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Website Optimization & Traffic

My Top 10 Ride-or-Die WordPress Plugins

So, here's the dealio. It's easy to go crazy when it comes to WordPress Plugins -- you can make your site do cartwheels and expand its functionality to the moon and who doesn't want that? The problem is, not all plugins are well-coded (even the ones you pay $ for as I found out the hard way) and...

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How To Use Content Upgrades To Build A Bigger, Better List

List building tactics come and go, but content upgrades provide so much value to you and your site visitors that it's safe to say this method of list-building is here to stay. If this is a new concept to you, let's start from square one... What is a Content Upgrade? A content upgrade is a free...

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How To Choose The Right CMS For Your Website

Should you use SquareSpace, Wix, or WordPress? There are a lot of feature-rich and affordable website solutions these days that allow you to build beautiful websites for your business without knowing how to write a single line of code. But, it can be challenging to decide which platform to choose...

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Pogo Sticking In SEO – Why It’s Bad & How To Fix It

"Pogo-sticking" is a term I hadn't heard until recently, but as soon it was explained to me, I instantly knew that I'd been making some innocent but potentially impactful mistakes with my blog content (affecting my ability to rank on Google). So I did a little digging and want to talk about the...

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8 Helpful Strategies For Finding Time To Blog

Finding the time to blog when you're juggling a laundry list of life priorities can be brutal. It's probably the #1 complaint I hear when I talk with people about what holds them back from making progress. Effective time management for bloggers is all about working with a strategy, using a system...

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4 Free & Cheap Keyword Research Tools & How I Use Them

Since you've landed on this page, you already know that SEO traffic is the holy grail of traffic and you want more of it. You also know it's all about choosing and using keyword phrases strategically and using them correctly in your (high-quality) content. Using keyword research tools is a vital...

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3 Types of Blog Posts to Create A Perfect Content Mix

Every business blogger struggles to create consistency; we get stuck wondering things like "what should I write about?" and "how long should my blog posts be?" rather than doing what we really should be doing: writing blog posts. The key to bringing order to this chaos is to create a content mix....

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Win the SEO Game and Take the Number One Spot

The following post was written by the brilliant Hristina Nikolovska of SEOTribunal “Get a website,” they said. “You’ll get loads more business,” they said. “It will be easy,” they said. Well, we’d love to know who “they” are and be able to give them a stern talking to. In the early days of the...

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A Simple Trick to Improve Your Services Page Copy

Over the last few months, I've been fine-tuning a new service offering: testing it out on beta clients, ironing out all the kinks, and creating a well-oiled process I feel confident about. So when it came time to write the sales page copy, I thought I had all the pieces I needed:  WHAT it is, WHO...

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How To Drive Traffic To Your Small Business Website For Free

It's a question every website owner has, "How do I drive traffic to my website?" Paying for traffic (advertising on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, et al) isn't feasible for most business owners I know who are bootstrapping their brand and don't have thousands or even hundreds to spend....

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Optimize Your Images For SEO, Social Media, & Pinterest

Optimizing your images for seo, social media, and Pinterest is an often-overlooked detail that can make a big difference to make sure your content is discoverable in search. First, let's clarify what it means to "optimize images"... There are a few factors that go into creating a great social...

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How To Get More Social Shares & Look Great Doing It

I'm a frugal business owner and I use a ton of free tools to run my business, but when it comes to getting the maximum results from the content I create (with the limited time I have), I rely on the premium plugin Social Warfare Pro to help get my blog content shared on social media. For $29/year,...

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How To Write An About Page That Converts

Your ABOUT page is likely to be your second-most visited web page: it's where your site visitors decide whether or not you're the perfect person to help them and whether or not they like and trust you too, so getting it right is much more important than most people realize. It's also one of the...

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8 Reasons Why Your Website Isn’t Winning Clients

You’re brilliant, talented, and hard working … so how come clients aren't signing up? It might not be you that's the problem, it could be that your website is letting you down in some big way. A question for you... Are you spending a lot of energy on traffic but none on your website itself?  Your...

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Skyrocket Your Website Conversions With This One Simple Trick

I hear this one a lot: I need more traffic. Okay, we all need traffic. Lots of it. But if clients aren't signing up, what you think is the problem (not enough traffic) probably isn't the problem. Here's the truth: traffic's easy to get. You can buy as much as you need at "the traffic store"...

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5 Conversion Copywriting Hacks To Spice Up Your Website Copy

First a definition: Conversion copywriting is designed to entice a user to take action on your website. Brand copywriting is something different — that’s your story, your unique voice, your personality, your tone.  Use these tips to help you punch up your copy wherever you want a site visitor to...

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One Simple Trick To Get More Website Visitors To Take Action

We all make a dizzying number of choices every day, from deciding which toothpaste to buy to which Facebook posts to click on. An abundance of choice seems like a great idea because it means having the freedom to do and have what you want, but... Too much choice leads to a phenomenon known as...

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9 Ways To Empower Your Website For Higher Conversions

Let's talk about how you can empower your website for better conversions and turn it into your hardest-working employee--whose job it is to build awareness and trust, generate leads, increase sales, and help you grow your business. Launching a website is a blast, it's exciting and hopeful―but...

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Understanding Google AMP: Should You Make The Switch?

As we prepare for 2017, AMP is one of the biggest issues concerning your website on the horizon, especially if you're a blogger. Because more people are searching on mobile devices than desktop now, Google's looking to provide the best user experience possible. Enter: AMP. Defining AMP in plain...

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5 Fatal Mistakes People Make When Hiring A Web Designer

From time to time a potential client comes to me after having a bad experience working with another web designer. I mean, I've really heard some horror stories y'all: money flushed down the drain; a website they've paid for but isn't serving them; domain names held hostage after the relationship...

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Taking a Copy First Approach to Designing Your Website

"Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design; it's decoration." — Jeffery Zeldman Most business owners who need a new or improved website start the web design process somewhere in the middle: rather than getting clear about their business goals and their customer, or...

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Evaluating Your Own Website: A Zen Approach to Optimization

Looking at people’s websites is a big part of what I do for a living. I can almost always spot areas that, if improved upon, will lead to better results (including my own website, believe me...). But talking to other people about their websites is a touchy business... unless they've hired me to...

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