Strike out into the unknown?

Discover new opportunities?

Change the world with your hyper-realistic food-themed jewelry? (I don’t know about you, but my world has certainly been…changed.)

And, maybe even make some money along the way?

The road to building a successful business and becoming your own boss can be a long one. Luckily, we have a map.

In this complete guide, you’ll learn all the steps that you need to start a successful small business, from creating a basic business plan to hiring your first employee.

Grab a snack (of the non-necklace variety), and let’s hit the road.

Refining the Big Idea

Every creative endeavor has two halves: the idea and the execution.

Many aspiring entrepreneurs come up with awesome ideas, but end up struggling with the second part.

Need proof? How many friends of yours have revolutionary app ideas? And how many have actually developed an app, released it, and built a successful business out of it? Chances are, the answer to the second question is a lot lower.

When you start your own business, you have to get beyond the big idea to crafting your execution plan.

So, let’s start things off on the right foot and break your big idea down into small, achievable steps.

1. Define Your Business Idea

Few things kill a new business like a concept that’s way too vague. How do you even start building your business if your plan is simply to “make a new type of social network?”

Well, you don’t. You either refine your idea into something tangible, or let it languish over time.

Most ideas can be saved with a dash of refinement and a bit of polish. The key to doing so is asking the right questions:

• Why are you starting this venture?
• Who is your target demographic, and is that a viable market?
• What product or service are you offering?
• When will it be available, and when would someone use this product?
• Where will your product be available?

By answering these questions, you can turn a vague idea like “start a new social network” into “start a new social network for US-based professionals and recent college graduates to connect and find job opportunities in their alumni networks.”

Once you get through your first round of questions, ask more: Why would this niche market use this over LinkedIn? What are the features that separate it from the competition?

Refining your idea is like making a sculpture out of a block of marble. Start by cutting away big chunks on your first pass, and then chip at the little details once you’re further along.

Remember, sometimes ideas simply don’t work. It’s just as important to know when to give up on an idea as how to refine it. After some chipping, there’s no shame in admitting that a certain direction isn’t a good one. Put it to the side so you can focus your efforts on another big idea.

2. Create A Business Plan

The next step is to start working out the fine details by developing a detailed business plan. Besides serving as a guide, your business plan can also come in handy when looking for investors or business grants.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, a business plan should have these elements:

• Executive summary: Sum up your business. Why will it be successful? What is your mission statement? What are you offering? In short: Who are you as a business, and why should anyone care?
• Company description: Expand on some of the most interesting points in your executive summary. What problems does your business solve? What is your team like? What’s your competitive advantage? Your company description will likely overlap with your executive summary to some extent, but you can expand on it and add new information here as well.
• Market analysis: Explain how your product fits into the target market. What are competitors doing? How can you do it better or cheaper?
• Service/product line: Describe the products or professional services you’re selling. Include information about patents, lifecycle, benefits, and even business location if that’s critical. This information will form the backbone of your business model.
• Marketing and sales details: Explain how your sales and marketing efforts will work. How will you grow your customer base? How will you retain customers?
• Funding request: If you’re using this plan in an investor meeting, include information about how much funding you’ll need over the next five years and what you plan to use that money for.
• Financial projections: Prove that your business is in good financial health and ready for success by including your financial plan and projecting what your finances will look like in the next few years. Keep in mind you may also want to include an income statement here if you’re already up and running.

Once you have all the information you need, we’ve created a business plan template that you can download and fill out.

3. Decide On A Business Name

Chances are that if you’ve made it this far, you already have some type of working name. If you don’t, it’s time to iron one out.

When coming up with your business name, keep these tips in mind:

• The name should be catchy and sound good when you say it out loud
• You should be able to trademark your name
• The name should relate somewhat to your product or service’s benefits or features
• You should be able to get a .com domain for it (more on that next)
• Your name should be easy to spell

Some entrepreneurs get backed up at this stage. While it’s definitely important to make sure your business name has some allure to it, don’t overthink it and hold up your progress just because you can’t settle on the perfect name. Give yourself a reasonable amount of thinking time and then go with your favorite option, even if you’re not completely thrilled with it.

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4. Flesh Out Your Brand

Like people, businesses can have all kinds of personalities.

Once you’ve settled on a name for your business entity, start to consider what other features and characteristics you want people to recognize your brand by.

At this point, you’ll want to design a logo and set some brand guidelines. What tone will your business take in its communications? What colors represent it?

Oatly, for example, has defined itself through its playful and irreverent copywriting, its funky logo, and its commitment to a soft palette of primarily blue, brown, black, and white.

Ideally, your visual identity should be recognizable enough that when you release a new item, target customers will immediately realize that it’s from your product line.

Securing Your Space On The Web

In our digital-first world, maintaining a strong online presence is more important than ever.

Luckily, starting a website and building a social presence is way easier than it used to be. Here’s how to get rolling!

1. Register Your Domain

Your domain is the address that people will type in when they want to visit your website.

For example, our domain is dreamhost.com. If your business was called Deb’s Donuts, your domain might be debsdonuts.com.

The vast majority of businesses will want to get a .com name. However, other domain extensions, like .ai, .inc, and .net may be worth consideration in certain cases.

Purchasing and registering a domain is a simple process. All you need to do is search for your desired domain on a reputable domain registrar’s website and buy it. Most registrars guide you through the process.

Once you’ve got a domain, you need to connect it to your website. Most website-building platforms offer guidance on how to do this. (Here’s ours.)

Overall, the hardest part about choosing and registering a domain is finding one that isn’t already taken. In some cases, you may need to get a bit creative by adding words, i.e., Deb’s Donuts PDX.

Related: Choosing The Perfect Domain Extension For Your Business

2. Set Up Social Media Accounts

The number of social media users just keeps going up.

To ensure your business’s survival in the modern business climate, you need to be where your potential customers are — on social media.

Don’t worry. You don’t need to actually develop your social media presence just yet. Right now, we’re just setting up usernames. Like domain names, usernames on major social network sites are hot commodities and go fast, so you want to lock them down ASAP.

Unfortunately, it’s fairly unlikely that you’ll end up finding the same username on all social platforms. Most businesses will need to edit their handles slightly or have different accounts per platform (such as @debsdonuts on TikTok and @debsdeliciousdonuts on Instagram).

Related: How To Create A Winning Social Media Strategy

3. Build A Website

What use would your domain name be if you had no website to go along with it? Once you have a domain ready to go, it’s time to start building your website.

These days, there are tons of online website builders that make it easy to get a site up and running quickly.

But if you want your website to run on a powerful, tried-and-true platform, building a WordPress site is one of your best options. WordPress powers over 43% of all websites, so there’s no lack of support, powerful features, and communities to get involved in.

DreamHost offers a drag-and-drop WordPress website builder with shared hosting that combines the ease of a website-building tool with the raw power of WordPress. This gives the business owner the best of both worlds.

Handling Legality And Financials

Starting a business can sometimes mean navigating a lot of red tape. Between registering your business, structuring it, and opening a bank account, many entrepreneurs quickly find themselves with their hands full.

Here are the basics for getting your business off the ground.

1. Find An Accountant And Attorney

If you’re serious about your business’s success, it’s a good idea to start things off on the right foot and hire an accountant and an attorney. Starting a business is a complex process with lots of legal requirements, and this team can guide you through it and answer your questions along the way.

If you’re on a very tight budget or starting your business as a side hustle, you may be able to hold off on this step. But keep in mind that you’re running a risk when you don’t have a professional helping you with complex tax, financial, and legal issues.

Plus, an attorney and accountant will help you figure out how to choose a business structure, which is the next step in your journey. (Having fun yet?!)

2. Decide On A Business Structure

Choosing a business structure is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. The legal structure you choose will determine how you pay taxes and how government entities view your business.

Importantly, your business structure will determine whether or not your profits are taxed on a pass-through (or flow-through) basis. Owners of pass-through businesses count their share of profits as individual, self-employed income, which is subject to income tax. Owners of non-pass-through businesses pay themselves a salary and report their income and the business’s profits separately.

The most common business structures in the U.S. are:

• Sole proprietorship: This structure can be used by businesses without any employees. Any businesses that don’t formally register are automatically considered sole proprietor operations.
• Partnership: Have a business partner? Partnerships are a simple structure for businesses with two or more owners. Profits are taxed on a pass-through basis.
• Limited liability company (LLC): LLCs are among the most popular pass-through structures for small businesses. This structure separates personal and business assets so that you can’t lose your house or car if your business goes bankrupt.
• Corporation: A corporation is a standalone legal entity. Profits are not taxed on a pass-through basis, so owners need to pay themselves a salary. There are several types of businesses in this category, including S Corps (note: this is a pass-through entity), C Corps, and nonprofits (typically tax-exempt, varies by location and designation).
• Cooperative: A cooperative is a business owned and operated by a group of people who use its products or services. These people typically own shares in the company, and profits are distributed amongst them. Some cooperatives are exempt, and others pay taxes like corporations.

Our recommendation is to avoid starting with a hugely complex business structure. As you can see, the ins and outs of business structure and tax compliance are already enough to keep up with.

3. Register With The Government And IRS

Most business registration happens at a state level, so you’ll need to look into your local laws to see what’s required to legally form your business. An attorney can help guide you here.

Once your business is registered, you might need to file to get a federal tax ID called an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Think of an EIN as a Social Security number for your business. According to the IRS, you’ll need an EIN if your business does any of the following:

• Pays employees
• Operates as a corporation of partnership
• Files tax returns for employment, excise, or alcohol, tobacco, and firearms
• Withholds taxes on income, other than wages, paid to a non-resident alien
• Uses a Keogh Plan (a tax-deferred pension plan)
• Work with certain types of organizations (trusts, estates, nonprofits, etc.)

If you’re running a sole proprietorship or single-member LLC, you don’t need a separate tax ID. Your profits are taxed as personal income.

4. Open A Business Bank Account

Having a business bank account just for business expenses helps you separate your personal and business finances, making accounting and filing taxes much easier. It also offers an extra layer of protection for your personal assets, maintains a professional image, and allows you to open a business credit card and checking account.

To open a business bank account, you’ll need to have your formation and tax documents, along with a business license and ownership agreements. Your accountant is a great resource here, especially if you’re considering applying for a business loan.

5. Purchase Insurance

Many business owners forget to take out an insurance policy, or simply don’t realize how important it is. Don’t be one of them.

Insurance can help if your business takes on property damage, or if you get sued for some reason. Plus, if you hire employees, you legally need to have unemployment insurance and worker’s compensation in case anyone experiences illness or bodily injury as a result of the job.

Setting Up Your Daily Operations

A business is like a machine. To keep it running smoothly, you can’t just focus on a few parts (products, marketing, etc.). You need to make sure all the parts are present, working well, and functioning in harmony.

Let’s discuss the other core elements to keep your business engine humming.

1. Accounting

Your accounting system is the backbone of your business’s financial operations. Without a good system in place, you can’t process invoices, make payments, etc.

For those of us who weren’t mathletes, there are a lot of small business accounting tools on the market. You can also speak with an accountant, who can help you find a solution that works for your specific needs. 

2. Project Management

A robust project management program ensures that projects, such as new campaigns and product features, reach completion in a timely and organized way. Project managers use them to communicate with different team members, contract employees, and other external businesses to keep everyone on the same page.

Whether you’re going to be your sole proprietorship’s own project manager or you’re hiring one for your corporation, we recommend you invest in useful business apps like Asana or Trello.

Related: 14 Practical Small Business Apps You Need To Know

3. Payroll

If you plan to hire employees, you need some type of payroll system. Gusto and Bill.com are good options, but there are more on the market if you want to shop around.

If you’re hiring only contractors, a payroll platform is helpful, but not entirely necessary.

4. Communications

Whether you’re hiring employees or contractors (don’t worry, we’ll cover that next), you need a way to communicate with each other.

While email works fine in most cases, many growing businesses prefer powerful, asynchronous platforms like Slack, which speed up communication and are more convenient than email.

5. Shipping (If Applicable)

Businesses that have an e-commerce component need to set up a shipping system. To figure this out, compare options like USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL to see which one best fits your needs.

Related: WooCommerce Vs. Shopify: Which Platform Is Right For You?

Hiring Your Team

A business is nothing without its team members. When building your team, you have the choice to mix and match between three types of workers.

1. Employees

Employees are full-time or part-time workers. Hiring employees comes with a slew of legal and tax responsibilities, such as paying payroll taxes and unemployment insurance.

However, there are also benefits to hiring employees, such as having reliable team members always available during work hours. You also have more control over the work produced.

2. Contractors

Contractors are typically independent businesses themselves, so you won’t have any legal responsibilities as their employer (outside of what’s covered in your contract). You can hire them at will without a long-term commitment.

However, since contractors are independent and not full team members, you won’t have the same level of control over the work they produce. Plus, they may not be available when you need them — they have their own schedules and businesses to run, after all.

Contractors are useful for businesses that need specific deliverables, like graphic design, writing, web development, etc. — but businesses that need operational support may benefit from having actual employees for customer service, management, etc.

3. Vendors

Some businesses choose to outsource elements of their work to third-party vendors. For example, you may choose to hire a third party for on-site security, or a call center to field all your customer service requests.

This is typically only required for larger businesses, but it’s something helpful to keep in mind as you grow.

Speaking of…

Growing Your Business

Once you’ve planted the seeds of your business, here’s how to apply the water and fertilizer so that it grows into a successful startup.

1. Establish A Marketing Strategy

Having a clear marketing plan that outlines how you want to promote your products or services and to whom gives you direction. Direction is critical for saving time and money and staying on the path to growth.

What kind of marketing tactics should be part of your plan? We’ve compiled many of the best advertising and marketing tips and plans for small businesses in the following guides:

• Content marketing
• PPC advertising
• Email marketing
• YouTube marketing
• Local strategies

In addition to tactics, your marketing strategy should outline what kind of marketing spend you’re willing to shell out, and which marketing analytics tooling you’ll use to track campaign success and ROI.

Related: 30 Affordable Ways To Promote Your Website

2. Set Goals And Create An Expansion Plan

Businesses rarely grow without goals, at least not in the right direction. To ensure your business continues to evolve over time, it’s a good idea to set SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

What does that mean? Instead of setting a goal like “grow my business,” you’re going to get a lot more precise: “Increase sales by 25% by the end of Q4.” Now, your goal fulfills the SMART criteria.

To build a plan for growth and expansion, outline a series of these sorts of goals for a period of one or two years. Typically, businesses divide this period into quarters, so you’ll ideally have eight goals for a two-year period.

Need Support Getting Your Business Off The Ground?

Starting a business is typically a long and arduous endeavor.

That said, it’s also incredibly rewarding!

Few things are as satisfying as seeing others enjoy your hard work and benefit from your products and services.

If you’re ready to become a small business owner, DreamHost shared hosting is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to get your website up and running and your idea off the ground.

Our plans give you everything your business needs to thrive online — easy WordPress set up, tons of storage, speed, great reliability and security, and more.

Our Pro Services team takes all those other stresses, from managing your website to maximizing your marketing, off your hands so you can focus on the bigger picture.

While there are no certainties in business, some things are universally true: Whatever happens, you’ll learn a lot as an entrepreneur, and DreamHost has your back every step of the way.

Get More Visitors, Grow Your Business

Our marketing experts will help you earn more traffic and convert more website visitors so you can focus on running your business.

Learn More

The post How To Start a Business (Begin Your Journey Here) appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

While creating top-quality content is important, your website’s relationship with every other site in the vast sea of the internet is just as vital. You won’t get very far if no one is linking to your pages, and you can’t expect many people to do so without some effort on your part.

While you can’t force people to link to your content, you can take some simple steps to encourage other sites to send visitors your way.

All it takes to generate quality links is a little careful planning and a few proven techniques.

In this post, we’ll talk about why you need a fully developed link-building strategy. Then, we’ll explore how to create one using 12 proven strategies.

Let’s get going!

What Is A Backlink?

A backlink is an inbound link from another website to yours.

The internet is filled with links. Your site probably has lots of them: internal links, which go between different pages within your own site, and outbound links, which go from your site to external websites owned by other people.

Basically, a backlink is like a vote of confidence or a signal of content relevance and quality to search engines.

In other words, backlinks are just as important as the links you include on your own site because:

• Links to your site improve your visibility, helping to familiarize people with your brand
• They also bring new visitors to your website, including those you might not have had an easy way to reach otherwise
• Google and other search engines view backlinks as a positive symbol — they indicate that others find your content useful and worth linking to. Therefore, having plenty of quality links to your site (from relevant websites with high domain authority) can improve your search engine rankings

Backlinks come in two standard flavors:

• Dofollow backlinks are the standard type of hyperlink that passes on “link juice” or SEO value from one site to another. They are a powerful tool for improving a website’s search engine ranking, as they indicate to search engines that another website endorses your content
• Nofollow backlinks, on the other hand, include an HTML attribute that tells search engines to ignore the link in terms of passing on SEO value. Introduced to combat spam and over-optimization, Nofollow links are commonly used in comment sections of websites, sponsored posts, or other places where links might not be organically placed. While they don’t contribute directly to a website’s search ranking in the same way Dofollow links do, they can still bring traffic to your site and assist in building brand awareness

There’s no doubt that the more people are linking to your site, the better. Having lots of backlinks essentially tells Google (and potential customers) that you have a trustworthy and reputable website.

However, there is one big problem when it comes to backlinks — you rarely control them. This means you’ll need to engage in some link building or take steps to increase the number of backlinks pointing your way.

What Is Link Building?

Typically, your website will have a lot of links. Internal links point toward other pages on your own website, while external links point away from your site to other web pages. Having plenty of both is vital for your site’s User Experience (UX) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Link building is the strategic process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. It’s a cornerstone of SEO strategies because links are a major signal to search engines that your site is a valuable resource — one that’s worthy of citation. Essentially, each backlink you earn is seen as a vote of confidence from one site to another, like a +1 for the quality and relevance of your content.

The goal of link building is to increase the number of high-quality backlinks pointing to your pages, which, in turn, improves your site’s rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). This process often involves a mix of strategies and tactics you can use to convince other website owners it would benefit them and their website to link to your content.

It’s important to note that effective link building is not about manipulating search engine algorithms. Instead, you should focus on creating compelling reasons for others to cite your website as a source of quality information or entertainment.

This can be achieved in many different ways: producing truly share-worthy content, establishing trusted partnerships, or participating in the online community in a way that naturally leads to your site being linked.

Beyond SEO, backlinks can also drive a significant amount of direct traffic to your site and help enhance your online reputation. They are a signal to both search engines and users that your site is a credible and authoritative source in your niche, which can help you establish your brand, grow your business, and more.

What Is a Link Building Strategy?

There’s a lot of content for people to link to and they may not even know about yours. So you’re most likely to succeed at link building if you can put together a comprehensive, well-thought-out link building strategy.

A link building strategy is a carefully crafted plan designed to increase the number of high-quality backlinks pointing to your website, thereby improving its visibility and ranking in the SERPs. This involves identifying objectives, setting goals, targeting relevant audiences, and selecting the most effective strategies and techniques to get other websites to link to your content. Your strategy won’t be a one-size-fits-all; it must be tailored to the specific goals, audience, and industry.

At its core, a link building strategy looks for opportunities to create links that enhance your site’s perceived value and authority in the eyes of both search engines and other internet users. It requires a deep understanding of your own content, as well as the landscape of the web in your niche.

Your strategy might involve creating unique, high-quality content that naturally attracts links, or reaching out to other site owners to ask to write a guest blog for them.

A successful link building strategy hinges on the quality of the backlinks rather than the quantity.

Search engines, particularly Google, have gotten better and better at identifying and penalizing sites that try to manipulate their search engine rankings by acquiring low-quality or spammy backlinks. As such, you should focus on ethical and sustainable link building practices, which prioritize creating genuine, valuable connections between websites.

Implementing a link building strategy typically involves multiple steps, and we’ll cover those in more detail later in this article. First, though, we want to talk about some of the biggest dos and don’ts of link building.

The Dos And Don’ts Of Link Building

In a moment, we’ll walk you through the process of putting together your link building strategy and successfully executing it. First, however, it’s important to cover some basics.

For example, there are things you’ll want to avoid (like the plague) while conducting your link building efforts. These include:

• Paying people to include your links on their sites: Buying backlinks is generally considered unethical, and if Google finds out you’re doing it, you’ll be penalized severely.
• Misleading people about your links to get them featured: This is likely to backfire. If people click on a link leading to your site but find out that your content isn’t relevant to them, they’re just going to leave.
• Spamming other people’s sites with your links manually: It can be tempting to add links to your site’s content to as many other websites as possible. However, doing this too much can harm your credibility and get a lot of your links reported as link spam.
• Using link directories, link farms, and link exchange schemes: These are shady techniques developed to get a lot of links into the public quickly — like the above methods, they can backfire and get Google’s attention (and not in a good way).
• “Black hat” link building techniques: This mostly means trying to get “hidden” links on pages by cloaking them, making them hard to see, or even hacking directly into other sites. Pretty gross, right?

Some of these are obviously bad ideas, while others (such as link exchanges) might initially seem smart until you learn more about them. None are worth the risks involved.

So what should you do? Let’s lay the groundwork with these link building “dos”:

• Encourage links from high-quality and high-ranking sites: The quality of your backlinks matters just as much to Google as the quantity. So wherever possible, you want to try and get backlinks from sites that are trustworthy, well-maintained, and visible.
• Focus on relevant websites: You want to encourage new visitors likely to be interested in what your site has to offer. Backlinks on sites relevant to their needs are much more valuable than backlinks from random pages.
• Reach out: You don’t have to simply hope for backlinks, you can ask for them directly, and there are several effective (and non-intrusive) ways to do so.
• Use a variety of techniques: One link building method may not get you too far, but a combination of three or four smart techniques can make a big difference.
• Create awesome content: Your content marketing matters! The truth is the better your content, the more likely people are to link to it, whether as a result of your efforts or simply stumbling across it. The ultimate rule of thumb: If you create link-worthy content, high-quality, relevant links will come to you — not the other way around.

At this point, you’re probably wondering how to put all of this into practice. Without further ado, let’s jump into the practical portion of link building 101.

How To Get Backlinks For Your Site

Like any way of promoting your website, there is no “one right way” to do link building. Likewise, there’s no golden ticket that will get you a hundred backlinks by next Thursday (if there were, promise we’d tell you).

However, you can take some basic steps that will greatly improve your chances of successfully increasing backlinks. We recommend starting with the following 12 strategies. You can pick and choose a few link building tactics to try, and mold them as needed to fit your unique needs.

1.  Take A Close Look At Your Target Audience

A lot of successful link building comes down to pursuing backlinks in relevant places. This means you have to be very familiar with your target audience. If you don’t know what they care about and where they hang out, you can’t encourage links they’re likely to see.

If you haven’t done so already, this is a perfect time to put together a target audience profile. That’s a detailed description of the visitors you’d like to attract to your website. You’ll want to research them carefully and collect information on their demographics, behaviors, interests, needs, and so on.

When it comes to link building, you’ll want to pay particular attention to where your target audience spends their time online. What sites do they visit and which social media platforms do they prefer? These are the places you’ll benefit most from including in your link building strategy.

This is also a good point to research your competitors’ backlink strategy.

If you can, find out what kinds of sites link to your top competitors. It’s also useful to know what online places and communities your competitors are ignoring, as those likely have audiences hungry for the quality content you’re offering. Those are backlink opportunities you don’t want to miss!

2. Audit And Update Your Existing Content

Next up, it’s time to think like a content marketer. You can’t encourage links to your site unless you know what you want people to link to. Generally, you’ll want to focus on specific content, rather than simply your home page (which can appear more spammy and less authentic).

So this is a great time to conduct a thorough audit of your site’s existing content. While doing this, you can:

• Look for top-quality pages and posts (or even product pages) that you think other sites would want to link to: Add these to a list as you go, so you know what represents your best content.
• Find any content that could be great but needs a little improvement: With a few tweaks, so-so articles can become a target for a quality backlink. This means ensuring that they’re up-to-date (for example, make sure you don’t have a broken link in the text and that stats are still accurate), match your brand’s style guide, and provide value to your audience.
• Search for “gaps” you can create new content to fill: There may be information or topics that you think other sites would be happy to link to, but you haven’t written about yet. You can follow our guide to writing a blog post to get started.

After auditing your content, the next natural step is to start improving and expanding it. Having lots of high-quality content makes link-building a lot easier.

It’s also worth noting that if you don’t have a blog on your website yet, now is the time to start one! There are few things better than a blog for generating lots of new, timely content that people will want to share with their audiences.

3. Do A Link Gap Analysis

After auditing your content, it’s a good idea to audit your backlinks. Performing a link gap analysis is a great way to understand where your website stands in comparison to its competitors in terms of backlink profiles. This analysis helps identify the “gap” between the number and quality of backlinks your site has versus those of your main competitors.

Understanding this gap is the first step. Next, you can strategically target your link building efforts to close it, improving your site’s authority and search engine rankings.

Here’s how to do a link gap analysis, step-by-step:

1. Identify your main competitors: Start by listing out your main competitors. These can be sites that rank well for keywords you’re targeting or operate within the same industry niche and attract a similar audience.
2. Use an SEO tool to analyze backlink profiles: There are several keyword research tools available online, such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz. Use these tools to analyze the backlink profiles of your own site and those of your competitors. Make a list of backlinks, then look at the quality of these links, the diversity of linking domains, and whether any of them are particularly authoritative backlinks.
3. Identify gaps in your backlink profile: Compare your backlink profile with those of your competitors to identify any gaps. Pay special attention to the quality and relevance of the backlinks, as these are more important than just quantity. Look for patterns in the types of content that are earning links for your competitors but not for you.
4. Analyze opportunities: Based on your findings, identify opportunities for your own link building strategy. Maybe you can target specific websites or types of content that are currently linking to your competitors but not to you, create content that fills your backlink gaps, or reach out to high-quality domains and ask them to link to your site.
5. Create a plan: With your analysis complete, develop a targeted action plan to acquire new backlinks. This plan should prioritize high-quality, relevant links that will close the gap between your site and your competitors.

4. Consider What Link Building You Can Perform Yourself

As we mentioned earlier, most of link building involves getting other people to link to your site of their own volition. However, there’s some link building you can do on your own, without venturing into spammy territory.

And who doesn’t love a little DIY?

The first and most important part of this step is internal linking. You need to make sure all of your online presences are connected. This means your social media accounts should point to your site (and vice versa), and if you have more than one website, they should be interlinked as well.

You can also include some links to your content on other people’s websites, particularly in forums and comment sections. But be careful — don’t create too many of these links, and make sure they’re always highly relevant.

Your best approach is to find sites and communities where your target audience is present and engage genuinely with them. When organic link building opportunities come up and you can share a helpful link, don’t be afraid to do so. While these links are not considered as valuable by Google as a natural link created by someone not affiliated with your site, they still have an impact.

5. Start Conducting Outreach

At this point, you’ve done a little link building of your own. You’ve also improved your site’s content marketing efforts, which will hopefully generate more links for you organically (as people stumble across and share your pages and awesome articles).

However, the best way to build links is to ask for them.

Yep, you can reach out to a website and simply ask them to link to your content. This is a common practice and can be very successful when approached carefully. It can even help create the foundation for mutually beneficial relationships between you and other relevant sites.

So, what does successful outreach look like?

Everyone’s strategy is a little different, but the following tips and techniques are key:

• Reach out to highly relevant sites: This is where all your research will come in handy. Sites that see your content and audience as relevant to them are more likely to welcome your request, rather than see it as intrusive.
• Offer specific content they can link to: It’s not usually effective to just email blogs and write, “Link to my website, pretty please?” Instead, use the results of your content audit to identify specific pages and posts you’d like to share and request links to them specifically.
• Share genuinely useful content: A link building request is obviously self-serving, but it doesn’t have to be all about you. Do some research on the site you’re reaching out to and find something you think would really be interesting or useful to its audience. Blog posts, tutorials, infographics, and videos are all great options.
• Suggest specific places your links could be included: This shows that you’ve done your research and makes accepting the request easier on the target site. You can propose new links where none currently exist or even offer a better piece of content as a replacement for an existing link. Don’t forget to offer up some anchor text to make it even easier for the other site’s admin!

Most importantly, remember to be polite and conduct yourself professionally. Never demand that someone include a link to your site. People who manage successful websites learned not to feed internet trolls a long time ago. Instead, create a concise and friendly email message that you can send to the sites and blogs on your list and try to personalize it for each one.

6. Build Ultimate Guides And Use The Skyscraper Method

We’ve touched on this already, but one of the best ways to build links naturally is by creating awesome, useful, relevant content that people naturally want to link to. One of the most effective ways to do that is by creating comprehensive, in-depth resources known as ultimate guides.

These guides should cover a topic relevant to your niche as thoroughly as possible, providing valuable insights, tips, and information that are not readily available elsewhere. The goal is to make your guide the go-to resource for its topic, making others in your industry and related fields want to link to it as a reference.

One popular (and super effective) way to create ultimate guides as a link-building strategy is called the Skyscraper Method. This method, coined by SEO expert Brian Dean, involves three key steps:

1. Research and identify the best, most popular content on a topic: Look for existing content within your niche that has attracted a significant amount of backlinks and social shares. Tools like Ahrefs or Semrush can help you identify these pieces of content.
2. Then, create something better: Take the topic of the popular content and create something even more valuable. Your ultimate guide should be more comprehensive, up-to-date, and useful. This could mean adding more depth, updating statistics, including infographics and videos, or covering additional related subtopics not addressed in the original content.
3. Reach out and promote your content: Once your ultimate guide is published, reach out to websites that link to the original piece of popular content. Let them know about your guide, explaining how it’s more comprehensive and valuable for their readers. Don’t forget to also promote your guide through your own channels, such as social media, email newsletters, and your website.

Comprehensive guides and the Skyscraper Method require a significant investment of time and resources, but the payoff can be huge. Not only do they attract backlinks, but they also establish your brand as an authority in your field. This can lead to increased organic traffic, more engagement, and even opportunities for collaboration and partnerships.

When crafting a detailed guide, keep these best practices in mind to maximize its impact:

• Choose evergreen topics that will stay relevant and useful over time. That way, your guide continues to attract backlinks and readers long after it’s published.
• Use images, charts, infographics, and videos to make your guide more engaging and shareable.
• Keep your ultimate guides up-to-date with the latest information and trends. This not only helps maintain its value over time but also provides opportunities to reach out to new potential link sources.

7. Create Listicles

Listicles — articles formatted as lists — can be an effective way to attract backlinks thanks to their highly shareable and digestible format. People love reading lists because they offer information that’s structured and easy to consume. Plus, they can easily share them with friends! What’s not to like? 

When you create listicles that compile valuable resources, tips, or recommendations relevant to your niche, you provide useful information to your audience and increase the likelihood of earning backlinks from other websites looking to provide their readers with helpful resources.

Your listicle should cover topics that are engaging and relevant to your target audience. Look for subjects that have a broad appeal and can be easily segmented into list form. This could range from “Top 10 Tools for Remote Work” to “5 Must-Read Books for Aspiring Entrepreneurs.” Adding quotes or insights from industry leaders can also make your listicle more shareable. And don’t forget to incorporate relevant keywords throughout your listicle to improve its visibility in the SEO rankings and bring organic traffic to your site.

8. Look For Media Coverage Or PR

Securing media coverage or participating in public relations (PR) activities can significantly boost your link-building efforts. When reputable news outlets, industry publications, or influential blogs mention and link to your website, it not only drives direct traffic, but also increases your site’s authority and SEO ranking.

To attract the attention of journalists and editors, you need to offer something genuinely newsworthy. This could be original research, a groundbreaking product launch, a significant company milestone, or an expert opinion on current trends. Your content should provide value to their readership and stand out amidst the noise.

When you have something newsworthy to share, a well-crafted press release can be your ticket to gaining media attention. You can also engage with journalists and media professionals on social media, especially platforms like X or LinkedIn.

Another way to gain media coverage is by positioning yourself as an expert in your field who can provide valuable insights into current news or industry trends. Journalists often look for knowledgeable individuals to quote in their articles, which can be an excellent way to secure a backlink from reputable sources.

Finally, be sure to monitor the web for unlinked mentions of your name or site–sometimes, media outlets will mention your brand without linking back to you. Tools like Google Alerts or Ahrefs can help you monitor for these mentions. When you find them, reach out to the publisher and politely ask if they can add a link back to your site.

9. Use HARO

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a great tool for gaining high-quality links from authoritative sites. It connects journalists with sources for upcoming stories, providing a platform for experts to share their knowledge and get featured in various media channels.

Register as a source on the HARO website and set up email alerts for topics relevant to your industry or expertise. You’ll then receive daily emails with queries from journalists looking for sources. The key is to respond quickly and accurately to requests that match your knowledge base.

If you provide comprehensive answers and are willing to share useful data, personal anecdotes, or expert analysis that can enrich the journalist’s story, you’ll be more likely to be selected and result in a backlink.

Keep in mind that timeliness is critical when responding to HARO queries. Journalists often work on tight deadlines, so sending your response as soon as possible increases your chances of being featured. Aim to respond within a few hours of receiving the query.

Most journalists will ask for a short bio to include with your contribution. This is your opportunity to secure a backlink. Write a brief, informative bio, and include a direct link to your website. Make sure the link adds value to the readers and is relevant to the context of your contribution.

Once your contribution is published, you can leverage it for further visibility. Share the article on your social media channels, include it in your email newsletter, or feature it on your website. This not only drives traffic, but also showcases your expertise in your niche.

10. Try Broken Link Building

Broken link building is a type of link building that involves finding broken backlinks (or dead links) on other websites and suggesting your own content as a replacement. This method not only helps you earn backlinks, but also helps other site owners improve their user experience — a win-win!

Here’s what to do:

1. Start by identifying websites in your niche that have content that’s similar to yours. Look for blogs, resource pages, or industry news sites. The key is to focus on sites that are relevant to your audience and likely to link to your content.
2. Use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Check My Links (a Chrome extension) to scan the sites you identify for broken links. These types of tools can help you quickly find links that lead to 404 pages or other error messages.
3. Once you find a broken link, try to evaluate the content it was originally linking to. Understanding what the missing content was about will help you propose a relevant, high-quality replacement. If you already have content that matches or can quickly create content that would serve as a good substitute, you’re already in a great position to reach out to the site owner.
4. Contact the website owner or webmaster to tell them about the broken link. When reaching out, be helpful and courteous. Start by providing value, such as pointing out the broken link (and maybe even mentioning a few others if you found more than one)
5. Then, suggest your content as a replacement. Be specific about why your content would make a great substitute. Focus on the value it would provide for their readers.
6. If you don’t hear back within a week or two, it’s OK to send a follow-up email. However, if you still don’t receive a response after a follow-up, it’s best to move on to other opportunities.

11. Build A Free Tool

Offering a free online tool can be an incredibly effective strategy for attracting backlinks. Tools that offer useful functionality or solve specific problems in your industry are likely to be shared widely and linked as valuable resources. We’ve also talked a lot about how the best way to build links is creating high-quality content, and a really useful tool is one of the most shareable types of content.

Start by identifying a gap or a specific need within your industry that can be addressed with a tool. Maybe you can simplify a complex calculation. Perhaps you can automate a tedious process. Or you can help someone visualize complex data.

Here’s the key, though: ​​the more useful and unique the tool, the more likely it is to attract attention and backlinks.

Depending on your expertise and resources, you might develop the tool in-house or hire developers. Just make sure that your tool is user-friendly, visually appealing, and most importantly, functional. It should perform its intended task well to encourage users to share and link to it.

Once the tool is ready to launch, create a dedicated landing page for it. Include comprehensive instructions, the benefits of using the tool, and examples of its output.

Optimize the page for SEO with relevant keywords to increase its visibility in search engine results. Then, share the tool through all available channels: social media, newsletters, blogs, and industry forums. Maybe even reach out to influencers and thought leaders in your industry who might benefit from your tool. You can also submit the tool to directories and listings that curate free resources. Spread the word far and wide.

Building a free tool requires an upfront investment, but the potential SEO benefits and the ability to attract a significant number of high-quality backlinks can offer a great return.

12. Get Involved In Guest Blogging

Guest blogging can be one of the most powerful tools in your link-building strategy. Also called “guest posting,” it involves writing a brand new post to be featured on another website. This post can then contain one or more links back to your site and content.

You can often get farther with guest blogging than with simple link requests. After all, you’ll be providing content to another website for free. In return, they’ll link back to your site. This is a very attractive proposition for blogs, in particular, since they’re always in need of fresh content.

Just like with outreach, guest blogging is most effective if you follow some simple best practices. These include:

• Avoiding sites that want you to pay them to publish your guest post: Most blogs will accept this kind of content for free, so there’s no need to pay for placement unless you’re desperate to be featured on a specific high-profile blog.
• Checking the blog to see if they have guidelines for guest bloggers: Many will have a dedicated “write for us” page that outlines their requirements, what they will and won’t accept, and so on. By carefully following these guidelines, you’ll increase your chances of getting past a busy blogger’s spam filter.
• Doing your research: Find out what the blog’s style is like and what kinds of topics they cover. This will help you come up with a topic idea that they’re more likely to accept.
• Reaching out with a proposal first: Don’t simply write up a full post and submit it! These are often rejected and can waste a lot of your time. Instead, reach out to the blog and let them know what topic you’d like to cover, what key points you’ll include, and what link(s) you’re hoping to see.
• Creating quality, unique content: Never copy content from your own site or elsewhere (plagiarism is always a big no-no). Instead, take the time to put together a unique, polished post for each blog. Also, avoid getting too “sales-y” about your own website or products and focus on providing real value to the blog’s audience.

This is the most time-intensive of our link building strategies. Still, it can pay off in increased visibility, improved authority, and links that are perfectly placed to capture your audience’s attention. Plus, you might develop collaborative relationships with some of these blogs, providing further opportunities for interlinking in the future.

Measuring Your Link Building Efforts

Trying to keep tabs on your backlinks manually can be very difficult. It’s best to use a backlinks analytics tool instead. Many solutions can tell you everything you need to know about your backlinks, quickly and with minimal fuss.

If you have a favorite analytics tool already, chances are it can help you out in this area. If not, a perfect place to start is with Google Analytics. This tool is free, accessible to beginners, and full of useful metrics and features. Google Analytics is an especially great place to monitor the amount of traffic that each backlink drives to your site. High amounts of referral traffic from backlinks are a good sign that your link building strategy is boosting your SEO.

Other good backlink analysis tools include Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz. These tools can help you keep tabs on the total number of backlinks your site has built up, as well as the source of backlinks and the rate at which you’re acquiring new links. Watching these numbers can help you determine whether your link building strategies are effective, and test certain strategies against one another.

Pass The Link Juice

If you want to improve your website’s traffic and attract more of your target audience, link building is necessary. A complete link building strategy helps you encourage relevant sites to share your content with their audiences. It’s a method that takes a little time to master but is cheap, cost-effective, and highly trackable.

Of course, bringing traffic to your website is just the start. You also want those new visitors to have an excellent experience — which starts with high-quality web hosting. Fortunately, our shared website hosting can do the trick!

Sign up today to see what a world-famous website hosting plan can do for you.

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The post How To Get Backlinks: 12 Strategies That Work appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Alas, for most website owners, the only thing the words “content audit” evokes is a shiver down the spine. That’s probably why our beloved Sound of Music heroine didn’t add data and spreadsheets to her list of favorite things. Yep. That’s the reason.

Nonetheless, content auditing is a necessary evil. We’ve long known it’s an integral part of content management, and a big step toward hosting a successful website. Conducting regular content audits isn’t simply a nice thing to do; it’s something you absolutely need to do if you’re looking to improve your website’s success (and your content performance) for the year ahead. And what better time to do that than right now?

Luckily, we’ve got you covered!

We want to make content auditing an experience that is as seamless and enjoyable as possible. Therefore, our step-by-step guide to performing the comprehensive content audit of your dreams — one that will help you meet all your content goals so you can focus your time and attention on raindrops, kittens, and all the rest of your favorite things.

Peace out, dog bites and bee stings.

What Is A Content Audit?

A content audit is a review of all the pieces of content on your website, from blog posts and landing pages to product pages and informational pages.

The content audit process helps you create a comprehensive list or inventory of all the content assets on your site, which you can then analyze to make informed decisions about which content pieces to update, keep as is, consolidate, remove, or create.

What Purpose Does A Content Audit Serve?

Auditing your site’s content is a bit like maintaining your vehicle. In order to run at its best, it needs routine maintenance: oil changes, tire rotations, and occasional fixes for parts that reach the end of their lifespan. Your website, and especially your content, is the same way. When you first publish a blog post, it’s shiny and new, like a brand new car. But over time, its internal links go to 404s. It falls down the SERPs. Its organic traffic drops off. It’s still a good blog post, but it needs a little maintenance — a content audit.

According to Semrush’s 2023 State of Content Marketing Report, 53% of marketers said updating their content helped increase their engagement. 49% said auditing and updating content helped them increase their traffic and/or improve their rankings.

Clearly, there are a lot of potential benefits in store if you make auditing a part of your ongoing content strategy.

Content auditing can help you:

• Create a thorough inventory of content from your site and understand how it all performs.
• Identify gaps in your content, including types of content or specific content formats you could offer to meet your audience’s needs.
• Make informed decisions about how to improve your content over time to align your content marketing efforts with your larger business goals.
• Identify content issues you can resolve (such as removing duplicate or outdated content).
• Identify and improve underperforming content.
• Improve your site’s SEO performance through your content efforts.
• Make your site easy for visitors to navigate by keeping content relevant and error-free.
• Identify high-quality content you can repurpose for other materials, like marketing campaigns or social media posts.
• Determine the content types your audience likes and dislikes so you can create content that is most likely to resonate with your visitors and customers.
• Assess your content for digital accessibility and make improvements so it meets current accessibility standards.

Before You Start A Content Audit

Before we initiate the Operation Step-by-Step Guide, it’s important to assess a few aspects of your site to determine what kind of audit to perform (and why) — and whether you need a content audit in the first place.

There are two closely related marketing efforts that require content audits: search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. If you employ either of these tactics, then performing a content audit is likely to benefit you and your business.

That’s because gathering a big-picture view of all of your content elements (like URLs, keywords and phrases, word counts, etc.) will allow you to see how you can better grow your organic traffic. Plus, when you revise or improve your content based on your findings, you’re likely to get an SEO bump in addition to creating something that resonates more with your audience.

Now, one last thing before we plunge into the nitty-gritty stuff. A content audit isn’t a 10-minute project.

It’s a time-consuming process and requires a good deal of analytics and brain power. As the old adage goes, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Make sure you have the resources and time to tackle this project. But know that the rewards will be well worth the effort.

Short on time? Scroll to the bottom of the post for a quick trick that can help until you have the time and resources for a comprehensive audit.

The 6 Steps For A Successful Content Audit

Now that you know what a content audit is, and why you should make regular audits a part of your SEO and content marketing strategy, it’s time to dive into the process. The six steps below represent a basic content audit workflow, but keep in mind that this is just a jumping-off point. You may find there are ways to tweak this process to make it better suit your business objectives. Regardless, these steps are a great place for any business to start.

1. Define Your Goals And Metrics

Before actually plunging into your content library, the first and perhaps most crucial step is to anchor yourself with a clear set of goals. What do you hope to achieve with this content audit?

By defining clear goals and tracking specific metrics, you ensure your content audit will be more focused, actionable, and ultimately more successful in improving your website’s performance and user experience.

The goal you set for your content audit should be specific to your business goals and current content needs.

Below are a few examples of some goals a content audit can help you achieve and the metrics you would track for each one.

Goal 1: Improve SEO Performance

An SEO audit identifies SEO opportunities by highlighting low-quality content, outdated SEO practices, and gaps in keyword coverage. It gives you a bird’s eye view of where and how your content can be optimized to meet the latest search engine algorithms and user search behaviors.

Tactics to use:

• Keyword optimization: Reassess the keywords each piece of content targets, ensuring they align with current search trends and user intent. Update content to include relevant, high-volume keywords.
• Content refreshes: Optimize headings, title tags, meta titles, and descriptions for better SERP visibility. Organize your content structure in a way that search engines can easily crawl and understand.
• Link health audit: Analyze internal and external links for relevance and functionality. Remove or replace broken links and identify new internal linking opportunities to enhance SEO connectivity.

Metrics to track:

• Organic traffic: The number of visitors coming to your site through search engines
• Keyword rankings: Where your web pages rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords
• Backlinks: The number and quality of external sites linking back to your content

Goal 2: Enhance User Engagement

Engagement metrics provide insights into how users interact with your content, which can help tailor your content strategy to meet user needs more effectively. A content audit can uncover which pieces of content resonate most with your audience and why. By understanding the characteristics of high-engagement content, you can replicate these qualities in future content, improving overall user engagement across your site.

Tactics to use:

• Content refreshes: Evaluate how your content is presented. Break up large blocks of text with headings, bullet points, and images to improve readability and engagement
• Multimedia: Identify opportunities to add or enhance multimedia elements like videos, infographics, and interactive content that can increase time on page and engagement
• Personalization: Consider ways to make content more relevant to different segments of your audience, possibly through personalization or creating more targeted content paths

Metrics to track:

• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page, indicating the relevance and engagement level of your content
• Pageviews: The total number of pages viewed, reflecting the breadth of content consumption
• Average time on page: How long visitors stay on a page, offering clues about the content’s engagement and value

Goal 3: Increase Content Relevance and Quality

Auditing your site can help you identify outdated, inaccurate, low-quality, or duplicate content that needs updating or removal. This helps make sure your audience finds value in every piece of content they come across, which can increase trust and authority for your site and brand.

Tactics to use:

• Content refreshes: Update statistics, references, and examples in older posts to reflect current information and trends. This can also include enhancing the depth and quality of analysis
• User feedback: Actively seek and incorporate user feedback to improve and tailor your content more closely to your audience’s needs and preferences
• Competitive analysis: Compare your content with that of your competitors to identify areas where you can surpass them in quality or coverage

Metrics to track:

• Content freshness: The age of your content and the frequency of updates, which can affect both SEO and user perception
• Feedback: Direct feedback from users, which can be gathered through comments, surveys, or social media, providing qualitative insights into content relevance and quality
• Conversion rates: For content with specific calls to action, the percentage of users who take the desired action can indicate the effectiveness and relevance of the content

Goal 4: Increase Conversions

A content audit can even help you increase conversion rates by identifying and optimizing the pathways that lead users toward making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or any other desired action. It allows you to pinpoint which content effectively persuades users to convert and which content falls short, providing insights into how your content can be refined to better lead users towards conversion goals.

Tactics to use:

• Conversion path analysis: Examine the journey users take before converting. Identify high-performing content that drives conversions and low-performing content that may be causing drop-offs. Look for opportunities to streamline and optimize these paths.
• Call-to-action (CTA) optimization: Evaluate the effectiveness of your CTAs within your content. Experiment with different CTA placements, wording, and designs to see what yields the highest conversion rate.
• Content alignment with user intent: Align your content with the specific intent of your visitors at different stages of the buyer’s journey. Tailor content to address their needs, questions, and objections at each stage to guide them toward making a conversion.
• A/B testing: Implement A/B testing for different content elements that could impact conversions, including headlines, content formats, images, and CTAs. Use the results to inform content updates and strategy.

Metrics to track:

• Conversion rate: The percentage of users who take a desired action after interacting with your content, which is the primary metric for measuring the effectiveness of your content in driving conversions
• Click-through rate: Measures how compelling your CTAs are by tracking the percentage of users who click on them, indicating the effectiveness of CTA placement and messaging

2. Take Inventory Of All Your Site’s Existing Content

We know, we know. All of your site’s content?! It sounds daunting. But it’s really not that bad.

Compiling a spreadsheet with all the data from your site’s content library is much easier and more straightforward than it sounds. It just takes a little bit of time.

All you really need to do is open up a blank spreadsheet and start filling it in. It’s up to you what you want to include in the different columns, but a good place to start is by putting a specific page or section in the far left column and then adding its URL. From there, you can branch out with different subsections and their URLs and then start listing the data you want to collect (more on that in Step 3).

If the process of making your own spreadsheet leaves you feeling overwhelmed, there are plenty of sites that offer templates to save you from doing extra work (and/or pulling your hair out):

• CoSchedule, a site known for its great marketing calendar, has a free template to use for a content audit. You have to sign up as a site member before you can access it, but the process is quick and painless
• If you’re an avid Google Sheets user, Buffer made a great one that you can use (plus a tutorial on how to quickly fill it all in using a bunch of handy content audit tools). Google Sheets was designed for sharing and multi-person editing so this template is especially handy if you need to distribute your audit among several other people.

3. Decide What Data To Collect

Now that you’ve set up and organized your spreadsheet, it’s time to dig a little deeper.

There are several indicators you can track when performing your content audit, but you also don’t want to end up with a ton of information that you’re never going to use. To avoid being bogged down with unnecessary stats, narrow your focus to one or two specific issues.

In addition to tying these back to your goals and their metrics from Step 1, here are some ideas to help you get started:

Functionality

• Are there any broken links on your site?
• Do all linked images and videos work?
• Do videos and images display properly?
• Do you have the right hosting plan for the job?

Readability

• Does your content score well on the readability scale?
• Is it aesthetically pleasing?
• Does your site have enough white space to give the reader visual breathing room?
• Are you using headings and subheadings properly?
• Do the fonts work on all browsers/devices?
• Is your content coherently organized?

Usability

• Is the content easy to navigate?
• Does your site structure make sense for users?
• Are your pages and posts mobile-friendly?
• Is your content accessible to all users?

Relevance

• Is the content engaging?
• Is it still relevant or timely?
• If it’s outdated, could the content be updated or repurposed?
• Does it resonate with your target audience?
• Does it get shares, page views, or likes?

4. Gather The Data

Congrats! You’ve completed the basics of content auditing. Not too shabby, eh?

Once you have the foundational steps done, it’s to get into the real meat of the content audit: the gathering. (Gathering data, that is.)

When it comes to gathering the data, there are several different tactics you can use:

Manually Entering Data

This is the simplest method for gathering data if you have a small site. Arguably, the most important part of a content audit is getting the URLs into your spreadsheet correctly. The reason? This allows you to quickly check out that page and keep track of what changes you’ve made. Plus, if you decide to go back later and revise those changes or add to your audit, you’ll have an easy reference point.

Using A Web Crawler

If you’re working with a bigger site — think, more than a dozen or so pages — and you fear your fingers may fall off from excessive CTRL C+V, you may want to consider using a web crawler to quickly gather information.

A web crawler, such as Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider tool, is a resource that quickly filters through your site and gathers specified data. The process of using a web crawler isn’t as self-explanatory as manually entering data, but if you have a large website housing a lot of content, the time it will save would be worth the initial effort.

Here’s a sample of the information a web crawler can pull for you:

• Page URLs
• Title and title length
• Meta description and length
• Major headings
• Broken links
• Word count

Web crawlers often compress all that data into a CSV file, so you can just download it, and then add the goods to your content audit spreadsheet.

Using A Paid Tool

There are a ton of great SEO tools on the market that can help you gather this data quickly, but for the best tools, you’ll likely need to pay. Some of the most popular paid tools among content marketers include Ahrefs, Semrush, and HubSpot.

How you use each one varies a little bit, so if you’re already familiar with a particular tool, that might be your best bet. Otherwise, each tool offers a robust help section filled with tutorials. Plus, marketers have also created plenty of independent tutorials that you can search for if you need additional help.

5. Analyze Your Collected Data And Create An Action Plan

Finally, the step you’ve been waiting for — making sense of all that data! And actually doing something with the results.

Start by going back to the goals and metrics you set at the start of your audit. How did your content measure up? Which types of content performed well? Which fell short?

See which of your strategies worked, which ones weren’t as successful, and why some efforts succeeded while others seemed to flop. It should also be more apparent what content your audience resonates with.

Because you’ll need to analyze each data point, the audit can be a little time-consuming. That’s why we recommended starting small (beginners especially should only audit a few key aspects of their site), and going back later to audit and analyze what you may have missed.

As you look at the data, keep a close eye out for what content or keywords were the most successful, and which ones weren’t so hot. This will help you identify what pages, ideas, and strategies to completely nix, which ones just need slight adjustments and improvement, and which ones should serve as a model for any future content you incorporate into your site and content strategy.

Because this step requires so much scrutiny, it will be the longest step. But once you’re finished, the results will leave you praising the day you heard of the content audit.

Okay, maybe praising is a bit much, but trust us, you’ll be glad you did it. At least, the results will be rewarding if you learn from your data and create a realistic action plan, which is the next and final step!

6. Adjust Your Content Marketing Plan

After meticulously combing through your data and extracting actionable insights during your content audit, the next step is where it all comes together: adjusting your content marketing plan based on what you’ve learned.

This step is where the rubber meets the road, transforming insights into action, and theory into practice.

With your audit findings in hand, pinpoint areas for improvement. This could mean doubling down on high-performing content types, topics, or formats, as well as identifying underperforming content that can be optimized for better results. Look for opportunities not just to enhance existing content but also to fill gaps in your content library.

Next, set new goals based on your findings. For example, maybe your audit uncovered that tutorials and how-to guides drive significant engagement and conversions for your site. In that case, your new goal might be to increase production of these content types by 20% over the next quarter.

Create a prioritized list of content updates. Some content may need minor tweaks for SEO optimization, while others might require a complete overhaul to improve their relevance and accuracy. Be realistic about the timeline for these updates, considering your resources and content production capacity.

Finally, remember that content strategy is dynamic and ongoing — and this won’t be the only time you audit your content and switch gears. Stay flexible and adaptable because things will change again in the future.

Ready To Take Action?

Each website’s content audit will look different so don’t worry if you’ve done things a little differently than the Jones’. Because your site isn’t the same as anyone else’s, your action plan will also be entirely unique to you. And that’s a good thing.

A well-conducted content audit that is perfectly tailored to your site allows you to understand how best to move forward.

One way to easily interweave your action plan into the audit is to create a column in your spreadsheet titled “Action Plan” or simply “To-Do.”  By doing this, each piece of content will have its own plan for the future.

This can be as detailed or simple as you’d like it to be. Extra columns can be added assigning who will carry out a certain task, deadlines, etc.

At the end of the day, how to organize your action plan is entirely up to you. You may want to create an entirely different document with a thorough outline of what actions you’ll take and when, and what you hope the results will be.

It’s your call. Our goal is to help you create something you can easily reference and understand.

Need A Content Audit Quick Fix?

First, we’ve got to tell a hard truth. No quick fix is going to provide the same results as the in-depth process we just outlined. However, we don’t want to leave anyone out in the cold (because please, we’ve had enough of that this winter).

If you run a WordPress website, you can run a content audit plugin for a quick fix. The WordPress Content Audit Plugin, for example, allows you to create a content inventory right in your WordPress dashboard — Spreadsheet not required.

You’re Finished (Sort Of)!

There you have it, folks. The dreaded content audit isn’t as bad as you thought, huh?

Once you’ve done this initial work, checking your site’s content is never going to be such a challenge again. That’s because once you’ve set up a good system, annual audits will just be a matter of adding new pages or posts to your already awesome doc.

What strategies have you used for content auditing in the past? What’s worked and what hasn’t? We’d love to hear any advice you have to make the content auditing process even more efficient. Please comment below with any tips or tricks you’ve used when auditing your site!

The post A Step-by-Step Guide To Performing A Content Audit On Your Website appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

In the vast world of digital marketing, PPC offers some distinct advantages over other types of marketing: the ability to allow precise targeting, from demographics and interests to specific times of the day; flexibility to adjust your campaigns in real-time based on performance data; and the potential for high ROI, even if you have a limited marketing budget.

Welcome to our beginner’s guide to PPC advertising, where you’ll learn how to navigate the PPC landscape, create effective campaigns, and optimize your ad spend for the best possible return on investment (ROI). With PPC, every click is a potential customer knocking on your door. Here’s how to answer them.

PPC Glossary

Diving into the world of PPC advertising can feel like learning a new language. This space is full of acronyms and jargon you may not be familiar with, so we put together this glossary to help you learn some of the most important terms before we dive in.

• Search engine marketing (SEM): The practice of increasing traffic to a website from search results. The focus is primarily on paid ads, but can also include organic search engine optimization (SEO).
• Pay-per-click (PPC): Advertising is a straightforward yet powerful marketing strategy where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It’s essentially a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically through SEO.
• Cost-per-click (CPC): The actual price you pay for each click in a PPC campaign. It’s a metric used to measure the cost effectiveness and profitability of your paid advertising efforts.
• Campaign: The highest level of organization with a specific budget, settings, and objectives. Each campaign can contain multiple ad groups.
• Ad group: A container within a PPC campaign that holds a related set of ads and keywords. Ad groups allow for more detailed targeting and organization within a campaign.
• Keyword: Words or phrases that advertisers bid on, hoping their ads will appear when these keywords are used in search queries. Keywords are the foundation of PPC campaigns, as they connect advertiser offerings to user searches.
• Landing page: The webpage users see after clicking on your ad. A good landing page is relevant to the ad text and keyword and optimized for conversions, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
• Quality Score (QS): A metric used by search engines to measure the relevance and quality of your PPC ads and keywords. It affects both your ad position and CPC. Factors influencing QS include the relevance of your ad text, the quality of your landing page, and your click-through rate (CTR).
• Ad rank: Determines your ad’s position on the search engine results page. It’s calculated based on your bid amount, the ad’s Quality Score, and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats.
• Maximum bid: The highest amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. Your actual CPC will often be lower, depending on the competitive landscape and your Quality Score.
• CPM (cost per mille): A bidding method where you pay based on the number of impressions (or views) your ad receives, with “mille” referring to a thousand impressions. This method is often used in brand awareness campaigns.

Now that you know the lingo, let’s get started.

What Is PPC?

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a digital marketing model where advertisers pay a fee each time a person clicks one of their ads. Essentially, it’s a method of buying targeted visits to a website, as opposed to earning those visits through traditional, organic search engine optimization (SEO).

PPC allows advertisers to place ads on search engine results pages (SERPs), social media platforms, and other digital spaces, directly reaching consumers who are actively searching for related products or services. This model can be highly efficient and effective, enabling businesses of all sizes to control costs, track performance, and precisely target their desired audience.

PPC campaigns can be customized with specific keywords, demographic criteria, and ad schedules, making them a highly adaptable and versatile tool for achieving diverse marketing goals, from increased web traffic to lead generation, sales conversions, and more.

How Does PPC Work?

Imagine you’re the owner of a cozy little cafe downtown, and you want more coffee enthusiasts to discover your special blend. PPC advertising is like putting up a digital signpost that guides them directly to your door, but you only pay when someone actually follows that sign and visits your cafe.

That’s how PPC works. Many different platforms and types of ads fall under the umbrella term “PPC advertising,” but they are all “pay-per-click.” This means you only pay for the ad when a potential customer clicks on it.

PPC Vs. SEO

PPC and SEO are both crucial strategies in a digital marketing toolkit, but they play very different roles in driving traffic to your website:

• PPC is all about instant visibility. By paying for each click, you can see your ads at the top of the SERPs almost immediately after your campaign goes live. This strategy is excellent for quick wins, targeting specific audiences, and promoting time-sensitive offers.
• SEO, on the other hand, is a long game. It involves optimizing your website and content to rank higher in organic search results. This means improving site speed, using the right keywords, and creating valuable content. SEO takes more time to see results, but it’s cost-effective in the long run and provides sustained traffic over time.

While PPC can give your site a quick boost in traffic, SEO builds a foundation for a consistent, long-term online presence. Ideally, a balanced digital advertising strategy includes both PPC and SEO to cover all your bases: immediate visibility and long-term growth.

PPC Vs. CPC

The terms pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-click (CPC) are often used interchangeably, but they refer to different aspects of paid advertising:

• PPC is the broader advertising model in which advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. It encompasses the entire strategy and execution of setting up, running, and managing ads across different platforms, from search engines to social media.
• CPC, on the other hand, refers to the actual price you pay for each click in a PPC campaign. It’s a metric used to measure the cost-effectiveness and profitability of your paid advertising efforts. CPC can vary widely based on competition for keywords, ad quality, and targeting settings.

In essence, PPC is the strategy, while CPC is a key performance indicator (KPI) within that strategy. Understanding the difference helps advertisers plan their budgets, manage bids, and optimize their campaigns for maximum ROI.

Why Is PPC So Effective?

Here are a few of the reasons PPC advertising works so well for so many different types of businesses:

1. It’s Cost-Effective

One of the biggest misconceptions about PPC is that it’s expensive. In reality, PPC allows for tight control over your budget. You can set a maximum cost per day, ensuring you only spend what you can afford. Since you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, every dollar is used toward targeting potential customers, making it a highly cost-effective strategy, especially for businesses with limited advertising budgets.

2. It Delivers Fast Results

Unlike organic search methods that can take months to show results, PPC can generate immediate traffic. As soon as your campaign goes live, your ads appear in search results or on targeted websites, bringing in potential customers. This quick turnaround is ideal for promoting time-sensitive offers, launching new products, or just gaining instant visibility in competitive markets.

3. It’s Easy To Control And Test

PPC platforms offer incredible flexibility to adjust your campaigns in real-time. You can tweak your ads, change your target keywords, adjust your budget, and experiment with different landing pages to see what works best. This ability to quickly control and test your campaign elements means you can optimize them continuously for better performance and ROI.

4. It’s Easy To Target Your Ideal Audience

With PPC, you can narrow down your audience based on demographics, interests, location, and even the time of day. Precise targeting means your ads are shown to the right people at the right time, increasing the likelihood of conversion. Whether you’re targeting local shoppers or a global audience, PPC allows you to tailor your message to fit your audience’s specific needs and preferences.

5. Data From Your PPC Strategy Can Help Improve Your SEO Strategy

The insights you gain from your PPC campaigns are invaluable for informing your SEO efforts. By analyzing which keywords and ad copy generate the most clicks and conversions, you can optimize your website’s content and meta tags to rank higher in organic search results. PPC data can also help you better understand your audience’s search intent, which allows you to create content that better meets their needs and drives more organic traffic.

Types Of PPC Ads

Different types of PPC ads allow marketers to tailor their strategies to specific goals, audiences, and content formats. Whether you’re looking to drive sales, increase brand awareness, or re-engage past visitors, there’s a PPC ad type that fits the bill. Let’s explore some of the most common types of PPC ads:

Search Ads

Search ads are the most common and recognized form of PPC advertising. When you type in a query, these ads appear at the top or bottom of the SERPs. They’re highly effective because they’re shown to users actively searching for products or services like yours. Search ads are text-based and can include extensions, such as site links, call buttons, or location information, to provide additional information and improve click-through rates.

Display Ads

Display advertising takes a visual route to capture the audience’s attention. These ads appear on websites that are part of a display network, showcasing your business in different visual formats: think banner ads, images, and other types of rich media.

Display ads are ideal for building brand awareness and retargeting campaigns because they allow you to reach users who might not be actively searching for your products but have shown interest in similar or related topics.

Remarketing Ads

Remarketing ads are a powerful way to reconnect with people who have previously visited your website but didn’t make a purchase or take a desired action. These ads follow users across the web and social media, reminding them of what they left behind and encouraging them to return.

Remarketing can significantly improve conversion rates since it targets users who are already familiar with your brand and have shown interest in what you have to offer.

Paid Social Ads

Paid social ads appear on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X (formerly known as Twitter). Social media sites offer rich targeting options, allowing you to reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can tailor paid social ads to specific campaign goals, like brand awareness, lead generation, and conversion goals. They come in many formats, from simple image ads to carousel and interactive ads, making them highly versatile.

Video Ads

Video ads are an engaging format combining visuals, sound, and motion to tell a compelling story. You can place them on video streaming platforms like YouTube or embed them within social media feeds.

Video ads are particularly effective for brand storytelling, product demonstrations, or capturing users’ attention in a crowded digital space. They offer creative ways to connect with your audience and tend to leave a lasting impression.

PPC Platforms To Consider

As you might have gathered from how many types of ads exist, there are a lot of PPC platforms you can choose from. Too many for us to cover in this article, in fact, because we know you don’t have time to read an entire novel. So instead, here’s a quick rundown of some of the most popular PPC platforms to consider, including their key features and potential benefits for your advertising strategy.

Google Ads (Formerly Google AdWords)

Google Ads is the king of PPC advertising, offering unparalleled reach thanks to Google’s dominance in the search engine advertising market — 28% of the market share, to be exact. In fact, Google processes more than 90,000 search queries every second. Each one is a chance to target a keyword with an ad that will get potential customers to click.

Google Ads allows advertisers to create both search and display ads, with extensive targeting options based on keywords, location, demographics, and more. The platform is well known for its sophisticated algorithm and analytics, enabling businesses of all sizes to place their ads in front of potential customers at the exact moment they’re searching for related products or services.

If you’re just starting out with PPC, Google Ads is likely the best platform to use for many different reasons. Let’s talk about some of them:

1. First of all, Google is Google. When you use Google Ads, you know you’re dealing with a reputable search engine. Plus, Google provides you with tons of helpful tools, like its Keyword Planner, account management tools, bid and budget management tools, ad creation tools, and a help center. These resources allow you to more easily create and manage your search campaigns, regardless of your experience level.
2. Google Ads is completely scalable to your budget, whether that’s big or small. There’s no need to stress about overblowing your expenses on pricey advertising packages. Plus, you only pay when you get clicks.
3. With AdWords, you can easily keep track of your stats and results; your progress is transparent and measurable. With accessible monitoring, you can continually improve your campaign performance and see better traffic. (We’ll talk success metrics later.)
4. With PPC, you can target hyper-specific audiences with a variety of match types, increasing your chances of converting relevant customers. Google Ads also provides you with many engaging campaign formats, like graphic display ads, YouTube video ads, text-based ads, responsive search ads, and more.
5. PPC with Google Ads can quickly get you clicks and impressions. Once you set up your campaigns, they appear immediately on relevant search queries. They also show up on the Google Search Network, a group of search-related websites and apps that includes Google Search Partners. This means your ad can appear in SERPs, certain online directories, and other pages relevant to your campaigns’ targeted keywords, increasing your reach.
6. Unlike pop-up ads or annoying clickbait, PPC through Google Ads is an unobtrusive advertising method, occurring during an internet user’s routine web browsing and searching.

Bing Ads

Bing Ads, while often overshadowed by Google, offers a valuable and cost-effective alternative to reach audiences. It powers ads on Bing, Yahoo, and other popular search engines in the Microsoft network. With lower competition and cost-per-click (CPC) rates compared to Google, Bing Ads can be a smart choice for businesses looking to extend their reach beyond Google’s ecosystem. The platform also provides robust targeting and scheduling options, making it easier to connect with specific audience segments.

Meta Ads (Formerly Facebook Ads)

Meta Ads harness the vast user data of Facebook and Instagram, offering precise targeted advertising options that are often unmatched on other platforms (even other social media sites).

With Meta Ads, you can target users based on their interests, behaviors, location, and more, making this an ideal PPC platform if your goal is to build brand awareness or promote engagement. This platform supports a variety of ad formats, from simple image ads to immersive video and carousel ads, catering to a wide range of campaign goals.

TikTok Ads

TikTok Ads have surged in popularity alongside the platform itself, especially among younger audiences. This platform offers a unique opportunity for brands to engage with users through creative, short-form video content. TikTok’s ad system includes options for in-feed videos, brand takeovers, and hashtag challenges, providing a playful and interactive way to capture the attention of potential customers.

LinkedIn Ads

Finally, LinkedIn Ads are tailored for B2B marketing. You can leverage the platform’s professional network to reach your target audience based on their job title, industry, company size, and more. This makes LinkedIn a powerful tool for businesses that want to reach professionals and decision-makers within specific sectors. LinkedIn offers many different ad formats, like Sponsored Content, Message Ads, and Text Ads.

How To Build A PPC Campaign

Depending on which platform you choose, the exact steps may vary. The general strategy you use to build a PPC campaign is the same though, no matter what type of ad or advertising platform you use.

Step 1: Decide Your Campaign Goals

A successful PPC campaign requires careful planning and strategic thinking. That means the first step is identifying what you want to achieve. Your campaign goals could range from increasing website traffic and generating leads to boosting sales or promoting brand awareness.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Who (specifically) are you targeting? A wide audience? Or a smaller subset of your target audience?
• What outcome do you want? What are your business goals for this campaign?
• What do you want your target audience to do?
• How will your campaign succeed?

Answering questions like these can help you guide your campaign choices. Clear goals guide your strategy and help you measure success.

Step 2: Set Campaign KPIs

KPIs are the metrics you use to evaluate your campaign’s success. These could include click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS). Setting KPIs upfront helps you track performance and make informed adjustments.

If you’re using Google Ads, measuring your progress is simple. With easy-to-use tracking features, you can utilize the site’s metrics to optimize your campaigns. It’s like a one-stop shop for paid search. Here are the four main metrics you need to watch:

• Clicks: When users click on your ads.
• Conversions: When users respond to your call to action and engage. A tracking code can help you keep track of this number.
• Impressions: Instances of your ad being displayed when someone searches the keyword associated with your bid. This is roughly the number of people who look at your ad/the number of viewers the ad reaches.
• Spend: The amount of money you’ve spent on a campaign.

Also, be aware of these numbers, which involve the fundamental four metrics:

• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of clicks that become conversions (the higher the number, the more effective your campaign). Determine this number by doing a little math: Clicks ÷ Impressions.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of conversions per click. A successful campaign keeps this number low. Find the conversion rate with another simple formula: Conversions ÷ Clicks.
• Cost per click (CPC): The price you pay for each click. To calculate this, use the formula: Spend ÷ Clicks. Your goal is to decrease this number.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): The amount of money you spend for each conversion. Determine this metric with a simple calculation: Spend ÷ Conversions. Again, try to keep this number low.

Once you start a PPC campaign, review these metrics regularly to look for ways to improve and optimize your campaign. By monitoring these metrics, you can make adjustments to keep performance high and costs low.

Step 3: Choose Campaign Type

Based on your goals, select the type of PPC campaign that best fits your needs. Options include search ads, display ads, social media ads, remarketing ads, and video ads. Each type has its strengths, so choose the one that aligns with your target audience and objectives.

Step 4: Set Campaign Budget

Determine how much you’re willing to spend on your PPC campaign. Consider starting with a modest budget to test the waters and adjust based on performance. Remember, your budget should reflect your campaign goals and the competitive landscape of your industry.

Google Ads is set up to work with your budget, no matter what it is.

Instead of forking over a wad of cash every time you get a click or blowing your ad budget in one go, you can set up your account to work within a daily budget. This lets you dictate how much money Google can spend on your ad placements daily. You can also request to have your budget spread across the entire day to capitalize on clicks at different times.

To learn more, check out Google’s guide on setting up your first bid. (We discuss “bidding” on ads and Google’s auction setup later in this article.)

If you’re just starting with paid advertising or your budget is tight (or both), Google offers you the ability to start slow, measure your success, and work within reasonable financial means while you learn how to optimize your campaign.

Step 5: Perform Keyword Research

For search and some types of display campaigns, keyword research is essential. The keywords you bid on tell Google which search result pages your ad should appear on.

Use keyword research tools (like Google’s Keyword Planner) to find relevant keywords with the right balance of competition, traffic, and cost. Focus on terms closely related to your products or services to attract qualified traffic.

When you have your keyword list, you can choose from different match types that dictate when your ad is displayed: exact match, phrase match, and broad match. Each type has its advantages and drawbacks. Opt for the one that reflects your audience’s search intent and your campaign’s needs and goals:

• Exact match displays an ad when the search matches the exact term or close variations of that term. This is a good choice for marketers looking to target a very specific audience. It can also limit your traffic if you’ve narrowly defined your reach.
• Phrase match displays your ad if the search query contains the same order of words. Unlike exact match, this type allows the query to include additional words.
• Broad match displays your ad when the search term contains some combination of the terms in your keyword in any order. Your ad could also appear with other variations of the words, such as singular or plural forms, synonyms, etc. This opens the door for more traffic, but the kind of traffic you get could vary. If searchers don’t find exactly what they’re looking for, your conversion rate could drop. So you’ll want to take caution with such a broad reach; you don’t want to waste your money on irrelevant searches.

Whatever your match type, keep tabs on your Search Terms Report so you can evaluate the kind of search queries coming through and adjust your search types to refine your keyword strategy. A good beginner’s option is to start with a phrase or broad match to drive traffic. Then, evaluate your results for converting keywords and switch to exact match.

When all else fails, test. As you optimize your campaign over time, you can add and delete keywords or change match types to best fit your needs.

Step 6: Write Your Ad Copy

How you craft your copy is critical to the success of your PPC campaign. Your ads must be relevant enough to your users’ searches to attract clicks. You also need to meet Google’s editorial standards, guidelines that dictate proper spelling, punctuation, image quality, and more. In addition to following the character limits for your ads, consider Google’s suggestions for copy-crafting best practices:

• Take advantage of your limited number of characters. After all, you’re paying for the click. Include an effective call to action that invites your customer to buy, click, and shop.
• Write for a mobile audience. Those customers tapping away on smartphone screens are an increasingly important group. Craft ad copy with them in mind.
• Set yourself apart by using your ad to call out what makes you different and unique. One-of-a-kind inventory? Bonus incentive? Free shipping? Whatever it is, emphasize your competitive edge.
• Connect your elements. Increase relevance and your quality score by including at least one keyword in your ad and matching your ad to your landing page.
• TEST! As with most things on your website, you need to test your PPC ads. Google even allows you to test different versions of your ad. They rotate through your ads to figure out which ones perform best.

Step 7: Create Your Landing Page

When users click on your ads, they reach landing pages via a destination URL. Landing pages are designed to convert; users respond to your call to action by buying, engaging, or subscribing.

With product-specific or customized landing pages, keep the user experience (UX) top-of-mind. Make it easy for visitors to find the offer you promised. In other words, don’t send them to your site’s home page or frustrate them with incomplete information. Instead, do all you can to help them complete their purchases. Hint: Google can help you test landing pages, or you can A/B test them using some expert tips.

Step 8: Set Up Analytics And Tracking

Finally, implement analytics and tracking mechanisms to monitor your campaign’s performance. Use tools like Google Analytics and the tracking features within your PPC platform to measure KPIs, track conversions, and gather insights about user behavior. Regularly reviewing this data allows you to optimize your campaign for better results over time.

More PPC Fundamentals And Best Practices

PPC success isn’t just about setting up campaigns. You also need to understand the underlying principles and continuously optimize your PPC strategies. Beyond the basics, these fundamentals and best practices help you maximize your efforts by refining your campaigns and increasing your ROI.

Bidding With Google Ads Auction

Bidding in Google Ads seems complex at first, but it’s essentially about telling Google how much you’re willing to pay them to display your ads to users. Here’s an overview of the bidding process:

1. The basics: Google Ads operates on an auction system. However, this isn’t a traditional auction where the highest bidder always wins. Instead, Google uses a combination of factors to determine which ads to display for a given search query. These factors include your bid amount, the quality of your ad (Quality Score), and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats.
2. Choosing a bidding strategy: Google Ads offers several bid strategies tailored to different advertising goals. Some common goals include driving clicks to your website, generating conversions (like sales or leads), or improving brand visibility. Depending on your objective, you might choose a cost-per-click (CPC) bidding strategy, where you pay for each click on your ad, or a cost-per-impression (CPM) strategy, where you pay based on how many times your ad is shown.
3. Setting your bid: You have several options for how to bid for ad placement.
   • Manual bidding: You decide how much you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad or for 1000 impressions. This gives you direct control over your bids but requires more attention to adjust bids based on performance.
   • Automated bidding: Google automates the bidding process based on your campaign goal. For example, if your goal is to maximize clicks, Google will adjust your bids in real-time to get as many clicks as possible within your budget.
4. Quality Score and Ad Rank: Your bid is just one part of the equation. Google also evaluates the relevance and quality of your ads and landing pages (your Quality Score) and combines this with your bid to determine your Ad Rank. A higher Ad Rank increases your chances of appearing at the top of the search results.
5. Winning the auction: The “auction” happens in milliseconds, every time someone searches on Google. If your Ad Rank is high enough, your ad appears to users. If you win a spot but your ad doesn’t get clicked, you don’t pay anything for that impression.

Keep in mind that Google Ads offers a great deal of flexibility within this system based on your budget. The auction-style bidding method means you get to decide how much you’re willing to pay for each click by bidding on your chosen keywords.

Then, Google Ads uses your bid and its algorithm to determine where your ads will be shown on the page, or if they’ll even be shown at all. That means that if you want to improve the position of your ad on the page (i.e., move that puppy above the fold), you’re going to have to do the following:

• Increase your bid.
• Improve the quality of your ads.
• Improve the quality of your web and mobile landing pages.

Increasing your bid means having more budget for ads, which isn’t always an option. We’ll talk about the other two options below.

Understanding Quality Score

Quality Score (QS) is a vital metric in PPC advertising, particularly with Google Ads. It reflects the relevance and quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages on a scale of 1–10, with 10 being the highest. A higher QS can lead to lower costs and better ad positions. To improve your QS, create relevant ad copy, select targeted keywords, and optimize your landing pages to ensure they’re useful and relevant to your ads.

For example, let’s say you find out that you have a low QS when using a particular keyword. That could mean that the content on your site isn’t tightly related to your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. If you increase your quality score, Google will place your ad in a higher position for lower bids.

Ultimately, the quality score helps Google provide a better user experience.  As it scans your content for relevancy, it ensures you’re not buying keywords that direct users to irrelevant pages.

Because let’s be honest: nobody wants to be directed to shiny pleather loafers (shudder) when they search for Air Jordans.

Don’t Forget Mobile

I know, I know. We talk about mobile all the time. The stats don’t lie, though: 70 percent of mobile searches result in the user taking action within an hour. With the majority of internet users accessing the web via mobile devices, your PPC campaigns must be mobile-friendly. This means designing ads and landing pages that load quickly and look great on smaller screens. Additionally, consider mobile-specific keywords and user intent, as search behavior can vary significantly from desktop to mobile.

A/B Testing Your Ads

A/B testing, also known as split testing, involves creating two versions of your ad (A and B) with one varying element, like the headline or call to action, to see which performs better. This practice is crucial for understanding what resonates with your audience and creating more effective ads. Continuously test and refine your ad copy, images, and landing pages to optimize your campaign’s performance.

Setting Up Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are terms you don’t want your ad to show for. Including negative keywords in your PPC campaigns prevents your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches, saving you money and improving campaign relevance. Regularly update your list of negative keywords to refine your traffic and increase the quality of leads.

As with other matches, this may take time to hone, so continue to keep tweaking to get it right.

Tracking Metrics And KPIs

To truly gauge the success of your PPC campaigns, you must track the right metrics and KPIs. Focus on metrics that align with your campaign goals, such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion tracking, cost per conversion, and return on ad spend. Use these insights to make informed decisions and continually improve your strategy for better performance.

Last Clicks

With PPC, savvy website owners can direct more customers to your website, whether you’re prepping for the holiday shopping rush or building a long-term marketing strategy for your business. PPC is easier than ever thanks to platforms like Google Ads. Its easy-to-use system helps you build an effective paid search advertising campaign to help grow your business.

Tell us: how has paid search helped your website grow? What are your best PPC tips and tricks?

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Business cards? Ready to go.

Lucky underwear? Washed and folded.

Business plan? Uh oh.

So you have an amazing business idea, and you’re ready to pitch it to investors or potential partners. But if you’ve never written a business plan before, it can be downright intimidating to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and try to condense your entire professional dream into one document.

But here’s the good news: writing a business plan doesn’t have to be a stumbling block on your path to business ownership. Instead, it can be a powerful tool that clarifies your business vision, guides your steps along your business journey, and helps secure the funding and partnerships you need to flourish.

And this article will help you by simplifying the process of business plan writing into smaller, more manageable pieces as well as highlighting all the essential parts of the plan that will bring your business idea to life.

Our aim here is to empower you with the foundational knowledge you need to draft a comprehensive plan that leads to a successful business. From articulating your business idea to conducting market research, defining your business objectives, making financial projections, and more — by the end of this guide, you’ll not only understand what goes into a business plan but also why it’s fundamental for your business’s success.

So read on, and let’s get started. Here’s everything you need to know to write your very first business plan.

What Is A Business Plan?

A business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines your business objectives and details the strategies you’ll use to achieve your goals. It acts as a roadmap for your business, highlighting your plans for product development, marketing, operations, and finance.

It guides your business from the startup phase through establishment and growth, providing direction and helping you to navigate the complexities of running a business.

Types Of Business Plans

Understanding the common types of business plans can help you choose the right one for your business’s needs. Generally, there are two main categories of business plans:

• Traditional business plan: These are the most common and detailed type of business plan, often favored by banks and investors. A traditional business plan is comprehensive, covering every aspect of the business in depth. This includes executive summaries, company descriptions, market analysis, organization and management structures, sales strategies, funding requests, and financial projections. It’s suited for businesses looking for significant funding or those with a complex business model that calls for a thorough explanation.
• Lean startup business plan: As opposed to the traditional format, lean startup business plans are streamlined and focus on the core elements of your business. They might include key partnerships, activities, resources, value propositions, customer relationships, channels, customer segments, cost structures, and revenue streams. This format is ideal for businesses that want to launch quickly and iterate on their business model. It’s a living document, meant to be updated and adjusted as you learn more about your customers and your market.

In addition to these, business plans can be prepared to cater to a variety of different scenarios and objectives. These include:

• Feasibility plan: Before committing significant resources, a feasibility business plan helps determine if your business idea is viable. It focuses on analyzing the market, competition, and financial feasibility of the project, helping you make an informed decision about proceeding with the business idea.
• Internal business plan: Used primarily for internal purposes, this type of plan focuses on specific goals or projects within the company. It might detail plans for a new product launch, a restructuring of the organization, or any other internal project, without the need for financial projections if external funding is not part of the goal.
• Strategic business plan: This plan outlines the company’s long-term vision and objectives, along with your strategies to achieve them. It serves as a roadmap for the business’s strategic direction, outlining the company’s future goals and how to reach them.
• Business acquisition plan: If you’re planning to buy an existing business, a business acquisition plan will guide you through the process. It includes an analysis of the business’s current condition, how you plan to finance the acquisition, and how you will integrate it into your existing operations.
• Repositioning plan: Designed for businesses looking to change their market position or business model, this plan focuses on strategies for rebranding, targeting new markets, or altering products and services to meet different customer needs.
• Expansion or growth business plan: For businesses aiming to expand operations, whether by opening new locations, entering new markets, or increasing production capacity, this plan details a strategy for growth. It covers market research, financial projections, and operational plans to help ensure a successful expansion.

Why Business Plans Are Important

A business plan is more than a document — it’s a reflection of your ambition, vision, and the blueprint to achieve your business dreams. Whether you’re a first-time entrepreneur or an experienced business owner planning to explore a new venture, understanding the fundamentals of a business plan is the first step toward success.

What Is A Business Plan Used For?

It’s easy to think of a business plan as an old-school formality that isn’t needed anymore now that we’re in the age of fast-moving, agile startups.

However, a business plan isn’t just documentation. Instead, it serves multiple necessary purposes: from crystallizing your business idea to helping secure financing and guiding your strategic direction.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways entrepreneurs still use business plans, even for modern startups and tech companies.

1. Communicating Your Business Idea

A business plan is often your business’s first introduction to investors, partners, and stakeholders. It translates your vision into words and numbers, making it easier for others to understand and believe in your idea.

This document articulates the problem your business intends to solve, the solution it offers, and why it’s uniquely positioned to succeed. It serves as a first impression and a pitch, presenting your business concept in a structured and compelling way to capture the interest of potential backers or collaborators.

2. Getting Financing For Your Business

One of the most well-known uses of a business plan is to secure financing.

Whether you’re seeking equity investment from venture capitalists, funding from investors, a business loan from a bank, or even support from friends and family, a business plan is a crucial part of that process.

Why? Because it provides potential backers with detailed financial projections, market analyses, and business strategies they want to see before they pitch in. It also demonstrates your business’s potential for growth and profitability, so investors can see how getting involved with you will benefit them.

A thorough and realistic business plan reassures investors and lenders of your business’s viability and your competence as an entrepreneur, which makes it an indispensable tool for fundraising.

3. Documenting Your Business’s Strategy And Goals

A business plan is also an essential tool for internal use. It documents your strategic plan, operational milestones, and the timeline for achieving them. Having a roadmap like this helps guide your team’s efforts, align them with your business’s broader goals, and measure progress as you move forward. It also helps you identify potential challenges and opportunities, so you can proactively manage and respond to market changes.

4. Facilitating Partnerships And Collaborations

A business plan can help secure strategic partnerships and collaborations. It showcases your business model, target market, and competitive advantages, attracting prospective partners who can offer complementary skills, resources, or market access.

5. Guiding Expansion And Growth

For businesses looking to expand, a business plan can outline the strategy for entering new markets or launching new products. It assesses the feasibility of expansion efforts, detailing the required resources, potential hurdles, and projected outcomes.

How To Write A Business Plan: Step-By-Step

Now that you know why a business plan is so important, it’s time to learn what goes into writing one.

Drafting your first business plan can seem like a daunting task. With so much information to gather and decisions to make, knowing where to start is often the hardest part.

However, by breaking the process down into manageable steps, you can create a comprehensive and effective business plan that helps your business succeed.

Here are the steps you need to follow.

Step 1: Executive Summary

Every strong business plan starts with a strong executive summary. The executive summary is the opening act of your business plan. It should give a concise overview of the most important aspects of your business.

Despite being placed at the beginning of your business plan, it’s often best to write this section last. This strategy allows you to distill the essence of what follows into a compelling and informative summary once you have a complete understanding of your business plan.

Purpose

The purpose of the executive summary is to capture your readers’ attention, whether they are potential investors, partners, or key employees, and motivate them to read the rest of your business plan. It should highlight your business’s mission statement, foundational goals, primary products or services, and provide a brief overview of your market analysis and financial projections.

For startups seeking funding, the executive summary should also include your funding requirements and what it will be used for.

Components

1. Business concept: Start with a clear statement of your business idea, focusing on the problem it solves or the opportunity it creates.
2. Products or services: Briefly describe what you’re offering. Explain how your products or services address the problem or opportunity you’ve identified.
3. Target market: Describe who your potential customers are, the market size, and any market segments you’ve identified. Show that you understand your audience and competitive landscape and there’s a demand for what you’re offering.
4. Competitive advantage: Outline what sets your business apart from the competition. This could be technology, expertise, partnerships, or unique business models.
5. Financial highlights: Give a brief snapshot of key financial projections, including sales, profits, and cash flow, if applicable. For startups, mention the funding you’re seeking and its purpose.
6. Your team: Introduce the core team members and their roles, especially management or leadership team members. Highlight their expertise and how it aligns with the business goals.
7. Your mission statement: Finish with your business’s mission statement, which can help readers understand your core values.

Writing Tips For Your Executive Summary

• Be concise: The executive summary should be no more than a page or two long. It’s an overview, not a detailed account.
• Focus on what matters most: Choose the points that are most compelling and relevant to your audience. What would matter most to an investor or a potential partner?
• Be clear and compelling: Use clear, straightforward language. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms that might obscure your message.
• Try to capture readers’ interest: Your executive summary should make readers want to learn more about your business. Leave them intrigued and looking forward to the details in the following sections.

All in all, the executive summary sets the tone for the rest of your business plan. It’s your first opportunity to make a strong impression, so make sure that it clearly conveys the essence of your business, its goals, and its strategy for success.

Here’s an example of an executive summary for a bowling alley.

Step 2: Company Overview

Following the executive summary, the company overview section is like your business plan’s foundation. It provides readers with detailed information about who you are, what you do, and the market needs you aim to fulfill.

This section goes deeper into the details of your business’s identity and history, and the path you’ve charted for its future. It’s an opportunity to share the story of your business, including its inception, evolution, and vision for the future.

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Purpose

The company overview is designed to give readers a clear understanding of your business’s nature, structure, and purpose. It outlines your business model, the specific niche you intend to occupy within the market, and the factors that you believe will contribute to your success. For stakeholders, this section is crucial for understanding the context in which your business operates, including its legal structure, location, history, and the objectives it seeks to achieve.

Components

1. Business name and location: Start with the basics — your business’s official name and its physical or operating locations. If you’re digital or online-based, describe how and where you conduct your business digitally.
2. History and background: Give a brief history of your business. How, when, and why was it founded? What milestones have you achieved so far? This can include the evolution of your product or service, market expansion, or any pivotal shifts you’ve made in your strategy so far.
3. Legal structure: Describe your business structure (e.g., sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, limited liability company). This affects many aspects of your business, from taxation to your level of personal liability.
4. Industry and market: Detail the industry you operate in and your target market. Highlight the current state of the industry, any trends readers should know about, and the segment of the market you aim to serve.
5. Products or services: While you’ll dive deeper into this in later sections, provide a brief overview of your main offerings and how they meet the needs of your market.
6. Team and management structure: Give a deeper overview of your team members and describe your business’s management team structure. Highlight the experience and expertise that each member brings to the table.

Writing Tips For Your Company Overview

• Be descriptive but concise: While this section is informational, keep it engaging. Avoid overly technical language or industry jargon that might confuse readers.
• Showcase your passion for your business: Let your enthusiasm and commitment shine through. Your company overview is not just about the facts but also about painting a picture of your business’s potential and values.
• Highlight your Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Clearly articulate what makes your business unique. Why should customers choose you over the competition? This could be your business model, approach to customer service, product innovation, or any other differentiators.

The company overview sets the stage for the rest of your business plan by providing a clear snapshot of your business at a glance. It’s your chance to introduce readers to the heart and soul of your business, setting the context for the detailed plans and analyses that come next.

Here’s the company summary of that same bowling alley business plan:

Step 3: Business Goals

After setting the stage with your company overview, the next step is to clearly articulate your business goals. This section is critical as it outlines what you aim to achieve in both, the short and long term. It transforms your vision and mission into actionable objectives, giving readers a clear direction for your business and a benchmark against which to measure your progress.

Purpose

The purpose of the business goals section is to specify your business’s targets and aspirations. These goals should be aligned with your company’s mission, vision, and core values, serving as stepping stones to realizing your broader ambitions. This section communicates to stakeholders what you intend to accomplish, offering a clear framework for decision-making and strategic planning.

Components

1. Short-term goals: These are the objectives you aim to achieve in the near future, typically within the next year. Short-term goals could include launching a new product, entering a new market, increasing your customer base by a certain percentage, or achieving a specific sales target. They should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
2. Long-term goals: These goals reflect your vision for where you want your business to be in the next three to five years or beyond. Long-term goals might involve expanding your business nationally or internationally, diversifying your product line, becoming a market leader, or hitting certain financial milestones. Like short-term goals, these should also be SMART but allow for greater flexibility and vision.
3. Strategies for achieving your goals: For each goal, outline the strategies or actions you plan to take to achieve them. This could include marketing initiatives, product development plans, partnerships, or operational improvements.
4. Milestones to track your progress: Identify key milestones that will serve as indicators of progress toward your goals. These are critical achievements or points in time on your journey to realizing your objectives.
5. Resources you need for each goal: Specify the resources (financial, human, technological, etc.) you will need to achieve your goals. This helps in planning for the acquisition or development of these resources.
6. Challenges and solutions: Acknowledge any potential obstacles that might hinder the achievement of your goals and outline strategies to overcome them. This shows foresight and preparedness.

Writing Tips For Your Business Goals

• Be specific and realistic: Your goals should be detailed and achievable. Unrealistic goals can demotivate your team and disappoint stakeholders.
• Quantify your goals wherever possible: Attach numbers to your goals (e.g., revenue targets, market share, customer numbers). This makes your objectives clear and measurable.
• Be aligned with your business’s values: Make sure your goals are consistent with your company’s core values and mission. Coherence demonstrates integrity and purpose.
• Be flexible: While it’s important to have clear goals, you must also acknowledge the need for adaptability. Markets and business environments can change, and your goals may need to adjust accordingly.

By clearly defining what you aim to achieve, you provide a roadmap for your team and a compelling case for investors, showing them not just where your business is today, but where it will be tomorrow.

Step 4: Products And Services

The next step is to dive into the heart of what your business offers: your products and services. This section is where you detail what you’re selling, the benefits it offers to your customers, and how it stands out from what’s already available in the market. It’s not just a catalog of your offerings but a persuasive argument for why your products or services fulfill a need or solve a problem more effectively than your competitors.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the products and services section is to explain the value proposition of your offerings. You need to convincingly articulate how your products or services meet a need or address a pain point in the market. This section should make it clear why your business exists and how it intends to deliver on its promises to customers. It’s also an opportunity to showcase the innovation, quality, and uniqueness of your offerings, highlighting how they contribute to your business’s overall goals.

Components

1. Detailed descriptions of your offerings: Provide comprehensive descriptions of your products or services, including features, advantages, and specifications. Be clear about how they work and what makes them unique.
2. Benefits: Focus on the benefits your products or services offer to customers. How do they improve your customers’ lives or solve their problems? Be specific about the value they provide.
3. Your market positioning: Explain where your offerings fit in the current market landscape. Who are your competitors, and how do your products or services differ from theirs? This should include pricing strategy, quality, and any unique features or technologies your business offers.
4. Your development pipeline: If your products or services are still in development, outline your progress and future plans. Include timelines, milestones, and any challenges you anticipate.
5. Supply and manufacturing: For physical products, describe how they are produced, your supply chain, and any dependencies or potential risks associated with manufacturing. For services, explain the process of delivery and how you ensure quality and consistency.
6. Patents and copyrights: Mention any intellectual property protections you have in place, such as patents, trademarks, or copyrights.
7. Future offerings: Briefly touch on any future products or services you plan to introduce. This shows investors and readers that you’re thinking ahead and planning for growth and innovation.

Writing Tips For Your Products And Services

• Use customer-centric language: Write from the perspective of the customer and use language that resonates with them, focusing on how your offerings make their lives better or easier.
• Include testimonials or use cases: If they’re available, these provide real-world evidence of your products’ or services’ effectiveness and appeal.
• Be clear and concise: While it’s important to provide detailed information, avoid overwhelming readers with technical jargon or unnecessarily complex descriptions.
• Use visuals: Whenever possible, include images, diagrams, or links to videos that demonstrate your products or services in action. Visual aids can make your offerings more tangible and understandable.

This section helps make the case to investors, partners, and customers about the value and potential of your business’s offerings. By clearly explaining the benefits and competitive advantages of your products and services, you make the argument for why your business is viable and likely to succeed.

Step 5: Market Analysis

The market analysis section of your business plan is where you demonstrate your in-depth knowledge of the industry, your target market, and your competitors. This section provides the factual foundation to support your business strategy, showing that there is a demand for your products or services and detailing how you plan to capture and grow your market share. It’s a critical component that investors scrutinize closely, as it showcases your ability to understand and navigate the market landscape.

Purpose

The purpose of the market analysis is to prove to your readers, whether they’re potential investors, partners, or even team members, that you’ve done your homework. It’s about showing that your business isn’t just a great idea in theory but is viable and competitive in the real world. This section should answer key questions about the size of your target market, trends and growth potential, customer needs and behaviors, and competitive forces.

Components

1. Industry description: Start with a broad overview of your industry, including its size, growth rate, and trends. Highlight factors affecting the industry, such as technological advancements, regulatory issues, and economic factors.
2. Your target market segment: Narrow your focus to your specific target market. Define your ideal customers based on customer segmentation, demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors. Quantify the size of this segment and discuss its growth potential.
3. Market needs and preferences: Delve into what drives your target customers. What are their needs, preferences, and pain points? How does your product or service meet these needs better than the alternatives?
4. Market trends: Identify and explain the key trends affecting your potential market. How are customer needs changing? What technological or social trends could impact your business?
5. Competitive analysis: Provide a detailed analysis of your competitors. Who are they, and what are their strengths and weaknesses? Consider using a framework like a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to compare your business with key competitors.
6. Market share and position: Discuss your strategy for capturing and growing your market share. How will you position your business against competitors? What unique selling proposition (USP) will you leverage to stand out?
7. Regulatory or legal factors to consider: Mention any regulatory or legal factors affecting your industry and how you plan to comply. This is especially important for closely regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and food services.

Writing Tips For Your Market Analysis

• Use reliable data: Support your analysis with up-to-date, reliable data from trusted sources. Charts, graphs, and tables can help illustrate your points more effectively.
• Be realistic: While it’s important to be optimistic, your analysis also needs to acknowledge potential challenges and how you plan to address them.
• Know your audience: Tailor your market analysis to your readers. For example, if you’re seeking investment, focus on aspects that highlight market opportunities and your competitive advantage.
• Stay current: Markets evolve, so update your business plan periodically so your market analysis reflects the most current data and trends.

A thorough market analysis not only proves the viability of your business idea but also demonstrates your strategic thinking and planning capabilities.

Step 6: Sales And Marketing

After presenting a thorough market analysis, the next step in your business plan is to outline your sales and marketing strategy. This section explains how you intend to attract and retain customers, the channels you’ll use to sell your products or services, and how you’ll position yourself in the competitive landscape. It’s where you translate your understanding of the market into actionable strategies that will drive revenue and growth for your business.

Purpose

The sales and marketing section demonstrates your approach to entering and growing within the market. It should convey that you have a deep understanding of your target customers, how to reach them effectively, and how to persuade them to choose your offerings over the competition’s. This part of the plan will be essential in the eyes of investors and stakeholders, because it shows how you plan to generate revenue and, ultimately, profit that will give them a return on their investment.

Components

1. Your marketing strategy: Detail your strategy for reaching your target market, including branding, messaging, and the marketing channels you plan to use (e.g., social media, email marketing, SEO, content marketing). Explain how your marketing efforts will align with the needs and behaviors of your target audience.
2. Your sales strategy: Describe your sales process, from lead generation to closing the sale. Include information on sales channels (online, brick-and-mortar, direct sales, wholesalers), pricing strategy, sales forecasts, and any sales teams or partnerships you plan to leverage.
3. Positioning: Explain how you’ll position your business and offerings within the competitive landscape. What is your unique value proposition (UVP), and how will it appeal to your target market? How does your pricing strategy reflect your positioning?
4. Promotional plans: Describe some of the promotional activities and campaigns you’ll use to attract customers. This could include advertising, special offers, sponsorships, or events. Provide a timeline for these activities and how they fit into your overall marketing and sales funnel.
5. Customer retention strategies: Detail how you plan to retain customers and encourage repeat business. This could involve loyalty programs, customer service policies, or quality guarantees. Discuss how you’ll gather and use customer feedback to improve your offerings and customer experience.
6. Metrics and KPIs: Finally, identify key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics you’ll use to evaluate the success of your sales and marketing efforts. This could include website traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, retention rates, and sales targets.

Writing Tips For Your Sales And Marketing Plan

• Focus on differentiation: Clearly state what sets apart your offerings from the competition, and how this will be communicated and marketed to your target audience.
• Be specific and actionable: Provide specific details about your strategies and tactics, including channels, tools, and technologies you’ll use. Avoid vague statements.
• Use data to back up your decisions: Reference market analysis data to justify your chosen strategies and demonstrate a data-driven approach to sales and marketing.
• Include your timeline and budget: Where possible, include timelines for implementing your marketing and sales strategies, as well as budgets for promotional activities. This shows planning and realism in your approach.

The sales and marketing section should convincingly show how you will capture and grow your customer base, driving the revenue needed to support your business goals. It bridges the gap between understanding your market and actively engaging with it, highlighting the strategies that will make your business a success.

Step 7: Logistics and Operations

After detailing your sales and marketing strategy, the next step is to outline the logistics and operations aspects of your business. This section is where you demonstrate how your business will function on a day-to-day basis, including how it will deliver its products or services efficiently and effectively.

Purpose

The logistics and operations section serves to reassure investors and stakeholders of your business’s ability to operate smoothly. It shows that you have a clear plan for managing the resources and processes that are critical to your business’s success. This part of your business plan is about turning your ideas and strategies into concrete actions and measurable outcomes.

Components

1. Logistics and supply chain management: Describe how your business will manage the procurement of raw materials, inventory, and supply chain operations. Detail any partnerships with suppliers or distributors.
2. Production or service delivery: Explain the processes involved in building your product or delivering your service. Include information on manufacturing facilities, equipment needs, labor requirements, and quality control measures.
3. Business locations and facilities: Describe the location of your business and the facilities required for operation. Explain why the chosen location is ideal for your business, considering factors like customer accessibility, cost, and infrastructure.
4. Technology and equipment: Outline the technology and equipment your business will use. Describe how these tools will enhance your productivity, efficiency, and competitive advantage.
5. Operations plan: Provide a day-to-day plan for your business operations, including roles and responsibilities of team members, workflow processes, and how you’ll handle order fulfillment and customer service.

Writing Tips For Your Logistics, Operations, And Finances Plan

• Be detailed and realistic: Give specific details to paint a clear picture of your business operations. Use realistic assumptions backed by your market analysis and sales strategies.
• Use visuals: Graphs, charts, and tables can make your business data easier to understand at a glance.
• Highlight risk management: Discuss any potential risks to your business operations and how you plan to mitigate them. This shows you’re prepared for challenges.

This section of your business plan is where you demonstrate your understanding of the operational details and complexities of running a business. It provides a clear roadmap for how you intend to transform your vision into a successful and sustainable business.

Step 8: Financial Projections

The financial projections section of your business plan is where you translate everything you’ve outlined into numbers. It provides a quantitative analysis of your business’s potential for profitability and growth.

In other words, this section clearly shows investors, lenders, and other stakeholders that your business is financially viable and can offer them a solid return on their investment. It’s where you make your case with numbers, showing the expected financial performance of your business over the next three to five years.

Purpose

Financial projections prove the economic sustainability of your business model. They offer a forecast of your business’s revenue, expenses, and profitability, and provide a clear picture of your financial health and growth potential. This section can help reassure investors and financial institutions that your business is a sound investment with a strong chance of success. It’s also a valuable internal tool for setting financial goals and measuring performance against those targets.

Components

1. Sales forecast: Estimate the revenue your business will generate over a specific period, usually three to five years. Break down the forecast by product or service lines if applicable.
2. Expense budget: Detail the costs associated with running your business, including both fixed and variable expenses. This should cover everything from rent and salaries to marketing and production costs.
3. Cash flow statement: Provide a monthly or quarterly cash flow projection for the first year and annually thereafter. This will show how cash is expected to move in and out of your business, highlighting periods of cash surplus or shortfall.
4. Income statements (profit and loss statements): Summarize your revenue, costs, and expenses to show your net profit or loss over time. This shows your business’s profitability and financial health.
5. Balance sheet: A balance sheet offers a snapshot of your business’s financial position at a specific point in time, detailing assets, liabilities, and equity.
6. Break-even analysis: Calculate the point at which your business will be able to cover its expenses and start generating a profit. This informs investors about the viability and risk level if they choose to back your business.

Writing Tips For Your Financial Projection

• Be conservative: We say it’s better to underpromise and overdeliver. Use conservative estimates that you can confidently achieve or exceed.
• Back up your projections: Base your financial projections on solid data and reasonable assumptions. Explain how you arrived at all of your numbers, referencing market research, historical data, or industry benchmarks.
• Highlight key metrics: Focus on key financial metrics that are most important for your business, such as gross margin, operating margin, and cash flow.
• Include scenarios: Consider presenting best-case, worst-case, and most-likely scenarios. This demonstrates thorough planning and shows that you’re prepared for different possible outcomes.

The financial projections section shows your understanding of your business’s financial dynamics and your ability to plan for its future. It’s not just about impressing investors — it’s also a must-have guide for your business’s financial strategy and management.

Step 9: Funding Request (Optional)

For many new businesses, securing external funding is an exciting step toward achieving their goals. This section of your business plan is where you detail your funding requirements.

Whether you’re seeking equity investment, a loan, or another form of financial support, the funding request section lays out exactly how much capital you need, how you plan to use it, and your preferred terms. This section is optional because not every business will seek external funding at the outset or as part of its growth strategy.

Purpose

The purpose of the funding request section is to provide potential investors or lenders with a clear and concise overview of your financial needs. It’s about articulating why you need the funds, how they will be used to grow your business, and how this investment or loan fits into your broader financial strategy. This section should align with your financial projections and operations plan, showing a direct link between the funding request and your business’s growth potential.

Components

1. How much funding you need: Specify the total amount of funding you are requesting. Be precise, and make sure this number is supported by your financial projections and the way you plan to use the funds.
2. Use of funds: Break down how the requested funds will be used. Categories might include product development, marketing, expanding operations, hiring key staff, or purchasing equipment. Be as detailed as possible to show investors how their money will be spent to drive growth.
3. Type of funding: Specify the type of funding you’re seeking (e.g., equity investment, debt financing, grants). If you’re open to different types of funding, explain the conditions under which you would consider each.
4. Terms: If you have specific terms in mind (for loans or equity investments), outline them here. For equity investments, specify the percentage of ownership you’re offering in exchange for the investment.
5. Future funding: If you anticipate needing more funding in future rounds, mention this. Provide a brief overview of what those future needs might look like and how additional funds will help escalate your growth.
6. Exit strategy: Especially for equity investors, outline your exit strategy. This could include acquisition, public offering, or buying out investors. It shows you’re thinking about the return on their investment.

Writing Tips For Your Funding Request

• Be direct: This is not the section for ambiguity. State your needs clearly and back them up with solid data from your financial projections.
• Align funding requests with your business plan: Your funding request should be consistent with your business plan’s other sections, especially your financial projections and use of funds.
• Focus on ROI: Investors and lenders are interested in the return on their investment. Highlight how funding your business will lead to a profitable outcome for them.
• Be flexible: While it’s important to specify your needs and preferences, also show that you’re open to discussions about the funding arrangement. Flexibility can be key to securing investment.

The funding request section is a direct appeal to potential investors and lenders to support your business’s growth. It should be persuasive, well-reasoned, and backed by the detailed planning you’ve put into the rest of your business plan. This section is your opportunity to make a compelling case for why investing in your business is a wise and profitable decision.

Downloadable Business Plan Template

By now, you should have a solid understanding of what goes into creating a comprehensive and effective business plan that can guide your business to success and attract the investment and support you need. Our downloadable business plan template makes this process even easier!

This template is designed to help you structure your business plan in a way that is clear, concise, and compelling. It includes all the sections we’ve discussed, from the executive summary to the funding request, with helpful prompts and tips to guide your writing. Whether you’re a first-time entrepreneur or a small business owner looking to expand, this template serves as a starting point to customize and develop your unique business plan.

How To Use This Template

1. Customize it: While the template provides a general structure, it’s important to customize the content to reflect your specific business idea, market, and strategy. Make it your own by adding details relevant to your business and industry.
2. Take your time: Writing a business plan isn’t a race. Use the template as a tool to organize your thoughts and research. It’s okay to take your time to ensure that each section is thoughtfully considered and articulated.
3. Seek feedback: Before finalizing your business plan, seek feedback from mentors, peers, or professionals in your industry. Use their insights to refine and improve your plan.
4. Update your business plan as needed: Your business plan should be a living document that evolves as your business grows and as market conditions change. Revisit and update your plan regularly to ensure it remains aligned with your business’s path.

Download the Template

And when your burgeoning business needs a reliable, professional website, consider professional WordPress hosting from DreamHost.

We offer plans to suit all budgets, whether you’re a small business just getting your start or an expanding enterprise. All plans include our WP Site Builder, which allows you to build a WordPress site in a simple drag-and-drop interface (or, if you already have a site, we’ll migrate it for you for free). They also come with lots of other goodies: a free domain, SSL certificate, professional email address, and privacy protection —- all the things your new business needs to thrive online!

Starting a business is no easy feat. But with a solid business plan and a great website, you’ll have a strong foundation to get you started.

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The post Writing Your Very First Business Plan? Here’s What You Need To Know appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Of course, you can connect with these individuals through your personal profile. But sometimes, attracting them through a branded LinkedIn Company Page is better.

Wait, you don’t have one?! We definitely need to fix that.

This guide will explain how to create a LinkedIn Company Page, why you need one, and how to maximize the benefits.

What Is A LinkedIn Company Page?

A LinkedIn Company Page is essentially a profile for your business or organization. It’s a place where you can introduce your brand, promote your work, and connect with customers and future hires.

Company Pages are free to set up, and the process only takes a few minutes. Some of the key details on display include:

• The name of your organization
• A link to your website
• Your industry
• The size of your organization
• Your company type
• Your logo

You can also include other elements, like a tagline, a full-length company description, your location, a custom button, and even a lead gen form.

Why You Should Create A LinkedIn Company Page

LinkedIn is a staple networking platform for any business looking to grow and expand. While you should definitely use your personal account to make valuable connections and keep up to date with industry news, there are additional benefits to creating a LinkedIn Company Page.

It’s like a social media version of your website, complete with information and news. Here are some of the key benefits:

Promote Your Brand

A LinkedIn Company Page is the ideal place to promote your brand and highlight the culture and values of your organization (Taco Tuesdays, anyone?).

You can do this by sharing updates, achievements, and insights about your operation. Staff can then re-share these posts on their profile, reaching their networks and extending their brand reach further.

Attract New Talent

As you begin to share what makes your company tick, there’s a fair chance that some people will want to join the party. This is your chance to land new talent.

Your Company Page can serve as a recruitment tool, allowing you to share new opportunities with job seekers and connect with potential employees.

Engage With Potential Customers

Similarly, potential buyers may see your brand pop up in their feeds.

By publishing content regularly on your Company Page, you can prove your expert knowledge, interact with your target audience, and further expand your brand’s reach. LinkedIn also provides notifications and visual analytics reports to help you track these interactions.

You can even set up customer CTAs on your Company Page, so prospective customers can go straight from socializing to making a purchase.

Improve Your Visibility In Search

In many industries, clients often search for suitable providers on LinkedIn. If you set up and optimize your Company Page, your brand may appear in these searches.

In addition, popular, well-optimized LinkedIn pages sometimes appear in Google search results. This gives you another opportunity to extend your online presence.

How To Create An Award-Winning Company Page On LinkedIn (In 6 Steps)

Setting up a Company Page isn’t rocket science, but there are a few tasks to complete if you want to promote your business successfully on LinkedIn. Here’s how to effectively plan and build your brand on the world’s biggest professional network:

Step 1: Check LinkedIn’s Requirements For Creating A Company Page

Let’s start with the basics: there are a few requirements you must meet to access the Company Page option. For starters, you’ll need to have a personal LinkedIn profile of your own. That account also has to:

• Be at least one day old.
• Have some connections (there’s no specific number you must reach, but the more you can include, the better).

LinkedIn also has some best practices for creating your page. These include:

• Making sure your personal account uses your real name.
• Confirming your email address.
• Making sure your company doesn’t already have a page.

Anyone who’s an employee at your business can create and manage a Company Page. As long as you have at least one active LinkedIn user, meeting these requirements shouldn’t be too hard.

The one criterion that might get a little tricky is providing a company email address with a unique domain. Gmail, Yahoo, and other accounts won’t work for this purpose. You’ll need an address like yourname@[yourbusinessdomain].com.

Fortunately, we offer an affordable solution.

At DreamHost, we provide professional email plans for creating addresses with unique domains. They start at just $1.67 per month per mailbox. You don’t have to register your domain or host your website with us — this service is available to anyone!

Step 2: Add Your Company Details To Launch Your New Page

To begin building your Company Page, click For Business in the top navigation bar. At the bottom of the sidebar that pops out, select Create a Company Page.

On the next screen, choose whether you’re creating a page for your Company, a Showcase page, or a page for an Educational Institution.

Input Your Company Details

After that, you will be prompted to fill in some basic details about your company. Start with your company’s Name and create your custom LinkedIn Company Page URL. Try to make this short and snappy — it’s more shareable that way. Don’t forget to add your website’s address here, as well.

Next, you can select your Industry, Organization size, and Organization type. These are each drop-down menu options, so choose the closest match, especially when it comes to your industry.

Logo And Tagline

Finally, scroll down to upload your brand logo and add your company tagline. These elements not only help promote your brand and make your profile more recognizable, but it also lends more credibility to your Company Page. In your tagline, make sure to include some keywords here for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes.

Keep an eye on the Page Preview section on the right-hand side to see how your Company Page will be presented on LinkedIn. Once you’re satisfied, check the verification box to agree to LinkedIn’s terms, and then hit the Create page button.

Step 3: Spruce Up Your Company’s Profile To Attract And Inform Visitors

You’ve created your official Company Page. Nice work! Now, it’s time to start adding additional information and branding elements.

First and foremost, you’ll probably want to include a banner image. This large image will be displayed at the top of your page, similar to a cover photo on Facebook.

You can re-visit these images using the pencil icon to edit your banner or upload a new profile picture.

At this point, you should add a compelling summary about your company. LinkedIn provides limited space here — just 2,000 characters, including spaces — so you’ll want to make every word count.

Under Today’s actions > Add description click Add.

Be sure to highlight what makes your company unique and better than the competition. Throw in a summary of your products or services, too.

When you’re done, click the Save button at the top.

Now you’re ready to post something!

Click the Create button.

You can choose to:

• Start a post
• Create an event
• Post a free job
• Create an Ad
• Create a showcase page

For example, to post a new job opportunity, click Post a free job. You’ll be redirected to sign into Talent Solutions center using the same email and password you’ve set up for your Company page.

Many LinkedIn users take advantage of the platform’s job-hunting features, so listing career opportunities can help boost your page’s visibility. Just make sure to keep it updated so people don’t apply for positions that are no longer available.

Create Your Call-To-Action

Did you know you can add a custom link to your Company Page? It’s the perfect way to pull visitors toward your offer.

To get started, visit your Company Page by tapping Me in the top navigation bar, and selecting the relevant company name from the drop-down menu. Next, tap Edit Page from the left-hand menu. Finally, select Buttons in the settings that appear.

Here, you can insert any URL and text for your link. This custom button will appear next to the big blue Follow button below the title of your Company Page.

While you could link to your homepage, remember that you already have a link to your website in your Page profile. So, consider using your button as a direct link to a specific landing page or resource — something that will impress someone new to your brand.

Build A Lead Gen Form

Better still, why not let people sign up without even leaving the social network? LinkedIn lets you build lead generation forms for this very purpose.

Select Lead gen form from the left-hand menu in the Edit Page area. It’s right at the bottom, under the Leads heading.

Next, choose your call to action. This will appear below the main profile section on your page. LinkedIn is a little more restrictive than with your button, so you only have four options:

• Contact Sales
• Request free demo
• Start free trial
• Get started

When users click this link, they will be prompted to enter their email address. LinkedIn will also grab relevant information from their profile, and include it with the submitted form.

Check the preview of your lead gen form at the bottom of the pop-up window. Once you’re happy, tap Save.

Step 4: Post Regular Company Updates And Industry-Related Content

Now that your page is up and running, it’s time to start pumping out content. This is the best way to promote your new Company Page.

If you have a blog on your business website, start sharing a link to every article you publish via your new page. This tactic is easy to implement (there’s no extra long-form content to write) and it can drive visitors to your website. Simply include LinkedIn as a part of your blog promotion strategy, and you’ll have a regular source of content for your Company Page.

Pro tip: LinkedIn often reduces the reach of posts that contain a URL, so post a quick teaser for each article and share the actual link as a comment.

In addition to your blog articles, post about recent business news within your industry, and company-specific updates, to keep your followers in the loop.

This is a good way to demonstrate your authority in your industry, promote company events, and even attract more followers. Just remember that, as with a blog, your LinkedIn Company Page will thrive when filled with relevant content that your target audience wants to see.

It might even be worth creating a quick strategy. Consider who you want to attract to your page, and what types of content are likely to interest them.

Step 5: Promote Your LinkedIn Company Page To Gain Followers

When you first launch your Company Page, it can feel like a party for one. If you want other people to join the fun, you need to get the word out.

Start by telling people where to find you. This makes your company and your job postings more discoverable on LinkedIn. As a result, your page is more likely to show up in searches.

Head to Edit Page and select Locations in the About section. Then simply type in the address of your central company location and hit Save. You can add more than one location if you want.

Another key promotional tactic is to engage your current employees on LinkedIn. Invite them to list your Company Page on their own profiles, and claim it as their place of employment. This will help you tap into their already existing networks to make connections with others in your industry.

Don’t forget about LinkedIn Groups, either. Posting regularly in relevant communities — including comments that add value to the conversation — is likely to attract clicks to your new Company Page.

Finally, it never hurts to promote your LinkedIn page on other social platforms and business networks. This may mean including links to your Company Page in your X/Twitter bio, or your Facebook About section. You could also have LinkedIn as one of the social sharing icons on your website and blog posts.

Step 6: Promote Individual Products Or Services On Showcase Pages

For small businesses that have a fairly straightforward offer, a Company Page should be enough. However, for organizations with a variety of products, services, and brands, packing everything into one page can be difficult.

Enter LinkedIn’s Showcase pages. These are sub-pages of your main Company Page dedicated to individual products or services. They appear on your Company Page in the right-hand sidebar, under Affiliated pages.

To set up Showcase pages, visit the admin view of your page and hit the big blue Create button under your logo. The last option on the pop-up menu is Create a Showcase Page. The process is then very similar to building your original Company Page, with the opportunity to name your page, add your website, choose your LinkedIn URL, and add a product logo.

Having set up your Showcase page, you can start sharing content aimed at the target audience for your specific product or service. In some cases, this technique may be more effective than offering generalized content on your primary Company Page.

Key Tips For Managing Your Company Page

Don’t forget: setting up and promoting a Company Page is just the first step. If you want to squeeze the maximum amount of juice out of your new online presence, be sure to follow these tips:

Add Extra Admins

It’s always a smart idea to have more than one admin for your Company Page, even if you’re the business owner. Taking this precaution ensures that sickness or a sudden firing won’t leave your page dormant. Plus, it helps you share the work of posting content.

Mention Your Partners

One way to build your audience is by getting your partners involved. For instance, you could share news about joint initiatives or even congratulate a partner organization on a big funding round.

When you post these updates, make sure to tag the partner Company Page. This will ensure that they see the content; they might just repost it to their own followers.

Get Your Coworkers Involved

We can’t stress enough the importance of getting your coworkers affiliated to your Company Page. It gives your new page credibility, and helps other users to reach the person they need within your organization. Just as importantly, your staff can then start reposting your content — boosting your overall reach.

Use LinkedIn Ads

If you’d like to create more traditional, campaign-based content for LinkedIn, you might also consider using the platform’s advertising options. LinkedIn ads are highly targeted and can help you reach other professionals in your industry, generate leads, attract job applicants, and more.

LinkedIn Company Page FAQs

Still have questions? We have the answers. Keep scrolling to see the most frequently asked questions on the topic of LinkedIn Company Pages.

Is creating a Company Page on LinkedIn free?

Yes, it’s completely free. You don’t even need a paid personal account. The only cost involved is related to running LinkedIn Ads.

How do I change my LinkedIn page to a Company Page?

It depends what you’re trying to achieve. You can’t convert a personal profile into a Company Page. However, you can convert a Showcase Page to a Company Page by contacting LinkedIn support.

Why can’t I create a Company Page on Linkedin?

Almost certainly because you haven’t met the requirements. If your account is less than a week old, you won’t see the option. You also need a profile that has several connections, and a strength rating of Intermediate or All-Star. And of course, you need to list the organization on your personal profile.

How do you create a Company Page on LinkedIn mobile?

It’s basically the same process, just with a slightly different workflow:

1. Go to any LinkedIn Page and tap the three-dot icon in the header area.
2. Select Create a LinkedIn Page.
3. Choose your page type.
4. Enter your company details.
5. Check the verification box, and tap Create in the top-right corner.

Job done!

Ready To Create A LinkedIn Page?

There are many ways to promote your business through social channels. Creating a high-quality LinkedIn Company Page is definitely one of the most effective, particularly for B2B companies. And as we have discovered, it’s really easy to do.

Just to recap, here is the six-step process:

1. Ensure that you meet LinkedIn’s requirements for creating a company page.
2. Add your company’s details to launch your new page.
3. Spruce up your company’s profile to attract and inform visitors.
4. Post regular company updates and industry-related content.
5. Promote your LinkedIn Company Page to gain followers.
6. Promote individual products or services on their own Showcase pages.

Of course, a LinkedIn Company Page is nothing without a solid business website. At DreamHost, we offer affordable hosting services with robust features and resources to help you create the perfect site for your company. Check out our Shared Hosting plans today!

The post Win With LinkedIn: How To Create A Company Page appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

In other words, it’s a tag management system that enables you to quickly and easily update measurement codes and related code fragments collectively known as tags on your website or mobile app.

Why would someone want to use Google Tag Manager?

GTM simplifies the process of tracking user interactions by providing a user-friendly interface to implement tracking codes, all without the constant need for a developer’s assistance. Whether you are looking to track basic analytics, monitor specific events like form submissions or clicks, or implement more complex remarketing campaigns, GTM can be an invaluable asset. It allows for greater agility in the digital marketing realm; you can test and deploy tags without having to rely on the IT department to write and release code, making the entire process much more efficient.

Additionally, GTM supports a variety of tags for different marketing platforms, not just from Google’s suite of tools. This compatibility extends its utility as a centralized tool for managing a variety of different marketing data streams. With the ability to add, edit, and disable tags at a moment’s notice, marketers gain a significant amount of control over their data collection and reporting processes.

In a nutshell, for anyone looking to streamline their site’s code and enhance their marketing efforts with minimal technical requirements, Google Tag Manager is an indispensable tool.

Now, let’s walk through how to install Google Tag Manager on your site. It only takes four steps and you can be done in about 10 minutes.

Step 1: Create A Google Tag Manager Account

Getting started with Google Tag Manager is straightforward, and the first step is to set up an account. If you already have a Google account for services like Gmail, Google Drive, or Google Analytics, you can use the same account to sign in to Google Tag Manager. If not, you’ll need to create a new Google account.

• Go to Google Tag Manager. Open your web browser and go to the Google Tag Manager website (tagmanager.google.com). Here, you’ll be greeted with the option to sign in or create an account.
• Sign in or sign up. Click on the “Sign in” button if you have an existing Google account, or choose “Create account” if you need to make a new one. Follow the on-screen prompts to sign in or to create your new Google account.
• Create your GTM account. Once signed in, you will be prompted to create a new GTM account. Click on the “Create Account” button located in the top right corner.
• Enter your account details. You will need to provide a name for your GTM account. Google recommends only having one GTM account per company, even if you have multiple websites, so this is typically the name of your company or organization. Under the same section, you will be asked to select your country.

The next step will be to set up and install a container and tags on your website. There are a few different ways you can do this, and we’ll walk you through two easy ways below.

Step 2: Install Google Tag Manager Code On Your Site (2 Methods)

Before you can install GTM on your site, you’ll need to finish setting up your account by creating a container. The container is the piece of code you add to your site to make Google Tag Manager work. You typically create a unique container for each website you install GTM on, so when you get to the next section in the account setup flow, where you enter your “Container Name,” you’ll typically choose your site name or URL.

Next, you’ll select your “Target Platform.” For websites, choose “Web.”

Finally, click “Create.” This will finalize your account and create your first container. You’ll see two pop-ups:

• The first one is the Google terms of service. Check the box at the bottom of the page and click “Yes”  at the top right corner to accept them.
• The second one is a how-to guide, which includes the code snippets you’ll need to install your container on your WordPress site. It also explains where to copy and paste the container code, but more on this below.

#1: Manually Add GTM Code

To add the container to your WordPress site manually, you’ll need to copy those pieces of code from the pop-up and paste them into your website’s source code.

Here’s what to do:

Log into your WordPress account. What you do next will vary depending on the version of WordPress you use, your hosting company, and your theme, but you need to find the source code for your theme files.

The navigation bar on the right is a good place to start. Look for “Theme File Editor” either under Appearances or Tools. If you can’t find the source code, skip to Option #2, which is much easier for beginners.

Since WordPress themes vary in design and functionality, their theme code may vary, too. You’re looking for the file for the header. A common name for it is header.php. If you can’t find it, contact your theme developer for help.

Inside the header file, find the <head> and </head> tags. Copy the first code snippet for your container and paste it as high up in the <head> section as possible.

Next, find the <body> tag. Copy the second code snippet for your container and paste it right after the opening <body> tag.

Click “Update File” to save your changes.

Go back to GTM and click “Preview”. This will open a new window to connect Google Tag Assistant to your website. Enter your site URL and click “Connect”.

A new window to your site will open, and Google Tag Assistant will notify you if the connection is successful. Once it’s connected, click “Finish”, go back to the previous window, and click “Continue”. You should see “Google Container Found” at the top of the screen, which indicates that installation of GTM on your WordPress site is complete.

Click the “Submit” button. Enter the version name and click “Publish”.

#2: Use A Plugin To Install GTM

The second method for installing GTM on a WordPress site is using a plugin. This method doesn’t require you to edit your site’s source code, so it may be more suitable for beginners.

A simple, free plugin to use for this is Insert Headers And Footers. After creating your GTM account and setting up your container, here’s what to do:

Go to your WordPress admin page. Navigate to “Plugins”, then “Add new”, and search for “Install Headers and Footers.” Once you find it, click “Install Now.”

Go to “Settings”, then “Insert Headers and Footers”.

Copy the code snippets from the boxes in your GTM account and paste them into the corresponding boxes in “Insert Headers and Footers”.

Click “Save”.

Step 3: Add A Tag

With Google Tag Manager code installed on your site, you’re now ready to start adding tags. Tags can be used for a variety of purposes, from tracking website analytics to remarketing and conversion tracking. Here’s how to add your first tag:

Go to the Google Tag Manager dashboard (https://tagmanager.google.com/  and select the Container Name you just created.

Click on the “Add a new tag” button.

If you’re just starting, you might want to create a Google Analytics tracking tag. This is one of the most common ways to use GTM, and GA4 provides tons of ways to use tags to track real-time site data and metrics. For a GA4 tag, name it something descriptive like, “GA4” or “GA4 Configuration.”

In the Tag Configuration box, select “Google Tag”. In the Tag ID field, enter your Google tag ID. Click “Save”.

After configuring your tag, you need to define when it will fire. Click on the “Triggering” section and choose a trigger. For example, to track all page views, you’ll select the “All Pages” trigger. Triggers can be as broad or as specific as you want – GTM gives you a lot of control.

Step 4: Verify GTM Is Installed & Sending Data

Before you save and publish your tags, it’s crucial to ensure everything is working correctly. Here’s how you can verify that GTM is installed properly and the tags are sending data:

GTM offers a built-in Preview mode that lets you see which tags are firing on your website. Click “Preview” on the GTM dashboard for your website, enter your website’s URL, and then navigate to your site. You will see a debug window at the bottom of your site that shows which tags are firing and which are not.

Next, you can look for real-time data in Google Analytics. If you’ve set up a Google Analytics tag in GTM, go to your Google Analytics account and navigate to the Realtime report. If you see active users on your site (you may need to navigate around your site to generate data), this indicates that GTM is correctly sending data to Google Analytics.

For a more technical check, you can use your browser’s developer tools to inspect the network requests being made when a page on your site loads. Look for network calls to ‘google-analytics.com’ or other relevant domains, which can confirm that tags are firing.

By taking these steps, you’ll be able to confidently confirm that Google Tag Manager is installed correctly and that your tags are collecting and sending data as expected. If there are any issues, the information provided by these verification methods can also help you troubleshoot any problems.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I install Google Tag Manager on different kinds of sites?

Yes, Google Tag Manager can be installed on all types of websites, including those built with HTML, PHP, WordPress, Shopify, and other content management systems or e-commerce platforms.

Can I use a plugin for my CMS to install Google Tag Manager?

Absolutely. Many content management systems, like WordPress, have plugins available that make integrating Google Tag Manager easier. Just search for GTM plugins within your CMS’s plugin repository.

Where does the Google Tag Manager code go on my website?

The Google Tag Manager code snippet consists of two parts. The first part should be placed as close to the opening <head> tag as possible on every page, and the second part should be immediately after the opening <body> tag.

What’s the difference between Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager?

Google Analytics is a tool that collects and reports data about website traffic and user interactions. Google Tag Manager, on the other hand, is a tag management system that allows you to easily update and manage marketing tags (including Google Analytics tracking code) without changing the code on your website. Essentially, Google Analytics measures your site’s performance, while Google Tag Manager helps you streamline the process of deploying and managing the tags that collect the data.

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The post How To Install Google Tag Manager On Your Site (Step-By-Step) appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Angling to get the best real estate on the board is the name of the game.

Purchased property on Illinois Avenue or St. James Place? You’re likely to get good traffic and see a Return On Investment (ROI).

But the more out-of-the-way Mediterranean or Baltic Avenue spaces? You may miss out on crucial crowds.

There is a lesson here for real estate moguls and website owners alike: Location is critical.

When it comes to internet real estate, the really cool thing is you can actually upgrade the location of your website on search engine results pages when you apply Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques.

So, to help you do just that, we put together this guide full of actionable steps SEO beginners and intermediates can take to improve website rankings and get you in front of more potential customers.

What Is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the act of making changes both on and off your website in order to help it appear closer to the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) when people are looking for products, services, or information you offer.

The ultimate objective of search engine optimization is to assist in making your website more visible and attractive to website visitors — boosting their conversions into clients, customers, or a loyal audience.

Why Should You Focus On SEO?

When you sit down to find something on the internet, there’s one place the majority of us turn to first: a search engine.

This means if you want to get your website noticed, you have to make sure that it appears in search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Most ideally, on the first few pages — beyond which only the most determined searchers have the attention span to click.

The best way to do this is by investing in a variety of SEO activities. After all, BrightEdge found that SEO is the number-one driver of traffic to websites.

Ready to rise to the top by optimizing your website to not only be more findable but more usable, trustworthy, and engaging?

Onward!

20 Ways To Improve SEO

When compiling this list of SEO strategies, we started with an assumption: You’re busy!

So the techniques here are ones that intermediate and beginner website owners or managers can implement fairly easily with a reasonable time commitment, and can build upon in the future as time allows.

Remember, you don’t have to use all of these, although you certainly can. Even a handful should be a good start toward giving your site a boost on SERPs.

Also, we’ll be focusing on advice targeted at Google since it’s the most popular search engine. It also happens to release the most helpful information about how its algorithms work. That said, many of these strategies should also help you on most other search engines, such as Yahoo Search or Bing.

Keep reading to learn about some of the most approachable areas of SEO to focus on — and how to tackle them. These tips will help strengthen your visibility and provide you with powerful Google search results and lots of organic traffic now and well into the future.

On-Page SEO Tips

On-Page SEO, or on-site SEO, describes all the changes and improvements you can make to your website to impact your search engine ranking.

On-site content is a huge area where you can apply SEO. Other elements that can be optimized include hosting, mobile readiness, links, headings, and more than we could dive into right now.

1. Use WordPress For Your Website

Right out of the gate, we’ll start with one of the best things you can do for SEO: Build your website using WordPress.

Why?

Well, partly because WordPress is built in a way that’s inviting and readable for both human readers and the algorithms search engines. WordPress websites are well organized, fast to load, and ready for mobile users.

It’s also extremely user friendly for website owners and managers, making it easier to do all the things you need to do on the backend to optimize things like content and header tags (more on both soon).

Then there’s the ecosystem of tools that work with WordPress to help folks implement SEO tactics, such as the plugins we’re going to discuss later in this article.

If you aren’t already on WordPress, learn how simple it can be to get started in our guide How to Start a Website in 5 Minutes with WordPress.

2. Choose Your Hosting Provider Carefully

Promise – we’re not just saying this because we’re a hosting company.

We’re saying this because it’s true: The hosting provider you pick is vital for good SEO.

Since Google takes page loading speed into account among its many ranking factors, a good host that prioritizes website speed can help push you to the top of SERPs.

Your host also affects the amount of downtime your site experiences and the location of your server — both of which are thought to influence Google ranking.

Google has even confirmed that it uses HTTPS as a ranking signal. That means it’s ideal if your web host of choice makes it easy to use HTTPS. FYI, with DreamHost, HTTPS protection is free, thanks to our partnership with Let’s Encrypt.

So when you’re setting up your SEO-friendly WordPress website, you’ll want to choose a host that’s reliable and has a reputation for excellent performance. Better yet, a WordPress-specific hosting plan that’s focused on providing impressive speeds with little to no downtime.

Even for an existing site, you may want to consider switching hosts if your current provider doesn’t meet these criteria to help support your SEO efforts from the ground up.

3. Prioritize Page Speed

As noted above, the load time of your website pages is a confirmed consideration most search engines make when ranking websites.

That’s why a good chunk of technical SEO tricks are focused on ensuring every aspect of your site works properly to keep up with speed requirements.

While we have a full guide on ways to speed up your site, here are some of the high points:

• Use a plugin to remove unnecessary code and increase speed performance
• Compress images to shrink file sizes that take longer to load
• Look for a WordPress theme that’s speed-focused
• Get rid of broken links, missing files, and other excessive elements that lead to 404 errors
• Implement security tactics that guard your site from Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and the load-clogging traffic they create

4. Get Mobile-Friendly

More people than ever are using mobile devices like smartwatches, cell phones, and tablets to browse the internet.

This means your site needs to have perfect usability on any type of device a visitor happens to be using.

You can ensure that it does by optimizing your website for mobile devices, which includes applying responsive design.

With responsive design, a website looks and acts just as great on a handheld gadget as it does on your laptop or desktop computer.

If your site is responsive, its chances of appearing high on SERPs will be that much better, because it’s quick to load and doesn’t scare off visitors immediately — a quality point many search engines consider when ranking websites.

For WordPress users, the best way to pull off responsive design is to choose a theme that supports it (which many, if not most, now do).

To test how your current site performs on mobile and how your SEO tweaks are working, use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

After a few minutes, the tool will spit out a check mark if the website you tested is responsive on mobile. If Google finds areas for improvement or pinpoints elements that had trouble loading, it’ll provide a list of adjustments you can make to enhance the mobile experience.

5. Find Dedicated SEO Plugins

If you’re new to WordPress, you may not yet be familiar with plugins.

These are small pieces of add-on software you can install to your WordPress website to add new features and functionality. There’s a plugin to help your site do just about anything — including rank higher in search engines. In fact, there are many SEO plugins for WordPress that are designed specifically to improve your site’s organic search ranking.

One of our favorite, comprehensive SEO plugins is Yoast SEO. It can add a whole suite of optimization-focused features to your site, including a keyword density analysis, reading ease score, SEO title and meta description ranker, support for understanding and cleaning up links, and plenty more.

6. Use Relevant Keywords In Content

Users frequently type similar search queries into Google when they’re looking for information.

You’ve probably searched for a phrase like “how to make risotto” or “is my dog acting normal?” before. And, if all was well in the Googleverse, these prompts should have resulted in pertinent responses, such as a recipe for risotto or a local veterinarian site.

Humans, as a species, are not all that different from one another. We tend to type the same kinds of phrases again and again. Well-used search terms and phrases are called “keywords,” and they should be the heart of your content if you want to boost SEO.

Google Keyword Planner is a tool that takes people’s search prompts and assigns value to each of them, and it can be a core component of creating high-ranking content when you learn how to use it to conduct keyword research.

Use Keyword Planner to determine which target keywords will make for high-traffic blog posts, product descriptions, and anything else that requires content.

For example, if your blog is about interior decorating, you might find through Keyword Planner that “mid-century modern furniture” is currently a hot search term. By incorporating this phrase into your blog and any products or services you offer, you’re more likely to attract searchers who are Googling this very topic.

Once you’ve made the most of Keyword Planner, you can look at using more robust tooling to track your rankings, analyze your traffic, and even review competitors’ keywords.

There are many helpful SEO tools on the market, from the free Google Analytics for tracking metrics to the breakout hit Ahrefs for all-in-one SEO support.

But, one of our overall favorites is Semrush. It’s an established and trusted solution with an extremely comprehensive set of features at an affordable price. Even better? We worked out a special 14-day trial with Semrush so you can see if they’re a good fit for your site.

7. Incorporate Useful Links With Link Building

Google and other search engines don’t consider your website in a vacuum. They look at how well it’s connected, both internally and externally to other sites.

Using plenty of links throughout your posts and pages in a strategy called link building tells search engine crawlers how they relate to similar content. It also encourages other people to link back to your site — more on backlinking soon — which in turn communicates to search engines that your content is valuable!

As with keywords, this is a strategy you’ll want to use carefully. If you cram too many links into your content, use a lot of links that point to irrelevant pages, only include links that promote products, or even neglect to optimize your anchor text — your search engine rankings will likely suffer.

Instead, look to incorporate links where they fit naturally, and to point readers towards high-quality websites that already rank well in SERPs. Smart use of both internal links and external links is key to achieving the best SEO results possible.

8. Create A Sitemap

A sitemap is a list of pages on your website that are accessible to search engine crawlers as well as users. Having one makes the process of crawling and indexing your website faster and more accurate, which is preferred by search engines and can boost your standing with them.

Sitemaps are usually written in XML, a metalanguage that crawlers can understand and transmit to search engines. Thankfully, you don’t need to know any XML to create your own sitemap.

You can visit Google’s page on how to build and submit a sitemap for a walkthrough of the whole process of creating and sharing your sitemap with Google Search Console.

However, it gets even easier if you’re running a WordPress site. Simply install the XML Sitemap Generator for Google plugin. This plugin will automatically notify Google (and dozens of other search engines, for that matter) of this new crawler-friendly way for it to browse your site’s content.

9. Apply Heading Tags Wisely

While a sitemap is useful for helping search engine crawlers see how your site is organized, it doesn’t help them make sense of the content itself. For that, you’ll need to use heading tags — or header tags.

WordPress makes it easy to apply heading tags so you can make website content easier to read. Though how it looks will vary based on your WordPress theme, when you go to add or edit content on your site there will often be an option to create headings that give content hierarchy and make it easier to comprehend.

Using these headings to structure your content accomplishes two things:

1. For human readers, it provides a visual benefit by breaking up your text and making it easier to read. It may also keep visitors on your website longer and inspire them to read your content more deeply, as they can scroll right to the sections in which they’re most interested.
2. For crawlers, good headers make it quick to understand how your content is organized and what it’s about, which is why they pay so much attention to them. So when creating SEO-ready posts and pages, don’t forget to use WordPress’ heading options correctly and consistently.

10. Write High-Value, Long-Form Content For Humans

Google and other search engines keep their algorithms mostly secret, both because they don’t want people to be able to exploit their weaknesses and because they are constantly changing.

That means any schemes for gaming a search engine aren’t going to last long.

You can come up with a lot of ways to catch a search engine’s attention, but setting up your website to appeal to robots and robots only ignores why search engines exist in the first place: to help people find solutions.

A search engine’s goal is to match people with the piece of content most relevant to what they’re looking for. So, above all, content that people find helpful is going to perform the best.

People will return to the same helpful tutorial or storefront over and over. And if they really like something, they’ll link it on their own site or share it with friends. As content gets linked and visited more and more, search engines will take notice and rank it highly.

In addition to value-adding content, search engines also tend to seek out more lengthy content.

That doesn’t mean shorter content never ranks highly. However, longer content has an advantage because search engines consider it more likely to be useful. Plus, the more comprehensive your content is, the better it can communicate its value to crawlers via more keywords, headings and subheadings, links, and so on.

Longer content is also valuable to readers, can increase your perceived credibility, and encourages visitors to spend more time on your site.

So, when building your content marketing strategy, plan to create pieces that are as in-depth as possible. There are many ways to do this, but the skyscraper technique — improving on existing content by making yours better and sharing it widely — is a powerful method worth checking out.

11. Keep Content Fresh

Along with quality and length, it’s believed that Google’s algorithms consider the freshness of content when deciding how to rank your pages.

Older, high-quality content will do well, of course. But, a boost may be given to some newer content that’s more likely to be accurate and relevant to searchers.

Therefore, if you want your site to do consistently well in SERPs over time, it will likely help to add new content regularly. Try planning a blog schedule to keep yourself on track and varying the types of content you create to keep yourself and your visitors interested.

Also, don’t neglect older posts and pages. Keep your blog fresh by updating your existing content. This not only ensures it’s up to date for readers, it also increases site-wide content freshness.

Off-Page SEO Tricks

Off-page or off-site SEO refers to all elements that affect page rankings outside of your website.

Off-page SEO is naturally harder to control than what you do on your own website. As you’ll see, strategies like thinking local, getting social, and more can really shape how people visit and interact with your website — and in turn how search engines perceive the value of your site and choose to rank it as a result.

12. Practice Responsible Backlinking

Backlinks have a bad reputation in some circles because overzealous marketers have abused them over the years.

The reason they’re often misunderstood is that there’s a whole internet underbelly of so-called SEO companies that you can pay to link to your site on their networks of low-quality articles.

Don’t fall for the charade! This is a move that’s sure to get you on Google’s bad side.

Backlinking doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Literally, a backlink is just an incoming hyperlink from one web page to another website, and there are ways to earn them fair and square.

Our advice is to stick to organic linking instead of the paid kind.

If you provide a service, encourage customers to write reviews on other sites. If you’re a blogger, ask another blogger if you can write a guest post for them and link back to your site in the post. If you use WordPress comments, make sure your comment username links to your blog. You can even engage in today’s hottest digital marketing trend: influencer partnerships.

The top results on Google tend to have more backlinks than all the rest. It’s clear that backlinks are a huge element search engines look for when assigning authority and ranking to websites. If you write great content and participate in online communities, you can develop a healthy ecosystem of backlinks over time.

13. Guest Post

We mentioned guest posting as a strategy for building out your backlinks. In addition, creating quality content for other outlets is also a way to build credibility in your space all while increasing brand recognition.

Plus, as long as you’re careful about who you partner with on guest blogs, you should be getting in front of readers who are very interested in what you have to offer. If your content piques their interest, you may be able to drive tons of soon-to-be loyal customers right to your website.

One key element Google uses to rate the quality of search results is EEAT:

• Experience
• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

When you’re invited by other website owners to create high-value guest articles that link back to your own website, you’re signaling to Google that you’ve established experience, expertise, authority, and trust in your field.

To find guest posting opportunities, connect with other website owners in a similar space. If you need help locating them, here are some phrases you can type into Google:

• “your niche” + write for us
• “your niche” + guest contributor
• “your niche” + blogs accepting guest posts

14. Get Social

Google has made it pretty clear that activity on social networks does not directly impact SEO or search ranking at this time.

However, building a robust social community is a great way to expand the reach of your content, which means more engaged traffic that then shows search engines just how great your website is for the right people.

Think about it, don’t you sometimes use social media to search up online services you’re looking for, or product reviews? Social media sites have become search engines of sorts. So sharing your content to them regularly is an ideal way to get in front of the right eyeballs.

Our advice is to learn which platforms your ideal audience uses. From there, stick to the few where you can engage the most regularly and authentically to drive website visits — and SEO.

15. Boost Local SEO With Your Google Business Profile

Local SEO enables website owners to attract the folks in their area who can benefit from their services or goods.

To get the most bang for your buck with local SEO, focus on your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). This will help you show up in the Local Pack — the set of listings and the map that appear at the top of Google when you search for a term that indicates you’re looking for local businesses. In other words, it’s what you see first when you search for something like “ice cream near me.”

There are tons of factors to play around with to make this profile the best it can be, from your business description to photos, posts, the Q&A section, reviews (which you can manage), and more.

For a step-by-step walkthrough on Google Business Profile optimization, check out this robust guide from BrightLocal.

Domain SEO Tactics

Your domain is your website’s name and address, which is unique to your site and critical to your SEO.

It’s made up of several parts:

• Domain Name: This is what most think of as your website’s name. It’s how search engines and people will know your site, so choose wisely and consider keywords, your business name, etc.
• Top-Level Domain: Your TLD, sometimes referred to as an extension or domain suffix, appears at the end of a domain name and can take many forms (.com, .org, .edu, etc.).
• Root Domain: This is the combination of your TLD and domain name. It will most likely be the web address people type in to find your site.
• Subdomain: Additional sections of your website that use the same root domain are subdomains. The most common is “www.” Both www.yourwebsite.com and blog.yourwebsite.com use subdomains.
• Protocol: Protocols such as “https” enable the connection between two locations on a network.

We tell you all of this so that you understand the tactics in this section for improving your domain SEO.

Domain SEO is the practice of considering your domain’s length, phrasing, structure, and more to build a space on the internet that your target audience finds clickable and trustworthy, boosting its value in the eyes of search engines.

16. Stick To A Single Domain & Subdomain

Contrary to what some may think, there’s no guarantee nor is there much good evidence that the ranking of your root domain will transfer to your subdomains.

On the contrary, what we’ve found is that you’re more likely to see a better ranking if you keep all your content together on a single domain and subdomain, like www.yourwebsite.com.

In other words, you don’t necessarily need to break your website down into subdomains like blog.yourwebsite.com or shop.yourwebsite.com unless you have a good reason.

The exception to this could be a language-specific version of a site, such as en.yoursite.com.

17. Apply Keyword Research Wisely

When it comes to incorporating keywords into your domain name, there are a few key things to understand (see what we did there?).

It’s not as simple as crafting your domain name around exact keywords. Consider URLs of yesteryear, like “best-insurance-quotes.com.” While this worked once upon a time, today search engines associate these keyword-stuffed domain names with lower site quality and give them lower rankings.

So while you can still use keywords wisely in your domain name, we recommend keeping it to a minimum and not trying to go for the exact phrases that searchers may type into Google.

Smartly-used keywords within your domain name can help internet users understand what to expect when they navigate to your site, and help Google associate your site with their searched-for keyword.

In addition, your website should have keyword-focused content, a strong brand identity, a smart structure, and a positive user experience. All of which back up your domain name to portray the quality of your website and minimize your bounce rate.

There are dozens of great SEO tools to help you figure out which keywords can help your business. Again, Google’s Keyword Planner is a good place for beginners to start.

18. Use A Simple Top-Level Domain

Even though there are plenty of TLD options for your domain, .com is the most common on the web, and the most familiar for internet users.

Therefore, it’s probably a good choice to stick with .com, a generally trusted and accessible (not to mention, brandable) TLD for a positive and reliable user experience.

That’s not to say that there can’t be any good reasons to choose another top-level domain, especially if you’ve decided to have more than one domain. Your TLD won’t negatively influence your SEO ranking directly, but remember to consider that some lesser-known TLDs (like .biz and .info) are often associated with spam and may therefore rank lower and receive less traffic.

What if your ideal .com TLD is not available for purchase? Try a country code top-level domain like .uk for the United Kingdom and .in for India — or popular options like .xyz or .store.

19. Canonicalize URLs

It’s important to know the SEO impact of duplicate content.

When multiple copies of similar or the same content exist on your website, it can trip up search engine crawlers, confusing them on which page is the original. Duplication may also cause search engines to miss your unique content, so it never sees the light of the first page of a search engine.

We definitely don’t want that.

However, it’s possible to have similar or even the same pieces of content and still have an optimized website, as each unique URL exists as a separate page in the eyes of search engines.

Canonicalization is the process of attaching a canonical annotation (often called a “tag”) to a URL that tells search engines “Index this one!” It indicates which URLs you want search engines to show on their results pages, making it easier for them to understand and rank your site and for you to tailor your site’s presentation online.

There are multiple ways to specify a canonical URL, which you can learn from Google’s handy guide.

20. Make It Easy To Read & Click

As important as your domain is for brand building and ranking performance, it’s not smart to pick your domain details willy-nilly — you’ll want to consider both computer and human processing capabilities.

Meaning, is it written and spelled with search engine algorithms in mind? And, is it also readable and appealing to those human visitors looking to find you?

An easy-to-read, accessible, and user-friendly domain contributes largely to positive user experiences and clicks. That in turn warrants more successful outcomes for your site.

Use these tips to make it easier for people and search engines to find, understand, and rank your site:

How Will You Grow Your SEO?

As you can see, SEO encompasses a huge range of strategies and techniques — so it can understandably be a little bit intimidating.

Fortunately, you don’t need to become an SEO expert overnight to help your site rank higher on SERPs.

If you want to begin seeing results, all you need to do is start with a handful of the above tips, building up your efforts and layering on more new tactics as you see success.

Do you have any questions or need support improving your WordPress website’s SEO?

Our SEO marketing pro services team provides expert content creation, creative SEO tactics, and continuous tracking and improvement to help boost the quality of your site and the traffic it attracts.

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The post Improve Your Rankings Using These 20 SEO Techniques appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

If you already use WordPress, you’re probably curious about how to stay on the cutting edge by adding AI tools, like ChatGPT, to your site. Lucky for you, it’s easier than you might think. There are a few different ways to add ChatGPT to WordPress, and we’ll walk you through them, step-by-step, in this guide. Let’s get started.

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. It’s a type of artificial intelligence (AI), specifically a model called GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer), which uses machine learning based on algorithms to produce human-like text. It’s trained on a wide range of internet text but doesn’t know any specific documents or sources from its training set.

Several versions of ChatGPT are currently available, including GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4. GPT-4 is the most advanced, capable of understanding and generating responses to a wide array of prompts, from answering questions and writing essays to creating short stories and poems.

You’ve probably heard a lot of people talking about ChatGPT lately. OpenAI released GPT-3 to the general public in 2020, and in the last few years, there’s been a ton of buzz over generative AI and its impressive ability to mimic human language. People have been speculating about everything that AI tools like ChatGPT can do–from replacing human customer service agents on e-commerce sites to writing films and TV shows. We still don’t really know what the future holds for AI, but people are always trying new and exciting experiments with AI tools.

How Do You Use ChatGPT?

Using ChatGPT is pretty straightforward. Here’s a basic guide:

Step 1: Write Your Prompt

You begin by typing in a prompt, which can be a question, a statement, or even a request for the model to write in a particular style. For example, you might ask, “What is the capital of France?” or ask the model to generate a short story about a puppy.

Step 2: Wait For The Response

After you type in your prompt and press enter, the model will generate a response. This should take a few seconds.

Step 3: Continue The Conversation

You can continue the conversation with more prompts. ChatGPT will follow along and keep track of the context within a conversation so it can respond coherently to follow-up questions or prompts (for the most part–it’s still a robot, not a human, and the technology isn’t perfect).

Step 4: Guide The Model

It’s unlikely that you’ll get exactly the right output every time you ask a question–your ChatGPT workflow should include guiding the model toward what you’re looking for. In other words, if it isn’t giving the responses you want, you can try to make your instructions more explicit. For example, if you’re asking for a short story and you want a happy ending, you might say, “Write a short story about a puppy with a happy ending.” The clearer you are, the more likely you’ll get your desired response.

Why Add ChatGPT To WordPress?

There are several ways that adding ChatGPT to your WordPress website can enhance it, adding more interactivity, a better user experience, or improved accessibility.

ChatGPT comes with many advantages. One of the main draws is that it can do a wide variety of things–it can be a content writer, WooCommerce product description generator, image generator, AI chatbot, and so much more, depending on how you choose to use it.

As for why you should use ChatGPT over other AI models? Here are a few things that set OpenAI’s GPT apart from other AI tools that are available right now:

• Natural language processing, which basically means ChatGPT is able to respond to prompts with text that sounds like a human being wrote it. This makes it great for answering website visitors’ questions in a conversational way.
• Integrations. It’s easy (and affordable) to get your own OpenAI API key, which then allows you to integrate ChatGPT into your live chat settings–as well as a ton of other apps and tools for different use cases (more on those below). Plus, since the API is linked to your own OpenAI account, you still get a lot of control over things like which models are used, which can affect the experience users have on your site.

Things ChatGPT Can Do On Your WordPress Site

There’s so much that ChatGPT can do on your WordPress site. Here are a few ideas:

• Write blog posts and website copy: ChatGPT is mainly an AI content generator–meaning it can help you draft blog posts, headers, meta descriptions, product descriptions, social media posts, content ideas, and other text.
• Customer service: ChatGPT can be used to build an AI chatbot that can handle basic customer service inquiries. It can provide quick and automated responses to frequently asked questions, saving you time and resources.
• User engagement: An interactive AI chatbot can keep users engaged, providing information and entertainment.
• Accessibility: AI can help make your website more accessible by providing another way for users to interact with your content, especially for those who may have difficulty with traditional navigation methods.
• 24/7 availability: AI tools embedded in your WordPress site can be available around the clock, providing immediate assistance to users even outside of your normal business hours. This is increasingly important in the digital age when people worldwide may need to access your site across different time zones.

How To Add ChatGPT To WordPress: 2 Methods

Ready to use ChatGPT to power your WordPress site? There are two main ways you can do so. Check them out below.

Method 1: Manually Creating Content With ChatGPT

The first way to add ChatGPT content to your WordPress site is to manually create the content and input it into your CMS. Many bloggers and content creators do this to create high-quality content in bulk for their websites, and you can, too.

To use this method, go to ChatGPT and choose the model you want to use. Then, start by asking ChatGPT to generate an outline or a brief introduction for a piece of content related to your website’s topic or purpose. For example, if your website is about gardening and you want to write about “how to grow roses,” you might prompt ChatGPT with something like, “Create an outline for an article about growing roses” or, “Write an introductory paragraph for an article on how to grow roses.”

Review the output generated by ChatGPT. If it’s not what you were looking for, you can try again with a more specific prompt or ask the model a new question. Repeat this process until you have a complete outline or draft.

You can also include instructions on the voice and tone of the output. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to make the writing “crisp,” “professional,” or “conversational.” You can also include instructions in your prompt for optimizing the output for certain keywords, or writing for a specific audience. Experiment with different prompts, and you’ll likely get better and better outputs over time.

Remember that while ChatGPT is a powerful tool for content creation, you’ll likely need to fine-tune the responses you get from it. Guide the model through different prompts to get the best content you can, and then edit it carefully before posting it to your WordPress site. While ChatGPT can produce coherent and grammatically correct text, it can make mistakes or generate text that is unclear or off-topic. Your role here is to ensure the content is accurate, engaging, and matches your website’s style and tone.

After you’ve made your edits, your content is ready to be published on your website. Add any necessary images, links, or other media, format the text as needed, and then hit publish!

Method 2: Using ChatGPT Plugins For WordPress

If you don’t want to input content created by ChatGPT manually, or you want to use GPT for more than just content, ChatGPT WordPress plugins might be a suitable resource for you.

WordPress plugins are pieces of software that you can add to a WordPress website to enhance its functionality or add new features. They are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress.

Plugins make it easy for users to add features to their website without knowing any code. There are thousands of free and premium plugins available for WordPress, allowing you to customize your site to fit your needs. Many of them harness the power of ChatGPT through OpenAI’s API.

Integrating ChatGPT with your WordPress site via a plugin involves a few general steps–but keep in mind that the specific process will vary depending on the plugin you choose. Here’s what you’ll need to do:

Step 1: Install and activate the plugin. You can download most plugins from the WordPress directory. Once downloaded to your dashboard, you’ll need to activate it.

Step 2: Configure the plugin. Head to your new plugin’s settings and input any necessary information to tailor it to your site and your needs. For plugins that use ChatGPT, you’ll probably need to enter an API key from OpenAI to enable the connection.

Step 3: Test the integration. After you set up your plugin, test it thoroughly from a site user’s perspective to ensure it meets the intended needs. You might need to adjust some settings–or even look for a new plugin if the one you tried isn’t working like you want it to.

Step 4: Monitor and adjust. Over time, monitor the plugin (and any others you use) and make adjustments as needed. This is especially important for plugins that use fast-changing technology like AI. You may receive feedback from site visitors, find areas where your AI tool could be more effective, or need to update settings over time to meet changing needs.

5 ChatGPT Plugins For WordPress You Should Know

1. Jetpack AI Assistant

Writer’s block? Never again. Content creation becomes effortless with the Jetpack AI Assistant, a plugin that brings AI directly into your WordPress Editor.

Jetpack AI Assistant allows you to enter your ChatGPT prompts right into a text box inside your WordPress Editor. The AI does the rest, generating blog posts, landing page copy, headlines, calls-to-action, dad jokes–whatever you need on the page. It’s similar to the first method we covered in this article, only it saves you a step–rather than generating the content in ChatGPT, then manually moving it over to WordPress, the JetPack plugin lets you just generate the content right in WordPress.

You can create tables and lists to organize your content, or generate an attention-grabbing title. If the output isn’t exactly what you need, you can ask the AI Assistant to try again–or refine the tone with a new prompt. There are even some built-in tones you can try: informal, optimistic, humorous, confident, passionate, and more.

Price: The Jetpack plugin has many different features and bundles at different price points. Just the AI block starts at $10 a month, billed monthly, after a free trial.

2. AI Mojo

If you want an AI content writer that will create keyword-optimized blog posts for your WordPress site, AI Mojo is a popular choice. Known as a Bring Your Own Keyword (or BYOK) plugin, it does what the name would suggest: takes the keyword you input and writes a comprehensive, search-optimized blog post.

One great thing about AI Mojo is that it comes loaded with pre-built templates, so you can generate complete blog posts–or pretty much any other type of search-optimized content you need. There are templates for outlines, introductions, conclusions, headers, and more.

Plus, the AI Mojo Wizard helps you refine your prompts and the outputs. You can paraphrase, rewrite, or shorten existing content and source images to go with your prompts.

Price: The AI Mojo plugin is free. However, using it with ChatGPT requires licensing an OpenAI API key.

3. AI Engine

AI Engine is one of the most versatile AI plugins for WordPress sites. It allows you to use ChatGPT to power a range of new tools and features on your site, including a content generator, a chatbot, a usage dashboard, and more.

AI Engine’s content generator can write just about anything you might need for a WordPress site, from blog posts to social media copy to WooCommerce product descriptions–with search engine optimization (SEO) tools built in. It also comes with a brainstorming feature that helps you quickly generate ideas in bulk.

With AI Engine, you can also embed a chatbot into your site, powered by ChatGPT and fully customizable in popup, window, or fullscreen modes. The plugin has built-in statistics that will help you monitor your OpenAI ChatGPT usage in real time, giving you insight into how site visitors interact with your chatbot.

Price: AI Engine has both free and premium versions. Premium plans start at $49. Free plans still require having an OpenAI API key.

4. ChatBot For WordPress

If you need a chatbot with features designed for e-commerce sellers, ChatBot for WordPress might be the plugin for you. With it, you can build forms, collect user feedback, collect personal details from users through conversations, provide live chat support, and more.

This is one of the more powerful plug-and-play chatbots you can get for your WordPress site. In addition to ChatGPT, it also integrates with Google’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI through Dialog Flow V2. You can use it to interact with users on your site, while also connecting it to Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and other platforms.

One of the most impressive capabilities ChatBot for WordPress has is the ability to anticipate and respond to certain visitor behaviors. For example, it can retarget visitors who have come to your site before, offering them a discount for placing a repeat order. It can even detect when a shopper is about to leave your site, and offer them a special, targeted offer to try to get them to stay.

Price: ChatBot for WordPress is a premium plugin, with prices starting at $29 for a standard license.

5. AI Assistant With ChatGPT

For an AI chatbot that can help your users and you, try AI Assistant with ChatGPT. This WordPress plugin can function as a chatbot on the front end of your website that your visitors interact with–but what’s more than that is it can integrate with the back end, too.

That means that when you’re working on your site, you can ask it questions like, “How do I post on WordPress?” or, “How do I enable/disable a theme?” AI Assistant will quickly generate user-friendly tutorials for you–no more tabbing away to search Google for answers to your WordPress questions.

AI Assistant with ChatGPT has plenty of other features–it can generate content right from the chat window, create text-to-speak responses, and provide 24/7 support to your website visitors.

Price: It has both free and premium versions, with premium licenses starting at just $49 for lifetime use.

6. AIomatic

If your goal is to refresh old content or supplement your ongoing content efforts with AI tools, AIomatic is a plugin you’ll want to check out. When you configure it, you can choose to integrate it with AiomaticAPI or OpenAI, and the plugin will pull content directly from the tool you choose.

Then, use the Keyword Replacer Tool to automatically generate affiliate links based on specific keywords.

Or, use shortcode or Gutenberg blocks to quickly insert AI-generated text into a new or existing blog post.

AIomatic even automatically generates featured images for your posts, pulling from royalty-free sites like Pixabay and Pexels.

Price: AIomatic doesn’t have a free version. The premium license starts at $49, which includes six months of support.

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