Crafting a relevant marketing message starts with knowing who the customers are. 

Google Analytics: 

Analytics tool from Google will help to identify the right target audience for your company. It is one of the most powerful insight tools that gather data from your website visitors. This free tool is easy to integrate and comes with lots of online resources. Whether you need to know your audience, their behavior, acquisition and conversion, google analytics provides comprehensive data to enhance your online presence.  

How to integrate google analytics into your website?

There are 2 easy methods to do it.

1. Using plugin
2. Embedding analytics code into your webpage

Using Plugin: If you are using WordPress website, it is easy to integrate google analytics using free plugins such as “Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights” or “Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP)”. Both plugins are popular with more than 1+ million active installations. 

Follow the steps below to integrate google analytics into your WordPress website,

• Log into your WordPress dashboard
• Click on Plugins
• Click on Add New
• Copy & paste “Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights”
• From the search list, click on Install
• Click on Activate
• Find the new tab called “Insights” on the left menu
• Click on Insights -> Dashboard
• Click on Authenticate and follow the required steps

Embedding Analytics code into your webpage: If you want to track your whole website rather than a particular landing page, you can add google analytics code directly into your header.php file before the closing tag </head>

Follow the steps below to embed google analytics code into your website

• Click here to Sign up
• Click on “Start for Free”
• Fill up the form with the correct domain
• Click “Get Tracking ID”
• Copy tracking ID
• Log into your WordPress dashboard
• Click on Appearance
• Click on Editor
• From the right menu, locate header.php file
• Find the tag </head>
• Paste the tracking id before </head>
• Click on Save

Facebook Insights

Facebook insights let you find the target audience using various inbuilt filters. It collects information from the Facebook users and let you target them based on information they provide on their facebook account. It also tracks the users browsing habits (such as their interests and behaviors) and streamlines your campaigns to reach your marketing goal. 

Once you follow the instructions below, you will be able to reach the specific audience and narrow the list using the user behavior, interests, relationship status, financial, language, education, hobbies, work, politics (US), life events etc. This will enable you to better manage your marketing budget and target only those prospects who are most likely to convert into the paying customers. 

How to filter facebook users & build your target audience?

• Create a Facebook business page using your personal Facebook account
• Click here to access Audience Insights 
• If this is your first time, click on “Everyone on Facebook”.
• Use the filters on the left-hand side to build your target audience such as location, age & gender, interests, Facebook usage, purchase activity etc
• Once the filters update, you will see the changes in the right-hand side and the related data such as demographics, page likes, location and activity
• On the top of the page next to your account name, click on “More” and from the dropdown menu click on “Save as”.
• Give your audience a name and save the list
• Use this audience list to create an ad on Facebook 

Now you can use Facebook ads to target the recently created audience list. Always develop your marketing strategies before investing your budget on online ads. You need to identify your KPIs (key performance indicators) and monitor the performance to get the most out of your campaigns. Running a successful ad campaign relies on the right mix of ads objectives, placements, budget, and formats.  

Due to the passive approach of many business owners, online ads are not creating any value to them. They spend a considerable amount of resources in creating and running their ads but fail to continuously evolve their strategies based on the collected metrics. The process of creating the ad campaign is easy but running a campaign with high conversion rate is challenging. You need to continuously monitor your campaigns and streamline your strategies with collected data and information on the ad manager.

Facebook has a built-in ad reporting system that offers a vast amount of data to edit & tweak the ads and reach the marketing goal. Always run a split test and offer variations on your ad campaign. Closely monitor your ads performance and determine the winning primary ad campaign. Once you figure out what works best for your business, you can stop all underperforming test ads and increase the daily budget limit of your primary ad campaign. 

The post Identify The Target Audience

How to find your target audience?

As a small business owner, I find it really challenging to keep up with the rapid advances in technology. Most of my customers are making quick decisions based on the information that is readily available online. My objectives have always been to keep my message on the forefront of the competition using various online platforms. 

The integral part of online marketing is the landing pages (or opt-in pages). All my marketing efforts end up on a single webpage that either conveys my messages or promotes my products and services. I have noticed that my marketing and social media campaigns are directly or indirectly sending prospects to my website. Therefore a fully functional website is an important part of my marketing campaigns. 

Why I Need a Mobile-Friendly Website?

Web surfing behaviour has changed a lot in the past few years. As smartphones and tablets gain popularity more people are surfing the internet on small screens. According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission 66% of Canadians use smartphones. The by-product of this shift in consumer behaviour has positioned the mobile-friendly feature at the core of the web development process. 

Google uses the mobile-friendly feature as a ranking factor in its algorithm. Starting April 21, 2015, if your website is not mobile-friendly, Google will not list your website on the search engine result page (SERP).

Currently, there is a staggering number of business websites that are not mobile-friendly. If your website is mobile-friendly, you will have a competitive advantage over these businesses. 

How Do I Check If My Website Is Mobile-Friendly?

The first step is to find out if your website passes the mobile-friendly test. Google offers this service for free. If you search “Mobile-Friendly Test – Google”, you will find a free Google tool to analyze your website for free. 

How Do I Make My Website Mobile-Friendly?

There are 4 ways to make your website fully responsive on all devices,

• Web Developers: If you need to create a fully responsive custom website, web developers are the best option. This method saves a considerable amount of time but it might be expensive for some small business owners. If you have a limited marketing budget, you must be ready to spend a good portion of it to update your website. If you are a start-up company this should be your last option.   

• Use Responsive Themes: For me, the best solution is to find a ready-made website template that is fully responsive and closely resembles my design needs. Most of these templates are easy to customize and do not require any coding background. WordPress offers many such templates for free. Premium templates start as low as $20. 

• Install Plugin: If you use a WordPress platform, you can use various free and premium plugins to make your site fully responsive. Plugins are add-ons that perform a specific function to enhance the feature of your website. In this case, you want to find the plugin that will make your existing website fully responsive on all screen sizes.  

• Freelance Service: The riskiest step is to find a freelancer who is ready to complete the task at a low price. Many out of country web developers are ready to exchange their service at an extremely low rate. I do not recommend this option because there is no guarantee that you will be 100% satisfied with the end product. If you decide to follow this option, do your research and find the vendors with positive reviews. 

References:

Participation by wireless service providers in the National Public Alerting System. (2016, March 29). Retrieved from http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2016/2016-115.pdf 

Make sure your site’s ready for mobile-friendly Google search results. (n.d.). Retrieved July 30, 2016, from https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6196932?hl=en

The post Mobile-Friendly Websites

How do I make my website mobile friendly?

In this article, we will help to streamline the process so that you can find the best possible website builder for your next project.

How to design a website

Traditionally building a website required coding experience & background. Web developers were the only expensive option available for the small business owners. A lot has happened since then.

Moore’s law state that the computers’ processing power doubles every 2 years. With the advancement in website design & development technology, various free and affordable options are available for small business owners. Currently, businesses can own high-end and affordable web design in Vancouver, Coquitlam, Surrey and surrounding areas.

Lets classify the website builder based on the 2 important components – time and budget.

Scenario 1: You have very limited time and budget

You might not know but there are artificial intelligence (AI) building thousands of websites worldwide.

Artificial Design Intelligence: If you are a busy professional with limited resources you might want to consider the artificial design intelligence (ADI) that helps to create your website automatically. Some big tech companies like Wix & TheGrid are offering to automatically build a website based on your content. If you can’t afford a web developer this cost-effective method is the best option for you.

Not ready to work with AI yet? Let’s try website builder software.

Scenario 2: You have time but very limited budget

Discover some of the most popular website builders that are both user-friendly and affordable.

Closed Source & Proprietary Content Management System (CMS):

WIX Website Builder

If you are not a tech savvy person and looking for a simple drag and drop editor, Wix is the best option for you. There are hundreds of template to choose from. Once you choose the web design template, you’ll simply change the images and content to depict your business. If you want to go a step further, use their drag & drop features to add and remove layout & sections. No need to hire a web developer.

Wix allows you to create a website for FREE. You can try your website design before publishing it.

Squarespace Website Builder

With visually appealing website templates Squarespace is the closest competitor to Wix. If you are in a creative field, Squarespace template might be the answer to own an expensive-looking and sleek website.

However, unlike Wix, it doesn’t offer any free trials and options. It comes with the hosting plan and all you need to do is connect your 3rd party domain using their domain mapping process.

Note: It’s a closed source platform that uses proprietary CMS.

Weebly Website Builder

Weebly is considered by many as one of the easiest website builder available for free. If you have a limited budget and need a simple and elegant website design you should try Weebly. It has more features and larger selection of apps than Wix. It offers an ability to backup and export entire website to a new host.

Like any other closed source software, the only drawback is the limited functionality and customization options. However it is worth noting that Weebly offers access to its source code. If you have a coding knowledge you can easily change the HTML and CSS to rewrite site layout, structure and design.

Note: It’s a closed source platform that uses proprietary CMS.

Scenario 3: You have Time & Budget

Open Source Content Management System (CMS):

WordPress

More than 75 million (more than 60% of the market share) websites are build on WordPress. It is an open source CMS with huge support based community. Most of the plugins are free and thousands of templates are available to choose from.

Learn more about the WordPress and why you should choose Open source CMS

WordPress also comes with drag & drop website builder that are easy to learn and use. Most of the premium WordPress themes come with built-in theme customizer, demo imports and documentation that allows you to upload and customize the theme at a relatively short period of time.

As the responsive web design ( mobile-friendly website ) is the ranking criteria of the search engine like Google, the responsive website builder customizes sites for all the screen sizes. When you compare the website builder you should compare their flexibility, usability, user-friendliness, price, responsiveness and real-time customization.

Here are the top 3 WordPress page builder

Elementor

Elementor is an intuitive drag and drop interface that allows pixel perfect design to the WordPress websites. You can control each and every aspect of your workflow and create a powerful design. This plugin allows you to outsmart your competition and brand your business withcustom-made website.

Besides creating a webpage, it offers the utmost flexibility to build landing pages and opt-in pages as well. Whether you are capturing leads through your ad campaigns or using dynamic content on your landing page, Elementor offers easy drag and drop solution to your complex project.

You can try Elementor for free with limited design elements or buy a premium package with additional add-ons. You don’t need to install and activate too many plugins. The complete set of design elements are capable of handling complex features & functionalities. If you need a multilingual site it is compatible with WordPress translator like WPML.

SiteOrigin Page Builder

SiteOrigin is the most popular page builder with 1+ million active installs and it allows you to build complex website layout using drag and drop tool. It is FREE to use in any WordPress site. The main attractive feature of this page builder is its ability to create the responsive grid-based layout & enabling them to populate with WordPress widgets.

You can download a free version from WordPress.org or directly from their site.

It is SEO friendly and generates light-weight codes without having to type a single code. Any changes you make can be previewed directly in a real-time. If you make any mistakes along the way, you can restore the history with a click. You can also add custom class and CSS to build advance design.

It is free and comes with the lifetime updates.

WPBakery Page Builder

Formerly known as Visual Composer, WPBakery Page Builder is the most used page builder on the premium WordPress themes. Almost all of the themes purchased from themeforest.net have this page builder installed on them.

WPBakery page builder offers online support via support tickets. It offers both front-end as well as back-end editing and comes with 39 design elements. It has more than 80 templates & layouts and fully compatible with WooCommerce and WPML translator.

The post Best Website Builder

Choosing the best website platform

How to translate a page

If you own a WordPress site, it is easy to integrate language translator into your website using free plugins as well Google’s free translation service. With this method, you can translate the site into 100+ languages using multilingual plugins and snippets.

In this blog, we will learn about the free and premium multilingual plugins to translate website for all languages.

Google Translate Website ( without plugin )

If you have used google to translate words and sentences in the past, you can use the same translation library and include it into your website. Google offers this website translator service for free. Here is how to do it,

• • Go to this link https://translate.google.com/manager/website/

• • Add your website URL

• • Choose the original language of your website

• • Choose the translation languages

• • Get the code

• Copy & Paste the translation code into your website pages or posts

That’s it. Once you complete the process, you will see a google translator with all the selected languages readily available on your website.

Google language translator using the multilingual plugin

Google multilingual plugins use the same concept & library but they are easier to add compared to the raw google translation code. Some plugins provide additional customization to match the google translator with your website design. Here are a few popular google website translator that you can use on your website for free,

Google Language Translator by Rob Myrick: With more than 100,000+ active installation on WordPress sites, this plugin ranks higher with great clients reviews. We have used this free plugin on various sites (we have developed) without any issues. Follow these simple steps to start transforming your website into a multilingual site.

Installation Part 1:

• • • Go to your WordPress dashboard
  • • Click on Plugins
  • • Click on Add new
  • • Search for “google language translator ”
  • • Select Google Language Translator by Rob Myrick
  • Install and activate the plugin

Installation Part 2:

• • • Find the recently installed google translator under Dashboard > Settings > Google Language Translator
  • • Click the checkbox to activate the plugin under Plugin Status
  • • Select your languages and adjust the setting based on your requirement
  • • To use this plugin into your website copy and paste various codes under Usage
  • Click on Save Changes

Translate WordPress with GTranslate by Translate AI Multilingual Solutions: Another popular translator plugin with 100,000+ active installations and 640 5-star reviews to translate your website into 100+ languages.

Installation Part 1:

• • • Go to the WordPress dashboard
  • • Click on Plugins
  • • Click on Add new
  • • Search for “google GTranslate”
  • • Select Translate WordPress with GTranslate by Translate AI Multilingual Solutions
  • Install and activate the plugin

Installation Part 2:

• • • Find your recently installed plugin under Dashboard > Settings > GTranslate
  • • Select various options to customize the plugin
  • • Select the languages you want to translate
  • Copy and paste the shortcode into the header and footer of your website files to start using the translator.

If you are targeting a particular niche and language plays an important role, merely using google translator might not be professional enough for your business. You might need a platform to manually translate the website into 1 specific language rather than using a translator for all languages. To offer precise translation with manually translated content, there are 2 highly rated plugins

Polylang: Polylang is a free WordPress multilingual manual translator. Besides your normal web pages, Polylang also translates custom post types, taxonomies, menus, widgets and links (URLs). It is also compatible with the multisite. Click here to compare features and plans. With the premium plan, you can unlock advanced features and premium support.

If you want to use the automatic translation with Polylang you can add free add-on called Lingotek. When you activate Polylang, Lingotek add-on is automatically added to your dashboard.

WPML: WordPress Multilingual Plugin is a powerful premium plugin that is widely used by almost all of the multilingual premium WordPress theme. The pricing starts at $29 unto $159. It comes with a 30 days money back guarantee and translates over 40 languages. WPML site states that there are 600,000+ sites currently running this plugin around the world.

Also, with this plugin, you can take advantage of their string translation interface and directly translate plugins through your WordPress admin dashboard. This translation management software allows you to connect your website with any translation service provider. 

If you are running a simple informative business website (or blogging website) and need to translate site into other languages, google translator is easy and ready to integrate. Simply follow the google language translator steps above start reaching a wider audience. 

If you are looking to target more specific audience and planning to use precise translated content, WPML and Polylang are your best options. These plugins come with detail documentation and you can customize them based on your unique needs and requirements.

Before you implement any changes to your existing site, you should first run a test site and see how everything works. If the plugin you’ve chosen address the demand and meet your expectation, you can install it into your site.

The post How to translate a website

Google Language Translator

The process is simple and can be summarized as follow:-

• Generate nameservers from your hosting account
• Add those nameservers on your domain providers platform

To give you a better understand, we will take 2 widely used platforms as an example. Let’s say you have registered your domain with WHOIS and purchased GoDaddy’s hosting plan. Here is how you can point your domain from WHOIS to GoDaddy hosting account.

How to connect your domain name from WHOIS to GoDaddy hosting account?

If your domain is registered under WHOIS and your hosting service is with GoDaddy, you’ll need to add your GoDaddy’s names ever to WHOIS platform. Here is how to do it,

On GoDaddy Platform:

• Log into your GoDaddy account
• Click on My Products
• Click on Manage All next to Domains
• From the drop-down menu click on DNS
• Click on Add DNS Hosting
• Enter the domain name (that you’ve registered on WHOIS)
• Click on Next
• The system will generate nameserver for you

On WHOIS Platform:

• Log into your WHOIS account
• Go to your control panel
• Enter your registered domain name to go to Order Information
• Click on Nameservers
• Copy new nameservers from GoDaddy and paste it into WHOIS. Copy and paste both nameservers from GoDaddy

That’s it. Usually, it takes 1-2 hours to get your website up and running but according to GoDaddy sometimes it can take up to 48 hours. So keep your fingers crossed and check back in a while.

The post How to add domain to your hosting plan?

WHOIS And Godaddy

Hiring web developers in North America for the odd jobs is expensive. As a small business owner, stretching your marketing budget to maintain your website can be a very challenging task.

Choosing the best Content Management System (CMS), will lower the cost and increase the site’s productivity.

Engaging content attracts web visitors and adds good SEO value to your website. Constantly creating, editing and updating content should be a focus of your content management strategy. You should not be worried about the cost and methods to add fresh content to your site. Therefore, regularly managing the digital content should be cheap, fast and easy.

So the important question is…

What is the Content Management System or CMS?

Content Management System is a software that allows you to create, organize, edit, manage and publish data, information and content on the web. Since it is mostly used for the web publishing, in this blog we will focus more on that particular application. 

The content management system also serves as a platform for the developers to add functionalities and design to the website. The best content management tools will have an easy user interface that allows multiple users to publish content in the most cost-effective way possible.

Many CMS platforms are free and based on PHP and MySQL. Open source CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Ghost, Typo3, Magento, Microweber is popular and cheaper than the proprietary CMS. It makes a huge difference whether you choose the open source CMS or proprietary system. Learning the difference will lower the cost and increase the benefits in both private sectors as well as government projects. 

Open Source CMS: When the community of developers from around the world collaborate to create and maintain the system, it is known as the open source system. The global community of developers who are constantly working to improve the CMS platform is responsible for developing, maintaining and frequently updating the open source CMS. Since there are a lot of people working together to improve the CMS, a lot of resources and applications are easily available free of charge.

Open source CMS is updated frequently with new features, improved functionality and security. As a small business owner, you do not have to worry about your website security if you choose the right CMS platforms and plugins to safeguard your site. The best open source CMS will have an easy user interface, many free features, optimized for performance & speed, and big community behind it.

If your website is backed up with a strong content management system, it will provide a competitive advantage over your competitors. New promotions, offers, blogs and news can be readily shared with your users in an extremely short period of time. In addition to learning how to write SEO friendly blogs and articles for your website, you must also have a user-friendly system to post them on your website. Since SEO is an integral part of the website, the best CMS will allow you to optimize your content for the search engine like Google, Bing & Yahoo. You can also add additional SEO plugins to further enhance your SEO score.

Proprietary CMS: When a developer builds and manage their own in-house CMS it is known as proprietary CMS. They are closed source platform that restricts 3rd party access to the source code. A proprietary CMS is a paid software and usually charge the monthly fees. They have a limited community and resources as compared to the open source system.    

The 3 most popular open source CMS that are licensed under GPL are

WordPress: WordPress started as a blogging platform has emerged into the full-scale business and eCommerce platform. Although it is based on PHP scripts, the users do not require any coding experience to install, edit and manage the template. There are thousands of WordPress themes both free and paid version for all sectors and industries. You can build a simple business website in WordPress for free.

WordPress has a market share of 58.4% with more than 75 millions websites. The most powerful aspect of WordPress is the size of its web developers community. As a result, there are more than 50 thousand free plugins and 3000+ free themes available as of 2018. As a small business owner, each and every features and functionality you can think of (on your website) are freely available through WordPress. For example, if you need an events-calendar, you can easily install and activate free plugins and start showing your events to your web visitors.

Drupal: Drupal is a much more complex system than WordPress. Based on your project complexity sometimes WordPress is not enough to do the job properly. The powerful features and functionality of Drupal can handle the larger volume of content and require more technical experience than WordPress. Just like the WordPress plugins, it has modules to add additional functionality to the website.   

Drupal has a market share of 4.8% with 25 million downloads and 1.1 million websites running on it. It has 26K+ free modules and 2000+ free themes. Just like WordPress, it is a free and open source CMS. You will require a higher technical expertise than WordPress to manage sites on Drupal CMS. If you are a newbie and not a web developer, it is a challenging task to build a website on Drupal. You must have a working knowledge of PHP and HTML to get the most out of this platform.

Joomla: It is the 2nd most popular CMS after WordPress with 75+ million downloads. Joomla is preferred for the well organized and complex web projects. The dynamic admin interface is detail-oriented and extremely user-friendly to manage the large volume of web content. The management of Joomla platform requires an intermediate level of web experience and it is relatively harder to manage than the WordPress. Although there are millions of users and a huge community behind the Joomla platform, finding Joomla expert can be difficult and more expensive than the WordPress developers.

If you are building a multilingual site, Joomla offers readily available options to translate your content. It is a great platform to manage your eCommerce products and content. However, it is not highly recommended for the blogging sites.

Support & Documentation: The support and documentation are the prominent features of any high ranking CMS software. Failure to provide user-friendly documentation can discourage the web developers from using the CMS platform. Therefore thorough and coherent documentation with the functional demo can steer the web developers into the right direction. Always check the documentation and how well you understand them before deciding on the best CMS platform for your next web design & development project. 

The post Content Management System (CMS)

HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST CMS PLATFORM?

As you dig deeper into your online marketing campaigns, you’ll stumble upon various web pages. These web pages are built for the specific purpose, each with its own objective and goal. The best web design & marketing campaign maximize the use of these pages to generate leads and ultimately boost sales. In this blog, we will try to differentiate between the Home Page, Landing Page and Squeeze / Opt-in Page.

What is the Home Page?

The Home Page (also refer as homepage ) is the front page of your website that loads up when you enter your domain name in the web browser address bar.  It is the main page that provides a starting point for your web visitors to browse your website. This default page contains hyperlinks & navigation menus to different sections of the site.

Most servers load homepage as index.html or index.php file on the root directory of a website. The popular CMS platform like WordPress gives priority to the filename such as frontpage.php to be acknowledged as a home page.

Since it is the first point of contact between your customers and your company, it should contain all the important information and links to guide them towards your business goal. The information like clickable phone number, email, contact address, value proposition, unique selling proposition, competitive advantages, clients reviews and testimonials are important components of the modern homepage. 

Your homepage should load within 5 seconds. You should also enable Page Cache to avoid slow loading of your main page. Using a lot of images and especially the big banner or background images without proper compression will slow down the loading speed of your homepage. Use correct headline tags ( h1, h2, h3 etc ) and researched keywords throughout the page to rank higher on the search engine.

Example of the homepages are

https://customizepress.ca

https://wordpress.org/

https://www.shopify.ca/

What is the Landing Page?

Unlike homepage, your landing page is more specific and build with a focused objective. For example, when you see an advertisement on Google and you click on them, the destination page ( of that particular ad ) is called the landing page. A good landing page will have a strong Call To Action ( CTA ), an opt-in form ( to capture visitors’ email ) and a well-written content.

The landing page should be free of distractions and should be thoroughly tested ( Split test or A/B test ) before implementing them on your marketing campaigns. In order to avoid distractions, most of the marketing gurus remove the navigation bar from the landing page. It is to ensure that when someone lands on that specific landing page they will follow your desired Call To Action ( CTA ) instead of surfing around your website and getting sidetracked from the main objective.

Tracking your landing page and accurately measuring the performance, behaviour, acquisition and conversion helps to streamline your ad or marketing campaigns. The main purpose is to figure out, who followed your Call To Action and who exited the landing page without any actions. Once you can track these indicators, you can modify your marketing campaigns to minimize your bounce rate.

What is the Squeeze or Opt-In Page?

Opt-in page or squeeze page is a form of a landing page that captures your leads’ email addresses and names. The ultimate goal of the opt-in or squeeze page is to collect as many email addresses as possible in exchange for a freebie, such as white papers, tutorials, courses, templates, guides and e-books. The most successful squeeze page offers something valuable (often known as the lead magnet) in return for an email address. Your lead magnet should have high value, promises one quick solution and it should be instantly accessible.

These unique pages are commonly used in lead generation marketing strategy and often contain sales pitch, one powerful Call To Action ( CTA ), and short & precise offer. Just like a landing page, this opt-in page or squeeze page doesn’t have navigation menu to avoid user distraction.

The persuasion technique and design of a squeeze page should be subtle and focused on the single goal to collect email addresses. Using the split test ( A/B testing ) and optimizing the page based on the analytic data are the most effective strategies in running a successful squeeze page.

Example of opt-in or squeeze page:

https://customizepress.ca/seo-content-optimization/

Update – Canada Anti-Spam Law (CASL):

Starting 1st July 2014, Canada Anti Spam Law ( CASL ) requires express consent from the recipient to receive all forms of electronic messages including emails and text. If you are using the forms to collect user data, you will have to provide clear information and double opt-in with the confirmation-link before adding them into your subscriber list. Law also requires you to have a visible “unsubscribe” button on every message you sent to the subscriber. Therefore it is your obligation to ensure all the forms embedded on your landing page are compliant with the new Canada Anti-Spam Law (CASL).

There are 2 types of consent required by CASL,

Express Consent: When you receive a direct permission from the recipient to email them, it is known as express or explicit consent. You should document all the express consent ( obtained through form or confirmation link ) to prove that you have permission from the recipient. This consent is valid until the recipient withdraw their consent and request to receive no more messages from you. The request should be as simple as clicking an ‘ unsubscribe’ button embedded on your email. 

Implied Consent: If you have an existing relationship with the recipient you can still send the electronic messages without their express consent. The implied consent applies for both existing business relationship and non-business relationship. Click on the link to learn more about the CASL. 

The post Different Types Of Web Pages

HOME PAGE, LANDING PAGE & SQUEEZE (OPT-IN) PAGE

Learn to use various programs and create a highly effective content, blogs and articles for your website. You can also download the following checklist “Website Content Writing Guidelines” here.

Your Blogs/articles must have researched keywords

This is the most important part of the whole SEO writing process, yet the simplest one of all. Click here to learn how you can research the keywords related to your products or services. 

Must Provide In-depth knowledge about the topic

Writing superficial and frivolous articles are boring to read and doesn’t establish you as an expert in your field. You should avoid writing articles and blogs solely for the SEO purpose or to manipulate the search engine. You must consider yourself to be an expert and provide in-depth knowledge about your expertise related to your products, services and industry. 

Must be formatted using proper SEO guidelines

• • Post title should contain your researched keywords

• • Post URL should contain your researched keywords

• • Use appropriate heading tags such as h1, h2, h3

• • Use researched keywords in your headline

• • Use keywords on the anchor text (the internal and external link on your post)
  • All the images should have image alt tags with the researched keywords on them

 Internal & external backlinks

Use appropriate anchor tags with properly researched keywords to create both internal and external links to and from your new articles. As you write more blogs and articles, link them with one another. Also, link various part of your website such as the products and services with the proper anchor text.

Must be an original and unique content

Do not copy content from other websites as it is. Check for the duplicate content using various free tools such as

https://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/

https://www.copyscape.com/

After you write your blog always check your content so that search engine doesn’t see your content as a “copy and paste” from another website. According to Google’s Duplicate Content Guidelines, if you use duplicate content with the intent to manipulate the rankings, your website might be removed entirely from the Google index.

Must be grammatically correct

Use the spelling and grammar check on your word-processor to identify and edit any spelling and grammar mistakes. Also, check your final content using the following tools,

Grammarly for Chrome Add-on or

https://smallseotools.com/grammar-checker/

Article Spinner / Rewriter

Not Highly Recommended. If you detect duplicate content on your website, use the article spinner to avoid duplication. Article spinner helps you restructure and rephrase your articles to avoid duplication. If you decide to use article spinner use the manual/hand spinning rather than auto spinning. Here is a tool to spin or rewrite the articles,

https://smallseotools.com/article-rewriter/

Readability Test

Your message should be simple, unambiguous and clear to all your audience – from highly educated audience to less educated audience. This factor is determined using various readability scores. You should target the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level score of 5. For inspiration; The Sun Also Rises by Ernst Hemingway has Flesch Kincaid Grade Level of 4.1. Check your content score at

https://www.webpagefx.com/tools/read-able/

Note: If you are in a technical industry your readability score might be higher.

Generate Word Clouds

Generating word clouds is the easiest way to visualize your keywords density and frequency on your content. Larger and bolder text should contain keywords and key phrases.

https://www.wordclouds.com/

Social Sharing (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube)

Make it easy for your audience to share and promote your content online using social share buttons. If you are using a WordPress site, you can easily add these buttons using the following plugins (for free),

https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/sassy-social-share/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/mashsharer/

Image selection

Do not use the images from a Google search. Most of those images are copyrighted and require permission from the owner. Use only Creative Commons (CC) licensed images that are free for the commercial use and requires no attribution, such as

https://pixabay.com/

Attribution required,

https://www.freepik.com/

Others,

https://www.pexels.com/

https://unsplash.com/

Note: You can also buy stock images from

https://www.istockphoto.com/ca

https://www.shutterstock.com/

https://www.gettyimages.ca/

Image Formatting

Use Canva to create a quick design for your marketing campaigns, including social media and blogs. There are thousands of pre-made templates and layout to choose for various platforms and campaigns.   

https://www.canva.com/

Canva tutorial: https://youtu.be/XqYti78riU8

Image Compression:

Compress your image so that your new post loads relatively faster. Large and uncompressed images make your website slower.

https://compressjpeg.com/

Proof Reading & Publishing

Ask your co-workers and friends to proofread your content. Find out how easily they understood the content and use their feedback to enhance your writing skills. Use Spelling & Grammar check on your word processor as well as the above-mentioned programs to check your document.

Do not publish the same content on 2 different platforms ( to avoid the duplicate content). For example, if you write a blog on your website, do not copy and paste it into your social media platforms.

Blog as a Social Media Post

Do not copy and paste the whole blog from your website on social media platforms. Instead, use the excerpts or summary of the post you’ve created as a Facebook content. Use proper hashtags on the keywords. Use the URL of your new blog/article. Use canva to reformat images to fit on Facebook posts.

If you run various social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, you can schedule and post content on multiple platform using Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media management system that helps to monitor and manage multiple networks at a relatively short period of time.

https://hootsuite.com/plans

Hootsuite Tutorial (including account setup): https://youtu.be/Bn6h9VrfWw0

The post How to Write Blogs and Articles?

WEBSITE CONTENT WRITING

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It secures your business website and protects it (and your website visitors) from online bugs, viruses and harmful bots. An SSL certificate creates an encrypted connection between the web visitor’s browser and the server while facilitating web browsing experience. It protects the valuable information (such as credit cards, logins etc) that is transferred between the parties using your website.

SSL is a part of HTTPS protocol that sends encrypted information between a broker and a server. So if you accept credit/debit card and your site is not SSL protected, your clients might not feel comfortable providing that information. Most shoppers are careful and want a guarantee that their information is safe.

How do you find if a site is SSL protected?

If the site’s URL starts with https instead of http it is SSL protected.

for example, https://www.facebook.com/ is SSL protected whereas httpss:yoursite.com is not secured.

Do I need SSL certificate for my website?

The most frequent questions that our clients ask us is whether their website needs SSL certificate or not. If your website is collecting important data and information such as credits and debit cards, SSL certificate is highly recommended. Most of the hosting providers require websites to have SSL certificate before accepting any form of debit or credit cards. In most of the eCommerce site, SSL certificate reduce the risk of credit/debit card information being stolen from your website visitors.

You will also need SSL certificate if your web pages are password protected. Just like an eCommerce website, if you have a membership site, it needs to be secured using SSL certificate. SSL certificate provides a safety net and secures highly valuable information from the hackers. You have to make sure that you will not be a victim of the bots surfing for a weakly protected password.

Where do I get SSL certificate and how do I install it on my website?

Contact your hosting provider and ask them to add SSL certificate to your account. Some of the hosting providers offer SSL certificate for as little as $20-$30 per year. If you are using a WordPress site, you can find many plugins that will help you integrate your SSL certificate to your website. The 3 most popular WordPress SSL plugins are listed below:

• Really Simply SSL by Rogier Lankhorst
• WordPress HTTPS (SSL) by Mike Ems
• Force HTTPS (SSL Redirect & Fix Insecure Content) by LittleBizzy

Remember, your goal is to choose the provider that issues SSL certificates with the highest strength encryption algorithms and are easy to implement on your existing site.

If you want to secure only one domain or a subdomain name, you can choose single SSL certificate. Single SSL certificate covers most of the small businesses websites. However, if you have one main domain and many subdomains, you will need Wildcard SSL certificate. Based on the level of validation you can choose from:

• Domain validation
• Organization validation
• Extended validation (EV)

SSL provides security, trust, privacy and data integrity for your website users’ personal information and your website. Therefore it is your responsibility to protect the information of your users even if the security of your website is not that critical.

The post What is SSL certificate?

DO I NEED SSL FOR MY WEBSITE?

Click here to request tutorial and write great content for your website. Here is a content outline for each major page and section. If any page or section is not applicable to your business, please disregard them.

Homepage:

• Company Name. For example; CustomizePress
• Company Tagline. For example; Custom WordPress Website
• Headline: For example; Vancouver Web Design & Digital Marketing
• Call to action. For example; Free Quotes, Schedule an appointment, call us etc

Company Overview:

• Short description about your company, what it does and the value it creates for your clients. This is what you would tell if someone ask about your business. 1 to 2 paragraph
• List 5-7 main points that set your business apart from your competitors. This is what you tell if a prospect or potential customer calls you to learn more about your services/products

About: Words limit: 500-800 words

• Company’s history & profile including who you are, what you do
• Your company’s vision, mission, achievements, awards & recognition, expertise
• Company’s value proposition, unique selling proposition and competitive advantages
• Image, profile and short description of management and team members
• Your company’s track record on industry required guidelines for example professional conduct guidelines, safety standards & policies, professional practice guidelines etc 

Services:

• List of all the services with complete details
• Write 2-3 paragraphs about each service
• Explain why your clients should choose your services/products over your competitors
• What unique value you offer and what qualifies you to offer these services. Here you can write your elevator pitch
• Whether you sell services or products, explain your take on good customer service and how your business achieve them

Blog / Resources:

• Write 3 blog/articles related to your services/products that is helpful to your website visitor. It can be any thing informative and directly related to your industry
• Write original content, do not copy from the internet. Original, informative and valuable content play decisive role in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Each blog 500-800 words
• Provide related image for each blog. You can find free images at https://pixabay.com/

Pricing Chart: if applicable

• How much do you charge for each services.
• Do you have a package deal or promotion? If yes, what are they
• List all the items they receive

Images:

• Images related to your business (5-7 images)
• If you do not have images, we will use free images as well as recommend you professional stock images from the web

The post Website Content Outline

USE THE FOLLOWING OUTLINE TO CREATE YOUR CONTENT