constant Contact, Aweber or MailChimp then LeadPages can be used for – actually integrated – with these platforms to help you grow your email list on these sites so you get more subscribers.
LeadPages they offers dozens of templates to help you create high-converting landing pages and allows you to easily send lead magnets to your subscribers. What else can LeadPages do? We let’s review what the landing page tool can do and how it can help your business grow.
What is LeadPages used for?
LeadPages has a ton of great features, so lets examine it key features for online business owners, and content marketers who are considering buying a LeadPages subscription.
1. Send Lead Magnets
A lead magnet is a digital giveaway like an ebook, video, coupon or seminar access that can be emailed to a subscriber once they sign up for your email list.
Some people call this process a bribe. But I like to think of it as a trade. Something like: I’ll give you this cool free thing if you give me your email address and agree to let me email you on a fairly regular basis, with the agreement that you can unsubscribe at any time and that I won’t send you anything that is spammy or sell your address to a third party.
LeadPages makes it easy to store and send a lead magnet when someone signs up on your Leadpages subscriber box or the opt-in box on a landing page. See a lead magnet page example here. You can also use your own email platform to send a lead magnet. You don’t have to use LeadPages feature to do this.
2. Create a Sales Page
When you are selling a product online you will always want to design a lengthy sales page to provide the product benefits and answer the prospective buyer’s questions, dispel their doubts and drive them to a registration pages where you close the deal and transact the sale. LeadPages makes this easy to do with its 350+ templates that can be customized to your content, you brand, your content and drive to your shopping cart.
3. Design a Squeeze Page
Sometimes you want to drive a prospective customer toward a single act, usually to register or sign-up or possibly to buy something. For this you’ll need a squeeze page. It’s a simple page that provides content of some kind and issues a call to action.So what is Leadpages squeeze page capability? Squeeze pages are easy to design in LeadPages, especially if you want to use video from YouTube, Vimeo or hosted on your servers.
4. Make an Upsell Thank You Page
One of my favorite tactics in digital marketing is to offer an upsell after a subscriber has opted in. You have their attention and they are in a YES frame of mind so offering them something else on a thank you page is really effective in increasing your level of engagement. LeadPages has some great templates for this purpose where you thank the usr and direct them to their next action. This is usually driving them to either another sales or squeeze page. Or to your sales cart (in another tool – LeadPages does not provide shopping cart technology)
5. Deploy a pop-up sign-up box
LeadPages offers a version of it tool to just popu open an opt inbox on an existing content page. You set up the LeadBox to trigger when a graphic or link on a page is clicked. It works like this. Click Here.
6. Run A/B tests
When a landing page is not converting it is really handy to tweak it in different ways by changing colors, text, images and increasing or decreasing content. LeadPages let’s you test pages side by side and against each other. It serves up different versions to your site visitors and collects conversion data so you can see which version of your landing pages is more effective at driving them to action.
7. Seamless email platform integration
We use Infusionsoft as our primary email marketing platform so it is important that it can integrate with any marketing tool we use. The good news is LeadPages integrates well with Infusionsoft as well as pretty much every dominant email platform available today. That includes:
Drip (An email automation software owned by LeadPages)
8. Hosted Video Pages
We develop a lot of courses at Cyberwalker Digital, and it’s very handy to offer some of our content for free as we promote the course. LeadPages lets you easily create video pages with call to actions. 9. Integrate Shopify buttons to create an enhanced sales page
Using Shopify button code you can build LeadPages that drive to a Shopify product page. This is really handy if you want to design a more robust product sales page and drive drive traffic directly to Shopify’s checkout cart.
What is LeadPages 2.0?
Recently LeadPages upgraded their tools to give you more freedom to design or customize a landing page. They introduced a drag and drop tool that allows you to select page elements and drag them into position. Previous to this you were limited in drastically changing page elements. You could customize, but within a framework. So if you have been wondering what is LeadPages plan to improve their tools, well the new version of the product has just arrived. (However, the company is constantly improving the tool beyond the major revisions.)
The new system let’s you work with a page to pretty much strip it bare and start again. To change the layout. Or simply edit small details. And all without thinking about any HTML, CSS or Javascript code. It is landing page design for non-programmers.
The new version of LeadPages also let you do A/B testing not just between versions by between versions of pages that used different initial templates.
What else? I still have question about what is LeadPages used for?
You can ask us in the pop up box below. We will answer you personally via email.
Learn this little known SEO secret about backlinks, so you can get ranked well
It’s no secret that good content will ranked well in Google and Bing, and drive tons of valuable traffic to your website. But writing good content is not enough to win Google’s (or Bing’s) favor to attract traffic unless the content is unique, rare, authoritative and…linked. You see backlinks are critical in SEO. And backlink authority even more so.
Yes, backlink authority. Let me explain. The number of links – also called backlinks – from 3rd party websites to your website is perhaps the No. 1 signal that Google uses, and Bing uses (to a lesser extent), to rank a webpage and drive it to the top of search engine listings.
Learn this little known backlinking SEO secret
But there is a little-known secret that only the most expert of SEO marketers (and some content marketers know) that makes all the difference in how a web page ranks.
In fact, this one secret is so important that it can rank your webpage better than its competitors with fewer links, breaking the long held rules that more backlinks are better.
Let’s dig into that a bit more. Let’s say that a page on a website about beekeeping is very useful and has been around long enough to become linked by 20 other websites. And as a result of all these links, Google’s algorithm has rewarded the content by ranking it as the number one site for the keywords “beekeeping basics”.
But then a second site comes along and publishes a page that manages to attract backlinks from only 10 websites, and yet it grabs the number 1 spot on Google results. What happened? By any measure that seems unfair.
How did my competition outrank my site with SEO?
Now there could be any number of factors that have caused the disruption. It could be that the outranking challenger has:
A faster web site.
A better mobile friendly website.
A secure protocol called SSL in place.
Better on-page optimization for the keyword phrase “beekeeping basics”.
More social likes and shares.
Better, more detailed content.
All these factors play a part in webpage and website ranking, but chances are that if all these factors individually or combined haven’t caused the ranking disruption, then it can only be one core issue at play.
And that is link authority.
(And arguably backlinks and their associated authority, more often than any other measure, is the key linking factor for any well-ranked website.)
You see all backlinks are not created equal. Some have more “authority” than others. So they impart to the website that they point to much more “Google Juice” than a linking site with less authority.
You see, if the New York Times publishes an article about beekeeping, and it links to the aforementioned competitor beekeeper site, that validates the site’s value to Google. That action imparts trust and authority moreso than a link from a dinky website about poetry, that was abandoned 3 years ago.
The link source matters. And there are two factors at play.
The site’s authority is determined by its traffic, it’s own back-linked pages, it’s social likes and many more SEO ranking factors.
The topic of the site and/or page.
In the case of #2, a beekeeping site linking to a beekeeping site will impart more authority to a linked page than, say, an unrelated knitting page linked to a beekeeping site.
Get your site ranked using this SEO backlinks building secret
So here is how you can make this information actionable. And in doing so, drive your website up Google search results to the very sought-after top three slots.
Discover which websites are linking to your webpage and what their authority is. The authority measure is an actual numeric ranking. SEO tools like Ahrefs.com. or Moz.com. can provide a score for any site or specific page. Both have very competent authority measurement tools.
Use the authority tools to measure how many unique websites are linking to the competing web page, and what their authority is.
Develop a campaign to encourage more high authority inbound links to your page that can rival the authority if you competitor.
This strategy may seem simple enough. (And it really is.) Once you have completed your analysis in Steps #1 and #2, it is Step#3 where the real work starts. Backlink building, especially backlink building using high authority web sites is not always easy.
How to leverage backlink authority easily
But, let me make this easy for you. If you send me the link of a webpage on your web site that you would like to rank on the front page of Google. My SEO team and I will send you FOR FREE – a PDF report that tells you how you page ranks from a backlink authority perspective for the keywords you’d like it to rank for. And how it compares to the authority of the number 1 ranked page for those keywords. This will show you what link-building work you will need to do.
After I sent that, I will also send you our mini ebook called 10 Easy Ways to Create High Authority Backlinks. Of course, I will also tell you how we can do the backlink work for your company when you hire us as your SEO consultant. 🙂
We are always hunting for new ways to optimize our clients’ online web store properties, so that they generate not only more sales, but larger average transactions. So with that I thought I’d share with you the following revenue boosting secrets for your online store.
The secrets I outline below work for all ecommerce platforms, no matter what they are, however we have found easiest implementation with two selling tools: We build all our clients stores in either Shopify or using SamCart. The former is a versatile ecommerce platform that lets you build complete stores that are highly secure and scaleable. So we start all our small clients on the platform with templated stores. We also launch our large clients on Shopify too, because it is very customizable. SamCart, meanwhile, is a shopping cart to drive direct sales, and has a wicked upsell capability.
Ok, on to our revenue boosting secrets:
1) The magic red button:
In most of the world red means stop. But we will often switch our “Buy Now”, “Checkout” or “Add to Cart” buttons to the color red (or a shade of red in same cases). We saw average uptick of 18% click rate when we did this on three different websites, and across both SamCart and Shopify. Here’s the rationale: Red is a striking color and rarely is anything on a designed page the color red. Red is an attention getting color, and people apparently love to click on red buttons. It doesn’t mean stop. It means go buy. Try it yourself. It’s a killer ecommerce hack.
2) Always Be Selling:
“Do you want fries with that?” is the ubiquitous question asked at McDonalds, but did you ever wonder why?
Because when people are in a buying mood they will almost always say “yes” to upsells. In fact they say yes to upsells 33% of the time, if there is a good deal to be had. That is because there is a thrill when buying and the feel good-brain chemicals keep flowing the more you keep the “buying process going. (The downside is when this subsides there can be buyer remorse when the natural high runs out, but curiously it doesn’t result too often in returns.).
3) Where the profit is:
As I said in #2, McDonald’s always asks: “Do you want fries with that?” or sometimes “Do you want to upsize that?”. Here is a second reason they do that. The item they are offering as an add-on is — get this — a massively high-margin item. There’s little profit in hamburgers, but fried potatoes? The hot little tasty savory add-on is almost all profit. So just before final checkout, ask if they want something else, and make sure it is a high-margin product for you to maximize your average checkout transaction.
4) Make your guarantee awesome and outrageous:
Promise the world when you sell, and promise extremely easy and flexible returns. Why would you make your life so difficult? I mean, let’s be real, returns are hassle for a vendor. They cut into your bottom line. And you work hard for the sale, why would you want to make it easy to undo it? Simple. Because you’ll sell more. Once a product is in the hands of the buyer, unless they experience extreme buyer’s remorse, they typically will not go to the trouble of returning a product. Why? Because they don’t want to tell the seller why. (It’s embarrassing for many.) It takes their time to reach out and return the product. And it’s an overall perceived hassle. So, in your pre-sell process, be sure to make it clear that returns are easy and frictionless, and that the buyer has lots of time to change their mind. That’s because the buyer will have one less excuse to not buy. If they feel good that they can change their mind after the sale, then they will more likely complete the initial transaction. AND be sure to make good on any refunds or returns. Still, more people will buy because of the great guarantee. And few will ever make the effort to return a product. The net result? More sales.
5) Keep the gravy train rolling:
After a buyer completes the transaction, be sure to send them an email immediately that adds yet another offer. Give them free shipping or a 2 for 1 deal or something else. Work to get them to come back immediately. And limit the offer to 7 days. Expire the coupon and let them know with hours to spare. Scarcity drives sales.
6) ABT – Always Build Trust:
Your store’s checkout page should have your phone number, address and testimonials. Create trust with your design and be transparent about how they can reach you. After their first purchase, tell them how special they are. Offer them hidden unpublished deals. People like to feel special and they love to be treated well. As trust develops, they will be more inclined to buy a 2nd and 3rd time. Why? Because you have proven that you keep your promises, they feel safe in doing business with you, and that will lead to more sales from them in future.
Andy Walker is a digital marketing strategist and owns the Niagara-based agency Cyberwalker Digital. http://cyberwalkerdigital.com
What does Usain Bolt have in common with CNN, Kim Kardashian with eBay, and Snoop Dog with GM? The answer is, they all run their websites on WordPress. In fact, according to a Forbes article, WordPress supports almost 75 million websites, which is more than 25 percent of all the websites in the world. It is …
You probably know that creating backlinks for your website is really difficult, boring and time consuming. And yet SEO backlink strategy is the most important task you can do when growing organic traffic with search optimization. It’s almost impossible (remember I said “almost”) to rank well in Google without a decent volume of backlinks to any …
9 ways you can use the landing page tool to grow your online business I thought was cool recently when in the same week I got two calls from two of our clients with three days asking – Hey Andy, What is LeadPages? In both cases the clients were looking to grow their online businesses. They …
We are always hunting for new ways to optimize our clients’ online web store properties, so that they generate not only more sales, but larger average transactions. So with that I thought I’d share with you the following revenue boosting secrets for your online store. The secrets I outline below work for all ecommerce platforms, …
n most of the world red means stop. But we will often switch our “Buy Now”, “Checkout” or “Add to Cart” buttons to the color red (or a shade of red in same cases). We saw average uptick of 18% click rate when we did this on three different websites, and across both SamCart and Shopify. Here’s the rationale: Red is a striking color and rarely is anything on a designed page the color red. Red is an attention getting color, and people apparently love to click on red buttons. It doesn’t mean stop. It means go buy. Try it yourself. It’s a killer ecommerce hack.
“Do you want fries with that?” is the ubiquitous question asked at McDonalds, but did you ever wonder why?