You use a lot of different tools in your business. You’ve got WordPress, Google Drive, Evernote, MailChimp, Asana, and dozens of others. And while all these tools are incredibly helpful, there’s one major problem: They don’t communicate well with each other. In other words, getting information from one app to another isn’t usually very easy. For example, let’s say you wanted to create a new line in a spreadsheet every time someone contacts you through your website. Normally, you might have to manually download the contact information and then copy and paste it into the sheet. It’s a pain. That’s where Zapier comes in. It allows you to connect apps that don’t normally communicate AND automate tasks between the apps. This can save you huge amounts of time as well as eliminate the tedious tasks that eat up your day to day. Let me break it down for you. What Exactly Is Zapier? Simply put, Zapier is an online tool that connects and automates most of the apps you use, like WordPress, Gmail, MailChimp, Wrike, Zoho, ConvertKit, Trello, and hundreds more. It serves as a translator of sorts, translating the language of one app into the language of another so that they can pass information between each other. And the beauty of it is that there’s no coding necessary. No waiting for developers to do what you ask. No digging into complex tasks and routines to try to connect radically different apps. Zapier does all that for you. It serves as a digital butler of sorts, You can have Zapier automatically repeat tasks you would normally do yourself in your different apps. You can make a “Zap” which connects two or more apps with each other so they can talk to each other without you even entering the conversation. Zapier constantly monitors all the apps so that when a prespecified condition occurs (like a WordPress form being filled in), it can perform the task you’ve created. Scheduling meetings is another great example of how Zapier works. Let’s say you work in Slack a lot and tend to forget to look at your calendar. You can create a Zap that connects Google Calendar and Slack. Zapier will notify a Slack channel of your choosing that there is an upcoming Google Calendar event. And it can do this for over 1,000 other apps too. How Exactly Does Zapier Work? We’ve already explained the basics, but let’s dive in a bit more. To understand how Zapier works, you have to start learning the lingo. A Zap is basically a template for something you want Zapier to do repeatedly and automatically, without you needing to intervene in any way. Within a Zap, there are Triggers and Actions. A trigger is the initial event that sets the Zap in motion An action is what the Zap does in response to the trigger Let’s use WordPress as an example. You might tell Zapier, “When I publish a new post in a specific category, automatically create and publish a Facebook post on my page.” The Trigger here is you publishing the WordPress post and the Action is the post to Facebook. Then you can make a template for this Trigger-Action combo and apply it to any WordPress posts. This template is called a Zap. If you wanted to make a record of the WordPress post in a Google sheet, you could add that into the Zap as well. It’s kind of like a recipe. Or let’s say you were creating a new eCommerce store using WooCommerce. With Zapier, you can log every purchase into a Google Sheets spreadsheet so that you can keep track of all your orders. That’s how powerful and flexible Zapier is. The best part is that you can set up custom Zaps for any apps supported by Zapier (which is over a thousand). Pick two or more apps, choose the Trigger, choose the Action, and Zap it for all future similar situations. For some apps, Zapier will check on your Triggers every 15 minutes, while others get triggered immediately. Automated data flow. It’s a beautiful thing. What Can You Do With Zapier On WordPress? If you’re a WordPress blogger or using WordPress for your business’ website, you need Zapier. What are of some of the ways Zapier can supercharge your WordPress workflow? Here are the some of the Triggers you can set up in conjunction with both WordPress.com and WordPress.org: When your blog receives a new comment or a new comment status happens When you add a new tag, category, or any other way you would group posts When you publish a new post, add a post status, create a new post format, or create a new type of post When you add a new user or author to your WordPress backend When you or another user upload new media to your WordPress site When you set up nearly any type of Trigger via the HookPress plugin These triggers can then perform actions in numerous apps without you ever having to click a button. 10 Things You Can Do With Zapier That Will Make Your WordPress Experience Easier Let’s take this even further and look at 10 more things you can do when you combine the power of Zapier with WordPress. Remember — all of these Zaps are automatic. Share New Posts On Social Media You may have heard content marketers say something like, “Blogging is 5% writing and 95% other stuff.” Oftentimes, that’s true. But what if you could do less of that “other stuff” by delegating it to a machine? Zapier can help you by automatically sharing your new WordPress posts across all your social profiles like your Facebook page, Twitter profile, or Pinterest profile. That way, you won’t need to go to those platforms and share the post manually. Talk about a time saver. With Facebook, you can even tell Zapier to share only certain types of posts and what Facebook pages to use. With Twitter, you can pre-set the format of the tweet, shorten the URL (or not), and specify what types of posts should be tweeted. Post Instagram Photos To WordPress When you connect the Instagram Zap, you can go the other way by posting new Instagram photos to your blog. You can set it up so that when you post a photo to Instagram, Zapier will automatically publish it on your blog as a new post. You can even choose the post format and category. This is especially useful if you’re a photographer or utilize your Instagram profile heavily in your business. Post YouTube Videos To WordPress Many businesses also have YouTube channels as a way of cross-promotion and reaching every potential customer. If that’s you, you may want to look into the YouTube Zap. Like the Instagram Zap, you can have Zapier automatically post your YouTube videos to WordPress, choosing how the video post will look on the blog and if the post will go live immediately or be saved as a draft. Post An RSS Feed To WordPress You might be wondering why you’d want to post an RSS feed to your WordPress blog. A simple reason is to create a feed of blogs other than yours that you enjoy reading and that you think would be useful to your readers. You can also bring together content from other platforms, like your social media profiles or other blogs you run. However you use the RSS Zap, it’s going to be one of the easiest Zaps to set up (honestly, they’re all easy to set up). Send Your Buffer Posts To WordPress Buffer is an app that lets you schedule your social media content to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And with the Buffer Zap, you can also have that same content posted to your WordPress blog. After connecting Buffer, you just create a title, select the post author, and any categories or tags. Post SurveyMonkey Responses To WordPress If you’re not aware, SurveyMonkey is a free service that allows you to make custom surveys, which you can use to get feedback from your fans and followers. And with the SurveyMonkey Zap, you can have people’s responses or the overall results of the surveys automatically posted to your WordPress site. This could be a cool way to tell your readers, “Hey! This is what you all think as a collective group. Cool, right?” Send Google Docs To WordPress Many writers and bloggers prefer to write in Google Docs. And with the Google Docs Zap, those types of people can easily transfer that content to WordPress. Zapier will automatically save Google Docs as draft posts in your WordPress account. Add New WordPress Posts To Google Calendar If you create a lot of written content, it’s really important to have a content calendar of some sort. Zapier knows that. That’s why they made a Zap that will add every new WordPress post to your Google Calendar. This will help you easily see, at a glance, what posts are going to be published and when. No more accidental double posts or a long time in between posts. Store WordPress Posts In Dropbox You probably already back up the content of your blog, but it’s better to be safe than sorry and use a secondary (and even tertiary) backup. With the DropBox Zap, you can store individual WordPress posts on your DropBox. This would be really annoying to do manually, so it’s really helpful that Zapier does it automatically. How To Connect Zapier With WordPress Don’t worry — this is a pretty simple process. After you sign up for Zapier, the best course of action is to create a new WordPress user just for Zapier to access. Here’s how to do that: Login to your WordPress account Under the Users option in the sidebar menu of your admin panel, choose “Add New User” As the Username, put “Zapier” For the email, put any email address that you have access to (not Zapier’s email address) Generate a secure password Under Role, choose Admin if you want Zapier to do pretty much anything with your blog (Zapier recommends using Editor) Click “Add New User” That was easy, right? Now that you set Zapier up as a new user, you can connect Zapier to your WordPress. Don’t Do Things The Hard Way You have enough to do as it is. Instead of wasting your time manually performing tedious tasks, let Zapier do the heavy lifting. That way you can focus on the things you do best without having to constantly worry that things aren’t being done. In our fast-paced, constantly evolving workplace, time is your greatest asset. Thanks to Zapier, you can potentially reclaim hours of previously wasted time.
HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing software tool that can allow you to optimize your WordPress website for lead generation and conversion. Site owners use HubSpot to improve traffic generation, lead capture, automated nurturing and sales conversion and with $375.6 million in revenue for 2017, HubSpot has cemented themselves as a force to be reckoned with in this space. HubSpot does bundle its own content management system (CMS), but many marketers don’t realize that a HubSpot WordPress integration is possible via a plugin that gives you an easy way to continue using WordPress as your CMS while integrating HubSpot into your site for your inbound marketing efforts. In this article, we’re going to walk you through: Why you should consider using HubSpot with WordPress How to install the WordPress plugin Using HubSpot to improve your WordPress SEO Using HubSpot to generate and track leads on your WordPress site How to implement By the end, you’ll have a firm grasp of how to leverage both the marketing power of HubSpot and the flexibility of WordPress. Let’s dive in. Why HubSpot and WordPress? One of the things we love about WordPress is the huge amount of flexibility it offers. With thousands of open-source plugins, there’s not much you can’t do. But in some particular situations, it can be helpful to have everything neatly tied together, with all your data in a centralized location. HubSpot does that for inbound marketers. HubSpot’s inbound marketing framework can help you create a WordPress website that sees more traffic, by attracting more visitors, converting those visitors into leads, turning those leads into customers, and turning those customers into promoters of your brand. There are certainly plugins that can help you do each of these things, but your data will be scattered across a variety of platforms. With HubSpot, you can have everything you need to run powerful inbound marketing campaigns in a single location. We’ve had several clients use the HubSpot and WordPress integration plugin, and they have seen tremendous results from connecting their website with their inbound marketing software. Some of the results include: 4x increase in website traffic 2x increase in organic website traffic 228% increase in social media website traffic 140% increase in referral website traffic 47% increase in view to lead rate 38% increase in landing page conversions Obviously, HubSpot has some powerful tools that can be incredibly helpful if you’re an inbound marketer. Now, let’s walk through some simple ways you can use HubSpot to supercharge your WordPress site. Step #1: Install The HubSpot WordPress Plugin From your WordPress dashboard, install the official HubSpot plugin (which has over 30,000 active installs and comes with support from the HubSpot team). Note: you’ll need a HubSpot account for the plugin to work properly. Once the plugin is installed, it will begin pulling the data from your WordPress site into your HubSpot account. Step #2: Use HubSpot to Improve Your WordPress SEO HubSpot offers powerful SEO tools for your WordPress site. Keywords Obviously, you want to rank your content for the keywords that are most important to your business. Using the HubSpot keywords tool, you can identify which keywords you’re already ranking for, as well as get suggestions for additional keywords. In addition to showing standard metrics like monthly volume, keyword difficulty, and approximate CPC, HubSpot also shows specific marketing metrics, such as the number of leads generated by organic search traffic. This data is incredibly helpful in that it allows you to get a sense of how effective your SEO efforts are in generating not only traffic, but actual leads. If you’re struggling to figure out what keywords you should target, the suggested keywords tool allows you to type in a single keyword or a URL and then get a list of possible keywords. The URL function can be particularly helpful if you’re trying to compare organic content from a competitor. Simply type in their URL, see what keywords come up, and then determine if you should develop content around any of those keywords. Finally, under the recommendations tab, HubSpot will show you low difficulty keywords that you’re already ranking on pages 2-10. With just a little work, you can probably move these pages onto the first page of Google. On-Page SEO HubSpot’s on-page SEO optimization recommendations can help you improve SEO and the rankings of existing content. If you’re trying to move a piece of content to the first page of Google, following these recommendations is a must. Granted, there’s more to SEO than optimization, but it’s certainly a good starting point. Step #3: Use HubSpot To Generate And Track Leads HubSpot makes it really simple to place lead generation forms in strategic places throughout your WordPress website, and then A/B test those CTAs to see which perform the best. By implementing lead gen forms throughout your site and tracking their performance, you can begin moving prospects through your funnel. One simple A/B test to consider implementing is testing content upgrades versus popups. A content upgrade is a lead gen form embedded within a piece of content that gives readers access to exclusive additional resources. For example, if you have a list of the 10 best WordPress optimization tips, you could give readers a massively expanded version of that list as a PDF download in exchange for their email. Test this type of lead gen form versus standard popup email capture forms and see which one works best. With HubSpot, you’ll have detailed analytics that will tell you everything you need to know. Tracking Leads Once you’ve captured a lead, it’s simple to start nurturing that lead through your funnel and tracking their behavior. Within HubSpot, you can create email drip campaigns for your leads and then track how the leads respond. For example, you can determine which pages your leads visit, how they arrived, and where they are in your marketing funnel. This kind of data allows you to identify the buying intent of particular leads and customize your interactions based on where they sit in your funnel. Ramping Up with HubSpot on WordPress Now that you know the power of HubSpot and WordPress, what are your next steps? I recommend adding a call-to-action from HubSpot on each page of your WordPress website. Using the plugin, you will be able to easily see which calls-to-action are generating the most clicks and leads. Wherever you’re using a WordPress form, replace that with a HubSpot form. You can do this using the embed code from HubSpot. This will allow you to trigger automation and workflows based off of the form submission. Set up your email automation in HubSpot based on the above form submissions and conversions on your website. This will allow you to truly maximize the value of the HubSpot and WordPress integration by nurturing your leads as they convert on your website. Measure your analytics. With the plugin, you will be able to easily see which channels are not only driving the most visits, but more importantly, the most leads and customers. This is critical to analyzing your inbound marketing strategy daily, weekly and monthly to make sure you’re optimizing your strategy to coincide with your businesses goals. Identify low hanging SEO fruit. Determine which pages are already ranking, which ones could rank with a little bit of improvement, and which keywords you could easily rank for. Then optimize and improve existing pages, and create new content that will rank for low difficulty keywords For one Pagely client, prior to using HubSpot and the WordPress plugin, they were not able to track conversions on their website, get detailed analytics including how people were finding their website and, most importantly, get data on how people converted on calls-to-action. Using the WordPress plugin in conjunction with HubSpot has allowed them to truly maximize the value of their website to turn it into a lead generation engine. Since the transition, they have seen their website visits increase by an average of 352% over the first 6 months of the transition and leads increase by 124% over the first 6 months. How to Learn More You can start learning more by accessing countless tips and tricks and subscribing to HubSpot’s blogs. If you have a WordPress site now, here are some quick integration tips for your HubSpot trial or your new HubSpot platform: Track website activity with advanced analytics in HubSpot Plug into CTA messaging that works with HubSpot CTA tracking Add HubSpot forms to your WordPress site to increase your conversion rate Optimize your website content and search engine optimization with HubSpot Page Performance tools HubSpot also has a completely free Academy and Inbound Marketing Certification that you can take to start to familiarize yourself with the inbound marketing methodology. HubSpot and WordPress integration can be a powerful tool for your inbound marketing efforts. Please keep in mind that the only way to be truly effective is to have a holistic inbound marketing strategy that covers all facets of the inbound methodology. Making a strategic decision to start with inbound marketing will help maximize your online marketing efforts by increasing website visitors, lead generation, customers, and happy customers! Inbound marketing empowers marketers to attract visitors, convert leads, close customers and delight promoters. If you’re using HubSpot with WordPress now, please share your experience and/or questions/issues in the comments section below.
When it comes to building or updating your WordPress website in 2018, there are certain questions you absolutely need to answer. For example: Is your website going to have a modern look that’s elegant and beautiful? Is your current or proposed WordPress theme for 2018 a functional and intuitive design? Will it present your business in the best light? Your business’ website is of the utmost importance, so ensuring that you have an up-to-date, mobile friendly, intuitive, beautiful, and functional site should be a high priority. If you’re going to stand out from the crowd, you can’t afford to have a site that looks like it was designed in the America Online days. That being said, finding the best business themes for your WordPress site can be tedious and incredibly time-consuming. There are literally thousands of themes available, making finding the right one a difficult process. So, we saved you the trouble. We’ve created a list of ten beautiful WordPress business themes that you should consider for 2018. Below, you’ll find a few great free themes, as well as a collection of paid themes as well. As a reminder, when selecting a theme or framework, we highly recommend doing your research. Here are a few basic guidelines to always follow when choosing a theme: Make sure the theme author/shop is reputable and uses current WordPress coding standards. Read reviews. There are 1000’s of themes available, find out what others from the WordPress community have experienced. Look at the authors/shop update release logs. Do they push out updates when needed to support new core releases? Are the authors active in the community? Do they contribute to WordPress core and/or the theme, plugin repository? Support, is there a strong community of theme support? Do the authors actively engage their customers through support forums? Free WordPress Business Themes #1 – Flash If you want something that’s both elegant and a bit flashy, download the ultra-responsive, flexible, and stunning Flash template for your business’ WordPress theme. Though it’s a free theme, it’s not lacking in special features and it certainly won’t leave your customers thinking that you designed your site in Geocities. The Flash theme is fully widgetized and comes with a flexible, and extremely helpful, live page builder called the Flash Toolkit. This toolkit contains more than 10 different easy-to-use drag and drops that allow you to customize each page to your liking. Fluid and responsive, the Flash theme is no joke. It’s a great design for consumers looking at your page on a desktop, but also has brilliant mobile screen options that doesn’t make you sacrifice aesthetic for mobile functionality. Even better, the Flash theme is deeply integrated with SiteOrigin Page Builder plugin, so customizing widgets, rearranging, and crafting a beautiful page is simple and delightful. This theme is built on the foundation of WordPress customizer, so you’re able to fix, adjust, and tweak your site with live previews. With so many different variations, it’s an outstanding pick for all types of businesses Download here #2 – Talon With Talon, it’s all about design. With a stunning homepage, numerous features, and free of charge, the Talon theme is the perfect add-on or update for your WordPress site. Engaging and sharp, it will draw in your customers and keep them captivated long enough to allow them to explore your pages, which is exactly what a well-designed WordPress theme should. However, the Talon Theme is more than just attractive and appealing. It’s a responsive, easy-to-use, flexible theme for your site that was created with the latest WordPress technologies. This web theme is well-suited for businesses, freelancers, agencies, entrepreneurs, corporations, and much more. It’s designed with functionality in mind, beautiful on both a desktop and mobile screen or tablet, ensuring that you don’t have to sacrifice any of your aesthetics for purpose. It was built on WordPress Customizer, so you’re able to watch as you make changes and see your progress as you go. The best part? You don’t need to know a single line of code to make this theme look outstanding. With dozens of options on headers, icons, fonts, and layouts, you can make this theme your own in a snap. The theme even comes with a support team that will get back to you with any questions or concerns you may have. Download here #3 – Himalayas The Himalayas theme claims to be the best, clean parallax theme, and it’s hard to argue. Equipped with a feature (parallax) that’s missing in most free WordPress themes, the Himalayas theme is a one-of-a-kind user experience. It’s one-page style is ideal for people who want to highlight everything on a single scrolling page rather than deal with the fuss of creating numerous pages. All of the features you’d find in a premium them are present with this free theme — style, flexibility, customization, ease-of-use, and stunning versatility. You can customize and change your full-width slider, have transparent stick menus, and create customizable sections for whatever you want. You also have an on-call response team for any issues you may face with the theme. Download here #4 – Illdy This stunning theme is a multipurpose design that’s both clean and elaborate. It’s built based on the Bootstrap frontend framework, so you can expect a fully responsive site and full mobile accessibility without sacrificing looks. We certainly recommend this theme if you have a creative business (photographers, artists, musicians, etc). Illdy is built to integrate with WordPress Customizer, making it incredibly simple to customize your site. Using this theme, you can make customizations and then see exactly how they’ll look when they go live. Entirely flexible, this free-to-use theme is versatile enough to cater to both commercial and private sites and businesses. It also works well with dozens of popular WordPress plugins (think Contact Form 7, WP Super Cache, Next GEN Gallery, Gravity Forms, and soon, WooCommerce). While a theme alone won’t push you to the top of the search engines, this theme is considered SEO friendly, which is certainly a plus. And unlike many of the free WordPress themes available, you can use parallax scrolling enabled sections for a user experience unlike any other. Download here #5 – Ample Ample is a fast, effective, and fully-updated WordPress theme that could be the perfect fit for your WordPress site. If you’re on the hunt for a theme that creates a modern aesthetic for your business without sacrificing any functionality, Ample is a fantastic option. This theme is a fully responsive site that makes your web content easily accessible on any device, from desktop to mobile phone. The Ample theme capitalizes on the latest parallax background effects, allowing you to add more information to a single page without sacrificing readability. At the top of the theme, you’ll find a full-width slider that lets your customers access the site with ease. You can fully customize the theme with background images, colors, and different effects. Even more, this theme is extremely flexible, meaning you can easily expand your site if you plan to grow your business. Download here Premium WordPress Business Themes #6 – DynamiX Fast. Responsive. Engaging. This effectively describes the DyanmiX WordPress theme, and for that reason, it’s one of the best paid WordPress sites for 2018. This theme is more versatile than most WordPress themes and yet still retains its elegance and functionality. Simple and flexible, this theme can be used for your small business, corporate website, or ecommerce site. It’s is optimized for fast performance, which is essential to keeping customers on your site for any length of time. You don’t need add-ons, extra tools, or coding knowledge to make this theme your own. Everything you need to customize and change the theme is right in front of you. The DynamiX theme utilizes something called the “Visual Composer” which lets you control your site elements with an easy-to-use drag and drop tool. And you can always make sure you’re making the correct changes by checking the live preview before you publish the changes. Additionally, this theme is SEO optimized to make sure you’re ahead of the game when it comes to SEO rankings. Purchase here for $59 #7 – uDesign If you’re looking for a way to give your business website a little pizzazz, uDesign has everything you need. The homepage of the theme is entirely widgetized, meaning it’s incredibly simple to customize and move the elements on the page. Without any coding, you can customize your homepage to your heart’s content. This theme also has portfolio options which allow you to display your work, products, and photos, and it includes a a Google Maps widget so you can display the location of your business. You easily can optimize your site for SEO as well as make your theme multi-language ready. Purchase here for $49 #8 – Jupiter Jupiter is the WordPress theme for people who want options. If you’re looking for a certain degree of style, elegance, and richness to add to your site, look no further than this incredibly customizable theme. For starters, you can find over 70 pre-built templates to help you get started, generate ideas, or build on top of. Simply pick out the template you like best, insert the necessary information, and get to work on building the site you love. Your site can have everything you’ve ever wanted, including customizable headers, a variety of post styles, widgets, portfolio styles, and more. And like some of the other themes we’ve mentioned, no coding knowledge is required to make this theme look beautiful. Everything is drag and drop, making setting up your site a breeze. The Jupiter theme is performance oriented, using a memory management tool to keep your site fast. And if you were looking for a theme that’s multilingual, then Jupiter is a perfect fit. Using the WPML plugin, can easily translate your site into multiple languages. It’s also SEO optimized to help you with rankings. Purchase here for $59 #9 – Dante If you’re looking for a WordPress business theme that immediately makes your customers feel like they’re enjoying a premium experience, then Dante is a great option. This theme has just about everything you need thanks to its use of the Swift page builder. There are 27 pre-built page templates available, which can then be customized and tweaked in dozens of ways. For example, the Dante theme allows you to change the site background to parallax or video, and even lets you choose animations for specific elements on your pages. And like other themes we’ve mentioned, you don’t need coding experience to make this theme beautiful. If you are the kind of person who likes to get into the nitty gritty, you can use the shortcodes for advanced customization of your site. Purchase here for $59 #10 – Avada Downloaded almost 400,000 times, claims to be the number one theme of all time. While it’s difficult to verify this claim, the fact that this theme can he highly customized without any coding knowledge makes it ideal for most business owners. Using the Fusion Builder tool, you can make dozens of customizations to your site while still keeping it compatible with most of the popular WordPress plugins. Even better, once you purchase the theme, you’ll be able to get free updates for the rest of your life. Purchase here for $60 Final Thoughts The sheer volume of WordPress business themes available (for free or for purchase) can make it incredibly challenging to sit down, scroll through, and find one that works for you. Instead of staying stuck in the past, choose from one of these top ten WordPress business themes listed above, and give your site a fresh look. We’ve done the hard work for you. All you need to do is pick your favorite. Happy choosing!
72% of people prefer to get business communications via email and the ROI on email marketing can be as high as $38 for every $1 spent. You’ll hear people claim “email marketing is dead,” but the numbers don’t lie: email marketing is still very effective and every business should be using it to engage their prospects and customers. Looking for the best solution for email marketing, and how to integrate with WordPress? MailChimp is one of the best email services and also one of the easiest tools to use (and integrates incredibly well with WP, which is a massive plus). In this article, we’re going to walk you through everything you need to know about integrating MailChimp and WordPress to help stay ahead of trends in email marketing. By the end, you’ll know how to capture leads on your website with a subscribe form, automatically send new blog posts via an automated email newsletter, and we’ll recommend a slew of WordPress plugins that can supercharge your MailChimp marketing. We’re going to cover everything you need to get the two solutions fully integrated and working together seamlessly so you can leverage the power of MailChimp’s email marketing features to grow your WordPress site and engage your audience. Let’s dive in… WHY USE MAILCHIMP? First things first: why should you use MailChimp as your email marketing solution? It really boils down to one thing: simplicity. You don’t need to know any coding to create emails. Everything is drag-and-drop, meaning you can easily add text, images, links, captions, and just about anything else your heart desires. Emails are automatically mobile friendly, seeing all your statistics is a breeze, and creating simple A/B tests only requires a few clicks. And here’s the kicker: it’s free to sign up and you get your first 2,000 email subscribers and 12,000 emails per month for free. In terms of email marketing, MailChimp has an incredibly low barrier to entry. If you want simplicity married to functionality, Mailchimp is your golden ticket. If you’re interested in more advanced marketing automation and CRM functionality, there are more feature-rich solutions. But, if MailChimp’s refined feature set checks all the boxes for you, why use anything else? HOW TO INTEGRATE MAILCHIMP WITH WORDPRESS Good looks and ease-of-use are two critically important factors in getting people to subscribe to your email list. The sign-up form (a.k.a. subscription form) you put on your WordPress site needs to be easy on the eyes and easy on the brain. The more difficult or confusing it is to sign up, the less likely people will end up on your list. As a general rule of thumb, the more fields you require, the fewer email subscribers you will get. Generally, first name and email address are all you need. Fortunately, MailChimp and WordPress are very friendly. They’re practically best friends. ADD OPT-IN FORMS USING A PLUGIN To add opt-in forms to your site install the MailChimp for WP plugin. There is also an official MailChimp for WordPress plugin created by Mailchimp, but it has fewer features, lower ratings, and is updated less frequently. With the MailChimp for WP plugin, you can easily create and seamlessly embed customized signup forms anywhere on your WordPress site. It has nearly a perfect rating (4.8 out of 5 stars) and more than 1 million sites are using it. Here’s how to your website’s email subscription forms set it up… SETTING UP THE MAILCHIMP FOR WORDPRESS PLUGIN First, go to the WordPress plugin directory and download the plugin to your computer. After you unpack it, upload it to your plugins folder within WordPress. Alternatively, you can install it directly from the WordPress backend and activate it. Next, you’ll need to connect your MailChimp account to the plugin. To do this, you’ll need to get your API key from MailChimp and paste it within the plugin. To find your API key, log into your MailChimp account, visit Account > Extras > API keys. On the API keys page, scroll down and click on the “Create A Key” option. In the API key column, you will see a box with a bunch of numbers and letters in it — copy what’s in that box. Next, go back to your WordPress plugin and navigate to the Settings menu of that plugin. On the very first page, you will see a box where you can paste the API key. Paste it, then hit “Save Settings.” Boom. Your plugin is now connected with MailChimp. CREATE A SIGNUP FORM After getting the plugin installed, you can create a signup form to put on your WordPress site. Within the plugin, go to Forms. Here you can choose the design and format of the signup form. MailChimp for WordPress has five themes to choose from and a field generator where you can customize the form by adding HTML elements. Below, you can see extra settings, like the automated messages and the redirect URL. You’ll want to be sure you select the right MailChimp list in the MailChimp settings (the one you want these subscribers added to). PUT THE SIGNUP FORM ON YOUR SITE There are many ways to get your signup forms on your WordPress site. The first is to use a shortcode. Underneath the builder module in the plugin is where you will find the shortcode. If you paste this anywhere within a post or page, it will automatically add the form to that spot. Another way is to use the MailChimp widget, which you can find by going to Appearance > Widgets in WordPress. Just drag and drop the widget to your sidebar or footer, change the title if you like, and hit save. Plus, thanks to this awesome plugin, there is a third way to get a signup form on your site. You’re going to like this one. You can allow anyone who writes a comment or uses a contact form on your site to sign up to your email list. Simply go to the Checkbox settings to activate this option. Cool, right? With your form placed on your site, your website visitors can submit their info via the form and be automatically added to your MailChimp list so they’re ready and waiting for your next email campaign. ADDING FORMS MANUALLY If you want to get slightly more technical, you can add MailChimp opt-in forms manually to your site. Instead of using the plugin, you can go through your MailChimp backend. Many developers prefer this route. To do this, go to the Lists page within MailChimp. Next to the name of your email list, you’ll see a drop-down arrow next to the Stats button. One of the options from that drop-down arrow is Signup Forms. Click it. On this page, you will see some different options: General forms, Embedded forms, Subscriber popups, Form integrations. If you click on Embedded forms, you can then design your signup form. Once you’ve chosen your template (Classic, Super Slim or Naked) and selected what fields you want, you can scroll down under the header “Copy/paste onto your site.” That box has the HTML code that you will copy and paste within your post or page. When you paste the HTML on your post or page, make sure you switch over to the “Text” view rather than the “Visual” view. SUPERCHARGING YOUR MAILCHIMP-WORDPRESS MARKETING MailChimp and WordPress are a power couple, and if you know what you’re doing, you can really take things to the next level. Here are some ways you can take this MailChimp-WordPress integration and knock it out of the park. These tips will help you make the most of it all. AUTO-SEND BLOG POSTS TO YOUR EMAIL LIST MailChimp has a feature called “RSS-driven campaigns.” What that means is you can have MailChimp automatically out an email every time you write a blog post. This is an easy way to keep people up to date with the action happening on your blog. HOW TO SET UP AN RSS-DRIVEN CAMPAIGN THROUGH MAILCHIMP An RSS feed is something that is automatically created by your blog. Every time you add a new post, it goes into the RSS feed. MailChimp can use that feed to pull the full or partial content of your blog posts into emails, and then send those emails to your list. First, you’ll need the URL of your RSS feed (side note: if you want to send your subscribers content from multiple RSS feeds, you can use MailChimp’s FEED merge tag, or use a feed aggregator like RSSUnify or RSS Mix). Although the content that goes out depends on what you post on your site, you can use MailChimp to customize when to email the content to your subscribers. In WordPress, the link to the RSS feed is often times www.yoursitename.com/feed. To set up the RSS-Driven Campaign, navigate to the Campaigns page and hit the “Create Campaign” button. In the popup box that appears, choose “Create an Email.” Choose the Automated tab then choose “Share blog updates.” Enter the name of your campaign, choose the list you’ll be sending this to, then hit “Begin.” On the next page, you’ll enter the RSS feed URL, how often you want this auto-send to go out, and choose the template and design of the auto email. And now you’re all set! When a new post is published, MailChimp will automatically grab the info from your RSS feed and place it into an email campaign so it can be delivered to your email subscribers. ADDITIONAL PLUGINS TO USE WITH MAILCHIMP Numerous companies have created WordPress plugins specifically designed to improve your MailChimp email marketing even further. Here are some of the most popular ones. SUMOME SumoMe is a powerful suite of marketing tools used by thousands of companies. If you are serious about growing your email list fast, you should consider investing in SumoMe. They have some incredibly unique ways to get subscribers, like the “Welcome Mat”, “Hello Bar”, and more. SumoMe integrates nicely with WordPress and MailChimp and is able to automatically add subscribers to your list. GRAVITY FORMS Gravity Forms is an extremely popular WordPress form building solution. If you need more options or more complex forms than the simple MailChimp signup forms they provide by default, Gravity Forms can probably handle it. It’s a proven, time-tested solution with a great reputation and we recommend it without hesitation. WUFOO Wufoo is a tool that allows you to quickly build and customize subscriber forms. With the free package, you get five custom forms, 100 entries, 10 fields, and stats. Wufoo is designed to be both powerful and easy to use. If you want a lot of options for designing your opt-in forms, this is a good choice. MAILCHIMP WD This plugin allows you to create wonderful looking subscription forms with some cool fields. You also have the option of adding PayPal integration and hiding or displaying certain fields depending on the selections your users make. The PayPal integration is especially useful if you’re taking payments through PayPal and then want to add those customers to your email list. ANALYTICS360 MailChimp has stats and reports you can look at, and so does WordPress. But don’t you want to go deeper than that? If you’ve ever wondered how the rate of new subscriptions correlates with your website traffic, Analytics 360 from Google can answer those types of questions. Basically, this plugin puts everything in one place. It takes your Google Analytics and MailChimp tracking data and puts it neatly within your WordPress dashboard. Efficiency is a key characteristic of a successful business. MAILCHIMP FORMS BY MAILMUNCH Like SumoMe, MailMunch is a suite of tools designed to help marketers grow their email lists fast. It has a variety of lead capture forms, including scroll mats, advanced pop-up forms, slide boxes, and a lot more. If you’re really looking to supercharge your MailChimp marketing, this might be the right solution. EASY FORMS FOR MAILCHIMP Unfortunately, MailChimp’s standard opt-in forms are pretty ugly. As great as MailChimp is in terms of simplicity, it’s not the best when it comes to collecting email addresses. That’s why plugins like Easy Forms are useful. If you really want to customize the look and feel of your form, this plugin has built-in CSS classes that can dramatically improve the look. WOOCOMMERCE MAILCHIMP If you sell products using WooCommerce, you’re going to want to use this plugin. With this plugin, you can integrate WooCommerce with MailChimp, automatically assigning customers to their preferred email lists and MailChimp interest groups after finishing an order. You can then create your own interest groups and add subscribers based on the list they belong to. Additionally, you can add an opt-in option at the checkout page, giving customers yet one more opportunity to get on your email list. MAILCHIMP ACTIVITY The MailChimp activity plugin lets you see all your MailChimp stats in your WordPress dashboard. This means you don’t even need to login to MailChimp to get a feel for what’s happening with your list. MAILCHIMP COMMENTS This is a fantastic way to build your list through the comments on your WordPress blog. When a person comments on a post, they’re given the option of signing up for your email list. If they do, you can automatically direct them to different lists depending on the post they comment on. GO FORTH AND CONQUER! You now have everything you need to conquer email marketing with MailChimp and WordPress. Yes, you should keep using social media to promote your business and brand. But unlike social media, in which people are randomly scrolling through hundreds of random posts, email has the ability to grab people’s full attention. When something shows up in their inbox, they need to take action on it, even if that action is deleting the email. The world is yours!
WooCommerce vs. Shopify: which should you choose for your ecommerce business? Unlike in years past when you had to hire a developer to build an online store for you, there are now a number of services that allow you to build an ecommerce store with little to no knowledge of coding. When it comes to building your ecommerce store, there are two that really stand heads and tails above the rest: Shopify and WooCommerce. These are the two most popular ecommerce platforms for a reason. But which is the best ecommerce platform? If you read the reviews, both seem pretty good. They both have glowing reviews. They both have people recommending them. How can you know which is right for you? That’s where we come in. We’re going to break down everything you need to know about Shopify and WooCommerce, and give you some recommendations on which is more appropriate for specific situations. This can help you a lot if you’re trying to zero in on what makes one solution better or different than the other. We’ll break this down in detail below, but long story short, here’s what you need to know: Shopify vs. WooCommerce: Both platforms are outstanding ecommerce options that offer similar features and functionality. Your choice will probably depend on differences in pricing models between WooCommerce and Shopify. Shopify is fantastic for those new to ecommerce or those who want a turnkey solution. WooCommerce is perfect for those who want full control over their ecommerce store and also want the power of WordPress. But let’s go a little deeper. By the end, you’ll be ready to start building your own ecommerce store. WHAT IS SHOPIFY? First things first: what is Shopify? Essentially, it’s an online tool that enables you to build an ecommerce store without doing any coding. You don’t need to hire a developer, and if you get stuck on any of the steps, Shopify will guide you by the hand. And, there’s a huge community of Shopify users and experts out there willing to help if that’s not enough. With Shopify you can sell all sorts of products, including physical items, digital downloads, drop shipped products, and even services. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you can integrate it with your Shopify store thanks to their Point-Of-Sale devices. If you’re new to ecommerce or simply want a simple, turnkey solution, Shopify is certainly a solid option. It allows you to get up and running really quickly. WHAT IS WOOCOMMERCE? In order to understand WooCommerce, you need to understand WordPress. WordPress is a massively popular, open-source website building platform. It’s so popular that it’s estimated that WordPress runs 28.9% of the internet, including some of the biggest sites out there. You can be sure that if more than ¼ of the internet uses WordPress, it’s got some things going for it. However, WordPress wasn’t built specifically with ecommerce in mind. Rather, it’s designed to be an all-in-one solution for creating and managing content with a dynamic website. Part of the reason WordPress is such a popular CMS is because it has an extensive ecosystem of add-ons called plugins. These plugins extend WordPress’s functionality in new and exciting ways allowing it to do much more than just publish blog posts. That’s where WooCommerce comes in. WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that adds a host of ecommerce features to any WordPress site, including things like a shopping cart, product pages, inventory management, etc. WooCommerce stores are free to create because both WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin are free. Yes, you will need to spend a bit of money on things like WordPress web hosting, but you have that expense anyway if you already have a WordPress website. If you’re not already using WordPress, then the cost of web hosting becomes a bigger factor in your decision. That’s an additional expense you do not have to worry about with Shopify. EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SHOPIFY Now that you know a little bit about both services, let’s explore Shopify to give you a good feel for the service. DESIGN OPTIONS If your site doesn’t look good, people won’t want to buy from you. Your site can’t look like it was designed during the Geocities era or by someone who really loved MySpace. It needs to look professional, clean, and be easy to navigate. Without these elements, you can be pretty sure you won’t succeed in ecommerce. Shopify offers more than 50 different, professionally designed store themes. Ten of these themes are free, with the rest usually costing between $140-$200. The themes are professionally designed and allow you to easily customize the look and feel of your shop. Shopify outsources all theme design to professional developers who ensure that the themes stay appropriately updated. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that the theme always stays fresh, but the disadvantage is that they can cost quite a bit. Shopify makes it pretty simple to change most of the design options on your site, like colors and styles. You can also easily update your site with new items and even change your theme completely. If you’re preparing for a new product launch, you can edit sections of your store without taking it offline. If you’re an advanced developer, you can use Shopify’s specialized ‘Liquid’ language to make more significant changes. This isn’t necessary; only if you want to really go deep into your site. PRICING OPTIONS Shopify is Software As A Service (SaaS) so they offer several pricing tiers that give increasingly more features as the monthly price goes up. The tier you choose determines which options are available to you. The most popular pricing package for Shopify will cost you $29/month, and they also have a number of other options: Lite ($9 per month) Basic Shopify ($29 per month) Shopify ($79 per month) Advanced Shopify ($299 per month). On top of these monthly fees, you will also pay transaction fees every time you sell something. Shopify takes a cut of every transaction, and if you’re using a payment gateway like PayPal or Stripe, there will be additional transaction fees from them. Because transaction fees vary and change depending on the payment gateway you choose, you’ll want to look into all the details to determine how you want to handle that aspect. SHOPIFY FEATURES Shopify offers a robust set of features right out of the box, including: Unlimited products Unlimited file storage Automatic fraud analysis Embedded Oberlo integration Credit card payments Multiple languages Adjustable shipping rates and taxes Customer profiles Drop shipping capabilities Manual order creation Discount codes Blog module Free SSL certificate Mobile commerce optimization Editable HTML and CSS Daily backups Site stats and product reports Fully featured mobile app Product importing via CSV files Different product variations Print orders SEO-ready site structure Individual product reviews Facebook selling module Social media integration Physical and digital products in the store Unlimited traffic to your store Again, Shopify’s goal is to be a turnkey product that allows you to quickly and easily build an ecommerce store. Including all these features ensures that you have everything you need to build your store. With Shopify, you can extend its base features using plugins called Shopify Apps. With Shopify become such a popular ecommerce solution, there’s a large ecosystem of third-party apps available to create advanced functionality like sophisticated email marketing, advanced financial and inventory analysis, and much more. If there’s a need, chances are there are already several apps that solve that problem. Shopify also offers an Enterprise-grade solution called Shopify Plus. You probably won’t need the power and features of Shopify Plus right out of the gate but it’s nice to know that they can continue to support your store as it grows. EASE OF USE One of Shopify’s greatest strengths is ease of use. It’s intentionally designed to make things quick and easy. All you need to do to get started is go to Shopify.com, go through the signup wizard process, and you’re done. After that, you can take your store live and begin selling. It’s really that simple. The Shopify dashboard makes it easy to get a feel for your store performance, as well as any issues you need to be aware of. It’s also easy to adjust settings like shipping, taxes, handling new orders, giving refunds, and more. For example, when you’re adding a product to your Shopify store, every option is available on a single panel so you don’t have to visit multiple spots on your dashboard when adding new products. This means you don’t have to hunt in multiple places for all the things that need to be included (description, specs, shipping, etc.) when you bring new products to market. If technology is intimidating to you, Shopify does everything they can to make things easy. CUSTOMER SUPPORT Because Shopify wants to be an all-in-one solution, they make great efforts to offer first class customer care. You can reach a customer care specialist at any time, 24/7 via phone, email, or live chat. They also has an extensive knowledge base that contains solutions to many of the most common problems. If you’re worried about getting stuck or running into a problem, Shopify wants to set your mind at ease. SHOPIFY SEO Basic SEO practices like meta data and site copy are no problem with Shopify. Assuming you’re adding sufficient descriptions for products, home page copy, and other SEO-related items, you should be fine. And when it comes to design, Shopify themes have a reputation for clean code and natural linking structures, both of which are important for search rankings. Because Shopify stores are hosted on their massive infrastructure, pages load fast, which is another important element for SEO. The only downside is that if you want to add a blog, it needs to be hosted on a third-party like WordPress. EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WOOCOMMERCE Now that you have a solid feel for Shopify, let’s explore WooCommerce. WooCommerce offers the same functions as Shopify with one key advantage: control. Because Shopify stores are built on the Shopify platform, you are limited in what you can do. You’re limited to their themes and their selling options. With WooCommerce, on the other hand, your options are almost unlimited because you’re building on the WordPress platform, which has thousands of themes and plugins, all of which can enhance your store. With Shopify, you don’t own your site. You get your own URL, and you’re spared the fee of hosting, but you’re restricted only to what Shopify allows you to do. This straightforward approach works well for eCommerce beginners (and lazy entrepreneurs), but not for those that prefer a hands-on approach. By contrast, WordPress and its WooCommerce plugin are tools to facilitate building your own site. You have much more options, vast libraries of plugins to customize your site, and more control in general — especially when it comes to site design, which we’ll discuss below. Think of it like this: You’re building a house and you have to choose between two construction crews. One lets you design the plans however you want, but the other comes with a rigid architect who tells you what you can and can’t do. DESIGN OPTIONS WooCommerce has been designed to work with the majority of WordPress themes, which means that your design options are essentially endless. There are many free themes available and thousands of top-quality premium themes to choose from. If you already have a WordPress site and a theme you like, WooCommerce can probably work with it. If you’re just getting started, you should pick a theme that advertises WooCommerce compatibility to ensure all its ecommerce features display correctly. There are themes that have been built specifically for WooCommerce, so if you’re having trouble selecting a theme, these are always a solid option. The Storefront Theme is the official WooCommerce theme and is a fine choice for your ecommerce store. While Shopify has an impressive range of themes, WooCommerce can be incorporated into any WordPress theme, in addition to its own library. That gives it far more variety, not just in template design, but in site features. Think about it. With WooCommerce, you can integrate any WordPress plugin into your eCommerce site. This creates a nearly infinite selection of possibilities. Of course, this means you have to put more time into designing your site, and not all plugins are free. Most of the Shopify themes are well designed, and if you have no desire to mess with design, then Shopify might be a better option. PRICING OPTIONS Both WooCommerce and WordPress are free. However, you will need to purchase a few things like web hosting, a domain name, a theme (if you choose a premium one), and any premium plugins you might use. Additionally, you’ll need to factor in the transaction fees from your payment gateway. Thankfully, these will only come into effect when you make a sale. When it comes to price, WooCommerce is at least initially, the cheaper alternative. However, if you start purchasing premium themes and plugins, your costs will go up. Depending on the Shopify plan, you could end up paying about the same amount. FEATURES WooCommerce can do anything that Shopify can do, and then some. While it doesn’t necessarily have all the features Shopify has right out of the box, you can be sure that someone has developed a plugin for whatever feature you need and there will probably be several different options to choose from. You’ll find plugins for everything from abandoned cart functionality to inventory management. You can fine-tune your checkout page and add in sophisticated marketing automation features. If there’s a need, there’s a plugin. In the event you need some very specific functionality and a plugin doesn’t exist, you’ll find that there’s an ocean of experienced WordPress developers that would be happy to create that plugin for you. Whether you want to sell on Facebook, implement email marketing, or study your customer’s behavior, WooCommerce can do it. Here’s what you’ll get with WooCommerce: Hundreds of plugins Runs off of your WordPress theme Payments via PayPal and Stripe built-in Adjustable shipping rates and taxes Complete control over your website and its data Facebook ad and Facebook stores extensions Unlimited products and categories Inventory control Mobile-friendly structure WooCommerce does a lot right out of the box and it’s free. It’s free core features are very similar to Shopify’s paid plans. This might make it seem like a much more affordable option, and it very well may be, but you should be mindful of the fact that in order to get advanced ecommerce features you may need to buy paid plugins. EASE OF USE Once you get through the initial steps of setting up a WordPress site, working with WooCommerce is just as easy as working with Shopify. The initial setup isn’t difficult, but it does take a bit longer and involve a few small technical details. If you’re uncomfortable when it comes to technology, you could have trouble at this step, but it’s really not difficult. To get started with WooCommerce, you need to: Buy your domain name. Purchase web hosting. Install WordPress. Install the WooCommerce plugin. Install any additional plugins needed. If this intimidates you, there are hosting companies that specialize in WordPress that will take care of everything for you. Some companies even have 1-click WordPress and WooCommerce installation options, meaning you can get your store up and running with minimal technical work. Once your site and WooCommerce are up and running, you’ll be taken through a setup wizard. It will help you set up things like currency settings, shipping options, payment gateways, and more. And like Shopify, WooCommerce makes it very easy to add new products. It usually can be done with a few clicks, meaning you don’t have to spend hours trying to get new products into your ecommerce store. SUPPORT One downside of WooCommerce is that, unlike Shopify, WooCommerce doesn’t have a central customer support staff. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t find solutions to your problems. Because WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you can get support on their forums or by creating a free account at WooCommerce.com. Additionally, Because WordPress and WooCommerce are open source, the developers who create the themes and plugins are available for support if you run into any issues. WOOCOMMERCE SEO This is one way that WooCommerce significantly outperforms Shopify. Hands down, WordPress is the best platform for blogging, which gives it a significant advantage for SEO. In fact, it’s not uncommon for Shopify sites to host their blogs externally on WordPress. Using a WooCommerce site on WordPress means consolidating these two crucial segments of the same brand. WordPress’s blogging capabilities encapsulate both a comprehensive CMS for content management and specific SEO concerns like meta data. Again, good SEO requires effort, but with WooCommerce on WordPress, the option is there for those that don’t mind the legwork. If you write outstanding blog content for the right keywords, you have a good shot at showing up on the first page of Google for particular searches, which can drive a massive amount of ecommerce sales. SO WHICH SHOULD YOU CHOOSE? Ultimately, the choice between Shopify and WordPress comes down to what you want out of your ecommerce store. Let’s break it down like this: CHOOSE SHOPIFY IF… Shopify distinguishes itself by being a really simple ecommerce solution for everyone. Anybody with the most basic computer and internet skills can create a Shopify store relatively quickly. It’s a simple, powerful turnkey solution that works right away. If the primary thing you’re after is simplicity and ease of use, Shopify can provide that. The setup is quick and easy and have a single dashboard that presents you with all the information. You should use Shopify… If you don’t have a website and you want to get an ecommerce store up and running as fast as possible with minimal effort. If you don’t mind paying a fee for all the features, even if you might not need them all. If you don’t care about the technological side of your ecommerce platform and just want it to work well and look good. If you are uncomfortable working setting up WordPress and don’t want to pay anybody to setup your store for you. If you want a turnkey approach where all you need to do is sign up and follow a few simple instructions. If you think you’ll depend heavily on customer support. CHOOSE WOOCOMMERCE IF… WooCommerce takes advantage of the hugely popular and powerful WordPress platform. Because of this, you get access to thousands of themes and plugins that can really make your ecommerce store shine. In terms of ecommerce, WooCommerce can do everything Shopify can, including coupons, shipping, taxes, and a lot more. You also have significantly more SEO options at your disposal with WooCommerce. An important concern to consider with WooCommerce, that you don’t have to worry about with Shopify, is choosing the right hosting provider for your website. Shopify handles this for you but you’ll want to be sure you find an experienced WordPress host that’s familiar with the unique technical, security, and maintenance needs of WordPress sites. In the world of web hosting, you generallly get what you pay for so don’t bargain shop on something as important as ecommerce hosting. You should use WooCommerce… If you want full control of your eCommerce store. If you to enhance your store with thousands of site designs and plugins. If you can handle the technical work required upfront to get your site up and running. If you’re one of those people who likes to do everything on their own. If you have a smaller budget. If you already have a WordPress site and want to build your store on top of it. If you already have a WordPress site and don’t want to add the additional cost of Shopify. If you can survive without 24/7 customer support. CONCLUSION Honestly, WooCommerce and Shopify are both outstanding options for building your ecommerce store. If you’re already familiar with WordPress, you might find the learning curve on WooCommerce more palatable than having to learn the ins and outs of a completely new CMS. Whichever you choose, the end result will still be a fully functional ecommerce store that can accept payments and process orders. So the real question is, “What are you waiting for?” The world needs another Amazon. Go create one!
While there are hundreds of factors that Google uses to rank a website, backlinks are undoubtedly one of the main building blocks of good Search Engine Optimization. And while it’s a fact that Google makes regular updates to its ranking algorithms and no one can know for sure what Google will do next, high-quality backlinks will always remain a decisive Google ranking factor. Why? Because a backlink is, in essence, a popularity vote. When someone links back to a page, it shows that they value that page and want others to see it. Google is in the business of delivering valuable information to its users, and when they see a page with a lot of quality backlinks it’s a signal to them that something valuable is on that page. The more backlinks, the more valuable. For this reason, it pays to learn how to build quality backlinks to your blog. But what exactly constitutes a quality backlink? Not all backlinks have the same value. In fact, some backlinks are worth far more than others. When Google analyzes the quality of backlinks, they look at how authoritative the site linking to you is and how related it is to your niche or main topic. There are numerous blackhat ways to get backlinks, but deploying these methods is playing with fire. If Google catches you using these methods, they can massively penalize your site, even going so far as removing it from search listings altogether. If your business relies on organic search traffic, this can be a death blow. Bottom line: don’t use shady methods when getting backlinks. Get quality links the right way. The following are 14 ways to do that. If you want to jump to any particular method, simply click the method: Method #1: Guest Post On Authoritative Websites Method #2: Create Amazing Content Method #3: Create Infographics Method #4: Promote Content Through Email Method #5: Use “Dofollow” Social Media Sites Method #6: Identify Broken Links Method #7: Contribute To Resource Pages Method #8: Find Brand Mentions Method #9: Give Testimonials Method #10: Find Outdated Resources Method #11: Do An Influencer Roundup Method #12: Appear On Podcasts Method #13: Create A Wikipedia Page For Your Company Method #14: Submit Your Blog To Aggregators Backlink Method #1: Guest Post On Authoritative Websites “Domain authority” is a metric used to measure a website’s authority on a scale of 0 to 100. If you can get backlinks from high authority sites, it can significantly boost you in the search rankings. Of course, these sites aren’t just going to give out backlinks for free. So how can you get them? One simple way is guest blogging. When you write a guest blog post on another site, you almost always have the option of including one link back to your site. Make sure that link points to a page you really want to rank, not just your homepage (unless you want your homepage to rank). For example, if you’re trying to rank a page where you sell tshirts, make sure the backlink points to that page. Julia McCoy talks about how she used guest blogging to massively increase her organic traffic: We don’t pay for advertisements or pay to get our rankings sponsored. Instead, we provide quality content on our site and through other sites to boost our authority in the industry. Our five-year-old company outranks major competitors by 5% on average, and we’ve already climbed to more than 4,100 keyword rankings with Google. Finding High Authority Sites But here’s the thing. In order for guest blogging to improve your rankings, you need to post on sites that have more authority than yours. Writing a post on your sister’s tiny knitting blog isn’t going to do much for your SEO. You need to guest blog on sites that are authoritative. To help you determine where to focus your guest blogging efforts, you can use MozBar, a tool that shows the authority status of any domain. The higher the domain authority, the better it is for guest blogging. This is a double-edged sword though. If you’re going to write for these sites, you need to produce outstanding content. You can’t expect them to accept a guest post that is fluffy, low on value, or full of grammatical errors. It needs to be outstanding. Writing For Reputable Sites In Your Niche As important as it is to get an authoritative website linking to you, the effort can go to waste if the website isn’t relevant to your industry. In other words, Google looks even more favorably on links coming from high authority sites that are related to your site. This demonstrates to Google that you’re an authority in your industry and should be valued and trusted. Guest blogging for websites in your niche helps you promote your website, increase your referral traffic, become an expert in your industry and, yes, get a quality backlink. Similar Site Search is a tool that can help you find relevant websites. Write For A Website More Than Once It’s important for backlinks to look as natural as possible. Guest posting for a website more than once can help the appearance of those backlinks as you continue to offer valuable commentary on your area of expertise. Keep in mind that Google is getting better and better at detecting shady SEO practices. If you land a guest blogging opportunity for a blog with a higher ranking than yours, use it to boost your credibility and become an expert in your field. Want to write a guest post for Pagely? Let us know. Backlink Method #2: Create Amazing Content There’s a reason why content is king. No matter how well you optimize your site, if your content isn’t good enough to be shared or linked to, your SEO campaign won’t work. There are hundreds of thousands of blog posts being published every day, and 99% are fluffy nonsense, like “Which Character From F.R.I.E.N.D.S Are You?”. To get high quality backlinks, you need to create content that stands far above everything else – content that is worth a backlink. Additionally, Google is increasingly prioritizing in-depth content for search results. Why? There are probably several reasons: Longer content is often more authoritative and contains the answers to people’s questions. Longer content contains more keywords, meaning it can rank for a variety of searches. Longer content is usually more thorough, increasing the odds that it’s valuable to the reader. Original research also tends to garner a huge number of backlinks. Why? Because people always link to it to back up claims they make. For example, if you did a detailed, data-based study in which you analyzed every factor that goes into making the perfect cup of coffee, you would get thousands of links from coffee bloggers. The bottom line: if you want backlinks and more organic traffic, create high-quality content that people will love. Take the time to map out a content strategy and only publish high quality content. You want viewers to find you through SEO, but once they do, you should be sure that your content is valuable to them. Backlink Method #3: Creating Infographics On Trending Topics Infographics are highly shareable, so look at what topics are trending at the moment in your industry and invest in creating a high-quality infographic. Infographics that display data in a visually appealing way work especially well since they make it much easier to digest complex subjects. BuzzSumo is an incredibly helpful tool when it comes to identifying trending topics. Simply type in a search term, like “content marketing”, and you can see what pages have been shared the most during a given time period. Make sure you mention at the bottom that you created the infographic. That way, if it goes viral, it will get a lot of views and might bring in some backlinks if viewers embed it into their own websites. Tools like Canva and Piktochart make it relatively easy to create engaging infographics that people will want to share. Backlink Method #4: Promote Content Through Email It’s not enough to just create content – you also need to promote it. If you can get notable influencers to share your content, either on social media or by linking to it on their site, it can be a huge win in terms of backlinks. Derek Halpern of Social Triggers is a huge advocate of this. He says: Here’s the truth: It’s smarter to find another 10,000 people to consume what you’ve already created as opposed to creating more. Or, in other words, create content 20% of the time. Spend the other 80% of the time promoting what you created. And while you may think that social media is the best place to promote your content, when it comes to getting backlinks, email tends to be more effective. Why? Because it allows you to engage with a person one-on-one and ask them if they would be willing to help you promote your content. But promoting your content through email involves a lot more than simply sending out an email blast to a bunch of people asking them to share your content. That’s called “spamming”. Rather, you need to cultivate relationships with influencers to the point that they’ll want to promote your content. How can you do this? That’s an entire article in an of itself, but here are some helpful strategies to consider: Follow them on social media and actually interact with them Quote them in the content you create Create something so valuable that sharing it makes them look good Be personal in your emails (no spammy templates) Help them see why your content adds value to their audience The main point is that you need to engage with influencers in a real and personal way. Show them that you know them and that the content you’re pointing them to is valuable to them. If you don’t do this, you’ll come across as a spammer sending out mass emails. Tim Soulo of Ahrefs makes this point: You just published a new article on your blog and now you’re going to send a mass email to 100+ top people in your niche with an excuse: “I saw you tweeted a similar post.” I’m sorry to say this, but your article is not welcome in their inbox. Otherwise, they would probably already be signed up to your email list. And besides, it’s just disrespectful to mass-email top people in your niche with some generic “outreach template.” The more famous a person is, the more of these outreach templates he gets in his inbox daily. Bottom line: be respectful when promoting via email. Backlink Method #5: Use “Dofollow” Social Media Sites “Nofollow” tags are pieces of code that tell search engines to ignore specific backlinks. In other words, if a backlink has the “Nofollow” tag, Google doesn’t give it much weight in terms of search rankings. It’s a little more nuanced than that and SEO experts will debate the subject endlessly, but that’s the general idea. They exist to prevent spammers from opening countless Facebook profiles and YouTube accounts to create backlinks to their website. However, not all social media sites have ‘no-follow’ tags. You can create Google+ profiles for your company’s key employees and founders and include custom links with anchor text for the search terms for which you want to be found. LinkedIn also allows you to create custom anchor text when you choose ‘other’ in the first website link. Google Places lets you create a local business listing with target keywords in the profile and description fields. Though you may not be a Foursquare user, you should still create a profile. The links associated with your account are followed by search engines. The same goes for your profile links on Yelp, and YouTube. Backlink Method #6: Identify Broken Links This method involves contacting a website owner to report broken links on his or her website. When you email them to report the problem, you can make a friendly suggestion that they replace the broken link with your website. The chances of a backlink back to your website are high because you are doing the site owner a favor and because a link to you is better than a 404 page error. How do you find these broken links? Step #1: Install the Chrome extension Check My Links or LinkMiner. These will automatically detect broken links on a page. Step #2: Find sites or pages in your niche that have a lot of outgoing links. These could be resource pages, directories, etc. The more outbound links there are, the greater the chance that some of them don’t work. Step #3: Identify broken links on the pages using the Chrome extensions. When you email the site owner, be sure that you’re suggesting content that is relevant to the original broken link. If it’s not, they’ll have no reason to link to it. Backlink Method #7: Contribute To Resource Pages Many sites contain resource pages where they curate the best content related to a specific subject. Assuming you’ve created outstanding content that’s related to the site, the owners of these sites are often willing to link to your content. How do you find these resource pages? Google has a series of specific search phrases designed to identify them: “Keyword” + inurl:links “Keyword” + “helpful resources” “Keyword” + “useful resources” “Keyword” + “useful links” Once you’ve found a relevant resource page, use the MozBar to determine the domain authority of the site. If it’s high enough, email the site owner and suggest your content to be added to the page. Backlink Method #8: Find Brand Mentions There are probably numerous mentions of your name or brand online that aren’t linked back to your site. These are golden opportunities to get links back to your site. Using a tool like BuzzSumo or Mention.net, you can easily find places that people have mentioned your name or brand but not linked to it. Once you’ve identified an unlinked mention, simply email the site owner, thank them for mentioning you, and ask if they would be willing to link back to your site. Most will be more than happy to. Backlink Method #9: Give Testimonials If there’s a product or service that you love, offer to give the creator a testimonial for their homepage. It takes only a few minutes to write one up and most people love featuring glowing testimonials on their site. On your name, simply include a link back to your site. If you use a large number of tools, this can be a great way to easily get a number of backlinks. Simply list them out then contact the creator or each to see if they would be interested in a testimonial. Backlink Method #10: Find Outdated Resources Because things change so fast on the internet, things become outdated extremely quickly. For example, a 2015 list of all the factors that cause a Facebook post to be seen would be completely outdated since Facebook has changed their algorithm numerous times since then. Nevertheless, that outdated resource may have dozens, or even hundreds of backlinks pointing to it. Those backlinks are ripe for the taking. How do you do it? Three simple steps: Step #1: Create the updated resource. Step #2: Find all the sites that are linking to the old resource. There are numerous tools, such as SEMRush or Ahrefs, that make it easy to find all the backlinks. Step #3: Email the sites linking to the old resource, alert them to the fact that it’s outdated, and let them know about your updated version. Assuming your content is top-notch, most site owners will be grateful for the heads up and more than willing to link to your new and updated version. Backlink Method #11: Do An Influencer Roundup An influencer roundup is when you contact numerous well-known people within an industry, get their opinion on a particular subject, and then put all those opinions in a single piece of content. Alternatively, you can collect the best content produced by influencers and put it into one big roundup. Once you’ve created the content, you email the influencer letting them know about it and asking if they might be willing to share it. You also share the post multiple times on social media, tagging a different influencer each time you share. It’s a powerful way to get both backlinks and social shares from some of the biggest names out there. Why? Because the influencers have a vested interest in promoting your content. They’re featured prominently, which in turn makes them want to share your content on social media and link back to it. Backlink Method #12: Appear On Podcasts This is a slightly unconventional, yet very easy way to get links back to your site. When you are interviewed on a podcast, it’s common practice for the host to include a link to your site in the show notes. Depending on the authority of the host’s site, this can generate some seriously high quality backlinks for you. Additionally, it establishes you as an authority in your industry. Backlink Method #13: Create A Wikipedia Page For Your Company Wikipedia has an extremely high domain authority, meaning that any links coming from it to your site are going to pass along some serious SEO juice. But how do you get a link from Wikipedia? You create a page for your business. On the page, links to the appropriate pages on your site. It’s important to note that Wikipedia pages are reviewed and must pass a series of conditions to get approved. This means you can’t just slap something together, cram it with links, and expect it to get approved. You need to follow the terms spelled out by Wikipedia, including citing all your sources and ensuring everything is factually correct. Backlink Method #14: Submit Your Blog To Aggregators Blog aggregators, like Alltop, are sites where links from numerous blogs are automatically posted. In order to be included on blog aggregators, you need to submit your blog. Typically, the process looks something like this: Sign up for an account on aggregator site Submit your site to the aggregator You’ll be given a small snippet of HTML code to place on your site. This code lets the aggregator confirm that you’re the owner. Someone from the aggregator site will review your submission. Assuming everything is okay, you’ll be added to this list. Other blog aggregators include: BizSugar.com BlogEngage.com BloKube.com InBound.org The Work Is Worth It Yes, each of these methods requires some amount of work. But the reality is that organic search traffic is becoming increasingly important as social media platforms kill the reach of businesses. Additionally, organic traffic tends to be more valuable than social traffic due to the fact that there is intent behind searches. In other words, people are looking for something when they search, whether that’s a product or the answer to a question. If you can provide them what they want, you become valuable to them and they’ll come back again in the future. So get to work building those high quality backlinks. Your blog will thank you.
B A N A N A S Pretty much sums up the last year – It’s been bananas. Never ending Pandemic, New Brands, Growth, Working towards compliance, New Product Launches, and more. This September 2021 is a very special month for us. Pagely, and by extension the entire multi-billion dollar Managed WordPress Hosting channel, is 12yrs old! Quick Flashback: In Early 2009 I opened up my IDE and started looking at some code we wrote in 2006 for a website builder based on WordPress. I added a few features to it, picked a new leet domain name, and in September 2009 – Launched Page.ly – The world’s first Managed WordPress hosting company. All the WordPress hosting buzzwords you know and love: Automatic Backups Automatic Updates Blazingly Fast Secure like Fort Knox 1 Click Staging Caching All. Of. It. Started. Here. Yes of course it is true we did not actually create everything under the sun, however the early work we did in the space is the parent to every Managed WordPress product offering available, regardless of the company selling it. Except billing for Pageviews, eff that noise – we don’t want any part of that. Team Retreat in 2015 Always Forward As Pagely begins it’s 13th year we have a strong wind at our back once again. I’m sure in some companies, especially investor fueled ones, growth is always fast and up while profitability is tied up in ropes and cinder blocks, then thrown off the end of the pier. In our company we’ve had our periods of growth insanity and just normal one foot in front of the other measured progress to increased profitability and high NPS scores. 2018 through most of 2020 was a bit of an odd timeframe for us when looking back – we invested heavily into the development of NorthStack and gained deep technical learnings. These lessons were then applied to Pagely as the decision was made to pause the NorthStack product while we felt out how the world was going to react to a fast spreading novel Coronavirus. Team Retreat Early 2020 As we came up to a major revenue milestone in 2020 we turned our focus inward to reevaluate our processes and to create new ones, address team makeup, and revisited our mission and values. We took the time to prepare for what was coming and to lay the foundational groundwork for our future goals. Less manic startup energy – more “we’re a real business now” mentality. We hired into newly created roles in team management, finance, enterprise sales, and compliance. Sally and I handed off more and more of the day-to-day responsibilities to our skilled team so we could take stock of where we are, and where we needed to go. Then we all worked together to formulate the plan to get us there. Allison’s (SupportOps Manager) dogs: Winne and Lola (“Karen”). The last year has been all about executing on that plan. We added 30% to our headcount – while improving and expanding our benefit offerings. We’ve engaged the services of an auditing firm and will shortly achieve SOC 2 – Type 2 compliance certification. Our brand glow up – which is the culmination of months of work by our Dir of Marketing Dave Amirault, and the creative team at Struck – will be launching momentarily. We’ve delivered on many of the requested features to our Enterprise clientele such as Single Sign On (SSO) to our services, and expanded support models and enhanced SLA’s. Back of the napkin math tells me our employees significantly increased their usage of PTO – after much encouragement and prodding from myself and their team leads. We launched Mercury just a few weeks back, which is a major win for our bottom line and our customers’ site performance. 20-30% faster network speeds on every request at cheaper data rates. Truly a win-win. These and many more items that are part of our strategic plan have resulted in a steadily growing sales pipeline and a pronounced upward shift in our momentum heading into 2022. Did I mention we are hiring? Get your tech jobs here. Times have changed. The important stuff has not. Jeff Matson’s doggo – Henry 2021 was also an emotional roller-coaster as we all bared witness to the, at times, abject selfish nature of people — and — the grit, empathy, and kindness of others. Sally and I have personally seen all of this up close and personal this year, a story we may share at another time. Each day though we took heart that by and large, the world is good and things tend to work out in the end. Keep the good people in your life close, and hug your kids every day. It costs you nothing to be kind. We lean on our core values as we make decisions and plan for the future. We also relied on them heavily in the past as we navigated the ups and downs of the pandemic. Sally has always said that if we do the right thing, success will follow. Doing the right thing by the people in our lives, our companies, and our communities is typically a selfless act with no expectation of return. At times though, the universe does surprise you with a healthy payback of goodwill, tenfold. There are lot’s of new faces at Pagely, as we said goodbye to others. It seems everyone has collectively reevaluated how they wish to invest their work time. Many leaned into the stability of good careers, others felt it was time to explore new options. At each coming and going I’m thankful to see new faces embrace our vision and values and old friends take a little part of the Pagely magic with them as they move forward to a new adventure. We are just as committed today as we were yesterday, and every day prior to becoming the best version of Pagely we can be. Branding work in 2021 Looking forward is as exciting today as it has been at each one of our 11 prior birthdays. I want to personally thank the team here at Pagely, and all of our customers and the fans we have in the WordPress community for being part of our journey thus far. Happy Birthday to Us. This coming year is going be the most interesting chapter in our story yet. I guarantee it.
