Geek Queen | News, Articles, Tips and Tricks for your website

Add A Recovery Email To Your Google Account

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 02:17:00 GMT

Add A New or Second Email To Your Google Account For Recovery

It is possible to add a recovery email to your Google account so that you won't get locked out. However can you add more than one? Yes actually you can and this is how.

Add A Recovery Email To Your Google Account

Unless you set up your Google account decades ago, you will have to have probably set up a recovery email when you created your account.
If you haven't and you would like to do so, or if you would like to add a new recovery email follow the steps below.
1: Click on the Google Account icon at the top right of your page (assuming you are doing this from a computer).

2. Now Choose "Manage Your Google Account"

3. Choose Personal Info

4. Scroll down to contact info and click on the arrow to the right of Email. 5. You will see a few options. Your Google Account Email, then under that a recovery email, then contact email and then Alternative Emails. If you haven't set up a recovery email, proceed to that option (clicking the right arrow) and set up your recovery email.
In the pic below you will see I've pixeled out my recovery email, but it would appear there under your main Google account email.
If you want to change your recovery email, this is also where you do it. You will need to re-enter your password to do this step.
Simply enter the new email into the next page and do the verification Google asks.

Google will require verification. They will send a code to the email you have just entered and you need to enter that code into the box that appears. That verifies that you have access to that email.

Add An Alternative Email As A Secondary Recovery Email

You can add extra emails that can serve as a recovery email address, however it can't be another gmail account. I have no idea why, but for some reason it won't let you add a second gmail account as your alternate email address.
Simply click the Alternative Emails option, add the email address and do the verification.

Alternate emails must be one that isn't used with another account and the verification is slightly different. You will get an email to the alternate account with a link that you click for verification. It will ask for your password (to the original google account) and once you are logged in the verification alert will disappear.
This is what your screen will look like prior to verification.

Once you have verified the account from the alternate email address, refresh this screen and the verification alert will go way.

Now you can close out of all those windows and go about your day.

Say Goodbye to Chrome's RAM Issues with Memory Saver

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 23:11:00 GMT

Stop Chrome Hogging ALL Your Ram Now

We all love Chrome, right? It's fast, powerful, and works great with our favorite apps, services, and extensions. But let's face it, Chrome can be a bit of a memory pig. Well, fear not! Google has come to our rescue with an awesome new feature called "Memory Saver." Let's dive in and learn how to get the most out of Chrome while keeping your RAM happy!

Why Chrome Loves to Gobble Up RAM

Each tab you open in Chrome creates a new process for the browser to handle. This is designed primarily to ensure that one misbehaving tab doesn't affect the others. If one tab you have open freezes or doesn't load correctly in theory, all your other tabs should operate fine. Of course this isn't always entirely correct. Any disrupted process, if its bad enough, will cause the whole browser to crash, but by running each tab as a separate process Chrome greatly minimizes this risk.
Chrome also has a prerendering feature which makes it fast but requires a good chunk of RAM to load pages quickly.
Knowing this, now you can see that the more tabs and resource-intensive tasks you run, the more RAM is needed. Chrome is processing all these tabs whether you are looking at that tab or not. Just because you aren't using that open tab at that time doesn't mean it's not doing anything behind the scenes.
Lets say you have 8 tabs open on your browser but you are mostly going between two main tabs, ALL 8 tabs are running processes which can lead to RAM overload. Chrome is effectively gobbling up all your PC's memory making everything slow down.

How Can You Solve Chrome Using All Your RAM?

Before now there wasn't too much you could do, however recently Google has released a feature flag that will handle this challenge.

What's A Feature Flag?

Google's Feature Flags are experimental (beta style) features and settings for your Chrome browser. They are experimental so not fully released at this point. That does mean they could have bugs (not the type where a shopping website takes over your browser - more like the feature doesn't work and everything grinds to a halt), and they could also be not completely stable. However if you do run into challenges you can simply turn off the feature.

Introducing Memory Saver: Chrome's RAM Preserver

Chrome has introduced "RAM Preserver" in its experimental features to address the RAM draw that it can be responsible for. This new feature will:

Automatically make unused tabs inactive while you work on other tabs &
Reactivate those tabs when you return to them

This can result in Chrome using up to 30% less memory compared to running it without Memory Saver.

How to Use Memory Saver and Free Up Your RAM

Memory Saver will roll out officially soon but is available as a feature flag now. Please remember that these flags are not 100% deemed as perfect by Google so if you do have any challenges you can just turn off the flag.
I've been using this for over 6 weeks now and love it, however everyone's system is different so what works for me might not work for you.

To enable it, open Chrome (one tab only) and paste this link in your address bar and hit enter:
chrome://flags/#high-efficiency-mode-available
You will see the screen below.

You can see that there are many MANY options available to you but its the top "Enable high efficiency mode" feature that we are after.
Mine you can see is already Enabled, however yours will just say "Default".
3. Click "Default," choose "Enabled," then click "Relaunch". Ignore the other options available to you and simply choose "Enabled" as shown below.

4. Now you will see a "Relaunch" button. Click on that and Chrome will relaunch. 5. When Chrome is open, go to the 3 vertical dots on the top right of your browser (next to your profile pic), click those and choose "Settings"

6. You now have a "Performance" tab on the left menu.

7. Turn on the feature by turning the slider to the on position

8. If you would like to keep particular websites active you simply add them by clicking the "Add" button and entering the full domain URL of the site you would like to keep always active.

What To Do If the New Performance Flag Causes Challenges

Firstly if you do notice any drama in your browser since turning on this feature, you can start by simply disabling it. Go to Settings / Performance & turn it off.
Restart your browser to ensure that change is registered properly.
If you have any further challenges you may need to remove the setting all together. To do this simply paste the URL we used above into a new browser window and change the "Enabled" setting back to "Default". You can also choose the "Disabled" option if you prefer.
So there you have it. Use at your discretion and see how you go with this Chrome feature enabled.

Reasons Why You Should Reconsider Designing Your Website Yourself

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 22:39:00 GMT

Why DIY Websites Aren't Always the Best Idea

In today's digitally driven age, having a strong online presence is essential for any business to succeed. One of the most crucial aspects of a business's online presence is its website. A well-designed website can attract and retain customers, generate leads, and ultimately increase revenue. Website design and hosting services are often considered expensive by small business owners, however engaging a web development professional can often save you money in the long run. If you choose to cut costs by opting for DIY web design there are some considerations you should be aware of.

Your Web Design And Development Skill Level Vs A Professional

Professional web designers have years of experience in the field and possess the expertise needed to create a visually appealing and user-friendly website. Some factors that we are experts in that you might not be aware of: We understand the latest design trends and also when to use them. A colourful graduated background might be perfect for a hairdressing business, but totally unsuitable for an engineering company. Web Design professionals also know-how to build your website optimized for search engines, We can create a responsive design that looks great on any device & we can ensure that your website meets Google speed tests - and passes. DIY web design tools may be easy to use, but they lack the depth of knowledge and experience that a professional web designer brings to the table.

Pricing that ends up more than you expect to get the customisation you need

DIY web design tools are built to accommodate a wide range of users, meaning that customization options are often limited. Web platforms are designed to make money too and usually the pricing tiers are set around extra options that you will most likely need for your website. Hosting might start at $9.95 per month, however to get all the tools you need you might end up paying $75 per month. Businesses that opt for DIY web design may find themselves restricted by the limitations of the tool they are using and end up having to pay for the highest plan to do what they want.

Unnecessary Website Bloat for Mobile Website Speed

Google's main focus these days is speed. With over 70% of most website visits now being from a mobile device that is where they start. All websites are assessed as "mobile first" now and having your mobile version display well and quickly is essential to keep your visitors happy. Because a large web platform provider has to accommodate millions of users, often the load times are longer and the actual loaded info is much larger than it needs to be. A professional developer will construct your website from a mobile first point of view, ensuring that load speed is minimised as much as possible.

Time Constraints

Designing a website is a time-consuming process that requires a significant amount of effort. DIY web design may seem like a cost-effective solution, but it makes way more sense to spend your valuable time on what you are good at and let someone who will be heaps faster do the work. Professional web designers have the skills and experience to design a website quickly and efficiently, freeing up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for any business that wants to rank highly in search engine results pages. Designing a website is based around expectations of search engines (like it or not) and designing you website to make it pretty might result in a huge loss of traffic. Ensuring that your website is visible to potential customers isn't the main consideration any longer. Web Design is based around reflecting your business identity WHILE having a layout that is attractive to the search engines. DIY web design tools may offer some basic SEO features, but they lack the sophistication and depth of knowledge that a professional web designer brings to the table. Along with using your keywords and phrases, positioning & image optimisation must be perfect to ensure you have a chance at competing with your opposition.

Design Professionalism

Your website is often the first point of contact between your business and potential customers. A poorly designed website can give the impression that your business is unprofessional and untrustworthy. A professional web designer can create a website that reflects the professionalism and quality of your business, while displaying your business personality at the same time. This will make a massive difference in helping you to attract and retain customers.
In conclusion, while DIY web design may seem like a cost-effective solution, it may not be enough for your business's online success. By hiring a professional web designer, you can ensure that your website is visually appealing, user-friendly, customized, optimized for search engines, and professional-looking. Investing in a professional web designer can ultimately save you time, money, and improve your online presence.

Googles Web Core Vitals Update for Clients

Thu, 20 May 2021 05:40:00 GMT

Action To Take For Google's Latest Update

Google announced a few months ago that they will be introducing a major update for the measurement of all websites.
It was due to be released earlier this month however they have just recently said that it will start to be rolled out in the next week or 2 and will take up to at least mid June to complete.

What is Google’s Core Web Vitals?

I’ve really tried to dumb this down, so please remember that I’m explaining it to you as if you were a 5 year old. Of course it is way more technical than this, but this is the nuts and bolts of the changes.
In simple terms Google is introducing new metrics to rate your website from a client perspective. Things like the load time for your page, the load time for your biggest item on that page, the positioning of items before vs after the page is fully loaded and response times to clicks are factors that will affect the rating/score system for all websites moving forward.

What does this mean?

Your website will get a ranking for both desktop and mobile, based around these factors. So you would get a score of Poor, Good or Great based on how your website handles these items.
Once you have a score, if you are competing against a very similar page on another website, these scores could mean that you would rank above or below your competition. The thing to remember here is that your range isn’t defined any further than that. So if you have a “good” score range of 65 and a competing website has a “good” score range of 64, you are both “good” so to Google (for now) you are both the same ranking. That number is for your use only, however, as always, this may change.
It isn’t the only ranking factor though , and Google has stated that great quality content will almost always win over a higher score, so take that into account. Their primary focus is and has been for years, the user experience. Translated - you have to serve the content that your visitors are after. If you do that you can often rank higher that a faster website.

How does this happen?

Google is going to be collecting the data from your visitors. Yes that’s right. Every time a visitor comes to your website Google will record the time everything takes to happen.
You can access this metric from your Google Search Console. However, because it is measured from visitors, until you have appropriate traffic levels you may get a “not enough data for this device type” error. It will give you the option to use PageSpeed Insights instead, however I’ve been having challenges with this tool so it might not work properly either. For now, work on what you can and once the traffic levels and/or rollout is done we can check again.

What I’m doing on all your websites?

If the items or widgets are something that was added in the initial development or redesign of your website I will be working through each client's site and optimising those items. This won’t be a 5 minute process and I am only doing what would be too technical for clients OR with regard to items that were added at design time. If you have added images and/or widgets yourself, you will need to check those.
This could be for example a sign up box you have put on your website from code that you got from Mail Chiimp or Constant Contact. If that is above the fold on your website you will need to move it further down the page.
Images - should be optimised (as below) Video’s shouldn’t be in the header or top of the page (as below), etc etc.

So I can Ignore it?

NO!
This is going to be Google's main focus moving forward and of course it doesn’t matter how great your content is if your page takes ages to load and users don’t stay. So as usual, it's a combination of factors.
For now, until the roll out is fully complete, your focus should be on placement of widgets on your pages, and ensuring that all your images are fully optimised for web before you upload them.
The platform is working on ensuring that standards are met, however there are some things you can do in the meantime.

Move larger and more “heavy” widgets to further down the page. IE: If you have a video header, now is the time to move it below the fold (below the area that is shown prior to any scrolling - like a newspaper). If you have a large image in your header, make sure its optimised. IE: The smallest file size it can be to look good. There are lots of free image optimizers out there. Search and I’m sure you will find something that suits you and your budget. Free ones are everywhere now.
Make sure that your mobile version images are not just optimised in file size but also in physical pixel size. If you have a 1920 wide image in your header for your desktop website, you will need to change that to a much smaller pixel size for mobile. To do this, the easiest way is to resize your image and then add the pixel size at the end of your file name. IE: A header banner image might be called: MyBusinessHeader so call the mobile size one MyBusinessHeader320 (to represent that it is 320px wide). Make the full size one not show on mobile and the smaller one not to show on desktop. Try to leave your mobile images 800px wide as a lot of screen still use up this space. Try TinyPNG for your resizing and pay attention to the tip at the end of this post for image names. It's important.
Avoid having multiple heavy widgets on the same page. IE: Try not to have a mail sign up form (HTML Widget), a video widget and a map widget on the same page.
The platform recommenda moving the main store widget below the fold which is a drama if you ask me, however I would assume they are working on this as they would have had a massive amount of pushback against this one. If you have a store, it will be a good idea to add a Product Gallery Widget above your store to compensate for this. I know it seems a double up but for now, that is their recommendation. Most online stores load via Javascript which uses a lot of resources so almost all ecommerce platforms will be experiencing the same drama. I will be contacting clients that have stores individually about this.
If you have sliders in your header, limit it to 3 images or less.
They also want us to remove Google Tag Manager, but this is not something I’m going to do just yet. This is Googles preferred way of handling multiple tags (Facebook pixels, tracking etc) and I want to do some more research on this before I implement it. Some of you will have this and some will not.
Finally - they recommend that you only load a single image above the fold. This actually reflects Google’s love of white space (a clean crisp layout without too much going on) so this is something you could start with.
Stick to 2 fonts for a website. This is how most of our websites are configured anyway, however I will be checking this for you.
I would also consider moving any forms to the bottom of your page. They shouldn’t be too much trouble but they would lean toward being heavy widgets.

Is it just the pages on my website?

It is every page on your website, which includes blog posts . If you have a heavy blog template (multiple images and comments sections) you might need to consider redoing your template.
So there you have it, the basic to-do's for this Web Core Vitals update.
Finally - do not stress about this. Yes it is a serious update but everyone else also has to comply so it isn't something to give yourself a headache over.
Just start with one thing, like any images you've uploaded for example and resize them and reupload.
BIG TIP!! - When you resize your images, make sure you rename them BEFORE upload. Most good platforms (ours included) use something called a CDN. That stands for content delivery network. That means that they store your images on multiple servers around the globe so they can be delivered as quickly as possible to people in Iceland or Austalia. Each location refers to its closest server. The downside of this is that often these servers run cyclical updates on a preset schedule. If you upload your image with the same name, it won't overright that image on the other servers for days or even weeks so while it looks fine to you, its still using the old huge image because it has the same name. So add "opt" to the end of the file name, or even a letter, something that identifys it as the new improved image for both you and the system.

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Google Search Tips #7 - Get Straight To The Search Box

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 20:30:00 GMT

Do You KNow The Keyboard Command To Get To Google's Search Box?

This is a very short and sweet Google Search Tips post.
Did you know that you can get into the search box on Google's results page simply by hitting your "/" key?
This is the best tip I've found for years!

How To Use The Backspace Key To Get Into The Search Box ON Google

There is absolutely nothing to this tip.
If you have visited Google and made a search, from anywhere in the results window simply hit the forward slash key which looks like this: / . That will put your curser back into the search box immediately.
That alone is amazing, however what is even better is it puts the curser at the end of your current search so you can simply backspace to make any changes.
It works from anywhere on the page so if you are scrolled to the very bottom and hit / - you are straight away back inside the search box.
You can thank me later! Actually thank me now and leave a comment if that helps you!

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Easy FREE Background Remover Tool

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 08:23:00 GMT

I Have Found A FREE Easy To Use Background Remover

Deposit Photos have just released a free to use background remover tool. Basically you just upload an image and thei AI powered tool removes the background
I can't attest to it being superior quality with things like hair or fur,however even Photoshop have only just released an excellent tool to cut out shapes with hair in the last 2021 update. Sure you could always do it but it was a mied method of different steps and now you just click the "refine hair" button - but I digress..
You simply go to this URL https://depositphotos.com/bgremover.html and upload your image.
It boasts that it takes about a second to work and so far yes that seems to be true.
It will work on all types of images:

people
objects
graphics
animals

It is completely free to use, however you do have to sign up for an account so you can download your images.

I Tested The Background Removal Tool With These 3 Photos

This first one it really struggled with, however I kind of expected it to. There is a heap of shaddows in this photo and its very busy. The childrens skin tone is also very close to the color of the ground which I think would have confused it.

This image I also didn't expect to fare very well. Like I said, hair and fur is a nightmare to cut out and this one wasn't much better. The biggest question here is why it cut out his rump? Its a similar color to the rest of him and a totally different color from the background so that seemed weird.
I sn't he gorgeous? I took this photo in the Masai Mara in Kenya and this was the day that we got caught in a Wildebeast migration! So cool!

This final image it did really well with.
It appears the key is to have nice clean lines and a heavily contrasting background. Obviously this woman and her baby are very bright which would have helped, however from experimenting with these 3 images, it is clear that you need to have a clean clear photo with a very different background for any level of success.

So there you have it. If you do need a background removal tool and your photo meets those guidelines, check it out and let me know how you got on.

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How To Format A Blog Post

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:09:00 GMT

How To Write A Great Blog POst

Websites are not a "build it and they will come" type situation. There are something like 7 Billion indexed web pages as at December 2020. 7 Billion! That's a big number. Many of these websites are business websites, online stores or membership websites, but what do they all have in common? They make use of blogs to get clients to their website. If they aren't doing that, they should be.
Google is a business like any other business and they won't be in business for long if they don't showcase the very best results to their clients. With this in mind, writing a great blog post is a skill you should learn. It is a challenge to begin with but the more you do the better you get and nothing you post is set in stone! In a years time there is nothing stopping you going back to those year old posts and improving them. That often counts as much as creating new posts.
Clawing your way to the top of the SERP's (search results) is hard. Actually it's VERY HARD! Here's some tips to help you along the way.

Step 1 - What should you write your blog post about?

Let me start by saying that the very first step to assembling a blog post is drilling down to what the post is actually about. Being specific is everything in writing articles or posts. Consider this: As a travel blogger, I might have just come back from Turkey. Writing a post about "How Amazing Turkey Is" is way too generic to ever be found. I would be competing against Trip Advisor and Booking.com and Expedia and will never be found. While that level of competition might seem standard for a subject like travel, it can be said for almost any niche. If you are a physiotherapist, how do you stand out against WebMD, or if you are a local builder how do you compete against the huge regional home builders? You have to choose your subject matter carefully and specifically. Here is some steps you can take to help. You need to drill down on your subject matter and drill down deep. While 3000 words is a great post length, that is a complete waste of your time if no-one ever finds it. 1300 words on a more specific topic has way more chance of being found. So think about not just your subject matter, but

what you are actually doing,
what you are hoping to achieve (sign ups, sales or just encouraging clients to stay, or
what you are going to teach your readers.

Think about why people would be searching for this subject. This step is important as it will define what you call your post and how you format it. For example: If you are a motorbike mechanic working locally who does repairs for a local off-road group, you shouldn't write a post about "the new Yamaha WR450". There will be more than a few of those already and you will be competing with the large magazines and bike sales websites. However, if you write a post about "how to change the oil filter for the new Yamaha WR 450" that is something that people could be specifically searching for. Think about the search terms you would use to look for your post. Let’s stay with the oil filter as a subject. If you were wanting to change the oil filter on this bike what would you search for? Let’s say your visitors start with "oil filter wr450" - that will likely return more shopping results so they are probably going to narrow it down further. They might now search for "change the oil filter wr450". That will show them more specific results for sure, however, what if the new model WR450 is designed differently from the last few models. They are going to discover quickly that what they find isn't for their bike. So, what if you created a blog post called "How to change the oil filter on a 2021 Yamaha WR 450"? That addresses all their search terms, doesn't it? Now you've drilled down to your blog post title. Well done!

Did you know that aproximately 75% of users never go past the first page of Google?

STEP 2 - CONFIRM YOUR SUBJECT MATTER

I know it felt like you were done with that subject didn't it? You almost are, however you still have to check to see what other posts are out there that talk about the same thing. This step is essential, not to copy anything from another website (never do that!), but to see exactly what their post is offering. You have to remember that Google is all about user experience and relevance, so before you start writing your article it makes sense to check who you are competing against and how your post could be slightly better than theirs.

What are you checking for?

Open the first 3 non-paid posts in the search results. So nothing that's an ad, only the posts that rank in the top 3-5 organic positions. Have a quick scroll through their post and see what they are offering.

Do they have clear headings?
Is their text well-spaced and easy to read?
Do they have good images?
Do they use tables to display data?
Do they have a video?

Any and all of these items above can help to boost your own rankings so if you can

include more information,
have better images (and make sure you add ALT tags to your images - how to here ),
have a better post layout - in this case, step by step instructions,
add in a table with approximate ride times in different conditions that you may be able to do before having to change your filter (its the data that will help) or
record a video of you taking the action, upload it to YouTube (for a second bite of the apple) and then include it at the bottom of your post.

You might even spot something that you've completely forgotten in your own post and again, you are not interested in copying anything here, you are just seeing how your article might be better.

Step 3 - Creating Sub Sections

Now you have your subject matter, you need to look at segmenting the post for your readers. Segmenting breaks up the content so your visitors can read it easier and it also enables us to create headings to show Google our relevance to the search. You have your post title, "How to change the oil filter on a 2020 Yamaha WR 450", now we have to create some subheadings. These might be:

What tools you will need to change the oil filter on your WR450
How to drain the oil from your WR450
How to dispose of a used dirt bike oil filter
Refilling the oil in your 2021 Yamaha dirt bike

Once you have done this a few times it gets easier and easier. Think of the steps you need to complete the action or if your post isn't an educational post these subheadings might be things like

How to get to Turkey from Australia,
How to get around Istanbul on public transport,
Is Istanbul safe to travel at night
What does a restaurant meal cost in Istanbul
How to get from the airport into the city in Istanbul

Do you see what I mean? These subtitles are creating divisions in your post. Readers won't stay on an article that is just droning on and on. The information needs to be broken down into bite-size chunks.

Ordering your blog post sections

Now you have your headings, arrange them in an order that will make sense for the post. If it is a How-To post this will be simple, however, if it is a travel post it might be more challenging. Step back and think about the process that has to happen for your post to make sense.

You have to get to turkey
You have to get to and from the airport
You have to have some accommodation
You have to know if you are safe to walk around at night etc.

Once you have completed this step open your document and start putting together your post.

Try to always write your post in a word processor like Word or Google Docs. You need to check spelling, formatting and layout prior to posting and the easiest way to do this is via a wordprocesser.

Step 4 - Assembling Your Post

Write your intro

Firstly write a two to three sentence introduction. Tell your visitor what the post is about and what they will get out of it by the end.
IE: We are going to show you how to change the oil filter on your 2020 Yamaha WR450 dirt bike. You will learn the proceedure to take to drain the oil, change the filter, replace the oil and test in 4 easy to follow steps.
If you have it, add a good quality image here. In this instance I would insert an image of the dirt bike we are speaking of. You have now reinforced to the reader that this is where they need to be with both text and images.

Fill out your sub headings

Now you need to break into each sub heading and write out the content appropriate for each heading.

Try not to have more than 2 large paragraphs without a break. A break can be just a bulleted list or a feature piece of text or even a new sub heading.
Write for your readers NOT for Google - we will get into optimising your post later.
Consider splitting your post into columns if it supports the layout. IE in this case an image on the left showing each step as you describe it on the right would work well.

Step 5 - Summarise Your Post

Once you have completed the content for all your subheadings, you will need to summarise and finish off your post.
A good summary might reiterate what they've learned, point them to more posts that might help them or even give them a chance to share your post via social media. Don't be too salesy with you summary though. Sure, if you can show them where to purchase a new oil filter that would be great but don't make it the only feature of your summary.

Step 6 - Getting Ranked by the search engines

OK this is where you are going to yell at me! On average it takes 8-10 months for a blog post to rank. I know that is brutal but that's just how long it takes. Don't be discouraged by this, everyone else is in exactly the same boat.
Some posts that are time relative (the 2021 dirt bike post for example) can rank quicker, however you need to be sure that date is always going to be relevant. The best SEO tips for 2021 will have no value at all in 2022 but people are always going to be looking for posts about a product that was manufactured in 2021 - like the dirt bike. So just make sure if you have a year in your title, it is always going to be relevant to the post.

A Few Tips

Searching for topics and keywords

Before you start searching for your topic and/or keywords make sure you are signed out of any Google account and clear your cookies and search history on whatever browser you are using. If you don't, Google will take into account what you've been searching for and cater the results to your past searches. This won't do you any good, so make sure you are logged out of any Gmail or Google account and clear your history and cookies first.

Abandon the "number 1 spot" mentality

Getting to the first page of Google is a massive challenge, and getting to that coverted first place is not what you should be focusing on. Unless your niche is very small and there are more than a few people searching for your subject matter, you will always be competing with someone who is way bigger than you, with a lot more money to spend.
What you are trying to do is provide potential customers with good quality information that reinforces your authority on the subject. People are smart, and while it is said that over 75% of people don't go past the first page of Google, people with real intent DO!
I did a survey last year and of 45 clients and friends who I asked, over 65% said that they ignore the first page and click through to page 2 or 3 on most occassions where they are searching for something real.
Sure browsing is mostly page 1, but they all knew that the big guys are on the first page and smaller more local businesses just can't acheive that. So ignore the number 1 spot. It will cloud your jugement and possibly damage your post.

Outbound Links

I know it seems counter productive, but don't be scared to link to other authorative websites on your own post. Remember Google is concerned with how helpful you are to your reader and giving them easy access to other information is a good thing in Googles eyes. Don't go crazy, but a few outbound links are expected and will be appreciated by your readers.
NB: Make sure those links are set to open in a new page. Don't send readers away without your page remaining open too.

Don't make any edits to the post for at least 3-4 months. Let it embed and be found. That's like opening the oven to check on a cake. You won't speed it up and it might sink!

Internal LInks

If you can, link to a few other of your own blog posts.
Internal linking also carries weight so don't be scared to add links to other blog posts that might be relevant.

Does Geek Queen have a Blog Post writer?

Yes I do have someone that can write blog posts for you, however she has been very ill with COVID so it will be around mid April 2021 that she will be back on board.

Prices for Content Writing

1250 word blog post $45.00 (you provide subject matter and images)
3 images to suit the post + $7.50
1500 word blog post $55.00 (you provide subject matter and images)
4 images to suit the post + $10
2500 word blog post $80.00 (you provide subject matter and images)
4 images to suit the post + $10
3000 word blog post $90.00 (you provide subject matter and images)
5 images to suit the post + $12.50

All prices are ex GST and availability is limited. Get in touch if you would like to chat about this service.
Please note that Patricia is great, but English is not her first language so some editing may be required. It won't be much but sometimes she uses the wrong word or gets a little flowery. I don't make these edits - that will be up to you, but $45 per blog post is a bargain.
If you would like a native english speaker to write your posts you can add $100 to each of those prices. English content writing is very expensive.
Alternatively you could try Fiverr or use the search box here to have a look for a writer.
This Fiverr link will take you to a page searching for "blog post writers" that are in Australia and you can see these are a lot more expensive than the same search term without specifiying Australia as the providers home country.

Don't be scared to ask for samples of their work and I would always recommend contacting them with your subject matter before you pay for the gig.
Ask for a quote for a 1250 word article, maybe a 2000 word one and a 3000 word one and see what they come back to you with.
This adds a level of security to your search as if you are not happy, you can request revisions, and if its really rubbish you just don't release the funds. But only do that if it's really terrible.

Comments On Formatting A Blog Post

Audience Grabbing Blog Post Ideas To Use

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 06:48:00 GMT

Blog POst Ideas To Grab Your Readers Interest

Writing any blog post is challenging, however it can get very daunting if you work really hard on a post, put your heart and soul into it and it bombs! Actually it can be truely horrible.

When working with clients I'm always telling them "IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU!". At an extreme level I've told a client that I am 100% not bothered if she doesn't love her website because it's not about her . It's about her ideal client. That seems brutal I know but it is the truth.

Sorry Anne but pictures of beaches and waterfalls won't sell your services as a couples therapist. Put all the pictures up of waterfalls you like in the studio, but clients aren't going to see a website with images of beaches all over it and connect that to getting a caring and helpful marriage therapist. A website has to appeal to your market and not just appeal to them, it has to cut through all the other websites out there and reassure your client that they are in the right place for the service they need.

Blog posts are exactly the same. No-one is ever going to click a blog post that has a date and location as the title. August-21-2019-Post3 is NOT a blog post title.

Who would ever click through that title??

What Elements Should A Good Title Have?

There are consistent things a good blog post title should contain (or have):

It has to establish your client expectations right off the bat. What are they getting next?
It should convey the tone of the article - solemn, funny, informative etc.
The value to your client should be instantly obvious (IE what are they going to learn, or how this funny story will make them laugh).
It cannot under any circumstance be click bait. You might get them once but NEVER again.
It should always contain at least one keyword relating to your post

Industry Concerns

While a travel blogger might write a completely different blog post heading to an architect for example, the same idea's can mostly apply. Top 10 things to do in Malta, might become The Top 10 Mid Century Homes in Palm Springs for an architect for example.
Don't over think it. Write your article first and then after you've been immersed in the subject matter for an hour or so, then you will find writing your title much easier.

Some Blog POst Titles You can Use

How To - this is great particularly for video blog post as well.

How I learned ________________________
How NOT to _____________ in _________________
How to deal with _________________________
How to ____________ using _________________
Simple ways to _________________________
How I _______________ my _____________
How to create/sew/travel/write __________________
How to teach yourself __________________
How to answer when someone asks you _____________________

Why - Everyone always wants to know why!

Why you can _______________ on your own
Why I travel/teach/learn _____________________
Why I liked _________________ better than _______________
Why I stopped ________________ and what I learned
Why you should _______________
Why its never a bad thing to _____________________

Help - Help or advice is a big search term

The best ____________ advice I've ever received
Massive mistakes I've made in ____________________
Easy ways to __________________ in/on/by _________________
_____ (number) things I learned about __________________
_____ (number) I learned from _____________________
Unexpected ways to ______________
Listening to advice on _____________ changed my life
When listening to advice is NOT the right thing to do
This quote taught me to life/travel/leave
Why ___________ was an epic fail for me

Lists - this topic can be endless
______ must haves for _____________ ______ Top purchases of ______________ ______ Reasons why ____________ worked! ______ Things to do in _______________ How these ______ things will take you further My top _______ reasons to _____________ (visit Malta in winter maybe) _______ Rules for ___________________ My top _______ mistakes to avoid during ____________ ______ Easy ways to ____________ in _________________ ______ Hacks for better ___________________ Top ________ Fears I overcame ______ New things I tried this year ______ Quotes to engage your Insta audience

Value Add Ons - this is where you recommend other websites, blogs or influencers your readers might love. Remember - you have to give them value whether its directed internally or externally. Don't be scared to make recommendations that don't directly benefit you.

____ of the best Pinterest Accounts for ____________
____ of my fave twitter posts from 2019
____ Insta Accounts you must follow this year
____ Blogs I follow for inspiration

Now away with you! You should be thinking about that next post you can write!
Jenny

Choosing Keywords And Phrases For Your Website

Thu, 14 May 2020 01:45:00 GMT

The Process for Choosing Keywords For Your Website

Choosing keywords and phrases can be a time consuming and difficult task. There are keys (no pun intended!) to how to achieve a good starting result that you can build upon over time. Hopefully this document will assist you in doing just that.

Keywords can be single words or what we call “long tail keywords” which is pretty much just a search phrase instead of one word. Keywords are competitive across all markets and getting the balance correct is an ongoing challenge.

NB: Of course you can disappear down the rabbit hole of keyword research and terms such as “content strategy” and “search volume” will appear over and over but this document is meant simply as a starting point. You have to start somewhere and at the end of the day this is what this is about. You can spend tens of thousands of dollars on keyword research and analysis easily, however what I’m saying here is that lets just start and move on from there. There is no point having a wide selection of keywords across all volumes and metrics if they aren’t what people are searching for.

Website Keyword & Phrase Selection

Considerations:

Do not change your keywords and phrases more frequently than 4-6 months if you can help it. Google likes consistency and changing these items too quickly will result in you not ranking for anything. If you make changes, make a few and see what the outcome is over a few months (I suggest a minimum of 3) before making more changes. The only exception to this is if you are changing direction in your business or are discontinuing a dominant service.
Ditch the “I must appear on the first page of Google” mentality. It is almost impossible to achieve unless you are in a super tight niche that has little or no competition. Instead you should be focusing on keywords and phrases that are applicable to your client base. Growing your online presence isn’t going to be a result of keywords only. Other factors come into play.
Ask your clients. So many of my clients forget that their website is about their target market, not themselves. Ask existing clients what they would search for to find you. You might be very surprised to find the terms they would use.
Remember YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DO so terms you use aren’t necessarily terms that the general public would use or even know. Move away from your expertise for a time and think about what the general public might consider it is that you do.
Keywords “per se” are no longer used for any search engine. What they do look for is words and phrases that are used consistently across your website. From terms you use for the content of your website through to terms that are used in our behind the scenes actions.
Keywords must be 100% relevant to your website and its content. You can’t for example add in a keyword that is trending just to try to attract traffic. Google is smarter than that.

Actions & Use:

There is so much more to SEO than just keywords and even keyword research can be a very daunting task. Here are my recommendations for getting started with your keyword and phrase research.

The first thing you need to know is where these keywords can and are used. While you probably won’t do more than 20% of this yourself, I always believe that the more you know the more you can grow (cheesy I know but it works).

Google is looking for the use of and repetition of the keywords you select (and by keywords I mean words and phrases) throughout your website. These basic items are where your keywords should be used.

NB: I’m not placing these items in any order of significance and to be honest, the significance per item is very hard to actually calculate. Just consider that they all play a part in reinforcing your keyword strategy.

Page URL - when you create a new page, make the page URL to be a concise description of your page. IE: A blog post about bathroom fittings might have the URL “bathroom-taps-you-will-love”. Try to do this BEFORE you publish the page or blog post. Once it is published if there is any chance someone has seen or bookmarked it, you will have to do a page redirect when you change the url.
Meta Description - this is a behind the page short description of what your page is about. This is also what appears in search results. While it's important to use your keywords here, you also have to remember that this is your one chance to encourage visitors to click through so write for them. The black text in the image below is the meta description for this search result.

Page Title - this is what appears at the top of your browser window or tab and while most clients won’t notice it, again it matters to SEO. Typically we use the structure “keyword | business name | secondary keyword” here.
H1 tag - your H1 tag is the first and main heading on each web page. You should only ever have one H1 tag per page and this is where you should use at least one of your keywords or phrases.
Your page text content , especially the first few paragraphs. You should use your keywords in these first few paragraphs, but above all the paragraph needs to be written for your client. Trying to go crazy with keywords won’t work and your clients won’t stay either so choosing keywords that have real meaning is where this kicks in.
Image names - there is some debate as to whether this is still a factor however it can’t hurt so make sure your images are named appropriately. IE: don’t upload an image that is “IMG045886.jpg”, rename it to be “ThisImageKeyword.jpg” before you upload it.
Image alt tags - ALT tags are for screen readers. A screen reader is for a visually impaired user and typically you should have ALT tags on all your images. Describe the image concisely. While this is a good place to use keywords, again Google is smarter than you think. Accessibility is a high priority so they will show their clients a page that is the most relevant and doesn’t stuff keywords into ALT tags. Use them to describe the image but remember you are describing the image for someone who can’t see it. That must be your priority.

Your Market and Location

Before you establish your primary and secondary keywords, don't forget to take into account your ideal client. If you supply a service primarily for children, consider what age range that might be. If you supply a service for women, make sure you take that into consideration with your keyword selection.

If you are a local business, consider using your location as one of your keywords. An organic cafe on the gold coast might use Gold Coast, but “Broadbeach” or “Mermaid Beach” is probably a better location term. If you are Laser Tag for example, “Gold Coast” is probably a better use of a location term as your market is probably going to be a high level of tourists who won’t know specific locations as well.

Primary and Secondary Keywords

Think of keywords like this:

Your entire website has a theme, subject matter and keywords that will reflect what you are about. It is REALLY hard to be specific with keywords on your homepage so don’t beat yourself up about this page. This will always have more generic keywords than any other page on your website. That’s OK.

Now, think of every other page on your website as a landing page. This is where you can get quite specific with both your keywords and content. If you offer 5 different legal services the keywords across these pages might be quite different.

You don’t have to use exactly the same keywords across your website and you shouldn’t .

Google is smart enough to know that “sickness and accident” & “life insurance” both relate to the same subject so if you have an insurance website, don’t feel like you have to use the same keywords on different pages. Each of those pages is a chance to get clients that specifically relate to that subject. Keep that in mind.

Google presents a web page to their clients in response to their search queries, NOT an entire website. If someone searches for a red car, they don’t look at all websites that have something about a red car, look at all the pages and average it out. They show the client the web page that is most relevant for their search for a “red car”. Of course domain authority and lots of other factors kick in here, but the idea is that they show their client the most relevant web page NOT website .

This enables you to have different keywords for different pages as long as they are all consistently related to the same subject.

Your primary keyword(usually a phrase these days) is going to be what is most relevant about the subject matter on that page.
From there you need to move into collating sub keywords. I usually say try to put together 3 key phrases for each blog post or page. Feel free to use other relevant terms across the page but these 3 phrases need to be repeated in a context that makes sense.
Often you find that what you thought was your primary keyword is after a few months of analytics bringing in the least traffic. Don’t be afraid to get a little left field with the third term. Stay on subject but something a bit quirky can often help bring good solid converting traffic. If I’m searching for “pink bling dog collar” that’s what I want to buy so if I land on your page from such a specific search my chances of purchasing are good!
Don’t go crazy! If you try to use too many phrases, you

can’t use them all on the page and have it make any sense &
you will be diluting the relevance of those that really matter.

So, a main keyword or phrase and then 2 extra that all make sense when you use them in combination throughout your page.

Weird note here: often misspelled words can work well. They must be something that is routinely misspelled however. For example, I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that Nepal tourism added Katmandu to it’s keywords and increased their traffic by over 45%. It is actually spelled Kathmandu, but you can see how it worked.

How To Assemble Your Keywords

If you have any spreadsheet skills at all - these are fabulous tools for assembling your keywords.

This is a sample I have created that you are welcome to use. If you have any challenges flick me an email and I will specifically share you in on a copy.

You need to not only gather your keywords and phrases but you need to see how you can use them. Sometimes a key phrase just won’t work in a sentence, which is why its important to collect multiple keywords and phrases and then work out which works best for not only representing your product but also in content for your visitors.

Blog Posts are Keyword Gold Mines!

While you should be blogging for Google’s love of new content, blog posts and also a fantastic way of being very specific in your subject matter.

Once you have done your website pages, move on to your blog posts. Blogs can be very specific and this is a great place to use a wide variety of subject matter (which of course then means more keywords) that might attract traffic to your website.

Along with your url, h1 tag, first paragraphs, images and meta descriptions, don’t forget blog tags. I’m talking about blog tags specific to my platform so if you aren’t a client of mine you will have to research how to add these to your posts. For my clients they are in the post settings at the bottom and are now interactive! Yeah!

Resources to Help

Neil Patel is the SEO king. I personally find that most of his content is great. He does often support a lot of paid tools or pushes his own tools, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth it. If you would like to go more indepth in keyword research, this series will help greatly.

Google Keyword Planner - this isn’t the easiest tool to use off the bat and I am in the middle of writing out a “how to” for it, however this help page should help you to get started with it. You do need a Google Adwords account but you don’t have to pay for Ads, just start an account to use the tool.

This post is downloadable as a PDF too!

Platform Update - New Options For Headers

Thu, 07 May 2020 05:26:00 GMT

New Capabilities In The Platform Website Header

Duda the platform I use has recently updated the capabilites of their desktop headers. By desktop headers I mean that these new features are only available for desktop views. Your tablet and mobile header will remain the same.

So what are they?

Overlap First Row

Despite it's very bizarre sounding name, Overlap First Row will enable you to make the image from the row directly below your header merge into your header menu. Effectively, this means that you can make your header background transparent and the image from the row beneath it will show as your background on your menu.

This is a great tool and will be very exciting for websites that have multiple images in the next row (adding multiple images to the background on a row makes a hero slider). These images will now get much more real estate and better exposure and if they are product images, that is a VERY good thing.

It also means that you don't have to have your image row such a deep row for clients to see the whole image. You can now make it merge into your header which means that the next section under your image row can be seen "above the fold" and encourage visitors to scroll down.

There are some considerations however:

Your images (if you use more than one) must have the same tone in the top of the image. If one is very light and one is very dark, your menu (if it is black text or white text) will look clear on one but not the other, so it is important to make sure that all your images are light or dark at the top of the image.

The other consideration is to make sure your images aren't too busy at the top. Again your menu will be very hard to see if the image has lots going on.

Shrinking Header Color And Image Changes

Duda's shrinking header is one of their best features. It is so simple but means that no matter how far down the page your visitor is, they can see the top menu. So valuable as a base feature.

They have now added the ability to change the colors and even the logo of that shrinking header. This means that if my header you can see above is white with black text, I could change it to be dark blue with white text on the scroll when it changes to the shrunken header. (Every time I type "shrunken header" I think about hiking the Head Hunters trail in Borneo!

You can even change the logo image. So as you see it now, my logo is Grey, however if I did edit the shrunken header to have a dark background I could change the image to be a white version of my logo to again make sure it is easily visible.

How To Acheive Both Of these Results

As always I find a video is a much easier way to learn how to make these changes than me typing endless instructions on the page during which you start to nod off about half way through.

This YouTube video below explains both these edits, shows you how to do them and things to be aware of. Comment on the video (or here) if anything is unclear.

If you are one of my clients and I've locked your header, just get in touch and I will release it for editing for you.

How To Change The Contact Button On Your Instagram Profile

Mon, 04 May 2020 00:10:00 GMT

Change The Instagram Contact Button To An Email Or Call Button!

Did you know that you can customize the contact button that now is available on Instagram business profiles quickly and easily?

I'll explain how to get the button (if you can't see it on your profile) and how to change it to either a call or email button instead of the generic contact button.

Add The Button To Your Profile

If you don't see the Contact button on your Instagram profile there are a couple of easy steps to take to add it.

You will need an Instagram business account, so if your profile is a personal profile you will have to change it to a business profile first.

The button will automatically appear once you add contact information in your business profile.

If you’re wondering how to get the contact button on Instagram, you’re not alone! Finding and editing this feature just takes a little digging into your profile settings. You’ll also need an Instagram business account!

To edit the contact button, simply go to your profile, select “Edit Profile” and tap the “Contact Options” under the Public Business Information section.

If you have multiple preferred communication lines, you can add all of them to pop up on a menu under the “Contact” action button on your Instagram profile.

Steps to add the contact button to your Instagram profile:

Go to Edit Profile
Tap the "Contact Options"
Complete the information in this area.

Once you have added your address, contact number and email in this area the Instagram contact button will appear on your profile.

NB: If you wish to add just your locale and not add a specific address, outside of the US smaller suburbs may not show up in the location option. For example, my business is in Miami on the Gold Coast but Miami only gives me Florida options so I have to use Gold Coast, Queensland for my location if I don't use my full address.

How To Change The Instagram Contact Button To An Email Button

If your business is best suited for contact via email, you can now change the Instagram contact button to be an email button.

This will allow your clients to click this button and email you directly.

Steps To Change The Contact Button To Be An Email Button:

Select “Edit Profile“ & then
Select “Contact Options“ again
Add in your business email address
Remove your phone number
Remove your physical address
Tap the tick symbol

Removing your phone number and physical address is critical to get this button to change to "Email". Email must be the only entry in the contact options. You can see in the pic on the right, the button is now an "Email" button.

How To Change The Instagram Contact Button To A Call Button

I'm sure you realise by now that to change this email button to a call button, the steps are very similar. You just remove your email information and add a contact phone number.

This will allow your clients to click this button and call instead of email.

Steps To Change The Contact Button To Be A Call Button:

Select “Edit Profile“ & then
Select “Contact Options“ again
Add in your business phone number
Remove your email address
Remove your physical address
Tap the tick symbol

As in with the Email button steps, removing your email and physical address is critical to get this button to change to "Call". Your phone number must be the only entry in the contact options. You can see in the pic on the right, the button is now an "Call" button.

Hide Your Contact Info Completely

You can of course hide the contact info on your Instagram profile complete.

Steps to turn off your contact info from displaying:

Go to Edit Profile again,
Choose profile display
Display contact info and toggle the switch to off

Once you've done this, your contact info won't show at all.

So there you have it, a simple and easy way to change your Instagram contact button to Email or Call in less than 5 minutes.

How To Build Your Own Instagram Link In Bio Page

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 06:56:00 GMT

Create A Landing Page For Your Instagram Bio Link

Most of us are aware the you cannot create clickable links in your Instagram posts. A wide variety of companies now offer paid accounts where you can schedule your Instagram posts AND some of them offer you a Link-In-Bio setup.
What this does is enable you to put a link into each post your create in your scheduling account that is specific to that post. Then you get a link from your scheduling company that you place into your Instagram bio. Then when anyone clicks the link in your bio, they get sent to a page where all your Instagram posts are displayed where they can click further through and to the specific URL's you set up when you scheduled each post.

This has been a great facility for creaters and businesses who use Instagram, however when I started thinking about it I wondered why I didn't just build my own Instagram landing page for my Instagram visitors? So I did!

Pros:

The biggest pro is that you are keeping your own traffic. You are driving your traffic to click through from Instagram so why wouldn't you keep the traffic? Using your own Instagram landing page, you are directing traffic directly from Instagram to your own website. Can't hurt right?
You can put more information in a better laid out page further encouraging your clients to click through to your post info.
You can style it to look in line with your websites colors and style

Cons:

If you post multiple times per day and want links back from all your posts, it isn't a small amount of work. This will really only work if you are a business that tends to schedule once or twice a day. If you are the master of the Insta on the run, this isn't for you.
You will have to republish your website daily to add the new conent that will appear on Instagram that day.

How Do I Do It?

The video below will walk you through how to create a website page for visitors coming from your Instagram bio link. If you aren't one of my clients and use another platform, the process will still work, but obviously the technical steps will be different.

If you already know what link in Bio is, skip to 7:50 where the start of the how to begins.

I am working on a written step by step that I will update here in the next few days.

20 Australian Directories To Submit Your Website To

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 14:00:00 GMT

20 Australian Directories To Submit Your Website URL To

In past years online directories were a great place to lodge your business information not only for exposure but for backlinking as well. Unfortunately spammers started using this option and Google no longer places a lot of authority to directory back links. While this is the case, it can't hurt and some of these directories do spend a significant amount of money on advertising which may expose your business to a client that might not otherwise find you.

This is a decent amount of work and knowing that I do offer a service to do this for you for $60.00. I'm pretty quick at it now so I have discounted that price pretty heavily. Complete this order form and I will send you an invoice. Once that is paid I will add your information to these directories.

You should have already created your Google My Business page & created a business listing page on Facebook so I've not included these in this list. Google My Business must be created by yourself as there will be verification via phone or email that I can't do so I don't offer this service myself.

Directories I Suggest

Apple Maps - https://mapsconnect.apple.com/

AussieWeb - https://aussieweb.com.au/

Bing Places - https://www.bingplaces.com/

BrownBook - https://www.brownbook.net/

dLook - https://www.dlook.com.au/

Enroll Business - https://au.enrollbusiness.com/

Factual - https://www.factual.com/

Flying Solo - https://www.flyingsolo.com.au/

FourSquare - http://business.foursquare.com/

Hotfrog - https://www.hotfrog.com.au/

Infobel - https://www.infobel.com/en/australia

Localsearch - https://www.localsearch.com.au/

showmelocal - https://au.showmelocal.com/

StartLocal - https://www.startlocal.com.au/

Street Directory - https://www.street-directory.com.au/

True Local - https://www.truelocal.com.au/

White Pages - https://www.whitepages.com.au/

Word of Mouth - https://www.wordofmouth.com.au/

Yellow Pages - https://www.yellowpages.com.au/

Yelp - https://www.yelp.com.au/

While as I say most of these directories won't make you magically appear on page 1 of Google (let that obsession go!), every little bit helps. Think of it more as a reinforcement of your business name and appearance in as many places as you can. While it may not gather you massive link juice, the power of repetition is strong and if a client sees your business in multiple locations that will help to enforce their trust of you as a secure local business.

I have created a Google sheet with the list for you to check off those you have done. You will need to make a copy of it into your own Google Account.

How To Handle Nasty Or Critical Comments From Readers

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 04:32:00 GMT

What Do You Do If you Get A Negative Or Nasty Comment?

We've all heard those horror stories about businesses that have been victimised by nasty comments or online bullying, however how should you actually handle these things?

I'm going to outline here how I react to negative or nasty comments on my blog or social media posts.

Step 1 - Identify Which Type Of Comment It is

Reading anything negative that has been written about yourself or your business is confronting for sure. However, you need to take your emotive hat off, sit it on the shelf and analyse each comment on its merits.

I must do the usual disclaimer here and say that this will be different for all of you. Comments that I may think are destructive you may consider not that bad, so only you can devise a way of categorising them.

Why?

Our usual reaction to anything negative is to be upset or angry, however firstly you need to establish if the comment has real merit or it is simply just offensive.

I break these comments down into:

negative but with merit
negative with no merit
nasty
personal or business attack
completely offensive

This is how I handle each type of comment.

Step 2 - Handle Each Comment Based On The Category It Fits INto

Negative With Merit

If the comment isn't something you want to hear but has actual basis, that is a negative comment but it's not something you could or should ignore.

I immediately try and find out if this is an actual client or if its just someone randomly commenting.

If its a client the first thing I always do is reach out immediately via the phone.

I actually call them. They are clearly upset and if I've done something, or not done something that they are upset about I need to get onto them immediately and chat about what it is. I know some people are scared to call upset clients, however what is the absolute worst they can do? Yell at you.
If they do yell at me, calmly and with respect, I ask them if we can work through the challenge together so I can solve it for them. It's very hard to be angry or yell at someone who won't engage.
I let them vent and then ask if they will work through it with you and offer any solutions I can think of immediately.
If they refuse to stop yelling, again, calmly and with respect I ask if they can lower their voice so we can both worth though the challenge and solve it. I reiterate that I 100% want to fix the challenge, but I can't do it with them yelling at me.
I work through the challenge with them and come up with alternatives. If I don't know how I can solve it immediately, I SAY THAT! Do not lie or try and fudge your way through. I tell them I don't have a solution at this minute however I will give it my immediate and utmost attention and will try and get back to them in the next few hours with a better outcome.
If I can't solve it that day, I call them again and reiterate that its my only job today and I'm working on it. Never let it go over to another day without calling them back.
As far as the comment goes, I reply to the comment apologizing for the challenge and that I've reached out to them directly to obtain a solution. I always reply publicly as that shows people how I handle any challenges and reassures others that their input won't be ignored.

Negative Without Merit

Personally I think this is the hardest type of comment to deal with.

If I can work out its a client, I call them and try to work through it but if I don't know who it is, I reply to it as best I can. I try to address it immediately and if the visitor tries to engage and make something huge of it, I delete it. I feel that if I've addressed the comment and that doesn't suit them, its probably a nuisance comment and I'm not going to waste my time on it. I won't get into a he said she said so I just delete it.

Nasty Comments

If a comment is posted that has no purpose apart from being plain nasty, whether its on my blog or a social media platform I tend to delete it.

I know that often the experts say you are better to leave it there and ignore it I feel that it will seem weird to possible clients if I've responded to another negative comment but have left this one sitting there. If it has no purpose and is just hateful, its gone. I've got better things to do.

Personal or Business Attack

If someone chooses to attack me personally through a business platform, that is just not acceptable to me. I have absolutely no challenge just deleting these comment. Likewise if its an attack on my business with zero cause, again I delete it. I would consider an attack to be something like:

"This woman's an idiot. She doesn't know what she's talking about blah blah blah...."

Where as a negative comment with no merit I consider to be more specific. IE:

"This online store is rubbish. You can't edit the style and it shows too many products on the home page etc etc"

That one isn't true but is actually about something I do so I would categorise that as Negative with no merit. Its probably posted by someone who hasn't followed the training and is now angry that their store doesnt' look like they want it to. It has no merit because you can edit those things so that's how I would categorise it.

Completely Offensive

Fortunately I've only ever had one of these and about a year later I found out that the person had gotten mixed up with who they thought I was. Regardless there is no place in today's world for that kind of behavior and they get deleted immediately.

If its on my blog, there isn't always much you can do about blocking them, however if its on social media, I block and/or report them and then delete the post.

Step 3 - What To Do Now

Mostly, I just walk away.

If it's something I've addressed, I check on the client a few days later to be sure it solved their challenge. If its something I've deleted, I just forget about it.

The only person that will suffer from dwelling on comments posted by online trolls is you. Walk away and realise that there are some very unscrupulous people out there with nothing better to do and if it's not you it's someone else. It's rarely personal and if it is you are the only one that control your response.

I do however encourage you to contact the authorities if you feel threatened in anyway or if it continues. Remember to always take a screen shot of the post before you delete it so you have a reference if need be.

15 Instagram Post Ideas For Engagement

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 00:27:00 GMT

15 Engagement Ideas for You Instagram Posts

Instagram is the home of pretty pictures. We all spend time scrolling through our feed, checking out our favourite brands, people and friends. But how often to we actually stop, like, comment or take action on an Instagram post?

As a business it can be a very real struggle to produce continually good content that your followers will love and will help to drive traffic to your website.

Here is 15 of my top tips for engagement through your Instagram posts.

Your Inspiration

Often things that inspire you will also inspire your followers. Share the accounts and people who give you inspiration to create your content and chances are that your followers will also love these profiles. Don't be scare to share personal inspiration as well.

A FAQ

If you are continually asked the same questions from clients over and over again, share it as an Instagram post. This can serve two purposes. It shows your followers that you care about your clients and do respond to their questions, and it might address the one concern they have that is holding them back from purchasing.

A Challenge

Create a challenge for your faithful followers that is focused around them. Create a new hashtag (#mybusiness-challenge) and ask them to post on their own accounts using the hashtag. Don't forget to respond to each and every one. Yes - ALL of them. You want your clients to feel the love when they take up the challenge.

A Flashback

Thursdays doesn't have to be the only day you can do throw backs. Keep them business oriented and stress how far you have come. Also ask for any more recommendations that might help your business move forward.

Before And After

Everyone loves before and afters. I shared a copy of my first website last year alongside my current one and it got very good engagement. Showing how far my own website has come enabled possible clients to see what I could do for them.

A Testimonial

A few clients have mentioned to me that they feel that sharing some positive feedback feels like they are bragging. That is so not the case. Express your appreciation for the positive feedback and tag your client so they get the exposure as well. Testimonials are the lifeblood of business these days and encouraging other client to leave one can't hurt.

A Hack

Sharing a hack you use regularly is a great way to engage your followers. One of my Photoshop Idols shared how to open multiple raw files in Photoshop while avoiding Camera Raw and I use that thing every day! I know that's completely irrelevant to you but to his followers it was gold! Thanks to Unmesh from @piximperfect

A Quote

If you find yourself reminding yourself of a particular quote you love to get you through the day, chances are others might like to see it. Create a post in your brands colors and theme with your quote and share it. Ask for other quotes that inspire your tribe.

A Finished Project

If you have just completed a project share it with your Instagram followers. Be sure to express the inspiration behind the project, your process and the end result.

10.

Encourage A Follower

You followers will usually be made up of not just potential clients but actual clients. Tag one and encourage one of your clients. Make mention of what amazing steps they are taking and how proud you are of them. Often these type of posts get a lot of shares and saves.

11.

Share Your Blog POsts

Use your posts to share blog posts that you know your following will find useful. Consider using a post managment tool like Later which encompasses LinkInBio. This tool enables you to put one link in your Instagram Bio which goes to a specific page that your follower can choose which item they wish to see. When you use later to schedule your posts, you add the link that particular post should go to and when the follower clicks the link in your bio (which is your LinkInBio link) they go to that particular post. Cool hey?

12.

A Website or TOol

It always seems counter productive to refer your own clients elsewhere, however sharing tools or websites that help you through the day may help them. Customer service at its finest. Don't forget to ask for tools that your followers may use that might help you! Engagement remember!

13.

A Failure

I know it seems strange, however sharing something you have failed dismally at is a great way to show that you aren't just about the fluffy stuff. Create real engagement by sharing something you really fell off the wagon with - however - make sure you include what you've done to ensure it doesn't happen again. Or what you've learned. You had a challenge and you fixed it.

14.

Caption This

This is a great way to encourage comments on your posts. You could even make it a weekly thing. What you want to do however is ensure that your post is branded in your colors and theme. Make it instantly recognisable to the scrolling army.

15.

Photos Of Yourself

I am absolute rubbish at this one but you shouldn't be. Even if your Instagram profile is your business profile, it's still about you. You are your business and nothing reassures clients more that their is a real person behind the screen than regular images of yourself.

Blogging to address a bad review.

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 02:17:00 GMT

A Case Study - Use Your BloG To Recover From a Bad Review

Blogging is not just for yoga, foodies, travel and "how to blog" websites. It is possibly one of the most powerful tools in your website arsenal and so many businesses are just not making the most of it. Apart from using a blog to drive traffic to your website and of course for keeping Google happy, you can use your blog for so many more things...

What is a blog?

I'm going to explain a blog in a way in which it relates to this article . We all know what a blog is, however consider that a blog is a way of adding content to your website that

doesn't clog up your menu,
allows you to go slightly off script
shows your business personality
allows you to capture visitors you otherwise might not
keeps google happy that you are always working toward a better website
is an opportunity to reinforce your revenue, conversions, branding and
a place where you can insert very specific calls to action without looking spammy
it is also a place where you can reinforce your company values and
somewhere that you can address client concerns easily.

How Susan turned A Bad Review Into Raving Fans Using Her blog

Let me give you an example of what I mean here. This is actually a client of mine however I've changed her name for the purpose of the story. Susan is no longer running her business as she has moved to Canada with her husband and children and is now running kids craft classes!

Lets hear the story:

Susan ran a very successful wedding invitation business. She did hand drawn calligraphy and had a very specialized luxury brand customer base. Susan had embraced a blog to help her drive traffic to her website but she wanted to be very clear about her pricing. In the beginning she had a few visitors take the action (awesome!) and call her but they were stunned at her prices and one even then left her a scathing review about how expensive she was. A review from a person who hadn't even used her services.

Susan was devastated and immediately noticed the effect on her business. We put our heads together on how to try to repair the damage and decided that Susan would write a few blog posts about how her services weren't for everyone and how you could still use her at a more cost effective rate. We worked out some packages that didn't include everything that Susan had offered to date.

For example:

Up to that point, Susan's wedding package pricing was based around guest numbers. Obviously being hand written invitations, it was based around a per invite cost. Susan's product was actually really incredible when you heard what the full package included, however when clients called and asked a ball park figure, Susan's per invite cost seemed exorbitan t. What she wasn't imparting however was that it wasn't just her writing someone's name on an invitation it was so much more than that.

Susan's package included:

A custom drawn logo for the bride and groom (usually based around their initials, the date and any other relevant factors).
Hand written Invitations,
response cards,
envelopes,
return envelopes,
table plans,
thank you cards &
"sorry you couldn't make it" cards. The "sorry you can't make it" cards were actually Susan's idea. She included the same number of cards and envelopes of the people who declined, with a lovely photo insert card inside that the bride and groom could send to those that couldn't make it. It was SO popular! Imagine getting a photo the week after a wedding your couldn't attend with a "You were missed" message inside. What a fabulous idea!
the pack also included the postage for the invitations. Susan could get a heavily discounted deal for volume post and passed some of that on to her clients.
She even included a lovely video of her writing the invites for the bride and groom to include in their wedding video.

Talk about over delivering!

Once you are aware of what the pack included, it was good value. It wasn't cheap for sure but Susan was converting about 75% of inquiries just by sending out a link to a blog page that showed exactly what was included and how she went about creating the invites. Her embeded YouTube video was getting a massive 93% click through rate to her ordering enquiry page. That is the percentage that was visiting the page from the email link. So of the people that enquired, and of those that clicked to watch the "how I do it" video, 93% of those also clicked the "enquire now" option at the end of her YouTube video.

If you haven't gathered - Susan was my hero. What that woman thought of and committed to was outstanding.

Why the info on the blog page and not just on her website?

From the start, Susan's goal was to sell primarily her full package option. By systematizing her process she was able to create all the little extra's (return envelopes, thank you cards etc) in a really time constructive way so those extra's was the "money for jam" component of her business. She kept herself busy with her current website traffic and referrals and after thinking everything through, realised that if she was to offer smaller more cost effective packages she probably wasn't going to be able to do that work herself.

Susan had a few colleagues who she knew she could call on but was concerned about the lack of time she could dedicate to supervising the work. Knowing this, she made the decision to offer these lesser packages via her blog only and not on the main pages of her website. Her line of thinking was that direct visitors to her website or those coming from her tried and tested advertising channels would have some idea of what her services cost so she wanted to direct them to her highest level package. Smart thinking. While they could find the other services if they searched her website it was important to Susan that the full package stay front and center.

In my mind, this decision was genius and I have no trouble telling you that I've recommended this in varying forms over and over and over again to clients. It's like a soft launch. If it works great, if it doesn't you haven't diluted your other products.

Susan wrote 2 blog posts herself offering the smaller more cost effective packages, and then engaged a copy writer to write the post that addressed the bad review. Susan was adamant that they call it "I Caused My Own Bad Review" and took full responsibility for not explaining exactly what her package included and how her skipping straight to the money question scared the living daylights out of a potential client. She apologized (I have to take credit here and tell you that was my suggestion - you all know how much I love saying "sorry my bad") and made sure that everyone knew that she felt personally responsible and had learned a valuable lesson.

We published the first two posts a week apart and they did get some traction for sure. 1 or 2 bookings from memory however they were clients Susan was pretty sure she could have gotten over the line anyway. Then we hit publish on the bad review post.

Now I have to mention that Susan pulled out every weapon in her marketing arsenal here and made sure that post was everywhere. She shared it to facebook, instagram & twitter and sent an email to ALL her previous brides asking if they could share it via their own social channels. Within a week it had been shared over 4500 times. I wish it was still up so I could show you but Susan using her existing clients to help her get the message out was an outstanding achievement. Her email subject line was "HELP - I messed up!" and a whopping 63% of subscribers opened it within the first 5 hours.

Her real stroke of genius was to very subtly include a link for her past brides to post their own review on Google My Business. Within 3 hours that bad review was nowhere to be found. It ended up buried under all these 5 star reviews.

The Outcome

OMG - people love drama!

The response was swift and immediate. The term "viral" occurs to me now even though this was years ago and before that term was coined.

I promised Susan I wouldn't tell you just how many bookings she got from that horrible review, but I am going to tell you that she immediately hired another full time calligrapher and also hired a PA to handle all the business stuff for about 30 hours a week. I do know that another part time calligrapher followed and when she moved to Canada a few years later, Susan sold her business for a very nice chunk of change.

All from a bad review!

things to consider:

The success of Susan's response to this incident was very dependent on a few things.

Susan had a very generous email list of all her past brides which was invaluable in getting the message out there. I'm talking over 700 women.
She thought outside the box about how to address it. Initially she wanted to offer the offended bride a completely free package but after talking it over with her husband and friends came to the conclusion that all clients aren't good clients and she didn't want to start a business relationship on less than great terms. I have so much admiration for her for this. If someone is going to write you a nasty review when their only interaction with you is a phone call about price - not a client I would probably take on either.
The wedding industry is HUGE and has massive engagement. If she was in any other industry I'm not sure she would have had even 10% of the success this achieved.
Google was not impressed with the amount of reviews Susan's business received in such a short space of time and we had to show them the entire blog/email/sharing thread before they would release a lot of those reviews. Google is always suspicious of your GMB getting a lot of reviews in a short space of time so in hindsight, we should have somehow split up the email with the review link and sent out a staggered campaign probably.

A footnote:

Feb 2020 - I messaged Susan to tell her I was finally writing this blog post and she said that she found out only last year that unbeknownst to her, the bad review woman had actually ended up purchasing Susan's full package about a year after the event. I loved that!

How To Never Run Out Of Content Ideas

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 21:44:00 GMT

how to never run out of ideas for your website blog

Once you have been writing blog posts for your business for a good amount of time, it does usually get easier to come up with new and fresh idea's for your blog. However, we all have those "OMG I can't think of anything to write about" moments.

Hopefully this post will help you to keep those content idea's coming thick and fast.

1. Don't be afraid to step out of the box - just stay in the room!

Typically a website blog is not just written to keep Google happy, its written to offer free helpful content to your existing visitors AND to attract new visitors. It is easy to run out of idea's if you stick way to tightly to your website subject. A blog is a great place to diversity and test. If you are a real estate website for example, try writing some blogs about decor with a twist on how it can help you sell your home. This could attract visitors who are after decorating advice and while they might not be selling their home now, they may in the future. Get in front of the curve and put your real estate sales business front and center in their mind.

IE:

The best modern style furniture to help sell a new home.
How Magnolia paint color isn't always the best choice.
The power of a good throw rug.

2. Keep a list that is always accessible

My domain emails are run through Google's GSuite which has a great range of apps available. I use Google Keep which is a note taking app. Apart from being incredibly easy to use it is cloud based so I can add notes on my phone when I'm out and have them accessible on my desktop immediately I get home. Perfect!

I have a blog post on how to use Keep so feel free to check that out.

3. Ask your clients what they would like to see on you blog

If you have an email list or regular website visitors ask them what they would like to see. If you use a good email marketing platform like GetResponse , part of their suite of products are form capabilities.

Create a new mini form and test how these work with your clients. Create a form asking for what they would like to see on the blog and see how the responses come through. If that doesn't work, maybe next time ask them to vote on which subject they feel would offer them the most value.

Some clients won't type in a subject but they will vote on a choice. Work out what works best and take that action.

4. Answer commonly asked questions

You will find that you are often asked the same question over and over again. Use this and create a blog post answering this question.

If you are being asked the same question over and over what are the chances that visitors are actually Googling this? Pretty good I would say.

Write a blog post answering this question and don't forget to create a tag for QandA posts so that clients can see other questions you have answered. Engagement is key so if you can add a "related posts" list to the bottom of one Q&A, you give your clients somewhere to go next.

5. be flexible with your time

I always sit down and write all my blog posts and create all my content around the middle of the month for the coming month. This gives me time to tweak and edit without being time stressed and I always find that once I start writing, I get more and more idea's about what other subject matter I could address. So be flexible. Don't sit down with an hour knowing you have to go back to a client project to meet a deadline. Make sure you have an open ended time frame so you can keep going if you get on that all important roll!

6. Learn new things

I could not begin to add up the number of times I've been reading a book or listening to a podcast or watching a TED talk and immediately thought of how a particular slice of content could apply to my business or clients. WAY too many to count.

Get away from your business and listen and learn for yourself. You will be surprised how much you gain and what idea's start brewing in the back of your brain and if nothing else, you will take the pressure off yourself. I don't know about you but I always have these great ideas when I'm walking or in the shower and not thinking at all about business stuff.

7. get ideas from your peers

I like that. "Ideas from your peers". I'm going to start using that more.

Don't be scared to see what others in your market are doing. Don't copy them, see what they are posting and if it has any relevance to your clients, write your own post addressing that subject making sure it's written with your client base in mind.

Consider using a Feed Reader

I use Feedly as my blog reader which allows me to collate all the blogs I follow into one place. I can categorize them, save them for later reading or into my own folders. I LOVE IT! Every time I sit down to read my feed (which is usually a Saturday morning with a coffee and the dog on my lap) I always come away with so many content ideas I can apply for my own business.

Again - don't copy anyone else's post but if you see something that your readers would be interested in add it to your Google Keep List and save it for later use.

This post (with video) on How To Use Feedly is available on the blog and should help you to get started with Feedly.

Save for later

How To Read All Your Blog Feeds Together

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 23:28:00 GMT

use feedly to read all your blog posts in one place

If you are anything like me you follow a veritable raft of bloggers across a wide variety of subjects and themes. If you haven't embraced the benefit of a good feed reader - NOW is the time.

Learn how to use Feedly (a free feed reader) to collate all your blogs into one place where you can read them, categorize them and save them to boards for later.

feedly as a blog feed reader

Feedly.com was originally one of the Google suite of products. I have been using them for years and find it to be supremely easy to use. I've never felt the need to upgrade to the paid version as the free account offers everything I need in a feed reader.

You can signup with your Google Account, email or Facebook (I use my Google account) and start adding content to your feed immediately.

Feedly allows you to categorize your incoming content as well as creating boards to save content you wish to revisit later. Simply visit www.feedly.com and click "Get Started For Free".

How to use feedly

The easiest way to show you how to use Feedly and to get the best out of it is via the video below. It's super easy to use and my video should run you through everything you need to know. Let me know how you go in the comments below and of course any blogs that are worth following.

Some of my faves:

Save for later

Stop Your Email Newsletters Going To Spam

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 00:27:00 GMT

how to get your email newsletters to the inbox

Starting your blog is easy. Getting email subscribers - not so much.

Despite all the "get 10,000 subscribers in 30 days" offers you see on the internet, it isn't that simple. I don't care what anyone says, prospective clients are hard to get and even harder to keep engaged. Keeping them engaged is the key to eventually making them clients and regular newsletters can help you achieve that goal.

Now that you have your email list and are creating regular content for your subscribers, its more essential than ever to ensure your email is actually seen.

10 tips to getting your email newsletter seen (And out of spam!)

Starting from the top following these simple practices can keep your email front and center in your client's inbox. For anyone who has ever spent the time creating regular newsletters, there is a real thrill in seeing how many of your emails were opened and an even greater thrill seeing a good click through rate. Lets start with the subject line...

1. Your Subject LIne

A lot of email spam filters can actually learn. They recognise the actions taken by the user and over time evolve their spam filters accordingly. Apart from these action driven changes, they are by default programmed to direct any emails with spammy or click bait style subject lines straight to the spam folder.

If you email contains any of the words or phrases that are considered to be regularly used by spam email you have a high risk of your email not even going into your clients inbox.

Things to avoid:

Don't use all capitals
Avoid one-word subject lines
Don't use RE: in your subject lines if it's not a reply
Try not to make spelling mistakes
Avoid the use of exclamation points in your subject line

Words and phrases NOT to use.

Think about the spam you have received and the words and phrases in those email subject lines. Avoid using anything that is or has been used in those emails.

For example:

Act Now / Cash / Investment (that's a big one) / Order Now / Quote (so many spam emails come in now with a quote as an attachment trying to get you to reply) / Purchase / Offer / Risk Free - you get the idea.

I know some of those can be hard to avoid especially if you are trying to promote a sale or product offer, however it is possible.

A Helpful Tip!

If you do use images in your newsletters, make sure to use ALT tags like you would on your website or blog post images. Read about how to use ALT tags in this post.

3. Use a reliable and reputable email program

With the introduction of the GDRP a few years ago, you should all now be using an Email Newsletter provider for your email marketing.

It is essential to have unsubscribe options and to keep your clients email information private, which it won't be if you aren't using a dedicated email marketing platform.

As well as adhering to legal email considerations a good email and/or promotional platform also has a large team working on overcoming any new delivery challenges that may arise. The won't have much of a business if all of a sudden their clients emails aren't being delivered into their clients inboxes or worse at all. Find one you like, that is easy to use and trust them. This is what they do - let them do it for you.

While it has a huge market share I personally I find Mail Chimp very hard to use. I know and people do laugh at me for this but I just don't understand their terms and I find everything is a challenge for me to actually do.

I use GetResponse which I love. They aren't just email marketing, they have auto responders, landing pages, exit popups and more depending on the plan you use. Starting at $15 USD per month I also find them very affordable for the products you get in their plans.

A Helpful Tip!

Never ever EVER use your own email application to send out mass emails. Most email platforms have hourly send limitations and apart from that, they simply aren't equipped to manage that level of emails. They also don't meet the legal and privacy levels you need to have and is the very best way to go straight to spam. Don't be tempted. It's not worth it.

4. Never use a free email address to send your newsletters

It is never a good idea to send email newsletters from a free email address. Some email marketing providers won't even let you do this. Always create a dedicated email address from your domain and use that consistently.

Mailchimp for example sends non domain emails as from: myemail@hotmail.com via mailchimpapp.net. That "via" is most likely going to send your email straight to spam.
Any decent spam filter is going to consider newsletters from free email addresses that end in gmail.com or outlook.com or hotmail.com to be spam. Spend the money and get a dedicated domain email for your email marketing.

GSuite offers domain email hosting for around $8.50 per month AUD which is a small price to pay to avoid the spam folder.

A Helpful Tip!

Domain based email addresses also tell your clients that you are a reputable business operating at a professional level. Apart from that, every single chance you get to show someone your website domain should be used. If your newsletters come from news@yourdomain.com once again you are enforcing your website address to your client.

5. Check the email's deliverability with a Spam Tester

Once you have your email ready to go I would recommend sending it to a spam email tester and checking the results.

You have a few options here, however I always use 2. Mail-Tester and Is Not Spam mainly because they both have little features that the other doesn't.

For Example: Mail-Tester can tell you if you have missed using ALT text on your images which is awesome! Is Not Spam will tell you things like "0.0 HTML_FONT_SIZE_HUGE BODY: HTML font size is huge". That is something I want to know to avoid going into the spam bucket so I tend to use both of these websites to check every email I send through GetResponse.

The Is Not Spam report is a little more technical and you do have to scan through it so beware of that.

Make sure that you make the adjustments these tools recommend or you have just wasted your time. Some things like setting up SPF Records and DKIM records will be a one off thing. Once you ahve done that you won't need to do it again.

tip - create an email list withjust the spam testers

A Helpful Tip!

Create an email list in your email providers account with JUST these two email addresses in it. Then you can send a test email to both and get the reports easily. I would open the browser window of both websites first, then log in and send your test email. Once you have done that, wait a few minutes and click the "View Your Report" button.

Check out the subject lines from the email newsletters you receive. I know some you will open because you are familiar with the content and are always keen to read what that supplier is sending you, however look at the emails you have opened because of the subject line. See what makes you click into the email and get ideas from that.

Legal Pages You Need NOW!

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 05:13:00 GMT

legal pages every website must have!

Legal pages should be a high priority for you if you are committed to protecting your website or blog.

Depending on what stage you’re at in your business and what type of website you have, you might have to have a specific policy that others don’t. In general however, there are a few legal pages that every website should have in order to be legally compliant.

what legal pages do you need?

1. A Privacy Policy & Cookie Policy

I have heard a lot of talk about how operating a business in Australia means you don't have to comply with GDPR for example. That is not true. If anyone from the EU visits your website, they have the right to these new privacy laws. So don't stick your head in the sand and think that because your business is outside of Europe (or California now with the CCPA coming into effect) that you get a pass on these laws.

If you serve content to these area's you need to abide by these laws.

Considering you can't control who see's your content, by default you need to comply.

You may choose to split your Privacy and Cookie policy pages however usually you wouldn't be in trouble for having both on the one page. Please ensure they are well defined and clearly different policies though.

2. Website Terms and Conditions Of Use

The role of a Website Terms and Conditions of Use is to protect yourself and your business from the use of any content on your website. Despite your best efforts we all make mistakes and the simplest thing misinterpreted by a reader could put you in really hot water.

Lets say you have a cooking blog and your list of ingredients for a recipe has an item that unbeknown to you contains traces of nuts. Can you imaging how badly that could end up for someone with an allergic child! Lets hope this would never happen, however if it does, you need to protect yourself from a potentially significant lawsuit.

3. Disclaimer for Affiliate Links / User Submitted Content

With blogging getting more and more competitive, the latest surge in a lot of blogs is guest related content. IE Guest blogging. While you may read every post before it is set live, a disclaimer over any guest posts will mean that you are covered should anything of the content, images or links NOT be legally used. Lets say a guest blogger uses a photo that they took off anther blog, you don't want to be legally liable for any breach of copy-write that photo might have.

Most bloggers also use affiliate links which means that they earn a commission from directing you to products and/or services via links. I use this myself. I don't earn much money from it but it does enable me to cover some of the cost of my ongoing training.

Most bloggers will only direct you to something they have either used or know to be good quality and value, however you need to protect yourself and advise your clients that some products you recommend you will be paid for. See my affiliate disclaimer statement here.

How do you get legal pages

In the past to obtain legal pages for your website you would have had to pay your solicitor or lawyer to draw them up at great expense for yourself. These days there are a few reliable and affordable website where you can get legal pages for your website.

Of course you should ensure you actually read the legalese and make sure they are suitable for your website before you use them.

The introduction of GDPR a few years ago has meant that a few businesses who supply legal pages have risen to the top of the heap.

Option 1 - The Contract Shop

The Contract Shop can provide you with a Terms & Conditions AND a Privacy Policy for $277 USD. They can also supply a blog disclaimer (which includes a disclaimer for affiliate links etc) for only $27.00 USD. That would make it just under $300 USD and while I know you are choking on your coffee right now, that's not expensive in the overall scheme of things!

They do also have packages, however these are primarily for design, coaching and artistic businesses and in my mind a little expensive (mostly considering our rubbish AUD exchange rate).

Option 2 - The Self Guru

Amira from The Self Guru is a lawyer herself and has website legal packages available for $180 USD which includes a Terms and Conditions of Use, GDPR & CCPA compliant Privacy Policy and a Disclaimer Template.

Now I have to say that Amira has fully embraced Convert Kit and is the master of the "and there's more...." so this page goes on forever. However if the "I Want It" button on the bottom of your screen doesn't show just scroll to the end of the page and work your way back up for the purchase button . Personally these are the legal docs I use for my website. She does include quite a lot of extra's like the Affiliate Disclaimer, Sponsored Posts Disclaimer & a Fair Use Disclaimer so you do get a lot for your money here.

Your responsibility

It is no longer OK just to have these pages on your website. A recent law suit in the US ruled that you have to have visible links to these pages and compliance can't just be inferred.

A lot of websites may have these page links visible via their site map but nowhere else and that is no longer acceptable.

Sure you don't want to take up valuable header menu space with these links, however ALWAYS link to them in the footer of your website at the very least. This is where most people will look to find them and you should be proud of the fact that you are protecting your livelihood.

The Best Of | Dec 2019 | Geek Queen

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 08:18:00 GMT

Things I've found and loved - DEC 2019

Watching: TED Talk - rethinking infidelity - esther perel

Don't read anything into this! Just watch it for interest's sake. It is a great talk, it's not that long and she really does cmopare how infidelity has changed over the centuries.

Let me know what you think.

Also Watching: fractured

I had this in my favourites for a while but only just watched it. OMG it is so good and right uptill the end you don't see it coming. That's all I'm going to say but let me know what you think.

Learning: 17 year old boys can be so painful!

So we've just come back from two weeks in Samoa.

Here's the rub: we took our nephew Jack and his two mates for Jacks' year 12 grad trip. We take all our nieces and nephews at the end of their year 12 and usually go away for a month and teach them to travel. The first three my sisters have children that age together so we took 2 cousins each time and then when the kids no longer had a cousin their age, we took their best friend. This time however Jack had two best friends since kindergarten so he couldn't pick just one. We shortened the trip to two weeks and took both and off to Samoa we went. Samoa is incredible (check out my Samoa blog posts on my Charge The Globe website) but OMG - three 17 year olds almost did me in! ALMOST - they would have had to have gotten up REALLY early in the morning to beat me, but I would be lying if I didn't say I was close! Regardless we all had an amazing time and Brad and I both survived.

Cudos to us!

Reading: centennial - james A Michener

I watched Centennial as a mini series when I was around 12 I think.

I loved it and now I wonder how I have never read the book.

This sweeping saga follows America's growth from the Native Americans through the settlers and ranchers to what was then modern day (in the 70's).

It doesn't leave much untouched but does allow you to associate with almost every character in the book, whether is a good association or not. After finishing it I was glad I had left it until now as there were so many small stories that I just hadn't remembered so it was like reading the stories for the first time. Its a whopping 1585 pages so its not a short read but it is worth it.

Get it via Kobo

Why A 404 Page Is Important & How To Customise It

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 04:57:00 GMT

Customising your 404 Page

In Geek speak, a 404 error is when a visitor to your website tries to access a page that doesn't exist. Most commonly, they may either manually type in an incorrect URL or they click on a broken link. When that happens a 404 error is returned and without a customised 404 page they might see something like this error below.

This is not only pretty ugly it can be a little scary to some visitors and you might immediately loose them as potential customers.

By creating your own customised 404 error page you can reassure them that it's not some horrible spam virus and encourage them to click further into your website. You can also take this opportunity to reinforce you brand style and personality with your 404 error page.

Some great 404 custom pages

There are some really great 404 pages available around the web. Here are some examples of what you can do with your own customised 404 page.

AirBnB's error page is animated and really worth a look.

The little girl actually drops her ice cream and while I'm not quite sure what a little girl with ice cream has to do with holiday accommodation, it is amusing. The link below will show you her in action.

AirBnB 404 page

This one above by Car Wow a UK company has an actual game you can play. Simply click the "Start" text and use your arrow keys to drive the car around boulders and other traffic. I got sucked down the rabbit hole for about 15 mins but it was really fun!

How to customise your 404 page.

Fortunately on the platform I use, 404 pages are really easy to customise and this video below will explain how to do it. It might take a little bit of planning and research to fully embrace the style and theme you would like to portray, however as long as it is

reassuring to your clients,
reinforces your brand &
enables your visitor to easily move on

that will be enough for your website clients to continue on their path with you.

If you are not one of my clients but your web provider uses Duda as a platform this video will also show you how to customise your 404 page.

The Best Of | Nov 2019 | Geek Queen

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 05:49:00 GMT

Things I've found and loved | Nov 2019

Watching: TED Talk - 4 words to ask your doctor.

An interesting talk about the relationship between you and your doctor and why some doctors will sometimes prescribe treatments and/or surgery and why.

Let me know what you think.

Also Watching: Mr Robot

I'm only three episodes in but I'm LOVING this series staring Remi Malik. Of course I keep expecting him to bust out Bohemian Rhapsody, but it's techy and ingenious and is right up my ally.

Learning: NOTHING!

Oh the horror!

Nothing on the course front this month. I'm so busy with the horrible "before Christmas" deadlines that I just don't have the time or the mental function to be learning anything new this month. I have a full Google course booked for the first week I'm back from Samoa so I'm confident enough to abandon my monthly learning schedule until then.

Reading: The Fallen

I spasmed my back a few weeks ago and since its been about 18 months since I last did it, I was determined to do all the right things and recover as fast as I could. Consequently I spent about 3 days lying in bed reading (and sleeping when the valium kicked in) so I did read a few books this month.

I've loved the Amos Decker novels by David Baldacci and The Fallen was no exception. They are crime novels where the lead character is an FBI consultant who is an ex footballer. He had a horrific injury in his playing days that left him with some special talents.

I do feel that these books are best read in the series order. They don't have to be but I feel like the groundwork for Amos personality is laid very firmly in the first book and if you slot in with book 3 that might not be completely clear.

Get it via Booktopia .

10 Tips For Writing A Service Description

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 04:33:00 GMT

How to write a description for your services

It is a very competitive world out there and despite the level of very hard work you put into your business, sales aren't an automatic outcome.

Let me share a process to help you stand out from the competition and write descriptions for your services that encourage your visitors to purchase.

Know who you are selling to

With the search engines having such a prominent place in how you develop any of your website content, it is easy to forget that it's people who purchase . While they may find your business because you have managed to get some kind of SEO driven traffic to your website, if you don't address them as real live people, that traffic is wasted.

1. Create your ideal customer as a physical entity.

You can drill this down to be very exacting, however try to be reasonably specific, while maintaining a slightly broad over view. IE if you sell feminine styled Instagram templates, your product is for a reasonably specific market. You probably don't need to incorporate an age range into who your idea client is, however if you are selling insurance to over 50's, yes that age will definitely be a factor. So, jot down features your ideal customer would have as a list to start. These can be physical (age, sex etc), location based or even feature based (a specific injury or health challenge for example).

2. Write out a statement of who your client is and why they would use your services.

Now you have that list, use the features you've listed and write out who your ideal customer might be.

IE: My perfect customer is a small business, club or non-profit who wants affordable website services. They want someone who they don't feel overwhelmed to talk to, who can cut through the "drama" of the techy stuff and who can offer them a website they can edit themselves if need be or who can help them with regular updates if they would like to pay for that additional service.

3. Work out what problem you can solve for them.

This might be more than one but regardless you need to explain how you can solve that problem without actually saying "I can solve...". When your prospective client lands on your website, the first thing they need to read is what you can do for them. If this is how you can solve a problem they have - perfect!

4. Offer details of your solution.

Let the client know exactly what is available and don't be scared to link to extra services you might offer. Internal linking is important for SEO however don't forget to use meaningful link text. IE: You might find our "7 day Instagram Scheduling Service" is something that could help, linking the "7 day Instagram Scheduling Service" text to your alternative service.

5. Keep it easy to read

Use bullet points to show what's included and excluded (don't be scared to show what's excluded) and make sure your paragraphs are not too long winded. Keep it informative and to the point.

6. Don't get hung up on keywords

While yes you do need to use your keywords and phrases, you are telling your client what you have to offer, why they should purchase it and why you are better than the competition. Don't waste that chance by focusing on your keywords at the expense of the content.

7. Display your prices

OMG - I don't know how many clients still try to subscribe to the school of selling to the client upon contact. That flat out doesn't work if your service is $3000 and they thought it would be $300. Be sure to add in a line about "customised" services if you have a different budget (don't say lower - different is good) but don't make it too much of a priority. If you feature that text right next to the price, people will of course try to get a discount. Showing prices also enforces to clients that you aren't making up a price based on how much you think you can get out of them. It's the same price for everyone and you are confident in your pricing levels.

8. Let them know what commitment they must make

I'm not talking financial here, I'm talking about telling clients what they will have to provide you and when. I have so many websites stall at content because despite me telling people over and over what they need to supply, they never realise how much work it is supplying all the text and images for their website. Now I've added an extra product which is "content creation" that they can purchase to have me do it, or they can stick with doing it themselves. It doubles up as an extra service I can link to in my website development page as well.

9. Display your terms of service

While this does seem a little out of the box, it is always reassuring to clients to see that you are a professional business and have (and will enforce) terms of service. I never think it's strange if I see that on a product or service website page. I like that I can read the fine print if I choose to and that it's available to me right off the bat.

10. Give them a way to immediately get in touch

Let them contact you directly from that page. You might have a form in your footer, a clickable link, a phone number or a social media option. You need to allow them to be able to contact you in one step.

Bonus:

Follow up after you've talked to them. If you speak to them and you are too expensive or they never called you back, wait an appropriate amount of time and follow them up. Ask them for feedback as to why they didn't move forward, however frame it that they are helping you, don't put them on the spot. I've done 5 follow up calls in the last 3 or 4 months and gotten 2 full websites from simply following up. People are busy, they forget, they feel embarrased that they didn't move forward or a plethora of reasons why you never heard from them again. By calling and touching base, you might be letting them off the hook and allowing them to now proceed easily and simply.

Getting Ready for The Silly Season

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 04:03:00 GMT

Getting your business ready for the silly season

For me the very best thing about the Christmas and New Year period (as a business owner) is that it is perfectly acceptable, expected even, that you close down for at least a few weeks over that time.

With a little effort now, you can put some holiday practices in place and embrace the "set and forget" mentality over the summer holidays so you can best enjoy your own break. Just because you run a small business doesn't mean you aren't entitled to close up shop and take some well deserved time off so make the most of this period, put the items below into practice and turn off your phone!

Start Publishing Your Closure Dates

Establish exactly how long you are going to take off or close your business for and start telling clients now. I mean RIGHT NOW!

If you have or use email marketing, now is the time to get that notification out to your clients. If you can get your campaign out this week that will give your clients 4-5 weeks notice, which is enough for anyone.

If you don't have a email marketing platform consider Get Response , which I use and LOVE! I found Mail Chimp keeps getting harder and harder to use with more and more limitations (6 segments to lists just doesn't work for me), so I moved to Get Response a few months ago and am really enjoying how easy it is.

What to Include In Your Email Campaign?

Clearly state your closure dates including your last day of business and your first day back
Let clients know of your availability in the lead up to that (IE: your calendar or last date for orders)
Keep it light and cheery - don't be afraid to show your excitement about your coming time off.
Wish your clients the best for their own holiday season
Let them know what contact points will be in place in the case of emergency - however ONLY do this IF your business could possibly have a client emergency. You need your time off so don't tell people they can contact you unless you are prepared for a disrupted holiday.
Make sure you email is holiday themed. Like yourself I'm sure your clients are looking forward to the break so embracing the spirit and being a bit silly is expected this time of year.
Add a customised pic to your campaign. A staff photo with your Chrissy hats or a personalised graphic for your business. I can create customised images for your holiday campaigns from just $49.00

Where else to publish your holiday info

The more places you publish your holiday information the more chance it has of reaching all of your client base. Don't forget:

Facebook - keep up with regular posts and even change your header photo to contain your closure info
Instagram - Use stories or just standard posts to tell your clients any information they might need before the silly season is upon us.
Linked In - update your info on LinkedIn to reflect when you will be available.

What else can you do?

Don't forget to add your holiday info to your email signature and make sure you have a calendar item to remind you to set your out of office auto responder for the period you are closed. Also make sure you have a calendar item set to turn it off once you are back to work.

One more thing....

Wherever you are and whoever you are with, please stay safe this holiday season. I will be spending our break in Samoa for three weeks and then will be back getting myself ready for the coming year for the last week of my break.

Geek Queen will be closed from the 12th December returning the 13th January. Please don't try something new on your website during that time, as like most of you I assume, I really need some down time this year so will be turning everything off for at least the first three weeks of that period.

Why Your Website Title Matters for SEO | Geek Queen SEO Tips

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 04:12:00 GMT

Website Page Titles & How Best to Use Them

Firstly, what is your page title?

Any page you create on your website has a title tag. The title is different to the page URL and should really be reasonably consistent across your website.

For example:

Lets assume I make a new page called Photographic Services. My page url might be geekqueen.com/photo-services however my page title might be "Photographic Services | Product Photography | Geek Queen" . My page title not only identifies my page, it is the text that appears in search results. In the image below, in blue you can see my page title.

Why your page title is important.

Your page title is a factor in your website SEO but it is also you one chance to grab possible visitors by telling them in clear concise text what your page is about and why they should click this particular link.

While the search engines will read the website title, the URL and the meta description and formulate your page's relevance (based on these and other factors), this is one area where you need to make sure you are not just using your keywords and phrases but actually writing for your visitors.

Typically, I recommend that your website page title is formulated as "keyword or phrase" + "keyword or phrase" + "business name". Even formulating it this way, you still have to ensure the title makes sense from a readability standpoint. If I had of made this particular website page title "Product Photography | Photographic Services | Geek Queen" it doesn't read as well. In formulating it as I have, along with using my keywords and phrases, I've also established an inherent hierarchy in my Photo Services. By putting the Photographic Services first and then the Product Photography it automatically implies that I offer more Photo services than just the Product Photography, so if a possible client discovers my link through a search, even if they aren't after product photography it still implies that I do other types of photography so there is a chance they will still click that link. I'm almost categorizing in my page title if that makes sense.

Your website page title also appears in your browsers tab. This helps your clients to easily navigate back to your website page quickly and easily. So its not just an SEO factor it is an identifying factor as well.

Looking at the title displaying in this way - I can hear you thinking "But they can't see my business name". No they can't, because we've put it at the end of the website page title, however, because we formatted it with our SEO keyword or phrase at the beginning of the title it is instantly identifiable to your client what that page is about. They know they searched for that term, but they might not recall exactly what your domain name was, so even though you can't seem your business name, that recognition will occur with the frequency of their page views. So don't stress that they can't see your business name on the browser tab, just be happy that they actually clicked your website link from the search results page.

Formatting your website page title correctly

There are some best practices you should follow for your website titles.

Don't use capitals. Some large websites do use this as a formatting option on their title tags but they have massive traffic to their website that can overcome Google's reluctance to direct visitors to a page it thinks is spammy.
Maintain consistency between all your SEO page tags. Make sure your page name, your page URL and your meta description all use the same type of language, you repeat your keywords or phrases and its aimed at your market.
Include your business name , but at the end of the tag. Don't waste valuable real estate putting your business name at the front of the tag.
Format it well. You will see I've used pipes between my phrases. Pipes are above your enter key on your keyboard on the same key as the backslash. Hold down shift and use that key.
Don't keyword stuff it. Two sets of keywords or phrases (and by phrases I mean three words or less) are more than enough. Any more than that and you will risk Google's fury! Well its not really fury but you know what I mean.
Make sure it is relevant to the content of your page. This is really important. People clicking and immediately leaving can be worse for your SEO than no clicks at all. That tells Google that your content isn't relevant so you will slide far far FAR down the list.

How to set your page title

Your page title should ALWAYS be part of the page creation. While you can change it at any time, it is always best to set your page SEO factors at the time you create the page.

Click the Pages section on the left hand side of your dashboard
Click the settings cog for the page you require
Click the SEO option from the drop down menu.

You can scroll up and down this settings area to change or set anything you need to. In the image below you will see your page URL, Page title and Page Description.

Set your page title and then write your meta description using the same keywords and or phrases to reinforce your relevance to Google.

NB: try not to change your page's URL unless necessary. If you do, MAKE SURE YOU COPY THE OLD URL FIRST. You should get a warning pop up asking you to set a URL redirect but some browsers don't show it. That popup is OK. Confirm that you want to do that and proceed. This will ensure that anyone who has bookmarked that page using the old link is redirected to the new link now. To check that has been done, after you save your page, go to Settings on the left hand menu and URL redirect. You will see your page redirect in there. If you don't, just create a new redirect using the old link you copied and then select the new page from the page menu and Voila! Page redirect done.

Why I Don't Use Wordpress

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 14:00:00 GMT

I am asked repeatedly why I don't use Wordpress and to be brutally honest, I would say that at least one client per month doesn't come over to me because I don't use Wordpress.

That's a lot of money I can hear you thinking and I'm sure you are also thinking, why don't you just do it if that is what people want??

6 Reasons Why I Don't Use Wordpress, And One Situation Where I Do!

1. Wordpress is open source.

Simply put, that means that any developer can write plugins and extras to work on the Wordpress platform. Awesome I hear you think and yes there are over fifty thousand Wordpress plugins available. However, if you don't know, I'm from a Database and Programming background and the thought of having client websites on a platform that some wiz kid in his mum's basement can write malicious code and upload via his plugin, makes my hair stand on end.

In my mind, that's just not secure enough. Oh and beware:

2. It's not free

To be clear, yes there is a free version, however if you look at their Plan Comparison you get almost nothing with it. Not suitable for anything that isn't a weekend blog. You need to use their business level plan before you get the Wordpress branding removed and have the plugin capability. That's A$33 per month. The ecommerce option starts at $59 per month. So, not free!

Wordpress.org is the other option available to you. Much less restrictive in terms of being able to use and add plugins and options yourself, however this option means you must host the website with a third party web host. You will have to pay for the web host yourself, and have the tech skills to create your wordpress site on a shared server. You also have to do all the installations of plugins and ensure that they are compatible with your other extra services. So much cheaper, still not free, and you have to be able to do all the techy stuff yourself.

3. You have to pay for most good plugins

A lot of plugins you might need to get the services you would like on your website are paid plugins. Once you pay for these options, again, it adds to your monthly cost. Free plugins can come with challenges and/or advertising options which leaves you not in full control of your own website.

Even if you don't pay for whatever plugin you might want to use, how do you choose one? Seriously - how? There are thousands of plugins available but how do you choose which image carousel you would like or what form plugin to use? You just have to take a leap of faith and then solve the challenges as they arise which is usually around 4pm on a Friday!

4. Wordpress has the right to your content!

I don't like the generic wording of their License clause.

License. By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt, and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing, and promoting your website. This license also allows Automattic to make any publicly-posted Content available to third parties selected by Automattic (through Firehose, for example) so that these third parties can analyze and distribute (but not publicly display) the Content through their services. You also give other WordPress.com users permission to share your Content on other WordPress.com websites and add their own Content to it (aka to “reblog” your Content), so long as they use only a portion of your post and they give you credit as the original author by linking back to your website (the reblogging function on WordPress.com does this automatically!).

They do say that it won't be displayed but still, you are saying you give them rights to it along with third parties they choose and that's just not something I think anyone should automatically agree to.

5. You are responsible for updating everything

When Wordpress releases a new update, you have to ensure you install it (for a hosted website). Any plugin updates are also your responsibility to install. The biggest challenge with this for me is that I can spend hours doing this when a big release comes out and then working through the challenges when I've updated the Wordpress installation only to find that two of the plugins are now not compatible. There can be hours that go into checking that plugin updates will work with the new Wordpress update, trying to work out what's going wrong when something fails and of course Wordpress blame the plugin and the plugin blames Wordpress.

No-one wants to pay for that.

It looks no different for you as a client so my time is spent tearing my hair out for no money. I love that I've made some great friends from my business but the word business should tell you that I'm not in this to work for free.

Should a new plugin break your theme or clash with another plugin, there is almost no support to help you get your website working as it should again. I love that I have a platform I can instantly chat with and even if their support is ofline, they always get back to me, no matter how daft the question.

Unless you pay for a WISYWIG editor (what you see is what you get), editing a Wordpress website required a decent level of technical know how. Without a drag and drop editor, it is just too hard for clients to make small changes. My mantra is to ensure that while my clients might need me for more complex tasks, they can add their own blog posts, make small changes and add new images themselves easily and quickly. Without a paid editor, they can't easily do that.

And When I Do Use Wordpress

The only time I use Wordpress is when I have a client who is what I call a "super blogger". Wordpress is a blogging platform. That is what it was designed for and they are good at that. IF my client is happy for the uphill battle to learn how do use Wordpress well, and if they are looking at running ads as a revenue stream, then that is when I use Wordpress.

In Summary:

Ok that was 7 and not 6 so you can't accuse me of under delivering!

My website platform is available to web developers and agencies and is built with not only my needs but client needs in mind. There are no plugins required and yes that will mean some kind of limitations here and there, however if anything goes wrong, I have a full team of support crew who's job it is to get things back on track.

They are constantly releasing new features and options and are very proactive in addressing feature requests. They are affordable for my clients and have a great level of security.

Update May 2020

I have a friend who works for a local web company that does only Wordpress websites and they have spent the entire last 3 weeks fixing (or trying to fix) websites that have been hacked during this COVID shut down. It seems hackers are bored too!

Through no fault of their own, almost every one of their clients websites has been down and there is NO WAY they are getting paid for this work.

Can you imagine how stressful this is for them! Not only are they trying to keep all their clients happy they will be at least a month behind in their work by the time this is all fixed.

My life is just not worth that! i love having a platform that is responsible for keeping not just my website but all my client websites up, secure and live.

25 Of The Most Useful Websites For Business Owners

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 04:38:00 GMT

25 Of The Most Useful Websites for Business Owners

As a small business owner myself, I'm always on the hunt for websites and apps that make my life easier and my business processes more productive. I hope these 25 website will help you to streamline your day and enable you to solve some problems.

1. Brave - the ultimate in browser protection. Brave is open source, had ad blocking capabilities and faster browsing. It is now the ONLY browser I use for researching. I got so sick of being stalked by Google and Facebook and Ad Remarketing so now I use Brave with complete confidence.

2. Later - This Instagram scheduling app is an Instagram Partner so you don' t have to be concerned about any challenges between the two parties. You can schedule Instagram posts & stories, Facebook posts, Twitter Posts and even Pinterest. Check out LinkInBio - one of the best features of this membership.

3. Highbrow - I LOVE this website. You get a new 5 minute lesson delivered to your inbox every day. I have a filter setup so it goes to my Highbrow folder and then I watch them all on Friday mornings. There is a 30 day free trial and then its $4 per month so VERY affordable. I particularly enjoyed the Introduction to Red and White Wine course!

4. Raindrop.io - this bookmarking app is my favourite thing at the moment. It is available as a plugin for your browser and as an app on your phone. You just add bookmarks from your browser, or share on your phone and then choose the Raindrop app to save. I love it because its everywhere so things I've saved on my PC I can access on my phone, you can create collections, sort and apply different icons to collections so you can find things easily.

5. Google Keep - you do need to have a google account for this but its a great note keeping app. Again, because it is all cloud based you can access your notes on your pc or your phone. I'm always saving stuff in keep.

6. Canva - I will readily admit I don't use Canva a lot directly for my business as I'm a photoshop user, however I do a lot of graphics and media on Canva for clients. While they do now have a paid version you can still get a lot of use from the free option.

7. My Maps On Google - you can create custom maps on your Google Maps account and save them for sharing or later use. Great if you have a sales team on the road and you want to create a day, week or monthly plan for them.

8. Unsplash - free stock photos. Nothing more to say! Great resource.

9. Get Response - I've recently changed to Get Response for my email marketing and I'm loving it. It is simple to use, the lists are easy to create and segment, the newsletters or marketing emails can be based off a wide range of templates and you can customise them with HTML to add in those little extra's you might need. You get a free 30 day trial and then it starts from $15 per month . Mail Chimp just go so confusing to me - and I'm a web person. I've not regretted moving.

10. PDF Escap e - for editing PDF's without Adobe Acrobat Pro.

11. Iconfinde r - in todays world of infographics, icons are becoming more and more necessary and if you can't find it on Iconfinder, it probably isn't out there. They do have monthly plans if you are a regular user or you can purchase credit and pay as you go

12. Google Translate - a must for anyone who does business with international companies, or just for translating that website for your hike in Switzerland.

13. Copychar - a great resource for all those unique characters you need but can never remember how to achieve from your keyboard.

14. Google Fonts - the best place to find open source fonts that are free to use with no restrictions.

15. Tripit - if your business does any kind of travel Tripit's $49 annual fee is really worth it. It schedules all your travel activities into "Trips" that you can create and share with other Tripit users. It will recognize a lot of confirmation emails that come into your email (must be the one you sign up with) and has a forwarding option if the booking is not automatically put into Tripit.

16. Kiva - Kiva is a micro finance website that allows you as a business person in the western world to give back to less fortunate area's by financing micro loans. If you've ever been to Africa, microloans are changing peoples lives. It might be $25 that allows them to purchase an extra cow, which means they have enough milk to sell and they become more self sustaining. You don't make profit on the loans but an incredible 98% are paid back in full on time. Even $100 will allow you to help someone who is trying to help themselves.

17. Infogram - if you are a business that needs to produce Info Graphics, this is for you. There is a free version, however the paid version starts from $19/ month (annual subscription). It won't be for everyone, but its a great option to having to pay for expensive software to do the same thing.

18. TED - I'm not sure there is anyone who hasn't watched a TED talk at some point, however taking half an hour from your day to watch something that is relevant to your work, or simply inspiring to you can change your attitude for the balance of the day.

19. Blind - I almost didn't add this to the list, but it is a handy website if you are really stuck. Everything you ask on Blind is completely anonymous so if you have a question about how to handle an employee's bad attitude or how to complain and get a resolution, this is for you. Beware however there are some not so great users who obviously just love the drama but I've used it for something a bit tricky and got some excellent suggestions. You won't need it until you need it.

20. Speaking IO - if you have to speak in public and need help to make that less stressful, this is the website for you. I love their USP "because imagining everyone naked is bad advice".

21. Review Meta - I know here in Australia we don't have a huge Amazon society but it is getting larger and larger. Amazon is run by reviews and it turns out you can buy Amazon reviews. This handy website allows you to put your Amazon product URL in and it will tell you how "real" the reviews are.

22. Xero - Cooking the books is something that so many businesses do as a last minute end of quarter activity. Xero helps to make that as easy as possible and has features like Bank Account Syncs, Repeating Invoicing and customisable templates. There is an app for your phone so you can add expenses from anywhere. It's very reasonably priced too.

23. Typing.com - I heard Bill Gates say once that learning to touch type was the best skill he had ever invested in. Can you imagine how much more productive you would be if you could turn those two fingers into ten fingers. Get cracking - you won't regret it.

24. Zoho CRM - I feel I must say here that any CRM will set you in good stead, however I've used and loved Zoho for a few years now. All CRM's can be a challenge to get your head around initially, but they can really help you to formalise your business sales process and also enables sales people to generate quotes and invoices easily and quickly. Without having to wait for the accounts person to prepare your quote, your sales team on the ground can act instantly which can increase your conversions.

25. Fiverr - Fiverr does require you to be a little brutal with who you choose, but it can be a great resource. I have a girl in Nigeria who rewrites content for me for $15 per post and I've been very happy with her. Sadly she has just told me she is having a baby and won't be continuing on. It does require a few "test" jobs to get the right person but it can be worth it in the long run.

Protect Yourself GDPR Compliance

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 05:03:00 GMT

Protect yourself and your website with gdpr compliance

So many bloggers and businesses want to skip paying for appropriate legal pages for their website. While there may be no legal requirement to have Terms and Conditions on your website, its always the smart move to have them. Privacy policies however are now required and its important they are not just on your website but easy to find.

Read my post on Legal pages you need now for a more indepth explanation of this subject.

For now I'm going to focus on GDPR compliance.

why do i have to be gdpr compliant?

To begin with I'v written a post about understanding GDPR so maybe you might want to start there.

In a condensed version:

GDPR serves countries in the European Union and is a policy that states how, when and what information may be gathered & used from a website.

A lot of clients have asked why they need to be GDPR compliant when their business is in Australia. While I understand that they are not deliberately serving content to European citzens, of course anyone can see your website so you do have to be compliant.

What options are available?

Firstly you could pay your solicitor to draw up the following documents for you:

GDPR compliant privacy policy & extra's like

website terms and conditions of use
disclaimer & if you are an ecommerce application
your sales and shipping terms and conditions

This would of course provide you with the most customised legal terms for your own business, however it could also cost you a decent chunk of change.

An alternative is to get your basic legals pages sorted via an online provider. I personally use The Contract Sho p for bloggers and coaching or online course websites and have been pretty impressed with the level of documentation they have available. My usual go to is their Website Terms Of Use and the Privacy policy package . It is usually $277 USD (which with our exchange rate can hurt) however it's a small price to pay to be assured that you have the basics sorted.

If my client is more business oriented, I tend to use this package from Amira at A Self Guru . Her website packages are a little cheaper at $180 USD but offer the same level of cover as The Contract Shop.

Of course you should always check with your legal provider before making any decision as to the legal documents on your website, and I'm not in any way providing legal advice here, however this is a great place to start.

Both of these documents are included in my website packages and should you require anything further I'm more than happy to add any other legal pages you provide.

Does this give you GDPR protection?

Yes both these packages from The Contract Shop or A Self Guru do include GDPR protection.

Even though you might be located outside the EU, if your privacy policy doesn’t have GDPR provisions, you could still be breaking international law. GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), is the European Union’s set of laws regulating data privacy. Under this law if someone from the EU visits your website you still have to ensure that their information is protected under those laws. That is why you see the Cookie Policy popups everywhere now.

Violators of GDPR could face fines of up to €20 million, or 4% of the annual worldwide turnover of the last financial year, whichever is greater .

Check out this list of fines on Wikipedia. You can see its a very real occurrence and isn't limited to big business.

How Many Posts Do You Need To Start A Blog

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 03:14:00 GMT

Exactly how many posts should you have to start your blog?

A blog is by far the best way to help maintain or improve your website standing. Google loves fresh content and a blog is the best and easiest way to achieve that. I have more than a few clients who are always going to start a blog and then panic sets in and they never start.

Why the panic?

On more than one occasion I've heard people comment that they don't want their blog to look dumb (yes they've used that word) or less than professional because what if someone finds it and they don't have heaps of content. I can understand the fear, however as long as you address why your blog doesn't have heaps of posts, you can easily get away with it.

All blogs start with one post!

This is not in doubt. Yes I'm sure some businesses don't publish their blog until they have multiple posts, but why not? Anyone who has ever written or read a blog realises that you all start with that first post.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to have multiple posts to start. One post is a start, and you have to start somewhere so get out there and publish that first one while you are working on the rest.

You only need one post to start, HOWEVER - its a great idea to at least write 5 articles to begin with.

Write 5 posts, publish the first one and then come back and publish the following 4 on the schedule you've developed for yourself. I always try and tell clients to just start. Start the first one, publish the first post and then keep going. Whatever you do though, if you've announced when visitors can expect to see new blog posts, stick to it. Don't tell someone it will be every Wednesday at 9am and then miss the first three weeks. Building an audience is dependent on consistency.

How often should I post?

Ideally at least weekly, however even if you start with a monthly schedule, you can build up from there. There are websites that blog daily, however that is very hard to maintain. You will find though as you start writing posts, you see possible articles everywhere. Use the notes app on your phone (I use Google Keep because then its everywhere for me), and just add a quick note whenever you think about a great blog article. Then when you sit down to write, you have a few idea's already.

Making your posts the best they can be can help you to gain traction with your visitors from the start of your blogging journey. If a visitor finds your blog, believe me you will want to grab them and hang on tight so here are a few ways to address a blog with not too many posts.

1. Announce Your Blog

Launch your blog like an event.

On your very first blog post, be proud that it is the start of great things to come. Introduce yourself and tell your visitors what you will be blogging about, how regularly you will be doing it, what to expect and then offer them a chance to sign up to be notified about new posts.

Consider things like:

adding a sign up form or at least a link to one
show your RSS feed (for blog readers)
make a suggestion as to how they can follow your posts (via Feedly etc)
ask for comments on how your first blog post was received

2. Ask for help

This does seem a little strange, however bear with me.

As part of your first few posts, ask your new readers if the content is what they'd like to see and ask for suggestions as to "themed" posts you might create. Make the most of the fact that you are new to this. Tell them you are, be proud of the fact that you're really starting to get the hang of it and ask for their feedback.

3. Recommend something outside your own business

Oh No I hear you scream!! I'm not sending them away!

Again, bear with me....

I'm not suggesting you send them to a competitor, however recommending an app, website, article or book helps your visitors to feel that they aren't just targets in your marketing game. Give them value. Value doesn't always have to come from your business. Recommending a business book you read might be the one thing that keeps them coming back to you.

Maybe recommend a cafe in your area, or a printer you've used. It's pretty easy to find something that isn't a direct competitor that will help impart openness and enforce with your readers that you aren't just always going to be selling to them. You will be helping them too.

Remember the "Know, Like and Trust" principle. If they read the book and love it they are probably going to like where they got the suggestion and knowing you recommended something with no financial upside for yourself will help them to trust that you aren't just going to be selling to them. Free content is everywhere, don't be scared to use it.

How to ramp up

Once you have been blogging for a while and are starting to get a good list of pre-prepared posts written you will want to increase your regularity. Again - just announce to your readership thats what you are doing. Make a song and dance out of how you now will be blogging weekly with all the news, tips and info they will love.

What if you can't do weekly?

Consider adding in a different type of post that add's to your schedule but isn't in the usual output.

For example, you might blog once a week about general topics for your blog visitors, however maybe the last Friday of every month might be the monthly round up of everything that has happened that month. In your monthly roundup you might list the blog posts you've written and a link to each (inner linking also helps with Google ranking), a general overview of what you've achieved that month and even something that you found elsewhere that helped you. This way you can add an extra post per month that isn't necessarily tied to your usual schedule.

In Summary

You only need one blog post to start! Just get started!

25 Website Must Haves

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 06:30:00 GMT

My 25 "Must Haves" for your website.

No-one ever realises the work that is involved in producing a website. Now think about what you need to have or include to make your website WORK!

Great content is the engine behind your website being successful, however there are many other design and application level things that will ensure you have the best chance of success. Here's my 25 must haves for your website.

:: Make sure it is immediately obvious what your website is about:

As soon as your prospective client lands on your website they should be able to tell instantly what its about. People's attention span is short and making them browse is never a great idea.

:: Have excellent navigation:

All your visitors should be able to get to where they need to go in three clicks or less. Ideally two, however any more than three and you've lost them.

:: Make sure there is a clear path directing your visitors through your website.

While its great for your Google Analytics for users to wander all over your website, it won't be good for your bottom line in the end. Website browsing = window shopping. If you want them to buy you have to show them how.

:: Have a call to action on every single page

Sometimes this is best achieved by floating buttons, sometimes it is repetition of the same call to action so your visitors have a level of expectation as to where it is, but regardless you need to have one on every page.

:: Name your images:

SEO isn't limited to text. Use every image you have on your website to enforce your keywords and phrases. Search engines can't read images but they CAN read the image name and ALT tags. Make sure you use this.

:: Declutter - Less is more:

Less is more. Use white space and padding to keep your content readable and pleasing to the eye. There is nothing worse than paragraphs of condensed text. Your visitors will glaze over and leave.

:: Embrace The Mobile:

Mobile browsing should not be limited to your website being fully responsive. The platform I use enables us to show completely different content and imagery to mobile users. Sometimes bullet points on mobile work much better than the paragraphs on your desktop. Ask me about this fantastic feature.

:: Invest in professional photography

Be it products or services, professional photography is a MUST for any level of success. Products need to have a consistant background, focus and sizing and personal photo's must be well lit, represent you or your service exactly and show who you really are. Know, Like and Trust remember!!

:: Don't put your social media links above the fold

I'm going to get shot down in flames over this one, but I never understand why clients want to give visitors a reason to move away from their website at the first point of touch. It makes no sense to me to direct your visitors to your socials immediately. Keep them on the website, allow it to work and of course WE ALL KNOW YOU HAVE FACEBOOK! Visitors will click when they get to the footer, but by then you've had an opportunity to impress on them how or what you do.

:: Write for your ideal customer NOT just Google

Don't get caught up in keywords and phrases and completely dismiss who your customer actually is. Write for them, in a style they will find appealing, using your keywords and phrases, BUT address their needs as a priority.

:: Display the most important info above the fold:

You get one chance and one chance only - use it. It's pretty simple.

:: Have an email list sign up:

Email marketing still outranks any other form of digital advertising out there. Don't miss out just because you don't ask. Consider offering a freeby to get email addresses. As long as you are clear about it, it can't hurt.

:: Don't be scared to show prices:

This might be obvious for an online store, however it is even more important for a service based businesses. People will assume they can't afford you if you give them the chance to make that assumption. Tell them how much your services are and what they get for their money. They can then make an informed decision.

:: Ensure your website layout is consistent:

Making sure that objects are in the same place no matter where in the website your visitor lands is the key to them moving around easily and moving further into your website.

:: Have a contact button/link always visible

Using a sticky header can enable you to always have both the menu and a contact button or link visible to your visitors.

:: Add a map to your footer:

Adding a map that links to your physical location will allow mobile users to get directions without having to leave your website.

:: Make sure your website loads well and fast

This is not just a customer based action, Google ranks your website on page load times so make sure your images are optimised and load quickly. Ask me how .

:: A great about page:

Tell your visitors about yourself or your business. Particularly why you are the best choice for them. Address their biggest challenges and how you can solve it.

:: Establish an easy checkout process

You would be surprised at the amount of abandoned carts you can avoid by making your ecommerce check out simple and easy.

:: Use testimonials

Testimonials help to reinforce that you are a legitimate business with real clients. If they allow it, ask your clients for photos and show their photo and their first name against their testimonial. It instantly makes it more real to your visitors.

:: Design for your client NOT you.

I've said this so many times over the years. You website design is aimed at your customer not you. In the end even if you detest it, if its designed for them and works, who cares! Don't present childrens toys in an elegant, understated design. The design should be instantly recognisable for what its representing. I'd like you to love it but not at the expense of it working.

:: Don't waste valuable menu space on pages that aren't important.

Having links to your terms and conditions or privacy policy pages is essential, but don't waste valuable header menu space on them. They can be in the footer and work just as well.

:: Don't try to be different for difference's sake

I constantly hear clients want their website to be different. I try to impress upon them that a lot of placements are done because they are expected by your client. Side menu's, hamburger menu's on desktop pages or lack of imagery in the header won't help your website work. Menu's, header images and other placements are there for a reason. They work. Don't dismiss them off hand. Listen to your designer.

:: Tell your clients WHY they would contact you.

Leading your contact form with a short intro about why you client might contact you will help them know they can ask any question. "Get in touch to chat about how a new design can increase your sales" or "We can co-ordinate with you a wedding of your dreams. Get in touch to find out how".

:: Keep the content going

Google is not going to show their clients a website that has had no updates since 2017 when there are so many other options. Remember they are a business too so its up to you to stay relevant and on point and the only way to do that is with new and current content. That's where blogs come in....

BONUS TIP:

Ensure your error pages are customised to your business personality. How about this one from Cascade Designs. They have a new one now but I love this one, especially the "Baaack". Some people are so clever!

7 Content Rich Blog Post Ideas

Sat, 14 Sep 2019 05:07:00 GMT

7 content rich, blog post & email marketing ideas

Do you ever have blog panic?? You know what I'm talking about. You sit down to write out your blog posts for the month and realise you've used all your ideas!

When it comes to our blog its always a challenge to keep your readers engaged, however your chance of doing that when you have nothing to write about grows exponentially! The thought of not having topics to write about, or how to go about it, can be a major challenge. But not to worry, you should flush all those problems down the drain because with this series of straight to the point ideas you will be writing up a storm.

Don't forget to share you posts with your email marketing list and drive traffic to your website as well.

1. Showcase Your Stats:

What you stand to achieve from showcasing your stats will often override exposing what seems to be a very confidential side of your business. It’s more about showing to your clients that you can actually do what you say you can . Honestly would you trust someone with your hard earned cash if you didn't believe they could actually achieve the outcome you are after.? Probably not so increase your clients trust by practicing what you preach and expose how your own stats support you pricing.

2. Expose your own influences

Showing your vulnerability (past or present) can really help reassure clients that you also will go out on a limb and ask for help. Kill two birds with one stone and show your clients who and what influences you. If you are getting something out of it, so will your clients and if you keep it to more generic subjects you don't have to be scared of loosing them to a competitor. I have one particular woman I follow who has great energy and is very inspiring, however her content isn't something my clients would be after so I have no challenge directing clients to her socials. She's a business coach - I'm not, but her exuberance is always loved by those who I direct to her.

Check out Alex Beadon (and her podcast). She seems to be very focused on Instagram stories at present, but she's done a lot of Snapchat marketing, Periscope and of course just general info on business.

3. Talk about current industry events

I discovered this works best for idea's and events that are in my industry but that I don't really offer. For example, Later who I use for my social media scheduling recently had LaterCON which was an online event showcasing all things new in Instagram in particular. They had various speakers and presenters and I had no challenge sharing this with all my clients. I have zero desire to create instagram stories for my clients, but showing them the benefits from it is added value and for the half a dozen or so that actually watched some of the event, they ALL loved it.

4. Share something more personal

Did you just discover a new way to do things? How about a new recipe or a better way to re pot your plants for a positive result? Share it! I've started sharing my book reviews on Medium and most of my clients are loving it. They have now started sending me recommendation (which I love) and our interaction is more frequent and I feel they are way more likely to contact me with any question they have and not have that "IT" barrier in the way. If they know we've cried in the same book I'm more human to them and as long as I maintain my professionalism, it is working really well for my bottom line.

5. Show your expertise:

You are WAY more rooted in your industry than your audience, and there must be something tricky you can share that while they might not directly benefit from, will help to enforce your knowledge and standing to them. I have a client that makes amazing cakes and she passes on these little tidbits now and again about something she can now do and I am LOVING it. While I can't bake for love nor money, I've actually used one of her icing tips when I was applying silicone the other day. You never know what your clients might like to achieve and just by telling them you can do it - might work for you both.

6. Embrace your point of difference:

What distinguishes you from others can really make you stand out. Start embracing your unique features. If you provide services that are mostly marketed to women, embrace that. Colors, styles and layouts that are more suited to women will help you to enforce how relevant you are to what they need. While we all should maintain a professional outlook in business, some business IS personal. It's the relationship you establish with your clients that allows them to Know, Like & Trust you. This makes you distinct in the industry and also helps in establishing your brand. Check out Constance Hall on facebook. She is FAR from everyone's cup of tea but she is true to herself and her Queens and has built a following of over a million people on that basis.

7. Share your successes:

Success stories are always well received, as long as you are humble in your telling. A client recently got this RAVE review from a very well known person in her industry and was so excited about it. She wasn't going to share it though. I didn't understand but she went on to say it would be "boastful" to share it. Agh - NO IT WON'T!! I added it to her website and insisted she share it as part of her next email blast (right at the top) and by expressing how overcome she was with pride that she had received this testimonial, it was so well received she made three MASSIVE sales from it. 3! Share your successes and be proud of them.

12 Ways To Improve Email Readability

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 02:28:00 GMT

A dozen ways to make your emails easier to read

Without a doubt, in this super busy world we now have more people skimming the surface than those who delve deep into the rabbit hole of info.

Some people get bored almost instantly, even if it what they are reading contains valuable content. Before you know it, they’re on to the next email without yours being read.

Have you ever wondered how to maximize email readability? Below are twelve ways to design emails that will maximize your reader’s readability and keep them glued to their seat.

What happens if they love your emails - they are more likely to click through and eventually purchase. Learn how formatting your emails can help you achieve your sales goals.

1. Using the subject line and sender name to grab your readers

The sender name and subject line are the icing on the cake. They give the reader an idea of your content, and it reflects on the whole email idea , hopefully luring them to open it. An email from Jenny - The Geek Queen, is much more enticing than info@somedomain.com wouldn't you agree?

The subject is also the one chance you have of standing out in their inbox. "Maximising your earn from clients you already have" is a better subject line than "February's News".

Once you’re able to get them past this stage, you’ve succeeded in grabbing your reader’s attention and interest.

2. Use a catchy headline

A strong headline is like a sweet fragrance calling for attention and luring your client in. It engages them, hinting them what to expect, and it might contain humor, curiosity or even highlight a reward. That damn Omaze is always sucking me in with promises of a night out with Idris Elba - and I open the damn email and read to the end almost every time! Take note of what works for you and replicated it in your headline.

3. Be smart with your font

A well used font can greatly improve the readability and ensure your content is read.

Fonts are more like the architectural design of a house, so adjust your font size to appeal to your readers as this can help your clients to absorb your information.

Try to use a contrasting color, make your fonts large enough and know the appropriate font style for each occasion. Don't use Comic Sans for a formal email and don't use a cursive font that might look great on your PC (you have the font) but won't look great when it converts to Times New Roman at the other end.

Remember that just because you personally love a particular font, doesn't mean you should be using it in your email marketing campaigns.

4. Be prudent with link usage

Too many links can be considered spamming and it can keep your email from being delivered. In other words, it doesn’t get to see the light of day.

Even without enough links to trigger your spam filters, you still don't want your client to feel spammed.

I myself hate those email follow up's you get from webinar's that all follow the exact same text template: roll on, roll on, this special isn't' going to last, get in now before the price doubles emails. They drive me crazy. I know they are just pushing me toward their "paid" course so I never read them and unsubscribe IMMEDIATELY.

Don't fall foul of the "known sales spiel" it doesn't work any more. Link to what's important and leave out the extra 7 opportunities to link to the same page. People will find the link if they want it.

5. Calls to action

This call to action can be in form of a link or a button but buttons are known to perform better. You can use short words with specified commands like “click here”, and “Get Started”. However, you can develop a more specified text to encourage clicks.

Images are also a great way to get clients to click through from emails. An image with a question written on it, might encourage clients to click through like this example below.

Now I have to write a blog post about Getting More Pins to use my new image!

6. Adopt your readers style

This is something you should pay a reasonable amount of attention to.

I always say to my clients - if you are selling dirt bike boots to extreme athletes, would you format your email the same as if you were selling post grad courses to plastic surgeons? No you wouldn't. You know who your market is so make sure you take that into account.

You need to make sure you are actually writing for your readers and not yourself. Using complex sentences and big words may not help get your point across. Be sure to use simple sentence structure so as to have an easy to read email.

Even if you are writing the NASA programmers weekly newsletter, you still have to to be prepared to consider that while your audience might be super well educated and with multiple degrees, bombarding them with technical phrases and wording won't make it easier for them to read. They might already be in your industry and well aware of the nuances of your email content, but it has to be easy to read.

Consider putting links in that direct readers to technical documentation on your website for further clarification. This way you can keep your phrasing simple, explanations short and still supply your reader with further info should they require it.

7. Use images wisely

In as much as visuals can explain certain concepts a lot better and help to reinforce your message, you don’t want to flood your mail with a lot of visuals. Some spam filters consider excess use of images as spam, so your images should be used to help explain complex points and also to catch your readers attention, but must be relevant to your content.

I personally believe you should never send out an email newsletter without images (lets face it we all love the pretty pictures) but they need to be relevant to your text and be a little sparse to have the best effect.

8. Don't save important info for last

I used to have a client who was a writer and was VERY good. This just didn't translate to emails however. She was so ingrained in building toward an outcome that she would put the very best content at the end of the email. 80% of readers had bailed by that point.

Think of your email as in inverted pyramid. Best at the top, useful info in the mid section and then reinforcing what you've said at the bottom. You have to grab them right off the bat. A teaser is also useful but its got to be worth their effort or they might read all the way through on this one, but if they get to that teaser info and it doesn't make a huge impact they are never going to make that mistake again.

9. Leverage white space

White space is a term that gets waved around a lot at the moment. Effectively it acts as a break in the content. It can act like a chapter in a book: you know you've just finished that section and are moving on to the next.

You engage your readers more when you don’t cover the whole space with content. It gives them the space to breathe because it can be choking sometimes when it feels like you are just droning on and on.

White space is more like a break. It maximizes the readability of your email and helps lessen the strain of reading mountains of text.

10. Know your email marketing software

Email marketing software can come with pre-installed tools which can be a great starting point for your layout. Leverage on their features so as to maximize your email readability. Whatever platform you use, they should have sections you can add, pre-built templates and layouts that they have created based on feedback and usability.

While you don't want your emails to be the same as everyone else's, these templates can be a great start. Changing colors and fonts can help to change a standard template into something that reflects your style and business.

Check out Get Response's great collection of templates. Scroll down on that page to see a sample of what you will have access too. You can sign up for free too!

11. Keep it consistent

Once you have nailed down what seems to work best for you, keep that layout consistent. This can affect your click through rate massively. If a client gets a regular email from you and knows that the best specials are midway down your email, if they do nothing else but scroll straight to there - you've just sent a successful email. Even if they don't click through (we don't all have money to spend all the time), next month they might.

The same thing goes for sending multiple emails per month. If you send out your news on the 15th and specials on the 28th make sure those emails are immediately obvious for what they are. Keep a consistent header but immediately under that make it known that this is the newsletter or the specials email.

I had a client have great success with end of month emails and then when she finally had time to start sending a newsletter out as well, she had a massive unsubscribe rate because no-one knew that it wasn't the end of month specials email . They thought her emails weren't going to have the end of month discounts anymore and unsubscribed. It took her 14 months to recover from that. Lesson learned!

12. Optimise for mobile

This can be a challenge if you use a platform that doesn't allow you to customise your mobile output. If that's the case, send yourself your campaign and check how it appears on your mobile device. Make alterations, resend and keep going until you are happy with the outcome.

Great email marketing platforms like Get Response allow you to preview how your campaign will look on mobile which is critical to its success.

Bonus Tip! - 13. Create You Ideal Client Profile

Think about what you like IN RELATION TO YOUR CLIENTELLE !

If you sell custom designed platform heels, chances are you like them and wear them. Think about what you would be attracted to and what would make you buy, but keep it professional .

If you are a cool rockabilly chick but most of your market are 20 something clubbers - don't impress your personal taste on them. Think about why you make the shoes, which designs sell, why do they sell and format that data into a personality. Then apply that personality to your email campaigns.

Now - get out there and get marketing!

Lower Your Bounce Rate Through SEO - Part 2

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 01:22:00 GMT

Lowering Your Bounce Rate Through SEO

In the previous post, we looked the meaning of bounce rate and established why it is important to have a low bounce rate. We also looked at some specific ways to reduce your bounce rate significantly by improving your SEO and observing your readers closely.

This time around, we will look at two other broad methods of reducing your bounce rate: by writing better posts and by making your blog easier to navigate.

Writing Better Blog Posts

Some steps you should follow to write better blog posts are:

Make sure your blog posts are easy to read: A lot of people in the world today are in a rush. We are all busy and have a million things to do and unless your website is a lifestyle blog that people are reading for relaxation, there is a good chance that a good percentage of the people visiting your blog are looking for something specific. Most times, people don’t visit blogs to learn more technical or difficult topics, but to find quick tips and tricks they can implement immediately. If you make your blog too difficult to read, they are going to take the next bus out of there.
Enforce your text with images: You also want to encourage your readers by using pictures, memes, GIFs, bullet points and short paragraphs so that they can have a smooth experience from the beginning of the post till the end. While they may skim over the images and info-graphics, you are reinforcing your text with these more visual options. Our brains process things differently, so while most visitors will expect to read a post, an image might be easier to understand to some. I know I'm very visual in my comprehension process and images always make more sense to me initially than text often does.
Be personal and conversational: Write your blog posts like you are talking to your reader. Don't be afraid to use slang and colloquial language. You don’t want to be stiff and too formal when addressing your readers because that makes for a very difficult read. Also, ensure you tell personal stories that are related to the blog post topic. For example, if you are writing a blog post on how to get through a difficult break up, you could share the personal story of a friend who used some of your tips and made it out successfully. Stories make people want to stick around to read more and even check out other parts of your blog. While the SEO for the article should be written with relevance in mind, don't forget ACTUAL relevance. If you are writing a "how to survive divorce" post, you need to express to your readers what actual experience you have with the subject matter.
Remember to write less but give more: Don’t go writing six paragraphs trying to prove a simple point you could have proven using just one. This will bore your readers and cause them to move to another website with more punchy content. You get one chance.

This should go without saying, but make sure your blog posts are accurate and relevant to the topic of the blog post.

Improving Your Blog's Navigation

Create a tag menu at the top of your blog: Ensure you put a menu at the top of your blog so that your readers can easily link to other parts of your blog. You can also put one at the bottom, but the one on top is top priority. While each post should stand on its own, showing visitors other subjects that your blog addresses will help to keep them on your website and engaged.
Put a search box at the top: Create a search box that is easy to find in your blog so that your readers can search for other related content and stay longer on your website. The top of your blog is the best place to keep a search box.
Include links to relevant posts: I know we talked about this in the last post, however it is relevant to your blog's navigation so I'm mentioning it again here. Link to relevant posts at the bottom of each new post you write. This enables your visitors to be one click away from more information they might find useful.

So I hope that has given you some more ways to increase your visitor retention and engagement. On a side note - could you leave me a comment below on what you think of the colored listing items? I'm trying something new and I'd love to hear what you think. As always I'm trying to make my own blog easier to read and I thought that the subject of each line item in a different color seemd to make it easier to skim. Let me know if that's true for you or not!

Lower Your Bounce Rate Through SEO - Part 1

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 04:01:00 GMT

Lowering Your Bounce Rate

A Bounce Rate is (basically) the percentage of visitors who come to your website and do absolutely nothing and then leave. They don't click to read more, they don't use the menu so effectively have no engagement at all. The way it's calculated by Google is a little more complicated than that, but that is basically what a bounce rate is.

It doesn’t matter what you create your website for, you want people to stay for as long as it takes to get the message you are trying to give them. It is always painful when you have people leaving your site as soon as they arrive, without checking other pages or taking action (buying your product, subscribing for your email list, etc.).

In this article, we wish to share with you some of the ways to keep people on your website and reduce the rate at which they bounce out of your website as soon as they come in (bounce rate) using some specific methods of improving your SEO and also by closely studying your readers.

How Will SEO Help?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, and is a process that involves improving your website traffic by increasing your website visibility in search engines. These search engines include Google, YouTube, Bing, etc. For this article, we will focus more on Google and how do rank better in Google.

Having your SEO focused on your target market will ensure that visitors to your website are (for want of a better word) pre-qualified. They've come to your website because of the search terms they have used and the language you have used in your meta tags (which is one of the best opportunities to actually convert those search clicks).

Ideas for Improving Your SEO

Use specific and relevant keywords: You have to be very thorough in your keyword research if you hope to improve your SEO and reduce your bounce rate. What this means is that you should try using non-competitive keywords that apply directly to the audience you are trying to target as opposed to generic and super competitive keywords that major websites and publications are using. Your audience won’t stay for long on your website if they think your content doesn’t apply directly to them. Also, you want to know exactly what your audience is looking for with the said keyword and try to give them that kind of content (whether it’s an infographic, video, podcast or blog post).
Link to other relevant posts: If you have another post in your website that is relevant to the one they are there to read, then try to link to this post. This will keep them on your website for long and improve your chances of ranking higher on a Google search. This step is very important. Do not slack off on it. Make some time every month to scroll through existing blog posts and see what new relevant information you have that you can now link to. You will be surprised how many internal links you can add.
Try to increase your referral traffic: This way, you know that the people reading your blog through a referral from another blog are interested in your niche and will stay longer. You can increase your referral traffic by guest posting and synergizing with other bloggers in your niche.
Give a freebie: Offer bonuses to your blog readers to thank them for visiting your website and encourage them to stay longer. If they get enough value from your freebie, they will stay longer and keep coming back for more.
Email your posts to your subscribers: If a client shares with you their email, ensure you send them blog posts as soon as you write them. Your subscribers already want more info from you (which is why they signed up) and they will stick around for longer when you give them something to read. This will reduce your bounce rate tremendously.

As a blogger or website owner, ensure you take these tips seriously and implement them and you will find that your readers will take your website seriously and stay longer. Try these tips today and be ready for next weeks Part 2 with more great actions for you to take.

How To Leave A Great Blog Comment

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 05:55:00 GMT

Commenting On Another Blog Can Be An Art

As a blogger, you understand that blogging is hard work. Collecting your thoughts together, doing solid research and putting it down in such a way that your readers can resonate with it and enjoy it is not as easy at would seem from the outside.

What makes the job seem worthwhile and interesting are the wonderful comments you receive from the readers of your blog posts, those comments that let you know that your posts are valuable and helpful to someone. In other words, these comments make you feel like you didn’t waste your time writing that post.

While it is certainly interesting to read comments on your posts and feel good about yourself, commenting on other blogs is a great way to expose your own website to like-minded people. You gain a whole lot of exposure from commenting on other blog posts in your niche (or other related niches) and that gain is important in the growth of your website.

How? Well, commenting on other blogs help build a good relationship with other bloggers in your niche and this relationship can lead to more traffic for your website. They could even direct their readers to comment on your own blog and comment themselves to bring more traffic to their blog. Basically, it is a win-win situation for everyone. Also, comments with good keywords can help improve your SEO and help you rank better on Google search engine.

That being said, you have to make your comment good, relevant, meaningful and strategic. You don’t just want to slap just any comment on another person’s blog post because that person may not return the “favour”.

What Constitutes a Great Comment

I know it sometimes feels like you are at cross purposes, leaving comments on a competitors blog post, however, consider how you feel when you get a great comment. Also think about how comments reinforce to your visitors that you are reliable and trustworthy. If you get comments on your own website that helps to do that, are you really going to delete the comment because you it's from a competitor?? No you're not.

Let us look at a few ways you can leave a good comment on another person’s blog post.

Make your comment meaningful: You have to actually read the post to be able to comment something meaningful. By writing “great article!” or “good post!”, you are simply telling the person that you didn’t read the post. You need to ask yourself what you learnt from and liked about the post before you proceed to type. You should also try to think of things in the post that could be open for discussion. You could also suggest things you think should be added that the blogger may not have included. Keep it VERY constructive though. You aren't pointing out errors, you are entering a discussion. Consider a comment like "have you thought about what changing headings might do for Pinterest posts? Do you think they are that important?"
Use specific keywords: The fact that you are a blogger means you should understand that comments are part of a blog and will come up when keywords used in the comments are searched for on Google. Using specific keywords in the comment section will make a blog post rank better, so you should try doing this while dropping your two cents.
Be careful when dropping links: Before you drop a link to your own blog, you want to be sure that the link actually has something to do with the comment and the post you are leaving the comment on. Anything other than that will make the comment look spammy. Some blog management tools allow you to add your own website URL as part of your comment profile, but others will not.
Ask for help relating to the post: No this isn't going to make your own website look incompetent IF you do it properly. For example, if you are following a similar lifestyle blog and the article is about a furnishing restoration, link to your own post about the same subject and ask if they have any tips for what they might have done differently, maybe with regard to colors or materials. You aren't undermining your own post you are just asking for a different opinion AND you get to link to that particular post.

If you follow these tips, as simple as they may look, you are going to leave a comment that will warm the heart of the other blogger in your niche and cause him or her to work with you to make both of your blogs better.

Understanding GDPR

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 20:39:00 GMT

What is GDPR and how does it impact your business?

The term GDPR is an acronym for General Data Protection Regulation. In layman terms, it is a regulation set up to give citizens of European countries more control over their personal data. It does this by simplifying the regulatory environment for both businesses and citizens in the European Union.

The GDPR compliance ensures that those organizations that work with personal data are obliged to gather these data legally, under very stringent conditions. Also, those who have to collect and manage this information are obliged to protect it so that it is not misused and exploited to the detriment of the owners. Failure to do this will attract punishment on the said organizations.

GDPR was approved in April 2016 by the European Parliament, with every official regulation published in all the official languages of the European Union the next month (May 2016). The legislation was eventually enforced on the 25th of May 2018 across all countries of the European Union. This means that on the 25th of May 2018, all businesses and organizations were expected to be complain with the Regulations of GDPR.

Does GDPR affect your business?

If your business is operating within the European Union, then you should be GDPR compliant. Also, if your business does not operate within the countries of the European Union but provides goods or services to businesses or customers within the European Union, then you are expected to be GDPR compliant.

What this means is that if you are planning to serve major countries in the European Union, then you should prepare to be affected by GDPR compliance. If you wish to do business on European Soil with European countries, even remotely via your website, then you need to comply.

Since every aspect of our lives (or the lives of our customers) involve the use and analysis of data (our names, telephone number, credit card number, address, etc.), it is therefore important that there are laws and obligations set in place to ensure that data privacy is maintained.

What does GDPR protect?

Under GDPR, your customers have basic rights like:

The right to access their data at anytime and ask how it is being used.
The right to have their data deleted if they choose to withdraw consent from your company
The right to transfer their data from one service provider to another
The right to be informed about any collection of data by companies
The right to have their data updated when they want it to be.
The right to be notified when there is a data breach that puts their data at risk
The right to request that their data not be used for processing.
And so on

As an organization working within the European Union or doing business with countries in the EU, you must comply with these rules or facing a penalty of 4% of annual global revenue in fines or 20 million Euros (whichever is greater).

This is no joke. Organizations like British Airways are facing hundreds of millions of Euros in fines for a data breach that happened in late 2018.

So if you are an organization that has to do business within or with EU countries, you must be careful to ensure you don’t fall victim to these regulations.

View the full regulation processes and FAQ's on the EU GDPR website

Why Consistancy Is Key To Getting The Best Results From SEO

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 02:29:00 GMT

Be Consistent To Achieve The Best Results From Your SEO Efforts

SEO remains one of the least understood website terms for small business today. It feels like it's screamed down at us like some kind of "live your life by this" rule and to be fair, it is an important part of your content strategy. What it doesn't have to be however is wildly confusing. Let me explain...

SEO Explained Simply

As most of you will know by now SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, although I really think it should be called GO now (Google Optimisation).

SEO simply put, is ensuring that your website content is targeted at not only your market but gives them the most relevant information inside the best possible user experience. That sounded complicated didn't it?

It's not really. What you are trying to do is create content that your website visitors will love, present it in a manner that they like AND show Google just how relevant you are to the market you are trying to get.

Exactly What Content Is Considered SEO?

ALL of it. EVERY SINGLE piece of content on your website should be optimised for the best SEO. Text, images, blog posts, video's, links and more.

All of the content you ever place on your website should be written or created with the mindset of "how does this help any potential visitors that come to my website, stay". Yes - getting your visitors to stay and browse around is also a factor in Googles SEO ranking. Think of it this way:

If your latest blog post garners some attention and you get a spike in visitors to your website but they all leave directly from that post (as in they don't go anywhere else on your site), or they leave almost immediately on landing, that tells Google that the post they came in on isn't relevant to the rest of your website.

As a result of that, the ranking of that post will slide. It might not be super noticable straight away, but if it happens over and over again, Google will assume that you are writing posts not relevant at all to your content PURELY for traffic reasons and Google doesn't like that!

We have to consider that Google is a business too and their business is showing their clients the best possible results for their search. If it becomes clear to them that isn't happening, of course they are going to shuffle your content post down the list and try a post that is more relevant. Over time that results in your website ranking falling which is very hard to recover from.

What's that got to do with consistency?

Consider this: Just because 174 people found that content today, doesn't mean that another 384 might find it tomorrow. It might mean tomorrows results are a dismal 14 new visitors. Predicting visitor numbers based around new content, is to be honest, a total crap shoot. I've seen some incredibly informative posts that address my clients market perfectly, fall completely flat, and I've seen some less than ideal new content generate a massive buzz. More and more, with so many mediums out there it is harder and harder to predict traffic numbers.

What is possible however is to reinforce to Google that you are committed to your website by producing regular quality content that is addressed directly at your clients. Even if none of that content goes viral (and believe me that is almost impossible to achieve), the chances of relevant clients finding it increases and it's relevant clients you want. The post I mentioned that generated a massive buzz earlier was a client writing a blog post about her local juice bar. I'm not going to tell you the theme, but suffice to say, she had tens of thousands of reads and not a single new client out of it. Why? They all googled the juice bar I'm sure!

As your traffic builds, or even if the numbers per post don't rise, but the clients return, this is a big indicator to Google that you are what you say you are and slowly but surely you will rise up the rankings. The further up the list you are, the better chance you have of getting in front of prospective clients.

Remember good content doesn't depreciate. I've had blog posts that are two years old all of a sudden generate some new traffic.

Other considerations re consistency

I know I work in IT and people would expect me to be tech savvy, however I'm not the only person that uses a Feed Manager to organise the blogs I follow.

My feed reader of choice Feedly, allows me to add in new content sources, organise them into labels, save them for reading later and share them through multiple platforms. As well as a desktop version, there are tablet and mobile Feedly apps so I have access to all the content I love on all my deviced.

I don't often open a news website, but its not unusual for me to sit with my morning coffee and browse my Feedly posts for an hour (and if I'm being honest) sometimes 2. I have over 185 saved posts (I checked today) and my rainy Sunday mornings will consist of me going back and re-reading what I'd saved and more often than not, visiting the associated website. I've signed up for newletters, added new blogs to follow and while it might be months or years later, I've spent money with a lot of the websites I've saved. It could be anything from Hiking gear to Lightroom presets but any website that I find now, I add their blog post to my Feedly, categorise it and Voila! Everything I like in one place.

What cements my engagement though? Consistency! New articles from the content I follow. I couldn't tell you the number of times I've seen a new article from someone I follow that has reminded me that I've now saved enough money for that lightweight sleeping bag I had seen on that website. I might have eventually bought it, but there is nothing like reinforcement to a prospective client.

So you have to consider that

keeping your content consistently updated isn't just for Google,
it's for your clients, which in turn evolves into
traffic and/or purchases, which in turn tells Google how relevant your content is to those who might be searching for what you sell.

It is indeed a cycle but it doesn't have to be a vicious one.

SEO Tips - Meta Descriptions Explained

Sun, 21 Jul 2019 00:38:00 GMT

Why Meta Descriptions Are So Important

A meta description for a web page is the information that appears about that particular page in search results. Looking at the pic above, the text you can see that describes what the page is about is the meta description.

In this case, Yoast describes what a meta description is, where it shows and moves on from there.

Meta Descriptions are a contributing factor in your website's SEO. Google uses the information provided in the Meta Description to establish that page's relevance to the search term used by their clients. However, its not just the SEO factor that is important, the meta description is where you get a chance to convince potential clients that YOU are the best option for whatever it is they are looking for..

Some FAQ's About Meta Descriptions

How do I access my meta descriptions

Usually your website developer will either ask for the text you wish to use for each page of your website, or they may develop that meta description as part of their service. I tend to write meta descriptions as a free service to my clients to start and then once their website is up and running, they can send me the text they would like if they want to change it.

Meta Descriptions appear in the <head> tag of your website page and unless your website is completely coded from scratch, there is usually an area in the page settings for your meta description. On our platform for example, if you go to Pages / Settings and you will see SEO as an option. Click on that and edit your meta descriptions from there.

How should I word my Meta Description?

I always suggest to clients that this is their one chance to convince possible clients to click through to their website. That's not entirely true, it's not your only chance, but that usually stresses how important meta descriptions can be. People are very busy in today's world and most tend to just scan through for something that peaks their interest so using relevant keywords is vital. What is also vital however is that it reads well (as a sentence not just a list of words) and accurately explains what is on that web page. Google will pitch a fit if you try to direct traffic to your website that has no relevance to your content, and trust me you never want Google deciding you aren't doing the right thing. So well formatted sentence using keywords relevant to that page (not generic words for your website) directed toward what you consider to be your perfect client.

Can I just repeat the first paragraph of my page?

In a word - NO!

Consider this, your meta description is not only a paragraph that could drive traffic to your website, its also one part of your SEO for that page. So if you repeat your first paragraph that is diluting your SEO actions because you are using the same keywords, the same phrases and the same content so instead of getting two bites at the apple, you are only getting one. A meta description while used for your clients, is another chance to reinforce to Google that your content is extremely relevant to this search term. If both your first paragraph and your meta description use similar phrases and repeat some (not all) keywords, Google considers that a double whammy and slides you up the list.

What if I don't add a Meta Description?

Google will grab the first paragraph from your page and use that as the meta description. See - it's important you do your meta descriptions.

How long should it be?

Google upgraded the length of meta descriptions from 170 characters to 320 in around November 2017. However, just to ensure we don't get too comfortable they recently went back to the 155-170 character range. There is no technical length, however keeping to around 170 characters will ensure your meta description isn't cut off.

What should I prioritize?

Use them over leaving it to be your page content

Content over length - its better to have a better description than have a long one.

Don't get tempted to keyword stuff

Remember your are directing clients so make sure you are giving them a reason to click through.

My Website Development Process

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 14:00:00 GMT

Learn what my development process is.

I've outlined below what my typical website development procedure looks like. Of course things vary on small or large projects, however I usually try to stick with this process for continuity.

Stage 1 | Managing The Enquiry

Of course this starts with a phone call or website inquiry from my potential client.

If the inquiry comes in via phone, I try to do a quick 5 min chat to see if the client is suitable for my business. Yes I do turn people down. That might be someone who is ingrained in Wordpress already or wants only Wordpress development. Or it might be someone who has come in through my programming contacts and doesn’t realise I don’t do big database contracts any longer.

If its via email, I still call if they have included their number. I feel that level of contact has a greater level of success and is more reassuring to the client.

Once I’ve touched base I schedule a longer call to chat about what their requirements are, tell them what I do, outline my process, stress to them what their involvement will be and give them an idea of my current schedule.

Stage 2 | Signing The Client

Once we have discussed their project and they seem to agree that I might be the developer for them, I follow up with an email that contains:

My open calendar dates (asking them to select what suits them the best
My understanding of what they require and the time frame I think is suitable
A quoted price for the scope of works
A copy of my contract
A list of what is included in the price I’ve given them
A full list of what their involvement will be and what they will be expected to supply. I never used to include this, however I’m constantly held up by clients who just don’t realise how much work putting a website together is. I got to the point that I felt that I had to take some responsibility for that, so I am very upfront about what they will need to do and when.

Once they’ve accepted the quote, I send them an invoice for the deposit and a time frame for their asset delivery.

Stage 3 | Pre-Design

I create a Pinterest Folder with design options for the client and send them the link. At this point, I’m not showing them designs, I’m showing them colors, styles and theme examples. I ask them to tell me which one they like (I usually number the examples), why they like it and how they think it applies to their website. I have comments on my images that should deter them from making design selections that aren’t suitable for their business. IE: If a client is dead set on a dark website I find a really dark one, and make comments about how challenging it is to read, how it will be impossible on mobile etc etc.

Once I have that feedback I develop a sample page. NOT a design, just an example of what they might have. I always used to develop a wireframe for approval from clients, however I’ve learnt over the years that it’s just not practical for them. I know what it's going to look like but boxes and crosses on a page isn’t visual enough for them so at this point, I do up a dummy page with options for their website.

So many colleagues tell me I’m wrong to do this, but honestly, using stock imagery and Lorem Ipsum text, I can create an example of the items we can include quicker than I can a wireframe and it gets my clients excited.

I now send the client links to everything they need to do in Google Drive.

Pages for website content
Links for paid and free stock photos
Pages for each product they need to complete(images, short descriptions, long descriptions, technical info, sizes, colors etc)

Stage 4 | Managing The Project

Once I have commenced the design this is the point of no return for clients. So much work goes into the design that for smaller websites, I ask for 75% up front before I start the design work and for larger projects I ask for 50% up front. None of this is refundable should I have completed the design aspect.

Layout Of Inspiration

I don’t do visual boards but I do extract items from past designs I like (of my own mostly, however sometimes it’s from a clients wish list) and assemble it into a Photoshop layout file. It’s usually pretty ugly at this point because this is effectively my image wire frame, however it's a great starting point for me and I move into my platform from there.

Colors:

I establish a color theme for the website and record all the color codes for each color and assign them a % of importance. I find this easier to establish the Main / Sub and Complementary colors if I know which is the more prominent color from the start.

Logo

If I am doing the clients Logo too, at this point I assemble my brief and contact my logo designers for options.

Client Assets

The client should be by this time uploading their images and completing their content for me and I start using these assets to formalise the design.

Web Assembly

At this point, I’m adding pages, creating blogs, setting up the store and payment systems and getting ready for the final client approval. I send the preview link to the client and while they are checking that out, I work through my tech list (my spin on check list) for the technical things I have to do. Checking page titles, meta tags, org tags, setting up Analytics, Tag Manager etc etc.

Client File And Info

I have template document that I save everything the client would ever need to know about their website. All domain logins, Google access, logo files etc and share this with the client.

Stage 5 | Release

Once both the client and myself are ready, we set a release date to launch the project. I usually try to make this a Friday so I can redirect the domain, launch and test and then when the client gets in to work on Monday morning, their brand new shiny website is there for them to take the edge of the Monday.

I always make sure I’m available to clients asap during the first live week just to make any small changes they might need or any technical tweeks should there be any.

Stage 6 | Follow Up

About 2-3 weeks after the clients website has been live, I touch base with them to see how they are going and if they need any help with anything. It’s always good to be there for them after the fact, and it helps them to be more comfortable with calling me at any time should they need to.

Google Keep - A Free Note Keeping App

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 14:00:00 GMT

Google Keep - Desktop & Mobile Note Keeping App

Google has a wide range of extra FREE resources as part of its Google Account (or G Suite if you are a business). Most of you will know about Google Photos, Calendar and Drive however a great feature that not as many people know about is Google Keep.

Keep is a note taking app that is available across all devices that are logged in under your google account.

For example, my PC, my Surface Pro and my Android phone all use the same google account login. Because of this I can add, edit or update my notes on Keep and immediately those updates are available everywhere I'm logged in to Google.

Features Of Google Keep

Google Keep is basically a note taking app, however its features and much more advanced than a basic level.

Your notes can have:

different colors assigned (I use different colors for clients or personal notes)
check boxes so you can see what you've done and mark off completed tasks
reminders so you never forget anything
images so you can add something to your note (handy for instagram posts)
archive ability (so you can archive a note without deleting it)
pin to top (will always appear at the top of your Keep lists)

under the more tab (the three little dots):

add a label or drawing
copy the note
show tick boxes (so you can mark items off as you go) or
copy to Google Docs

How To Use Google Keep

To use it, login to your google (PC steps) and then from your google account, click on the apps button (the 3x3 square near your profile pic) and then choose more and Keep will be shown there.

Alternatively go to keep.google.com

On your phone you should find keep under your google apps list.

Keeping On Keeping On

You can see from this screenshot of what my Keep looks like how handy it is when you use the colors and check boxes. I have allocated different colors to clients and subjects and there are so many notes in there that are just one off weird things that I know I can search for and find easily. Oh did I mention you can search for stuff in Keep??

I put everything from Movies I want to see to client lists to travel tips to the KM's I'm allowed to do in my car under my insurance policy. So handy and as long as you have given it time to sync, its also available offline!! So handy at an airport when I'm travelling

Incognito Windows & Why We Love Them

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 14:00:00 GMT

Incognito Windows Can Change Your Life!

Today's browsing world can be very "big brother". I constantly feel like I"m being tracked and marketed to and while I undertand that is the world I live and work in, sometimes I really need to just search for flights without being shown hot to get from the Gold Coast to Turkey on every single page I visit for the next few weeks.

Enter: Private Browser Windows

You all know I use Google Chrome for 80% of my work day. While I do use other browsers every day its Chrome that is my default browser so while other browsers do of course have this facility, its Chrome I'm talking about today.

What is Incognito?

Incognito mode will erase your browsing and search history from any websites you visit during the session as well as deleting any cookies your browser picked up along the way. Cookies are the little tracking slivers of info that websites store on your browser to give them information about your visit, your location and also for the purpose of advertising relevant content to you at a later date. By not storing these you won't expose yourself to what can be a very annoying few weeks of remarketing based around your website visits.

My primary reason for using incognito windows is mostly personal I will admit. If I'm searching for flights or accommodation for our next trip I flat out don't want to be distracted by adds for this for the next few weeks, so I use incognito. Once I'm done I know that I'm not going to get adds everywhere for the next few weeks which will drive me crazy!

A primary benefit to me is that by not having a record of my searches, prices aren't going to go up when I go back to those travel websites. They don't know I was already looking so don't show me inflated prices based around the fact that they know where and when I want to fly. On the down side of this, I also don't get any "Prices have dropped" emails from Booking.com which if I'm honest, has saved me a bundle in the past.

Another benefit of using an incognito window could be to avoid your "free" limit on pay per use websites such as newspapers for example. Some news websites will give you access to full articles up to a limited number and then their pay per view kicks in. IE you may be allowed to read 7 articles before they max you limit and ask you to start paying. That's fair enough to me but using an incognito browser, you aren't storing any cookies and you can confuse their system into thinking you are a new visitor every time. Less than ethical in my book, however it's not illegal and there is no way these large companies don't know you can easily do this. Its just too expensive for them to keep you out altogether so for now, this work around is completely overlooked by most business operating on the pay to play model after so many free visits.

How do I open an incognito window?

In Chrome its really easy. You see the three little dots at the far right hand side of your browser window?

Click on those

Click "New incognito window" and Voila! Done.

It's that simple. Browse away.

Most browsers have an incognito function, some call it different things, but for most of them, clicking the menu on the right hand side should put you in the right place to find the private browsing window.

What an incognito window won't do

Being Incognito won't hide your browsing from your ISP (Internet Server Provider)
Incognito isn't some kind of anti-virus protection. Nasty websites are still nasty and just because the cookies they store aren't kept, that doesn't mean some other malware isn't lurking on your PC somewhere.
It won't hide keystrokes from your employer!

Domains Names - The Fine Print

Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:00:00 GMT

Everything you should know about Domain Names

Registering your website domain name seems like the most fun thing you can do, and it can indeed be very exciting to secure that desired domain name. I'm not wanting to put a downer on your domain name search, however there are some factors that you should take into consideration prior to that all important purchase.

Your Location:

While it is always a very good idea to grab a .com domain (if you can get it) you really want to try and focus on your locality domain extension. Australia is of course .com.au, New Zealand is .co.nz and the UK is .co.uk.

The reason you will be trying to obtain these domain extensions is that Google considers that if you are using a .com.au domain name, that you are servicing primarily this country and will direct visitors to your website from Australian browsers. You domain name isn't the only factor in Googles consideration to relevant traffic but it does carry quite a bit of weight to how your website can be ranked.

This is a primary consideration if your website is an online store that is freighting primarily to Australian consumers. While you may be able to freight globally, postage costs on larger items can be prohibitive so you may be directing your attention to local purchasers first. A .com.au domain name will help you to address the local clients first.

What I would recommend is that if .com is also available purchase that too. There are no restrictions on a .com domain name so you can either use it to direct traffic to your .com.au website or just keep it so no-one else can grab any traffic meant for you.

Likewise, if a .com.au domain name is gone and it is very specific to your registered company or business name you might be entitled to persuing legal action to get it released to you. Alternatively, use the .com one in the meantime if that is available.

Legal Eligibility:

Registration of .au extensions is governed by the AUDA domain administration. Open .au domain extensions include:

asn.au, com.au, net.au, id.au and org.au.

As general information goes ( the actual rules on the AUDA website ), to register a .au extension, you must be a commercial entity (a company or business) and be registering a domain name that is either a direct representation of your business name or company name, or be directly related to services you provide.

For Example: You could register broomepearls.com.au if you business name was "Broome Pearls", you sold Broome Pearls or maybe grew Broome pearls. What isn't allowed in the .au arena is domain squatting. IE you can't purchase a domain name that doesn't pertain to your business in anyway for the purpose of investment or extortion. So you can't register broomepearls.com.au if you have nothing to do with Broome Pearls. Actually let me clarify that - you could do it, but you would have no case to hold it should a company called Broome Pearls challenge it, and you could be made to hand over the domain name at your own cost.

The requirements are clear however they are not your only consideration.

Business Name Vs Domain Name

Your domain name might not always be an exact match to your business name. Often your business is up and running before you get to your domain name so it's not always possible at a later date to get the domain name you would like.

My recommendation is to make registering your domain name a priority asap you start your business development. I always try to register both a .com and the .com.au domain if its possible. My main reason for doing this is to have the monopoly over your own business operating name. You don't have to use both domains, but having them both means that you have control over them.

What if you can't get your domain name?

Consider a .net or .net.au extension. While a lot of people consider these extensions to be less that perfect, that's not really true. Having your exact domain name but with a .net or .net.au extension is probably better than something that isn't a direct link to your business name. The work you put into your business, your website and your SEO (paid and organic) will enable you to override the fact that you don't have your exact domain name.

However....

Please take into consideration who actually has those .com and .com.au domain names registered. If they are a very similar business to you and sell similar products, you must take into consideration that you will almost certainly loose a certain amount of business to that company. If I accidentally type in yourbusinessname.com instead of .net and they sell similar products and I'm not familiar enough with your business to know it isn't you, I'm going to purchase from them. I won't know I'm in the wrong place, so you do have to consider that when registering your domain name. It might be worth the cost of an extra business registration and some unique branding to avoid this happening and establishing your own web presence free and clear of direct domain name competitors.

After you register:

Ensure that you make a note somewhere of where (the registrant) and when and for how long you registered your domain name along with the password or login for that account. Tag or label it in your emails or add it to you notes or even something like Google Keep . It's imperative that you have that information readily available so you can use it and have it available for your web developer.

Add the renewal date to your calendar so you can check it whenever you need to

What to watch out for:

There are unscrupulous people who troll domain registrations and then register other extensions and try to sell them to you or worse, send you an invoice for renewal which often people pay not realising its a scam.

You will also get a lot of emails, phone calls and or physical mail trying to sell you website services after you have registered your domain. If you have an option during the registration process to pay an extra fee to make your information private, that is almost always worth doing.

Where to Register Your Domain Name

There are many many many domain registrars out there however I use GoDaddy to register all my domain names. I find them to be well priced with lots of options like private registrations and very easy to use.

Can I Register Your Domain Name For You?

Of course I can.

I'm more than happy to register any domains you would like as it is much easier for me to do it AND I always register the domain in an account that is under your control. I always work with complete transparency and will bill you for the domain cost + a $50.00 fee for me to register it for you. That fee will cover up to 4 domain registrations too - its not per domain. Get in touch if you would like to take advantage of this service.

Google Search Tips #6 - Related Search

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 14:00:00 GMT

Search For Related Content With Google

I'm not sure if you all use a Feed Reader. I do and I use Feedly. I love it because it puts all my content in one place, I can categorise it, sort it, save articles and reread whenever I like. Even with such a great tool I find I sometimes get Millennial level boredom with the blogs I'm following. That's not their fault - I followed them for a reason but sometimes if I have time on my hands (holidays typically) I want new content and I want it NOW! Step forward Google Related Search!!

How To Search For Related Content

This is in my opinion, one of googles best search features so let me explain how it works. Lets say you have a fave website or blog you follow but you would like to find more similar blogs. Open your browser (Chrome is my browser of choice) and type in related:thewebsiteyoulike.com . To be clear you are typing the word "related" with a semi colon : then adding in (no spaces) the website you want to find related results for.

For Example:

Lets say I love Tumblr and I want to find more websites like Tumblr. I would type "related:tumblr.com" (without the quotes) into my browser and it will look for websites that have similar content to Tumblr and show you a list.

NB: If you use Chrome you can type this directly into the URL bar however if you are using another browser and don't have google as your default search engine, you will have to open Google first and then type this into the Google search field.

My Results

My results for my Tumblr related search are showing in the image below. You can see that Google has recognised that Tumblr is an image driven website so has recommended StumbleUpon (a little like Tumblr but something you randomly generate), Behance which is Adobe's portfolio website (also image based) and Flickr.

I will note however that the more specific your search website is, the more varied the results. If I type in a small local web company for example, I will often get no results. I am assuming that there are key points that must be met for google to find and compare websites to each other. So if you do not have many blog posts OR your blog posts are wide and varied in content theme and style, you may not get too many results. Don't be discouraged by this if you are searching for competitors to your own website. If you are developing content for your market that is what your clients want to see, if it does cover a wide range of subjects that's good for your client base so stressing about not getting any comparative results using this search is probably a waste of your valuable time. To show you what I mean by this you can see the search results below in order:

related:tumblr.com - a wide variety of image based and browsing websites is returned
related:neilpatel.com (one of the industry's foremost expert on SEO and marketing) - only one comparitive website was returned. The others are Neil Patel on other platforms.
related:theplanetD.com (a travel blog I follow) - and heaps of alternatives show up.

So I hope this has helped you narrow down more cat video websites or enabled you to find you competitors more easily.

My search results for Tumblr and The Planet D below

Google Search Tips #5 - Inner Website Search

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 14:00:00 GMT

Search Inside a Website With Google

Have you ever known that you have previously found something you wanted on a particular website but have no clue how to find it again? Google's ability to search within a website will set you on the straight and narrow toward your desired result.

How To Search For Within A Specific Website

it must deliver value to the visitor
it should exceed their expectations (of at face value at least meet those expectations)
it should provide them with a positive experience &
it should load quickly

Content that is blatantly self serving won't help you achieve that.

Content that is stuffed with what you consider to be keywords - again, won't help you achieve that

Content that is posted at an over zealous rate won't help you do that - UNLESS its crisp, quality content.

A huge quantity of content, if its hastily written and has no value won't do you any good, so its entirely possible that you've spent your weekends writing, writing, writing for no benefit.

The Key, (ignoring the pun) Is Consistency

Take the following steps into account when you are assembling your content.

Ask yourself: What is the visitor going to get out of this? How is this going to help them? If they are ever going to come back - they need a reason. Give them one.
Accompany your text with images. We are visual creatures - we love pretty pictures and don't forget, having well named images with good captions and ALT tags can work on their own driving traffic to your website. My husband, who isn't great with anything that isn't email from a computer perspective, uses Googles Image search maybe 10-15 times a day. He runs a business with 10 employees and doesn't have time to waste. He puts in his search, goes to "Images" and starts by clicking on the image that is closest to what he's after. He can't be the only one that does that!!!!
Optimize your images. Don't upload full size images. I CAN'T SAY THIS ENOUGH! Optimize your images for web. See this post on how to easily do this.
Consider people that aren't like yourself. Here you are writing blog posts and updating your website but does you visitor have the same skillset? Just because you know what you are offering or selling doesn't mean they know. Don't forget terms that are more generic in nature. Don't be scared to be less specific. If you have your essential key words and specific search terms in you text, there is nothing to be lost by being slightly more generic in other paragraphs. As long as it all makes sense, diversity can't hurt.
Be aware of your competition but don't be obsessed. I have a client who followed her opposition's blog and pretty much rewrote every single one. She didn't think she could come up with something on her own, so she pretty much just copied their idea every month and wrote it out herself. I was mortified - primarily because it (to me) is blatant plagiarism, but also because she knows her business. She knows what's worked and what hasn't and by ignoring that and copying what they were doing, she was setting herself up to repeat every single mistake they made . She's no longer a client.
Ask yourself: How does this apply to my businesses personality? It is affirming everything I/We stand for? If you run an engine rebuild business and want to branch off into Wednesday night classes - written text is probably not what you should lead with. Sure you need it on your page, but a video at the top would be much better suited to your market. Showing not telling is where you sit - don't miss that. Even if you don't think you can do a good enough video - I bet you can. Get your phone out, film it, go to Fiverr and find someone who can put it into a better output for you. And that brings me to my next item...
Your time is valuable. VERY valuable. Content writing may be a GIANT waste of your time. If you are aforementioned engine builder I bet you aren't going to take an afternoon off, sit down and crochet a doily for your grandma's birthday are you? Nope - even if you can crochet (lil bit jealous cause I can't) that is not a valuable use of your time. PAY SOMEONE!
Finally - PLAN. PLAN. PLAN. Like everything else, if you try and write one random blog post every month, but the time you sit down, login, type it, find images, resize them, rewrite it, do the SEO for the blog post and post it. There's an hour gone. Now I bet you can knock out the next one in half that time. So write two, or even better write 3. Three is my magic number. I never leave my PC until I've scheduled at least 3. Then I get beer - oh what am I saying? I mean coffee!

Resizing Images For Your Website

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 14:00:00 GMT

Don't fall into the trap of uploading full size images

How many times have you gone to a website, only to leave inside 4 seconds when it isn't fully loaded.

Guilty!!

Slow loading websites are 99% of the time caused by too large image files. Images that aren't just large in physical dimensions but also in kb size are DEATH TO YOUR WEBSITE!

I know your skill set probably isn't resizing images but there is a free and easy way to do it.

Hello Image Optimizer

There are more than a few image resizing tools out there, however I've found this to be very easy and wonderfully add free!

Check out Image Optimizer

To use it is very simple. You can just upload your images online or download their image resizer to your PC. I've only ever used the online version primarily as I'm horribly suspicious of anything I have to download. You can make your own decision.

" The steps are very easy, simply choose your file, set what options you want and the maximum sizes, and click Optimize Now.

Tips:

I always choose "small file size" from the Quality drop down list. If you choose that and your image isn't small enough you can do it again with the "very small file size" option. The Small is usually fine in my experience.
The Max width and height isn't linked. IE - If you put in 1200 as the width, it won't assume your image is landscape and set the width to be appropriate for the proportion of your existing image. It is very easy to work out however.

Take your existing image, right click and choose properties. Click the Details tab and scroll down to see the dimensions.
Divide the longest dimension (in this case I'm working with a landscape image - wider than taller) by the smaller one. That will give you a ratio. IE My image is 4288px wide x 2848px high. So 4288 divided by 2848 gives me a ratio of 1.5056.
So if I want my image to be a max width of 1200 if I divide that by 1.5056 that will give me a max height of 797px. If you made that 800px that would be fine. Your image would then come out in the same ratio of the existing pic.

Click the Optimize Now button and wait. Remember that it has to upload your large image so it's not instantaneous. Spend that time thinking about how frustrating this would be for a visitor to your website if they were trying to load your page with three 4mb images! Makes sense now doesn't it.

Once you are done, you will see a resulting output as below. Simply download the file to your computer. Make sure to save it in your "Optimized Images" folder - you don't want to confuse the files. Also remember to rename it to a meaningful file name before you upload it.

SEO Tips - Make the most of images

Thu, 10 Nov 2016 14:00:00 GMT

How to tap into the SEO benefits of your images

SEO can seem ridiculously confusing, make you beleive you have no real concept of ROI and worst of all, make it very hard to see value for money.

Fortunately, there are HEAPS of free SEO resources out there and lots you can do yourself, for free that will enhance your websites search engine optimisation.

Below I've listed some easy to do, no cost actions you can address on your website to help you improve your SEO visibility via your images.

Every time you add an image to ANY page of your website you should consider how it can help you. Sure, if it's a product image, it has to be a consistent theme to the rest of your website, clear, concise and be a correct representation of that product.

What is can also be is a great tool to attract your ideal target market to your website.

CHALLENGE: Google can't read images. Sure you can find other instances of an image on the web via Google, but an image by default has no text. Because of this, its VERY important how you treat any and all images on your website.

Search engines get the info from your images by reading:

the image name,
the image ALT tag &
the image caption.

For example: I'm looking for a 'boho crochet top' for a Christmas party (remembering Christmas is very hot here in Australia). For Google to show me an image related to my search it has to somehow know that image on your website is of a crochet boho top right? So its up to you to give Google this info and the easiest way to do this is these three easy steps below.

1: Name Your Images

So you may have three different tops that match that description on your website but they don't show up in any search - because - they don't have any text related to that image identifying them with that search.

RESOLUTION: Name your images carefully keeping in mind, what clients may search for and how specific you want to get with your descriptions.

ACTIONS: Before you even attempt to upload any image to your website, make sure it has the best possible image name .

2: Give Your Images Captions

Captions are another way to enforce what your image is about and how that is relevant to your clients Google Search.

RESOLUTION: Give your images a meaningful caption that is short and to the point. Think about how your client may possibly find you and use those search terms (in a logical way) in your image caption.

ACTIONS: ASAP on upload, edit your image and add the caption you have decided on. Its very simple and easy to do it now but its mind numbingly boring to go through your entire website at a later date to do hundreds of images. Make this part of your image upload habits .

EXCEPTIONS: There are occasions where a caption on your image doesn't jell with your layout, theme or style. If that is the case, don't be scared to leave it off. While ideally you want all three characteristics of your image to be covered, if you are missing a caption, but overall are impressing clients with your design, don't stress over it.

3: Set Your Alt Tags

An 'ALT tag' is shorthand text we use to refer to the ALT attribute within in the image.

ALT tags are used with screed readers to explain to sight disabled clients what this image represents. Its also a great way to (again) reinforce what this image represents to Google.

Using best practices on your website and including ALT tags on all your images will mean your website has a strong accesability factor.

ALT tags are NOT visible so you don't have to worry about moving your image or compromising your design.

How To Set Alt Tags On Your Images

This step assumes you use Weebly as your website platform, html is shown below.

Click on the image
Scroll down to the "Alt Text" area
Enter your Alt Tag remembering that this is designed for sight impaired users so you need to describe the image.

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How To Format A Blog Post

How To Write A Great Blog POst

Step 1 - What should you write your blog post about?

STEP 2 - CONFIRM YOUR SUBJECT MATTER

What are you checking for?

Step 3 - Creating Sub Sections

Ordering your blog post sections

Step 4 - Assembling Your Post

Write your intro

Fill out your sub headings

Step 5 - Summarise Your Post

Step 6 - Getting Ranked by the search engines

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Searching for topics and keywords

Abandon the "number 1 spot" mentality

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