The Creator of WordPress Shares His Secret to Running the Ultimate Remote Workplace

A great many companies allow their employees to work from home now, but few are as committed to the concept at Automattic, the software company behind WordPress. Automattic’s more than 700 employees are spread across the globe in 62 countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Last year, it closed a San Francisco office because not enough employees were showing up. Instead of offices, Automattic provides workers with a $250 a month stipend to spend at co-working spaces, or in a Starbucks.
Matt Mullenweg, the company’s founder (his first name gives Automattic its two Ts) argues that a distributed workplace, as he calls it, is not just good business but is more ethically responsible, as well. Offices he said, “are very exclusionary environments, by definition, and the only people who can contribute are people who can physically be at the office and at certain hours of the day.”
One one level, that excludes anyone who’s life circumstances mean they can’t commute to work in a conventional office, Mullenweg said. “At a larger level, there’s the 99.9% of the world that isn’t physically located in a place where they can make it to that office,”
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/17492/the-creator-of-wordpress-shares-his-secret-to-running-the-ultimate-remote-workplace

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/the-creator-of-wordpress-shares-his-secret-to-running-the-ultimate-remote-workplace/

Logic Hop launches: content personalisation available for WordPress

Logic Hop is the best content personalization plugin for WordPress and we’ve just launched even more features with the release of Logic Hop 3.0. Simple to install and quick to get started, Logic Hop takes care of all your personalized marketing. Personalized marketing: the future of WordPress websites
Traditionally, your website could only say one thing to all visitors. But your visitors aren’t all the same, and they aren’t all at the same stage in the buying process.
Sure you could try getting around this by keeping your site regularly updated, studying user behavior, adding more blog posts, creating multiple landing pages, and hoping the right people see the right thing at the right time.
Or you could take control over who sees what by using personalized marketing – personalizing what your website visitors see based on actual data, including browser history, on-site behavior, purchase history, user preference, and more.
If you run a WooCommerce store, this might mean presenting a past buyer with a $5-off coupon the next time they visit your site. If you run a job board, it could mean prompting a repeat visitor to go ahead and apply.
According to a recent survey
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/17491/logic-hop-launches-content-personalisation-available-for-wordpress

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/logic-hop-launches-content-personalisation-available-for-wordpress/

How to Create an Event Registration Page in WordPress

Do you want to add an event registration page on your WordPress site? Recently one of our readers asked if they can allow users to sign up and buy tickets online for their events. In this article, we will show you how to easily create an event registration page in WordPress and sell tickets online.

Why Create an Event Registration Page in WordPress?

There are plenty of third-party event registration and ticketing tools available in the market. You can also add Facebook events to your WordPress site.

However, many third-party event registration and ticketing services will charge a small fee for each ticket you sell. This quickly adds up, and you could end up paying a lot more than expected.

You will have limited options to promote your event on social media and even on your own website. Some event management services will insist on displaying their branding in your event emails, widgets, and tickets.

You can avoid some of these issues by creating your own event registration page in WordPress. This will allow you to collect online payments directly, store attendee information on your website, and use your own brand name when promoting the event.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily create an event registration page in WordPress.

Creating an Event Registration Page in WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

WPForms is a paid plugin, and you will need at least their PRO plan to access the PayPal add-on, which we will be using in this tutorial.

Upon activation, you need to visit the WPForms page in your WordPress admin area and click on the Add New button.

On the form builder, first you need to enter a title for your event registration form. Below that, you will see a list of ready-to-use form templates that you can select. Click on the Billing / Order Form template to continue.

This template will set up a basic online order form asking users for their information like name, email, phone, address, available items, and more.

You can point and click on any field to edit or delete it. You can also add new form fields from the column on your left.

To add tickets, click on the available items field and change it to attendees or tickets.

Your users will see the calculated price in the Total Amount field. Next, you need to set up the payment method.

Let’s go ahead and connect your event registration form to a payment service provider.

You need to click on the Payments tab in the left column and then click on the ‘Addons page’ link.

Note: You can also visit the addons page from your WordPress admin area by going to WPForms » Addons.

This will take you to the addons page. WPForms comes with addons for PayPal and Stripe. You can install either or both of them.

Note: In order to use Stripe, your website must have HTTPS / SSL enabled.

Click on the install button below the addon and then click on the activate button.

Once activated, you need to go back to Payments section to configure payment services on your form. Select your payment service and enable it.

You need to add the details like PayPal email address, mode, payment type, cancel URL, and more.

If you are using Stripe, then you will need to enter the API keys. For detailed instructions see how to use the Stripe addon with WPForms.

You will also need to enter a credit card field to your form before you can set up Stripe. Simply switch to the ‘Fields’ section and add a credit card field.

After setting up payments, let’s set up notification emails for both you and your users.

Simply go to Settings » Notifications and click on the Add New Notification button.

In the Send To Email Address section, you need to select user’s email from Smart Tags to send the ticket receipt.

Now you need to scroll down to the Message section and add your custom message with the fields that you created for the registration from using Smart Tags.

Once you are done, you can save your changes and close the form builder.

You can display this form on any page on your WordPress site. Let’s create a new event registration page in WordPress to display the form.

On the page edit screen, you will see a new button labeled ‘Add Form’ just above the editor.

Clicking on it will bring up a popup where you will be able to select and insert the event registration form you created earlier.

The plugin will now add the required shortcode to your page editor. You can save your changes and click on the preview to see your event registration page in action.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create an event registration page in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the best WordPress booking plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create an Event Registration Page in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

source http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-create-an-event-registration-page-in-wordpress/

What data do you need to find, pitch and win new SEO clients?

For SEO agencies and independent consultants looking for new business, a two-step strategy might be all you need to demonstrate your efficacy and separate from competitors. First, identify prospective clients that are well-suited to your offering. Second, send them a pitch that unequivocally communicates the potential results they can achieve from your services. The key to both is data and, conveniently, the same data that you use to recognize great potential clients in the first step can also be used to make a powerful case as to what your services can deliver for them.

Identifying your ideal SEO clients

The businesses you probably want to approach are those that are tuned in to how SEO works and have already invested in it, but that still have a veritable need for your services in order to achieve their full SEO potential. Naturally, a brand that has already climbed to the top of the most relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) isn’t a great candidate because they simply don’t need the help. Nor is a business with no SEO experience and no real SERP presence; they might require a particularly hefty effort to be brought up to speed, and perhaps won’t be as likely to invest in – and commit to – an ongoing SEO engagement.

While investigating potential business opportunities within this desired Goldilocks Zone of current SEO success, you might also be looking to target companies in the industries that your agency has previously done well in – both to leverage those past successes and demonstrate relevance to prospective clients with an adjacent audience. This makes it easy for prospects to see themselves in the shoes of those clients you’ve already helped, and for you to apply and repeat your tried-and-tested techniques.

Putting this advice together, you can begin the client search process by looking at keywords important to industries you’re familiar with. You will probably want to explore companies within the mid-range SERPs (ranks 10–30) that could contend for the top spots if they had better professional assistance. You can then perform an analysis of these sites to determine their potential for SEO improvement. For example, a potential client that derives a great deal of its traffic from a keyword in which it still has room to grow and move up in the SERPs is ideal.

Use data to make your pitches irrefutable

While a slick email pitch can go a long way toward winning over new clients, it’s hard to beat the power of data-driven evidence (of course, your pitch can succeed on both style and substance). Be sure to use specific insights about the client’s SEO performance in your pitch – adding visuals will help make your case more clear and digestible. Also, consider using an SEO case study focused on your success in an overlapping space to offer an example of the results they could expect. Your pitch should culminate with a call-to-action for the potential client to get in touch to go deeper into the data and discuss how to proceed.

There are a number of approaches to framing your pitch. Here are four examples of different appeals you can use:

• Show how you can increase the client’s share of voice for a high value keyword
• Tell the business about keywords they’re missing out on
• Show where the client could (and should) be building backlinks
• Explain technical SEO issues the client has and how to fix them.

Show how you can increase the client’s share of voice for a high value keyword

In SERPs, holding a top ranking is often exponentially superior. For example, it’s not unusual to see the top result capture 30% of all traffic (or ‘share of voice’) for a given keyword, while the tenth result receives a mere 1%.

Craft a pitch that pairs a result like this with data on how much traffic the keyword actually delivers to the company’s site, and the vast potential to multiply that traffic by improving their share of voice for that keyword becomes clear.

Tell the business about keywords they’re missing out on

Where a client has gaps in their keyword strategy, demonstrating your ability to fill them and deliver traffic the prospect didn’t realize they could be earning goes a long way towards proving your agency’s expertise and value. These keywords can be found by examining sites that share an audience overlap with the potential client, and then studying the keywords they rank highly on. This investigation may yield unexpected results, reinforcing that your agency can drive results in areas the client never would have thought of without your expertise.

Show where the client could (and should) be building backlinks

Discover gaps where a potential client’s competitors are outmaneuvering and outperforming them when it comes to establishing links from other sites – and then report these within the framework of a strategy that will close these gaps at every level. If a client clearly isn’t pursuing this strategy (i.e. if the average competitor has multiple times their backlinks), be sure to communicate the value of competing on this front.

Explain technical SEO issues the client has and how to fix them

To use this approach, perform an audit of the potential client’s site to identify opportunities to improve its SEO practices. This is especially important if your firm specializes in these services.

Providing specific tips and guidance serves as a substantial upfront gesture, and clearly demonstrates the value of an ongoing relationship.

Conclusions

Conveying the specific remedies and additions that you would pursue to optimize a client’s site and search strategy serves as a strong introduction and major first step toward becoming indispensable to the client as the one hired to execute a winning SEO game plan. Be sure to personalize your pitches as much as possible to stand out from competitors, while ensuring that compelling data makes up the crux of your appeal and the proof that you’re the firm to help that business achieve its full SEO potential.

Kim Kosaka is the Director of Marketing at Alexa.com, which provides insights that agencies can use to help clients win their audience and accelerate growth.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/31/what-data-do-you-need-to-find-pitch-and-win-new-seo-clients/

Ultimate List of WordPress Stats, Facts, and Other Research

Recently one of our readers asked us to provide some WordPress stats, facts, and research to help convince their boss on why they should use WordPress. Even though WordPress is the most popular website builder in the world, sometimes popularity alone is not enough for users to make up their mind. In this article, we have compiled an ultimate list of WordPress stats, facts, and other research that will help you convince others to start using WordPress.

The Basics: What is WordPress?

WordPress is an open source software that allows users to make a website. It is available for download as a free software and can be installed on any WordPress hosting company.

It’s important not to confuse WordPress (the software) with WordPress.com which is a hosted solution. To learn more, see the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org in our side-by-side comparison.

It all started when two users of a blogging software called b2/cafelog decided to take the software in a new direction. The idea was coined by Matt Mullenweg who was then joined by Mark Little and together they released the first version of WordPress on May 27, 2003.

Since then, WordPress has evolved from a simple blogging software to a CMS, website builder, eCommerce platform, and more. To learn more, see our article about the history of WordPress.

WordPress is a community software and thousands of users from all over the world have contributed to it by submitting code, fixing bugs, translating, testing, and helping others use it.

Let’s take a look at some WordPress stats and facts to see how WordPress is helping people do great things on the internet.

How Popular is WordPress?

WordPress is immensely popular and is used by millions of people all over the world. Here are some numbers to put things in perspective.

1. WordPress powers more than 30% of all websites on the internet.
2. It also holds nearly 60% of CMS market share. No other website builder software comes close.
3. WordPress powers websites for big name brands including Disney, Sony, Facebook, and more.
4. 14.7% of top 100 Websites are powered by WordPress.
5. More than 22% of all new domain names in the United States are running WordPress.
6. Each day more than 1014 WordPress sites and 496 WooCommerce stores join the top 10 million websites tracked by W3Techs.

WordPress Plugins

Plugins are like apps for your WordPress website. You can install them to add new features to your site and extend its functionality. To learn more, see our guide on what are WordPress plugins and how do they work?.

Here are some mind-blowing facts about WordPress plugins, which show just how massive the WordPress ecosystem is.

1. There are more than 50,000 free WordPress plugins on WordPress.org plugin directory alone.
2. 3 of those plugins are installed on 5 million+ websites.
3. 19 top WordPress plugins are installed on more than 1 million websites.
4. The most popular eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce is installed on more than 3 million websites with 43 million all time downloads.

These stats are from WordPress.org plugin directory alone. Many plugin developers sell premium versions of their plugins from their own websites.

With a healthy plugins ecosystem, it means that you can add custom functionality to your website at a fraction of the cost of custom development.

WordPress Themes

Themes control the appearance of a WordPress website. These are WordPress specific website design templates that you can install on your website to change its look.

There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes available offering WordPress users an endless combination of design, layout, color schemes, and features.

1. Themes were first introduced with WordPress 1.5 back in 2005, with the first new default WordPress theme called Kubrick
2. Just like plugins, there are both free and paid WordPress themes that you can install.
3. WordPress.org’s free theme directory has more than 5,800 free WordPress themes.
4. According to Builtwith, Genesis theme framework is the most popular theme used by 17% of websites analyzed by their service.
5. Thousands of themes are sold by Commercial WordPress theme shops with an average price of $40 per theme.

WordPress Security

WordPress is the most commonly used CMS software in the world, which also makes it a common target of hacking attempts, DDOS attacks, malware, and trojans.

1. According to Sucuri, a leading website security company, 83% of all CMS based websites that were hacked in 2017 were running WordPress. This number isn’t surprising considering that WordPress holds 60% of CMS market share.
2. Sucuri also reported that 39% of hacked WordPress websites were using an outdated version of the software. That’s why you should always use the latest version of WordPress on your website.
3. Nearly 50% WordPress sites are affected by a security vulnerability caused by an outdated or poorly coded WordPress plugin or theme
4. Around 8% of WordPress sites were hacked due to a weak password.

You can make your WordPress site as secure as possible by following some basic security best practices. To learn more, see our complete WordPress security guide for step by step instructions.

Often the stats above cause WordPress to get a bad reputation, but the reality is that WordPress itself is not insecure. WordPress core goes through rigorous security audits, and it’s more secure than many other platforms out there.

The only fault WordPress has is that it’s popular which leads to stats like above.

WordPress Community

WordPress has a massive user base spread across all over the world. It is used by not just businesses, but also governments, schools and colleges, non-profits, and more.

As an open source project, WordPress is driven by a global community of users. This means that anyone can contribute to the project in many different ways.

1. WordPress translation community has it fully translated into 56 languages, partially translated in dozens more.
2. In 2017, WordPress communities around the world organized 128 WordCamp events, in 48 countries, and sold 39,625 tickets.
3. In 2017, Local WordPress communities organized 4,379 meetups in 73 countries

If you want to contribute to WordPress, then see our guide on how to get involved with WordPress project.

The WordPress Economy

WordPress has a thriving billion dollar ecosystem that creates thousands of jobs all over the world. This also includes freelancers, developers, and companies that sell WordPress related products and services.

1. At the time of writing this article, freelancer.com website alone had 564,010 WordPress jobs posted out of these 13,680 were open.
2. Thousands of WordPress jobs are currently open on many popular freelancing websites.
3. Average hourly rate for WordPress developers can be anywhere between $20-$100 per hour depending on their expertise and job at hand.
4. A custom WordPress theme with its own unique design and plugins can cost $10,000 and it may increase depending on project’s requirements.
5. There are hundreds of small and large businesses, agencies, and developers selling WordPress related products. See our list of the most influential WordPress businesses and companies and what they do.

We hope this article helped you discover some new WordPress stats, facts, and interesting research. You may also want to see our article + infograph on 25 interesting facts about WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Ultimate List of WordPress Stats, Facts, and Other Research appeared first on WPBeginner.

source http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/ultimate-list-of-wordpress-stats-facts-and-other-research/

Everything you need to create your WordPress LearnDash site!

In the first part of this article, we will have a quick look at what an LMS is and who needs to use one. In addition, we will go through the list of the LMS Plugins available in the market. What is an LMS?
A Learning Management System is a software application, in this case, a plugin for WordPress sites used to create, administer, deliver and measure training to individuals online.
Who needs an LMS?As the demand for constant training and knowledge acquisition rises so does the need for online courses, training sessions, and long-distance education. For this, LMS is becoming quite a necessity as it is used on multiple occasions and serves numerous goals and needs.
More specifically LMS Plugins are used by:
Bespoke Universities providing Online Courses
Entire educational Platforms providing distance-learning
Solo instructors building and administering classes and training online
Large Companies wishing to train their employees. This way they ease through compliance sessions and on-boarding procedures
LMS types available in the marketWell, there is a big number of LMS Plugins available serving different functionalities and varying in many ways. For instance, there are different deployment
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/17487/everything-you-need-to-create-your-wordpress-learndash-site

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/05/30/everything-you-need-to-create-your-wordpress-learndash-site/

Where we’re going, we won’t need websites

As voice becomes the dominant force in search and people spend more time consuming content via social media, the future for the humble home page looks very bleak.

If comScore is correct and half of all searches by 2020 are made via voice, a crucial question arises: will we still need websites?

Even if the research is over-egged and the tipping point is reached a year or two later, the question still remains.

As consumers increasingly get used to asking Alexa, Siri or Google for the news headlines, a dinner recipe or flight options for a weekend away, answers will not be provided by ten blue SEO links. Rather, the options will be weighed up by an algorithm before what is considered to be the best answer is read out.

Remember Lycos and AltaVista?

New technology can always delight early adopters, but as it becomes more mainstream, seasoned observers know some huge names may become casualties as the public adopts new behaviors. Remember AltaVista, AskJeeves and Lycos, as well as when Yahoo! was a force in search? Read these names out loud and you may be less inclined to wonder whether voice will have an impact and shift focus to picking winners and losers.

Make no mistake, this is happening: a tide of disruption heading for search. Canalys estimates 56.3 million smart speakers will ship this year alone. The Amazon Echo has first-mover advantage and so has a 69% share. Google is in second spot with 25%.

However, given the core function of these speakers (beyond playing audio) is to perform voice searches, it would take a brave digital marketing executive to bet against Google closing the gap and even coming out on top – eventually.

Brands rush to the call of Alexa

To get an idea of how this impacts search, as well as consumers’ interaction with their favorite brands, one need only look at the early rush to set up Alexa skills.

In travel, Expedia and Kayak can find flights and trips via voice search; an Uber or Lyft ride can be hailed too. Capital One lets users check out their balance and Vitality has recipes and health advice available. If that sounds too healthy for a Friday night, both Pizza Hut and Domino’s are set up to receive an order via Alexa. On the other hand, Vitality allows users to find their own recipes and discover a workout to shift the calories.

Then, of course, there are the weather, travel and news travel updates that can be handled via voice rather than a visit to a website.

VR keyboard, anyone?

It isn’t just voice. Canalys is predicting that this is the year when VR headset sales will increase five-fold as the sector moves towards shipping almost 10 million units per year by 2021.

It’s hard to imagine VR users typing a search enquiry into a virtual keyboard in the air. Even harder to imagine that they will scan through a list of blue links to no doubt pick out a text-heavy page.

Results will be aggregated through a dominant source of information in the each vertical: taking a tour of your next house will likely be made possible by Zoopla, or a similar aggregator; picking out a hotel via a VR version of Expedia; test-driving your next car perhaps via something like AutoTrader. Content would be coming from multiple sources, but will likely be accessed through a single aggregator: no need to type in a query and certainly no blue links to choose which home page to visit.

Is the home page already dying?

This is already starting to happen in news and media. Alarm bells no doubt started to ring when a chart for the New York Times showed how bad things had got with direct traffic.

Source: New York Times.

The dates are old, but that underlines how this trend for news sites to lose direct traffic has been developing for at least 5 years.

Look at the latest figures for two British newspapers, The Times and The Telegraph, and the trend seems very clear. Even though the sites are subscription-based (presumably giving users an impetus to get the most from their monthly fee and bookmark the home page), direct traffic accounts for one third and one fifth of all visitors respectively. This is dwarfed by search, with social bringing up the rear.

Source: SimilarWeb

If you then compare these paid-for sites with two free resources, The Mirror and Independent.co.uk, the trend becomes even more notable. When people have no need to validate paying a monthly fee to get their money’s worth, both sources of free news sink to just one in five visitors arriving direct. Here social is far closer to direct traffic in importance, with search still way out ahead as the number one source of visitors.

Source: SimilarWeb

Putting the data to one side and asking consumers where they get their news results in a huge spike in favor of social media. GlobalWebIndex results from 2017 revealed nearly half, or 44%, say they get news from social media while 37% said they go direct to a news website. This 37% is matched by those who reveal they get their news via referrals from ‘somewhere else’ and a news aggregator service. The overall percentage exceeds 100% because of mixed behaviors.

People say they access news mostly through social, but the traffic-monitoring data says mostly through search. Either way, going direct to the home page is a habit the majority of people no longer have.

The mobile factor

It’s also clear that mobile websites’ importance is beginning to fade. App usage has now overtaken the mobile web, suggesting that although people still use mobile sites, they have favorite apps for brands or key tasks.

It’s perfectly reasonable to assume this behavior will tap in to the trend for brands to make their content voice-friendly. If a consumer has a preference to book hotels on Expedia and dinner with Domino’s, they will likely ask Alexa or Google to look for a Paris weekend deal or a two-for-one pizza offer through these favored brands. No need for a home page, though the app might be required to give an order reference or calendar reminder for peace of mind.

No more home pages?

If you look at the direction of travel, the future of the home page appears bleak.

Within 2 years we’ll hit a tipping point in voice search and this year should see a spike in sales of VR headsets – the former having far more immediate effect on search than the latter.

Also, in a mobile-first world, consumers are steering towards apps where they already know which brand they want to interact with, or trust an aggregator to come up with the right offer.

I’d suggest this means the home page will still limp on for a few years, providing information to voice search algorithms, as well as being a resource for information and ecommerce.

Ultimately, the job of a search marketer is going to shift towards getting their clients’ products and services in front of consumers via voice, and perhaps VR. There is no need for a home page here and we’re already seeing, particularly in news, how home pages are increasingly not the first port of call.

Consumers are increasingly looking for the simplicity of using voice and brands must adapt to find the best ways to make their ‘skill’ used for those searches or to craft their data so it becomes the top answer.

This will mean websites will eventually fall into disuse and become redundant. Not so much a fall off a cliff, but a long march into obscurity.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/30/where-were-going-we-wont-need-websites/

Interview about the challenges of running a WordPress plugin business

As a client service provider by day, one of my common problems when using WordPress is tracking and monitoring user activity. When a project has multiple users making changes every day it can sometimes become a game of “he said, she said” when things go wrong and no one can be held accountable. WP Security Audit Log aims to help solve problems like that as well as keep WordPress administrators aware of any suspicious behavior that is taking place on their site that might be malicious in nature. Developer Robert Abela took the time to discuss how he became interested in WordPress security, the biggest difficulties that have come up during WP Security Audit Log’s development and some interesting talking points about why his company stopped using Easy Digital Downloads.
Can you start by telling me a bit about yourself and how you got started working with WordPress?
Thank you for having me on this interview Brian. I am Robert Abela, the founder of the WP Security Audit Log plugin and the WP White Security website. I am from sunny Malta but live in Scotland. I worked in software startup companies for the first 15 years of my career. I worked as a QA engineer, systems engineer,
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/17486/interview-about-the-challenges-of-running-a-wordpress-plugin-business

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/05/30/interview-about-the-challenges-of-running-a-wordpress-plugin-business/

Four ways Google is making SEO easier

One of the easiest ways to understand SEO’s importance to the marketing mix is to pay attention to what Google says and does. Google is very keen on good SEO because it makes the internet a better place for users. If the internet is a better place for users, then Google can sell more ads.

Here are four things Google has said and done to help marketers improve SEO that you may not be aware of.

Google added an ‘SEO’ audit to its Lighthouse extension

Google is actively giving developers advice on how to improve the sites they work on: its Lighthouse auditing tool now has an SEO component that can analyse any page for basic SEO competency and tell you how to make it better.

This is a nice change for search marketers, who have for a long time made up for Google’s radio silence with research and educated guesswork. Some of the tips offered by the audit extension are fairly obvious and well known (tile tag exists, canonicals not broken, etc.), but others give an interesting insight into how Google assesses a page – such as the importance of making sure your text is big enough. Beyond being useful to marketers, it’s interesting to see how many different factors contribute to a positive user experience and correlate with a higher search engine ranking.

Google made significant improvements to Search Console

Search Console – formerly known as Webmaster Tools – helps you understand what’s going on beneath the hood of your website. It’s a comprehensive piece of software that, in its latest beta version, allows you to immediately index blogs and view up to 16 months of data in the search analytics (Performance) report.

For search marketers, this is particularly important; just think back to the days before ‘(not provided)’ was your most common GA keyword. Now you have a rich bounty of keywords, just waiting to be incorporated into your search strategy.

It’s worth mentioning that Google is taking Search Console seriously: it’s actively asking for suggestions and potential improvements, and even implementing some of them.

Google has revamped its SEO guide

By relaunching its SEO starter guide, Google is offering newbies an easy way to improve the quality of their websites. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a bit beyond starter guides, but it never hurts to brush up on the basics, especially when they’re directly from the horse’s mouth – after all, who knew text size was such a big deal?

It’s a useful primer for anyone looking to brush up on their on-site optimization, and a strong indicator that Google is taking organic search as seriously as ever. With content, for example, it dedicates a whole section to advice on organising topics, understanding readers’ desires, optimising copy, images, and headlines for users (not engines), writing link text, and generally creating blogs and web pages that your target audience actually wants to read.

Google has hired a new public search liaison

Finally, Google’s hiring of a public search liaison suggests not only that organic search is here to stay, but that the company is willing to be more open and transparent about it.

When Matt Cutts – who led Google’s WebSpam team and served as a kind of unofficial liaison between the company and the SEO community – resigned in 2016, search marketing professionals started communicating with Google in a number of different ways. They popped up in Google hangouts with engineers, asked questions in official Google Threads, and turned up to conferences where Google’s employees were present.

Google, in turn, started communicating more with them via  the Google Security Blog, the Google Chrome blog, the general Google blog,  the Google Webmaster Central Blog, the Google Analytics blog, and the Google Search blog. It then appointed its first public liaison for search in October 2017: Danny Sullivan, a former SEO journalist and analyst.

No doubt he’ll prove a useful resource for the SEO and marketing communities. But more importantly, perhaps, is what Sullivan’s appointment says about Google’s shifting philosophy to search marketing. If it was once obscure and opaque about organic search, it’s now open and consultative.

 

Luke Budka is director at integrated marketing agency TopLine Comms.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/30/four-ways-google-is-making-seo-easier/

Five ways to use predictive analytics

The era of graphs and spreadsheets as a way of thinking about analytics is beginning to approach its end. Predictive analytics, along with associated artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies, are changing the way in which we deal with data. These tools are becoming more accessible, and ‘big data’ thinking is no longer limited to firms with billion dollar budgets.

Predictive analytics provides a glimpse into the future, as well as access to strategic insights that can open up new opportunities. Here are five ways you can put predictive analytics to use, and how you can change the way you think about data.

Qualifying leads

According to Forrester research, predictive analytics has found three main use cases for dealing with  leads. Specifically:

1. Predictive scoring: This method analyzes how leads are responding to your marketing attempts and how likely they are to take action based on that information. In this way, you can more quickly identify which leads to focus more resources on and which to divert resources from.
2. Identification models: This use case is an approach that focuses on comparing leads to customers who have taken actions in the past. In doing so, you can divert resources to those leads who are most promising based on previous actions they have taken, as well as identify new markets that you weren’t previously aware of.
3. Personalization: In concert with predicting which leads are most likely to take which actions, the same data can be used to determine which leads respond best to which types of messaging. This advanced form of segmentation can take things deeper than simply splitting leads into groups – instead sending them much more personalized messages.

One prominent example of this was covered in the Harvard Business Review, detailing how a Harley Davidson dealership increased sales leads by 2930% using an AI named Albert.

The AI crunched CRM data to identify characteristics and behaviors of previous buyers. It then split them into micro-segments based on those characteristics. For each segment, it tested different combinations of headlines, visuals, and other elements to determine which worked best for each segment.

The value of your lead qualification is highly dependent on the value and quantity of your data. No matter how good your statistical models are, their abilities are still very limited without access to the information that they need to learn about your customers.

In the digital space – particularly if you are not using a CRM – the best place to start with predictive analytics will almost certainly be an integration of Google Analytics and Google BigQuery.

Modeling customer behavior

While lead qualification and conversion is the most obvious use-case for predictive analytics, and likely the one worth looking into first, it’s far from the only marketing application of this emerging technology. But virtually any use is going to have customer modeling at its core.

You can divide customer modeling into three basic types: cluster models, propensity models, and collaborative filtering.

Cluster models

Clustering is a way of segmenting customers into groups based on many variables. A cluster model looks for correlations between various attributes and identifies a number of equilibria in which certain types of attributes tend to accumulate. What makes clustering special, compared with traditional segmentation, is the sheer number of variables involved. Clusters often use 30 variables or more, far more than would be possible if you were manually segmenting customers, or even if they were manually segmenting themselves.

Clusters come in three forms:

1. Product clusters: These are clusters of customers who tend to only buy specific types of products, ignoring other things in your catalog
2. Brand clusters: These customers tend to buy from a specific collection of brands
3. Behavioral clusters: These are segments of customers with a specific collection of behaviors, such as frequent buyers who place small orders, or customers who prefer the call center over the checkout cart.

What’s important to recognize about these clusters is that they enable predictions about which clusters people belong to – even with limited information. If they buy one product with a specific brand, your brand cluster can predict what other brands they may be interested in, rather than just the more obvious recommendation of simply offering everything else by the same brand.

Propensity models

A propensity model is one that makes future predictions about customer behavior based on correlations with other behaviors and attributes. This may be accomplished using regression analysis or machine learning. A good propensity model controls for as many variables as possible so that correlations aren’t confused for causes.

Here are a few examples of propensity models:

• Propensity to unsubscribe: A model like this allows you to determine the appropriate email frequency, weighing the possibility that a recipient will unsubscribe against any possible positive outcome
• Propensity to churn: These are customers who are likely to move on if you don’t take action, but who may be high value otherwise

1. Lifetime value: Modeling the lifetime value of a customer can help you make strategic marketing decisions if it leads you to customers with more lifetime value, or leads to behaviors that extend lifetime value.

Other propensity models include predicting how far through somebody’s lifetime value you are, and how likely they are to convert or buy.

Collaborative filtering

If you’ve seen Amazon’s “customers who liked this product, also liked…” recommendations, you know what type of model this is. At first glance collaborative filtering might sound similar to product-based cluster models, but collaborative filtering is a bit different. Rather than grouping customers by the types of products they are likely to buy, collaborative filters make recommendations based on aggregate behavior.

In other words, this is less about the user’s product preferences and more about the behaviors that products tend to cause for users.

There are three types of collaborative filters:

1. Up-sell recommendations. These are recommendations for a higher tier version of a product before the sale is made
2. Cross-sell recommendations. Also offered before the sale is made, this is a recommendation for a product that is often bought at the same time as the initial one
3. Follow-up recommendations. These are recommendations for products that people tend to buy a certain time period after buying a prior product, such as replacing a product that runs out, or buying dishes after buying a table.

Connecting the right product to the right market

Working backwards from customer modeling, it’s possible to identify markets for your products that you may not have been aware of. Here are just a few examples of how this use case can play out:

• Incorporate referral sources into your cluster models. This will allow you to identify which traffic sources correlate with which types of products, brands, or behaviors. From this, you can immediately identify a new market for these products or brands
• Incorporate referral sources into your lifetime value propensity models. This will allow you to determine which locations to invest more of your marketing resources into, since you roughly know what the ROI will be
• Look for correlations between traffic sources and success with up-sells, cross-sells, and follow-up recommendations
• Look for correlations between keywords and your customer models
• Analyze the attributes that are strong predictors of buying specific types of products and brainstorm other markets that might share those attributes that you have not yet targeted
• Investigate high performing outliers where limited data is available and investigate whether expanding in those markets is a good option.

Connecting the right users to the right content

There are a number of ways that you can leverage your customer models to connect prospects with content in ways that move you toward your goals, some of them more obvious than others. Here are a few examples:

• Matching content related to products or brands based on the appropriate clusters
• Matching users to conversion copy when propensity models predict they are most likely to buy
• Recommending content to users that improves their propensity scores
• Recommending content to users that enhances their likelihood of responding well to an up-sell or cross-sell
• Matching traffic sources to the content that tends to produce high propensity scores for each particular traffic source.

As you can see, the number of approaches you can take here grows pretty quickly. Think strategically about how best to put your models to use and make the most of your models.

Discovering strategic marketing insights

While some predictive analytics tools can automatically streamline your marketing process and generate results (like Albert did for Harley Davidson), it’s important to remember that human decisions still play a very important part in the process.

Where predictive analytics and related AI tools often fail is in a propensity to ‘over-fit’ the data. They can get stuck at local maximums and minimums, incapable of making the leap to new terrain.

Escaping from traps like these, and making the most of these tools in general, requires you to find strategic insights from within your predictive analytics models.

For example, suppose you discover that a specific piece of content has a tendency to raise your prospects’ propensity scores; any automation you have in place can be applied to customize how your users are marketed to, and push them toward that piece of content. But what predictive analytics can’t tell you is whether there might be other traffic sources you haven’t tried yet that would be a good fit for that content. Using your experience and brainstorming capabilities, you can identify other potential markets for that content, feed them into your model, and see how the exposure changes things.

Your goal in working with these kinds of models must always be to find insights like these and test them to see if the results are as expected. If your model runs on autopilot it will not discover any new opportunities alone.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/29/five-ways-to-use-predictive-analytics/

How to Register a Domain Name (+ simple tip to get it for FREE)

Often when starting a blog, users ask us about how to register a custom domain name, and which are the best places to register a domain. In this article, we will show you how to easily register a domain name, and share a tip on how to register a domain name for free.

But before we get started, let’s cover the basics so we’re on the same page.

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name is the address of your website that people type in the browser to visit your website. For example, wpbeginner.com.

In simple term, if your website was a house, then your domain name will be its address.

The whole internet is a giant network of computers. Each computer is assigned a number which is called an IP address, and it looks like this:

66.249.66.1

Now, this is not an easy to remember address. Imagine if you had to use this kind of addresses to visit your favorite websites.

To fix this problem, domain names were invented. Domain names can have alphabets and numbers, which helps website owners create easy to remember brandable words for their website’s address.

To learn more about domain names, see our beginner’s guide on domain names and how do they work.

When Do You Need to Register a Domain Name?

Each day, over 44,000 new .com domain names were registered in the first quarter of 2018. Currently, there are over 134 million .com domain names already registered.

This means that all the good ones are being registered as we speak. Chances are that someone may register a domain name that you’re thinking of, so it’s smart to register a domain name as soon as you think of an idea.

This is why all tech-savvy entrepreneurs pro-actively register domain names even before launching a business. Domain names are cheap, and you can register them for a year. If you decide to not pursue the business, then you can let them expire.

If you are serious about building a business, then you should register a domain name right away. It will help you protect your brand identity, business name, and even future business ideas.

How much does a domain name cost?

Normally, a .com domain name costs $14.99 / year. Other domain name extensions cost varies based on each extension. Some are even more expensive than this. We don’t recommend using anything but .com domains because everybody remembers a .com domain, and your smartphone keyboards have a pre-built key for .com.

Do I Need a Website to Register a Domain Name?

No. You don’t need a website to register a domain name. You can register a domain name and make a website later. You can also register a domain name and set up a temporary website.

A lot of entrepreneurs treat domain names like digital real-estate, so they register a good domain name and hold it for the right buyer to purchase it from them.

How to Choose The Best Domain Name?

Domain names play a very important role in your website’s identity, and its success. You want to spend some time and do your research before registering a domain name. However, it’s also important to not overthink it otherwise you will never get past the research phase.

Here are some general tips to keep in mind.

• Make sure that your domain name is easy to pronounce, spell, and as short as possible.
• Stick with the .com extension, most users find them easier to remember than other domain extensions.
• Use your keywords and brand name in the domain name. For example, stargardeninghouston.com is more search engine friendly, than stargardeningcompany.com
• Do not use numbers or hyphens in your domain name. It makes them harder to pronounce and difficult to remember.

Need more advice? See our article on how to choose the best domain name for more tips.

How to Register a Domain Name (Step by Step)

There are multiple ways to register a domain name. You can choose from several top domain registrars that are authorized by ICANN to register domain names for you.

We will show you the most popular ways to register a domain name, and you can choose the one that best fits your needs.

1. How to Register a Domain Name for Free

If you want to register a domain name to start a blog or make a website, then this is the best option for you.

Normally, a domain name costs $14.99 / year and website hosting plans start from $7.99 / month. This is a lot of money if you are just starting out.

Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer our users a free domain name, SSL Certificate, and 60% discount on web hosting.

→ Click Here to Get Free Domain with Bluehost ←

Bluehost is one of the biggest hosting companies in the world. They are in business since 2003 and host more than 2 million websites. Not to mention, they’re officially recommended by WordPress.

To get started, you need to visit the Bluehost website and click on the Get Started button.

This will bring you to the pricing page. Their Basic and Plus plans are popular among our users.

Click on the ‘Select’ button below a plan to continue.

On the next page, you will be asked to choose a domain name. Simply type the domain name in the “New Domain” box because that will get you a free domain name.

If the domain name you entered is available, then you will be taken to the signup page. From here you need to enter your account information like name, address, email, etc.

Below the account information, you will notice some hosting extras. We don’t recommend buying them, so you can safely uncheck them for now. If you feel that you need them, then you can always add them later.

After that, you can enter your payment information to finish the purchase.

Bluehost will now register your domain name, setup your hosting account and send you an email with a link to your hosting control panel.

Since you need a web hosting to start a website, it makes no sense to purchase a domain name separately when you can get it for free with the Bluehost combo offer.

If for some reason you don’t want to use Bluehost to get a free domain name, then you can use InMotion Hosting or GreenGeeks, both are top WordPress hosting companies that are offering a free domain name with web hosting to WPBeginner readers.

Related: See the difference between domain and web hosting to understand why you need both to build a website.

2. How to Register a Domain Name with GoDaddy

If you only want to register a domain name at the moment without creating a website, then GoDaddy is your best option.

Godaddy is the largest and most popular domain name registrar in the word. They currently manage over 72 million domain names for 17 million users from around the globe.

GoDaddy offers an easy way to manage your domain name without creating a website. Once you are ready, you can just point the domain name to your preferred WordPress hosting company.

Here is how to register a domain name with GoDaddy (step by step).

First, you need to visit the GoDaddy website and enter the domain name you want to register in the search box.

If your domain name is available, then you will see a success message with your domain name listed on top. You can now go ahead and add it to the cart.

Next, click on the continue to cart button to check out.

GoDaddy, will now show you some additional services that you can purchase with your domain name. You can skip those by selecting ‘No thanks’ and click on the continue button.

On the next page, you will see your domain name and its registration period. You can change the registration period to up to 10 years if you want.

However, we don’t recommend that. You can always renew your domain name before it expires, so if you want to save money, then you can select just 1 year registration period.

You will need to create a Godaddy account to proceed.

After you have created an account, you will be able to enter your billing address and make a payment for your domain name.

GoDaddy will now register your domain name, and they will send you an email with a link to your domain control panel.

Pro Tip: You should make sure that auto-renew on your domain is turned on, so Godaddy can automatically bill your account and renew your domain name. This way you won’t lose your domain if you forgot to renew it.

3. Other Ways to Register a Domain Name

There are plenty of other domain name registrars that you can choose from. Prices for domain name registrations are pretty much the same on all those registration services. However, their user interface and domain management tools can be lacking at times.

If you don’t want to use GoDaddy for some reason, then we recommend trying out either NameCheap as the best alternative.

If you want a free domain name with website hosting but don’t want to use Bluehost, then you can use InMotion Hosting or GreenGeeks, both are listed among the best WordPress hosting providers in our list.

Domain Registration FAQs

Since we have helped over 130,000 people start a website, we have gotten just about every question you can possibly think of. Below are the answers to some of the top domain name questions:

Which is the best domain name registrar?

We believe that Godaddy is the best domain name registrar given their long history. However it’s a smarter money decision to get a free domain with web hosting like Bluehost. You can always transfer your domain name if you decide to switch hosting provider.

How can I buy a domain name permanently?

You cannot buy a domain name permanently. Domain names registration is done on a yearly basis. However you can pre-pay for up to 10 years which guarantees that you will have a domain name for 10 years.

How can I reserve a domain name without buying it?

There is no way to reserve a domain name without purchasing it. You have to buy it if you want to reserve it. Considering the low cost of a domain name, it’s a small investment for a business.

Is there a way to buy an existing domain name?

Yes, you can use brokerage like Sedo.com to potentially acquire an existing domain name. However it’s not guaranteed that you will get the domain name that you want because the seller may not want to sell it or ask for an outrageous price.

We hope this article helped you learn how to register a domain name for your website. You may also want to see our tips on how to make money online with your new domain name and/or how to create a professional email address with your domain.

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The post How to Register a Domain Name (+ simple tip to get it for FREE) appeared first on WPBeginner.

source http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-register-a-domain-name-simple-tip-to-get-it-for-free/