This is true even if you just want to create a simple blog page to post your thoughts for the rest of the world to read.

Creating your website is indeed much easier now than it used to be in the early days of the Internet.

However, people who rush the process will end up with a site that has a lot of problems that they are not happy with.

Here are some helpful hints you can use when you are trying to get your site off the ground.

1. Who Will Handle The Design Chores?

You will need to hire a web designer if you are not skilled enough to do all of the designing yourself.

It is at this early stage that many people make a rather large mistake. They falsely believe that all web designers possess the same skills and are the same. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

Web designers come in all skill levels and price ranges. You tend to get what you pay for where web designers are concerned. This is why you should not simply hire the first web designer you find online without completely checking out their background and experience ahead of time.

It is essential that you know what type of web design prowess you will be getting for the money you will be paying this person. Talk to many web designers to get a feel for the talent that is available in your area.

You should always ask to see examples of their previous work. This will allow you to determine if that particular person is up to the challenge of designing your site.

You might want to consider hiring a college student to be your web designer. Some of these young people are very talented and charge far less than professional web designers.

2. Find a Web Hosting Company

After you buy domains, you will also need to look into what company you will be doing business with in terms of hosting your site. This is yet another decision that should not be made in haste. Some web hosting companies are much better than others.

You need to find a company that is not going to have any interruptions in service that will cause your site to go offline. This will be a disaster if you plan on running an online business.

You will not be able to make money if your site is offline. Fortunately, there are many web hosting and design packages for you to choose from. Compare prices to get the best deal.

3. Set a Budget For Yourself

There will be various expenses that you will need to deal with during the crucial early days of your site.

Make a list and figure out what your overhead will be.

Make sure you have some extra cash set aside for any emergencies that might arise.

4. The Importance Of The Domain Name

For many, that’s a random choice, but it’s a wrong practice.

Search engines still give huge importance to the domain name to rank websites.

Sometimes, it just takes an appropriate name to be placed at the top of Google without much effort.

5. Choose Appropriate Titles For Search Engines and Visitors

The names of the pages, as well as slugs, H1 titles, and subtitles (and content, of course), are very important for achieving a good ranking, and so they are for your visitors.

Therefore, you must choose wisely.

For example, if you want to rank a page for certain keywords (let’s say “affiliate marketing“), be sure to place them in the H1 title, slug, subtitles and within the content:

6. The Importance Of The Content

Content is still the most important thing when building a website.

Many (especially graphics experts, web designers, and advertising agencies) tend to underestimate the importance of writing. They focus on images, on the “special effects” of a web page, and they write a short text. That’s a bad approach. The search engines are hungry for good content…just take a look at your competitors!

7. Loading Speed Of The Site

We have just a few seconds to convince the users to stay on our sites (see article).

If you offer pages that are loading slowly, then you risk losing many visitors (also search engines do not love to wait much to scan your site).

There are several ways to speed up your pages, be sure to check this post for more details.

8. Work To Retain Users On Your Site

Google recently published “Search Quality Evaluation Guidelines” (click here to download the PDF).

They are instructing the users on what they should consider to evaluating the websites.

Have you read it already?

I did it.

My take is that user experience is extremely important, and it’s becoming the most significant factor to rank.

Your mission should be to give users exactly what they are looking for when they land on your site.

How to achieve it?

Writing articles with added value and significant deepening of the topic treated.

Easier said, than done!

Here’s a quote taken from this post at MOZ of a few days ago:

“Content is king.”

But…

“The user is queen, and she rules the universe.”

Google only cares about your content inasmuch as it answers the user’s search query. Search results are not a collection of “good” content; they are a ranked list of content that best satisfies what the user is looking for.

What do you think?

Are you working already on the points mentioned in this post?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!

The Science Behind Power Words

Power words leverage basic human psychology. They tap into our deepest desires, fears, and curiosities, motivating us to act.

For instance, words like “discover,” “secret,” and “exclusive” play on our innate love for mystery and exclusivity.

Similarly, “free,” “bonus,” and “sale” instantly attract those looking for a deal, showcasing the item’s perceived value and urgency.

How Power Words Elevate Content

1. Boosting Engagement

Content enriched with power words can dramatically increase reader engagement. These words transform standard headlines, calls-to-action (CTAs), and email subject lines into compelling hooks that draw readers in, fostering an emotional connection that makes the content memorable.

2. Enhancing SEO

From an SEO perspective, integrating power words into your content can indirectly boost your site’s search engine ranking. While power words themselves aren’t a direct ranking factor, their ability to increase user engagement signals to search engines that your content is valuable, thereby improving your visibility.

3. Increasing Conversions

Power words can significantly influence conversion rates. Whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, downloading a guide, or making a purchase, the strategic placement of these impactful words in CTAs can persuade readers to take the desired action.

Categories of Power Words and Their Uses

To effectively harness the potential of power words, it’s crucial to understand the various categories and their specific applications:

Emotional Power Words

These words evoke strong emotional responses, such as happiness, sorrow, excitement, or anger. Examples include “joy,” “heartbreaking,” “thrilling,” and “furious.” They are particularly effective in storytelling, allowing the reader to feel more connected to the narrative.

Sensory Power Words

Sensory words describe experiences or reactions to something tangible. “Crunchy,” “smooth,” “vibrant,” and “silky” are such words that appeal to the senses, making descriptions more vivid and engaging.

Urgency Power Words

Creating a sense of urgency encourages readers to act promptly. Words like “now,” “limited,” “before,” and “deadline” signal that time is of the essence, making offers more enticing.

Trust-Building Power Words

Establishing trust is paramount in any relationship, including between brands and their audience. Terms like “certified,” “guaranteed,” “research-backed,” and “proven” help to build credibility and reassure readers about the brand’s integrity and the quality of the offer.

Examples

To help categorize and understand the vast array of power words, we’ve broken them down into thematic clusters, each serving a different emotional or psychological purpose:

• Curiosity and Intrigue: Unlock, Secret, Behind-the-Scenes, Exclusive
• Urgency and Scarcity: Now, Limited, Before, Last Chance, Immediate
• Value and Benefit: Transform, Boost, Elevate, Maximize, Ultimate
• Trust and Authority: Proven, Guaranteed, Expert, Endorsed, Backed
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): Missing, Slip, Never Again, Now or Never

Using Power Words Effectively

While power words can elevate your content, strategic placement and moderation are key. Overuse can make your message seem forced or insincere, diluting its impact. Here are a few tips for effective implementation:

• Headlines and Titles: Incorporate power words to make your headlines more compelling and share-worthy.
• Email Subject Lines: Use them to increase open rates.
• Calls-to-Action: Strengthen your CTAs to boost clicks and conversions.
• Meta Descriptions and Snippets: Attract more clicks from search engine results pages.

Understanding and applying the concept of power words can significantly influence the success of your content marketing efforts. By strategically incorporating these dynamic phrases, you can craft messages that resonate deeply with your audience, prompting them to engage, convert, and ultimately, become loyal advocates for your brand.

Far from it!

To demonstrate the power of very alive SEO, today I’m going to share 4 tried and proven SEO agency tips that will still drive traffic to your website this year.

1. Grow Your Revenue By Using Long-tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are created when you combine at least three words to form a search query that targets your specific niche.

How can you find all those terms?

Use an SEO checker, or an SEO agency.

And, how do these long-tail keywords help you?  

Let’s imagine you’re the owner of a chicken teriyaki recipe site.

According to SEMrush, there are 110,000 people searching for “teriyaki.” At first, you might think “Great! I’ll just use teriyaki as my main keyword!” And while that may seem like a good idea, what percentage of people searching for teriyaki will you actually be able to convince to visit your recipe site? Since most of them are looking for teriyaki restaurants, odds are you won’t get many clicks.

To get your website in front of that niche of people who are looking specifically for teriyaki recipes, you need to use a long-tail keyword. For example, “easy teriyaki chicken recipe.”

Looking at this SEMrush data, you can see how long-tail keywords are so effective. By using the long-tail keyword, your teriyaki recipe website will be discoverable by 2,400 searchers who are seeking exactly what your site offers.

Some SEO tips to help you craft effective long-tail keywords are:

• Make sure you understand your buyer personas.

What kind of questions are they typing into Google? What stage of the buyer’s journey are they in?

Answering questions like these will give you the ability to perfectly tailor your long-tail keywords to your personas’ needs.

• Check what keywords you’re already ranking for and use them.

Use Google Analytics to see what keywords are driving the most traffic to your site. Use these in your long-tails.

• Research what long-tail keywords are currently driving the most traffic.

Two great tools for this are Google auto suggest and SEMRush — use these to see what kind of long-tail queries your personas are making. Or, for a free substitute to SEMRush, check out Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest tool — type in a keyword, click “keyword ideas,” and scroll through the suggestions.

If you don’t know how to use Ubersuggest, here is a quick guide to get you started.

2. Increase Your Website’s Loading Speed

People are impatient. If your website doesn’t load within 3 seconds, 40% of your audience is going to bounce. As your bounce rate increases, your rankings will drop.

Here are three powerful SEO tips to make sure your site is loading quickly:

• Smooth out your site’s HTML by using PageSpeed Insights to identify problems.

Run your homepage and any other major pages or posts through the program, and take action based on the Opportunities and Diagnostics reports.

• Make sure that all the images on your site are compressed.

Use a program like Piio.co to optimize images and increase your site’s loading speed.  

• Start browser caching.

Browser caching is a fast and easy way to make big speed improvements for your website. Caching saves the basic elements of your site on visitors’ devices, so that when they navigate between pages your logo, menus, and the like, don’t need to be loaded again — increasing loading speed!

3. Build Your Site Authority

Two proven SEO tips to boost your website’s authority:

• Make it easy for your clients to give you social proof.

Put review forms on your product pages, ask previous clients to leave reviews, and show off your review stars where it really counts — in your post’s schema markup.

Written reviews contribute towards content and keyword count, so not only will your future prospects benefit from seeing 5 stars on your product, Google will also rank you higher due to the increase in relevant content and keywords.

• Get an SSL certificate.

Chrome has recently started flagging HTTP sites as “Not Secure” — driving potential clients away from your website.

Communicate trust and authority to your prospects by installing an SSL certificate and moving your site to HTTPS.

4. Answer Your Persona’s Questions To Get Featured In Search Snippets

Have you wondered how certain websites get their content featured in a nice little box at the top of the search results? These are called “search snippets” and they look like this:

According to a study done by Ahrefs, featured snippets have an 8.6 percent click-through rate.

That’s huge!

But it gets even better.

Being selected for search snippets gives your website double-representation — first in the snippet and again in the results. Wow!

Now that you understand what a powerful SEO tool search snippets can be, let’s get your website to be featured there.

Here are a couple quality SEO tips for getting your website featured in the search snippets:

• First, do keyword research.

Use Answer The Public to see the questions your personas’ are asking. Decide which one you want to answer.

Type the question into Google and take not of the kind of content that is making the search snippet. There are three kinds of content that get featured — tables, lists, and paragraphs. Whichever one Google is currently featuring is what you should also do in your post.

• Write a kick ass post and format it correctly.

To reach the search snippets, your post needs to rank in the top 10. So make sure you follow SEO best practices when creating your content.

Take the question you chose during the research stage, and place the answer as close to the top of your content as possible.

Put the question in an H2 heading and write your answer directly beneath the H2, making sure you keep your answer between 54-58 words.

• Publish and monitor your content.

Track the analytics of your post to make sure it reaches the top 10 search results for your target question.

Make adjustments where necessary.

Once you capture the search snippet, celebrate with some champagne.

Conclusion

SEO is still the primary tool by which to rank your website. Mobile and voice search may be changing the way people interact with the internet, but the way we do SEO hasn’t changed.

Getting ranked on Google requires diligent research, testing, implementation, more testing, and a continual emphasis on quality — all of these things are SEO.

Combine the tips I gave you today with quality content, and you will see your rankings grow and traffic increase.

It’s an important decision that definitely deserves some attention. In fact, since you need time and money to create a website, you have to be sure that your domain expresses in a few words the content that you treat.

The choice of the domain has an impact both on the way visitors perceive you and how the search engines will consider your site.

So if you want to choose and buy the right domain, I suggest you read this list carefully.

1. Your Domain Should Explain What You Do

Think, in a nutshell.

If you treat topics regarding “green tea”, for example, the rule should not be www.ILikeToDrinkTea.com, but rather www.GreenTea.com.

If this name is not available, you can try other versions of it.

2. If You Don’t Have a Strong Brand, Choose a Descriptive Name

Unless you are the owner of a known brand, it will be difficult to create a new one from scratch and push it out, just by focusing on the domain name.

So if you are creating a site around a specific topic, you have two options.

A) Choose a “Brand” name and accept the fact that people will not understand who you are, especially at the beginning
B) Choose a domain name that describes your topics, so that people can immediately understand your niche

3. Remember that Search Engines Still Take Into Account the Domain Name

When it comes to better indexing, the domain plays a very important role.

Ask yourself:

How do I look at my potential visitors?

What keywords would they use to find me at Google?

Then go to Google Adwords Keyword Planner and performs a search to locate the most used and relevant keywords.

Now think about how to include them into your domain.

4. Go For the Most Popular Extensions

.com extension is the web’s most popular extension.

Clearly it indicates the word “commerce”, so it is definitely the ideal extension to communicate to your users on your site that there are products on sale.

Get the .com, if it is possible or, in alternative, choose any .net or .org.

5. Choose a Short and Direct Domain Name

NoPassiveIncome is kinda a short and direct domain name.

It tells that the site is about passive income.

I could have chosen www.HowToWorkOnlineAndBuildAPassiveIncome.com, but it would be too long, unreadable and difficult to remember.

Better to be short and get straight to the point.

6. Choose an Easy to Write Domain

If your visitors find your site interesting and helpful, there’s a good chance they will want to go back.

Choose a name that is easy to write, as well simple to remember.

Imagine if your main site would be: www.xzbnahtypals.com … definitely hard to type on the keyboard and difficult to remember!

7. Do Not Copy Other Ones

It could be the biggest mistake.

Be careful not to use a name similar to that of a competitor to try to steal its market.

You could even end up in court and having to pay expensive fines.

Play fair and points to what your users are looking for.

8. Think About the Domain Name Look

Even a domain has its aesthetics.

Ask yourself how you can see it when it is written on a browser.

Make attempts writing on the search bar of your browser the domain name you would like to buy. This way you’re sure that you will choose the more attractive one!

9. Plan Long Term

If you want to create a successful site that will resist the passage of time, consider choosing a domain that is not strongly tied to the momentary trend.

Make sure that in 10 years your domain will be recognizable and current.

10. Gold Is In the Niche

Unless you’re a business magnate with a million euro budget available to spend on advertising, keep faith to the basics of good web marketer.

Focus on one niche and conquer it.

Long-tail keywords work best for this purpose.

11. Singular or Plural?

It makes little difference for the SEO purposes if your domain targets your niche using a plural instead of a singular.

So if one is already taken, you may want to opt for the opposite.

But pay attention to copyright!

12. Avoid Articles

Avoid buying domains including articles (the, a, an, etc).

These do not serve the purpose of better search engines indexing. Also think about how your domain will be perceived.

Simply avoid articles in domain names. They are useless.

An example?

Is is better “TheFacebook.com” or “Facebook.com“?

13. Need a Tool to Get New Domain Name Ideas?

Have you ran out of ideas?

Try Panabee.com:

14. If You Have a Unique Name, Consider Buying All Its Variants

If you choose a domain name and you want to make sure that no one else can create a site similar to yours, you should consider buying all the variations of your domain name (plus all the extensions).

Defend your site by blocking the access to roads of your niche for other potential contenders.

15. Protect Your Domain Name With a Trademark

Again, if you have an unique name that you don’t want to be used by others (and if you are doing things seriously), be sure to immediately record the trademark of your site or brand.

16. Think About Your Audience

When choosing your domain think about those who come to visit you.

What do they expect you to be?

Who are your visitors like?

How old are they?

Consider also the psychology of your users before choosing the name of your site.

17. Think About Social Networks

Try to see how it could be your domain when your site is shared on social channels.

This gives you a principle to be followed to facilitate the circulation of your content.

Pay a visit to Facebook, Twitter and watch how the URLs shared are showed.

Then with Google Chrome, make a double click and select “Inspect Element”.

Then from there, change the address of the site that you are viewing and save the edit.

Now you can study carefully what you see and choose the version that has a greater visual impact.

18. Dashes, Yes or No?

Many have chosen a domain name with dashes and still were able to build big sites.

Aha-Now or Entrepreneurs-Journey are examples of popular sites with dashes in their domain names, but their owners worked really hard to reach that level of popularity.

I prefer domain names without dashes, but it’s up to you.

19. Numbers, Yes or No?

I don’t see a problem when using numbers in the domain name.

Just think about if is relevant to your brand and/or what your users expect to find.

There are no restrictions or penalties from the search engines for those websites that use numbers. The search engines value more the older domains. Like the good wine, the more the domain ages the more is good.

Conclusion

In the last 13 years, I have bought many domain names and I expect do purchase even more!

Hopefully after reading this post, you will be able to get the perfect domain name (if still available!).

I make a few mistakes in my blogging journey and if you’re smarter than me, you will save a few hundred dollars and go straight to the point buying a clear, explicit and memorable domain name.

Want some more advice?

Any suggestions you’d like to add?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!

This means that you can set up ways to make money through your blog and then sit back and wait for the money to come in without having to put any work into the process.

Keep reading for a few ways that you can get started.

Image link credit

Write and Sell an E-Book

If you are already blogging, you are already confident in your abilities as a writer. And if you have a large enough following, you know that people respect you for what you have to say, for the knowledge that you can share with them, and for the valuable content that your blog provides.

So why not go a step further and write up a short e-book that you can then promote to your subscribers and readers for sale?

Whether you are a blogging expert on public health policy, thanks to your masters of public health from a reputable university, or you are known for your ability to teach others how to create art online with Adobe programs, all you have to do is put your e-book on your blog and wait for the sales to come in.

Sell Ad Space on Your Blog

If you are able to prove that you get a lot of traffic to your blog on a consistent basis, you can start selling ad space to fellow businesses on your website.

This is one of the many popular methods that bloggers use to generate passive income, as you can simply place the ads within the headers and the margins of the site without them getting in the way of your content.

Just be sure to keep the ads to a minimum, display them in a tasteful way, and focus on getting ads from businesses that would appeal to your readers.

With NoPassiveIncome, I’m doing great with BuySellAds:

Sign Up for Affiliate Marketing Programs

Finally, you can sign up for one of the many affiliate marketing programs that are available to bloggers and website owners just like you. These are really easy to sign up for and set up, and all you have to do is place ads for those companies on your website.

Depending upon the affiliate program that you sign up with, you can make money every time that a visitor clicks on one of the links, or when that person clicks through and makes a purchase.

You can also work on incorporating your affiliate offers in a tasteful way throughout your content so that more people are encouraged to click through, find out more, and make a purchase.

Just make sure the affiliates are related to your blog’s content so that readers will not be turned off by them.

Here’s a great guide you want to read about affiliate marketing: How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing – A 7 Minute Guide

By following the tips above, you can use your skills and education, such as your masters in public health online degree or your web development background, on your blog to start earning more passive income easily.

Give one or all of these strategies a try and see which one works best.

What’s your experience with passive income?

Are you earning something from your blog?

Please share your experience in the comments below, thanks!

As you can see in the screenshot below, the popularity of affiliate marketing has risen steadily during the last decade.

Image via Statista

Given that it can be a great source of passive income, it’s popularity shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

For brands, partnering with the right affiliates can help them reach a larger audience and promote their products to bigger and new audiences. 

For you, for each sale made via your affiliate link or promo code, you can earn a commission.

Without putting in extra effort, you can boost your income via affiliate marketing. However, to get the maximum ROI, you need to be strategic in your approach.

In this post, let’s take a look at how you can optimize your affiliate marketing campaign.

4 Effective Tips to Optimize Your Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

With the right mix of planning and strategizing, it’s possible to increase your profitability and get more out of your affiliate marketing campaigns. 

Here is what you can do to boost the ROI of your affiliate marketing campaigns:

1. Define Clear Goals For Your Affiliate Marketing Campaign

Have you tried getting somewhere without entering the final destination in your GPS? 

It can be confusing and tough. Similarly, if you start working on your affiliate marketing campaign without a clear vision and goals, it can be difficult to achieve them. 

So, the first step towards optimizing your campaign is goal setting. 

Consider what you would like to achieve in a defined time frame. Take into account your skills and resources, and make sure you set realistic goals.

Also, don’t confuse goals with wishes. Your goals are more concrete. They are time-bound and provide specific details about what you’d like to achieve.

Here are some goals that can impact your affiliate marketing campaign’s profitability:

• Increase your content’s impression count in X months by Y% 
• Increase the conversion rate of your affiliate marketing campaign by X% in Y months

As you can see, these goals are all measurable. They make it easy for you to track them and ascertain whether you were able to achieve them. 

If you are opting for native advertising, it’s all the more important to define these metrics beforehand. Why? Because measuring the performance of native ads isn’t exactly a cakewalk.

2. Compare Different Affiliate Programs

Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, PeerFly, and more — there are a lot of different programs for affiliate marketing out there. They make it super easy for anyone out there to get affiliate links. 

While you have a lot of options available, not all of them might be worth your time and energy. Before you sign up for an affiliate program, invest time in filtering out your choices so that you choose the right ones for you.

For the vetting process, it’s important to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is and what they might like. Additionally, make sure your the affiliate products are relevant to your audience.

Image via Amazon Associates

A common mistake that many affiliate marketers do is to pick the affiliate programs that offer the highest commission rates. But the first thing you should check out is audience compatibility. 

If the audience of the program isn’t related to your target audience, you’ll have a hard time generating any income.

On the other hand, a network that offers low commission but has a target audience related to your brand can still help you boost your revenue.

3. Check All Your Traffic Source Options

On the front of traffic sources, there is a lot of campaign optimization that is possible. The good news is that it’s also easy to work on it. On the flip side, what you can do depends on your traffic sources.

Some of them allow you to purchase traffic on the basis of the type of device used while others are more specific. They will only provide desktop or mobile traffic. 

You can also add custom variables and then pass the relevant data to your affiliate program. For instance, some sources enable you to send information like the placement type from where your traffic comes. Without setting it up on the side of the traffic source, you can’t get it done.

Also, if you can block or pause some traffic types in your traffic source, do that. You can then make a report which can help you evaluate the kind of traffic that matters.

Let’s say, you have a pop-up campaign for desktops and mobile devices. If you want, you can pause your traffic source based on its incoming source (desktop or mobile) and the network connection. 

4. Analyze Your Test Results

Test your campaign and wait till you collect a significant amount of data. Once you have it, check your numbers and assess whether you need to change your tactic. 

To optimize your campaign, you may want to leverage landing page CRO or change the offer to cut out a sweeter deal for your target audience. Sometimes, your landing page might work well on desktop, but may not show the same results on mobile devices. 

You can also optimize your campaigns based on different types of browsers, ISPs, OS versions, and other such factors.

Remember that adapting your strategy to the response that you get is the key to optimize your affiliate marketing strategy.

Pro Tip: Use specialized tools to analyze your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Ready to Optimize Your Affiliate Campaign for Profitability?

Affiliate marketing offers a ton of opportunities to earn passive income. If you’re planning to create an affiliate marketing campaign, make sure you optimize it well. That way, you can get the most out of your efforts.

From the onset, you should be clear about what you want to achieve. Clear realistic goals will help you stay focused. It will also help you determine the KPIs that are important to measure the success of your campaign.

For optimization, you can focus on the traffic sources, landing pages, as well as the offers that you give to your target audience. Lastly, you should test your campaigns and change your strategy as required.

Do you have any questions about optimizing your affiliate marketing campaigns? Please mention them in the comments section. 

Engagement is the ability of a product (a brand, a blog, an application) to create solid and lasting relationships with its users by establishing a link between the brand and the consumer. The more we know about the user, the more we can implement better tactics to ensure that this relationship is solid and lasting.

Engagement can be measured in different ways, with repeat purchases, repeated visits to a site, or in web statistics through elements such as bounce rate and residence time, number of pages viewed per user, time remaining on the web page or comments on a post. In short, it is necessary to measure and increase the user’s love for what you do.

But how can you improve user engagement without coding on your website?

In this article, I’ll talk about Smartarget, an interesting tool you can use to better connect with your users and increase sales.

Smartarget Popular Features

Smartarget is a fantastic tool that will help you increase engagement with your users by using different useful apps.

Registration is free (without credit card), and after you will confirm your email, you can start using it.

With the FREE account, you will get:

• Unlimited websites
• Unlimited Apps per website
• Performance reports
• Monthly 50 clicks on apps

One of the most popular features of Smartarget is the “Whatsapp – Contact US” app.

See how it will look like on my site:

Users that will click on the message will be redirected to the WhatsApp API, with your phone number to get in touch with you.

Another interesting feature is the “Email – Contact US” app.

See how it will look like on my site:

When clicking on the message, users will be able to send a direct email to you.

The icon can be placed on any corner of your site, top, bottom, right or left.

But there are many more formats and interesting apps you can try, such as:

• Corner Ribbon (you can customize a message to appear in the corner of your site. For example, to get more subscribers)
• Skype – Contact US (users will use Skype to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Telegram – Contact US (users will use Telegram to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Facebook – Contact US (users will use Messanger to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Contact Us – All in One. Clicking on the message, will open a menu where users can choose their favorite way to contact you. It looks really nice, see:

A feature I like is the “Exit Popup“.

In your Smartarget dashboard, you can personalize the message to be shown to your users when they leave your site.

For example, if you have a blog and you want to sell your eBook, or course, or training program, you can use this feature to invite users for a special discount:

You can customize the action type, which means the message will be open in a new tab or the same tab.

The delay of the message to appear can be customized. So, for example, to get your message displayed after 3 seconds, just type “3” in the “Delay before Flash Card appears” field.

You can set the message to be dismissed after of period of time, such as:

• X Days
• Every page refresh
• Never
• Dismiss period X days
• Works if you picked X days

Boost eCommerce Sales and Increase User Engagement Using Smartarget

Smartarget works with all platforms. No matter what CMS you are using, Smartarget apps work across all platforms:

• WordPress (the plugin can be found here)
• Shopify
• Wix
• ecwid
• Shift4Shop

If you have an eCommerce, there are some particular features you can use to boost your sales and increase user engagement.

For example, with the Information message, you can show important updates and information on your site:

Again, the message is entirely customizable and can be placed anywhere on your website.

A Smartarget app I found useful for eCommerce owners is “Social Sales“. By using it, you can improve user’s trust by making users think that there are currently ongoing sales on the website.

You can change the message, the name to be displayed and the product, with the target link:

To boost engagement via social media, you can use both these features:

• Instagram Follow Us (it will display a message to invite users to follow you on Instagram)
• Follow Us (a menu tab will appear with icons that can be clicked to invite users to follow you on social media)

Smartarget Prices

As mentioned earlier, with the FREE account, you will get:

• Unlimited websites
• Unlimited Apps per website
• Performance reports
• Monthly 50 clicks on apps

Once you reach 50 clicks per month, the apps will be visible on the homepage only until the next month.

After that, you can upgrade to the premium version, with Unlimited clicks on apps, at$4.16/mo:

Final Words

I find Smartarget such a great tool to use to boost user engagement and increase sales on your website. And without using coding.

The integration is really simple and the reports function will display interesting data such as how many clicks you got, clicks per device type, the average time to click, clicks per app and clicks per URL.

I plan to create an eCommerce site in the next months and Smartarget will be on my top tools to use to increase sales and improve the engagement with my visitors.

Now, it’s over to you.

Are you going to test Smartarget?

What are your thoughts?

Please share your comments in the form below, thanks!

We have different traffic channels to trigger an avalanche of readers to our online store or website. While this isn’t something that can be achieved with the click of the mouse, following the channels with patience and consistency will allow you gradually build sustainable sources of targeted readers.

Let’s examine these traffic channels and how you can capitalize on them for your business growth:

1. Search Engine Traffic

Without any iota of doubt, Search Engines are a major part of the Internet world. They drive a huge part of Internet movement through keywords.

Keywords are the basis of Search engines from the point of view of the searcher. But from the perspective of content marketers, it’s completely changing to semantics.

What I mean is that searchers on Google (for instance) will actually key in a short or long tail keyword in the search box. But Google doesn’t just match these keywords against content.  What it tries to do is figure out which content has a fair understanding of the keyword intent.

There are two main branches of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  you must focus on to see results:

a) Technical SEO: This includes your web server configuration and optimization, mobile friendliness of your site theme, images and other aspects that have to do with your site load speed

b) Content SEO: This is further split into two

• On Page SEO
• Off Page SEO

Let me say something more about these two:

– On Page Search Engine Optimization

In today’s semantic web, the new keyword is topic. That sounds weird but I think marketers should cease optimizing for keyword and rather try to cover topics in details.

I’m of the opinion that most of the LSI SEO tools in the market today should be overhauled. I recently was trying out LSIGraph and I think something should be done about this:

These are simply keyword variations not semantics. Semantic SEO (which is what On Page SEO is all about) is about topical relevant world not seed keyword synonyms . I have this post on Semantic SEO on my blog. You may want to read for a bit more on this.

– Off Page Search Engine Optimization

Off Page SEO is principally about backlinks and mentions. But you really have to be warned.

Tell between building links and earning learns. To earn links, you have to create and publish link-worthy content and wait for free inbound links from your community. Your readers find your article and deliberately link to it without you doing anything.

But if you have to build links, you’ll have to get your fingers wet on outreach marketing. Here are some common link building activities:

• Guest posting on relevant blogs by yourself.
• Hiring SEO experts, Link building agencies or Guest Posting Services.
• Blog commenting on relevant blogs.
• Buying of links from micro job boards like Fiverr (Serious Warning though)
• Etc.

But I’m not fan of buying links from random link sellers. First, Google frowns at this as it’s considered manipulating search results.

Be weary when it comes to working with guest posting firms. I have written this post about guest posting services to study out more.

I worked more closely with Sunil Gupta, one of my good friends who runs the Trafficora guest posting service and came to understand that one has just got to be very careful. Some of these link building services out there may end up completely damaging your SEO marketing campaigns.

2. Email List Traffic

If you are online and not building an email list for your business, you are hurting your business growth. Your list is an asset. It’s the only source of traffic whose terms fully dwell in your pocket.  You decide when and what to send to your list.

Each time I mail my subscribers, there is always a huge leap in clicks on my blog. Everyone else that builds and maintains an active list similarly has a success story.

There are three simple steps to building an email list for your online business:

1. Choose a cost-effective and reliable email marketing platform.
2. Get a free gift to entice your readers to signup to your list.
3. Place the list building elements on your website (Sidebar forms, Content Upgrades, Pop ups, Light boxes, Pop Unders, etc)

Recommended Read: 12 Action Steps To Build A Profitable Email List From Scratch

3. Social Media Traffic

Social media today has moved considerably from social to business. And if you are not involving social media marketing in your strategies, you really are getting it wrong.

Of course it’s absolutely free to use these platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. However, for purposes of ease, you may want to spend on services that will get more traffic for you.

We are not talking about these paid services though. Let’s maintain the talk within the free sphere. What you must do is to have an active presence on any of these platforms. You may not be active on all the platforms. Chose one or two and be the king.

Depending on your business type, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc have different approaches. While Pinterest is specifically designed for traffic, others have more emphasis laid on social.

Creating content and spamming social media won’t just help. Successful social media marketers are folks who engage and help others with exposure.

As you share your content, share others’ as well. Engage with them and build solid relationships. Many people will share your content simply because they recognize your brand. They may not have the time to read through. But they know that this coming from you must be worth sharing.

That’s why branding is a strong content marketing factor that must be heavily invested in.

4. Referral Traffic

This is traffic sent to your site by clicks on links on other sites. If you click here ( for instance) to my blog, I’m going to have a referral traffic from nopassiveincome.com.

Getting your website mentioned on other sites for referral traffic is tough. But there are different content marketing practices that can make this easier:

1. Guest posting (like what I’m doing here)
2. Commenting on other sites
3. Posting on Content Curation platforms – Medium, Zest, Scoop.it, etc
4. Forum signatures and active participation
5. Etc

Now, these are things you can do yourself for more referral traffic and it’s just the basics of Content outreach.

If you build healthy relationships with bloggers and publish link-worthy content, you are going to get those links from your content consumers. Of course that will add up to your referral link.

Wrapping Up

You may want to go on and identify many different traffic channels, but most evidently, these are near fetched. Start building up strategies for them and watch as your results grow.

Let me know what you think as you share your thoughts in the comment box.

Your web host eats away from your monthly costs, and they would increase if you upgrade your plan due to your growing site traffic. While this is a good problem to have, you spend more money to keep up with the demands of your site.

However, there are cheap web hosting solutions to help maintain your site’s performance despite the growing demands!

In this post, you will learn if your site is eligible for cheap web hosting, how to find affordable web hosting providers, and the pros and cons of this web hosting type.

Cheap Web Hosting: Who Is It For?

Not all website owners can avail of cheap web hosting. As mentioned, you need more expensive web hosting plan like a managed WordPress hosting if your site is attracting lots of visitors. However, if you site is attracting lower than 1,000 unique visitors a day, then you can start with this web hosting type before you move on to more expensive ones.

Cheap web hosting offers basic features that website owners require from their hosting provider.

The Essential Features Of Cheap Web Hosting

Since this web hosting type is light on the budget, you don’t get the whole nine yards for features and support. However, cheap web hosting is perfect for new websites so you don’t need the bells and whistles offered in premium hosting plans.

Still, you need to find a cheap web hosting loaded enough with the best features to help prime your site to success. Below are the common features that affordable web hosting has:

• 99.9% server uptime (site is online expect for 1m 26.4s in a day)
• email hosting and web mail services (Squirrel Mail, Horde, etc.)
• auto installation of scripts
• updated versions of MySQL and PHP
• live chat technical support
• regular server auto-backup
• one-click SSL certificate activation
• malware scanning

The Pitfalls Of This Web Hosting Type

Cheap web hosting is ideal for budget reasons. As mentioned, it is ideal for you to find ways on to lower costs to maximize earnings.

However, there are disadvantages you need to know when looking for cheap web hosting. It’s easy to make a mistake and choose a terrible cheap hosting by mistakes. While you want to lower costs, you shouldn’t compromise your entire online business just to save a buck. Therefore, if you’re adamant on getting a cheap web hosting for your site, you need to know what you’re getting into. Below are things you should need to guard yourself from affordable web hosting:

• Aggressive upsells – The affordable costs of web hosting is a gateway for hosting providers to offer you with add-ons to your current subscriptions. They will probably send your lots of emails about upgrading your account to enjoy additional features. You can turn off the emails and notifications, so this shouldn’t be much of an issue.
• Poor servers – Some web hosting platforms are cheap because their servers are cheap. The quality of your web host’s servers will dictate the success of your website. If it performs poorly, then your site will be unavailable to your visitors.
• Poor customer support – There are companies that don’t reply to your messages or are not responsive to your live chats. If you have issues with your site due to your web hosting and their customer support sucks, then you’ve chosen the wrong hosting provider.
• Banned IP address – The IP address used by the server can affect how your site perform. If your IP is blacklisted, then only a few can access your site. There are many reasons an IP gets banned, but your goal now is to either get the IP white-listed or move your site to another IP address.
• Spammy neighborhood – If your web host’s server is littered with sites infected with a malware, your site might catch it and affect your visitors too.

The search for a truly value-for-money host is further complicated by the abundance of comparative reviews and rankings which use dark patterns and less-than-sensible methods – sometimes without any specific goal, sometimes to promote specific providers. That’s why it’s often better to conduct your own research and test each of your shortlisted hosts by yourself.

Resources To Help You Find The Best Cheap Web Hosting

Now you know of the cons of cheap web hosting, you need proceed choosing the best affordable web hosting for your site with caution. Research and due diligence will be your best friends in this process. You can’t rush with your decision for a web hosting knowing it could jeopardize your site. Therefore, below are tools and resources you need to help you make an informed decision:

• HRank – Monitoring services like this can help you see a better picture of your present or perspective web hosting provider’s performance. You can check the data for the previous month and compare your hosting’s uptime and response time in comparison to other providers.
• Hosting Checker – If you have competitors with a fast-loading sites, then you want to use Hosting Checker to find out which web hosting provider they are using. Get the name of the hosting companies and compare their prices.
• Bitcatcha – This site works as a resource for hosting reviews and a tool to help you gauge how fast a website loads based on the web hosting it is using. Enter the URL of your competitors and see how fast each of their servers are.
• GTmetrix – This tool helps you understand the different factors that’s causing your site from slowing down. It not only considers your web host but also your content, the use of scripts, cookies, and more.

Wrapping It Up

Choosing a web hosting for your site will require you to do your research. This sentiment rings even truer for cheap web hosting. As one of the most competitive markets online, it is easy to get lost with the number of affordable web hosting platforms. However, this should not discourage you from vigilantly searching for the best cheap web hosting for your site.

Using the tips and resources featured here, you should be able to settle for a reliable and affordable web host you will use for a long time.

Understanding the basics of SEO and how to implement an effective SEO strategy will increase your success in digital marketing efforts. Search engines rollout new ranking algorithm updates from time to time with the goal of providing valuable and relevant search results based on their particular search query. This makes SEO an ongoing and complex process with a series of techniques to address the various search engines ranking factors and signals.

Understanding SEO Basics

SEO is a short form for search engine optimization and it refers to all activities and best practices used to improve and assess your site search engine result page (SERP) rankings. The higher your website ranks on SERP, the higher traffic you are likely to get.

SEO can be grouped into two sets of activities; on-page and off-page SEO. There are various modern tools that can be used for effective SEO campaigns each designed to perform a specific role.

One of the most reliable tools is the search engine ranking report software which helps you to track your position on SERP for a given keyword so as evaluate the performance of your digital marketing strategy and make the necessary adjustments.

Whether you are new or an expert in SEO, tracking your site ranking position on search engines will influence both your on-page and off-page actions to make your marketing campaign more efficient and effective.

On-page Vs Off-page Search Engine Optimization

On-page SEO refers to the optimization of essentials of your site such as the website structure, keywords, webpage code, content and user experience; things that you have control over. This involves working on your site HTML code, keywords, URLs, quality of content and user interface to create or improve search phrase relevancy signals of your webpage. It makes it easy for search engines to understand the context of your pages as well as improve your site visitors’ experience.

Off-page SEO, on the other hand, refers to activities on external websites that complement your on-page SEO.  It involves building trustworthy inbound links, social networking, blog and blog marketing and article submission, among others.

Both off-site and on-page SEO are important aspects of your digital marketing campaign, but it always makes sense to start with on-page optimization and use off-page optimization as a complement mainly because:

• It tells search engines the keywords that you should be ranked for.
• It works around making users happy.
• You already have control over your website elements.
• Inbound links will highly depend on the quality of your website in terms of structure and relevance.

Importance of On-page SEO

On-page SEO enables you to organize your website and optimize specific elements such as your content and specific pages to:

• Give your site the best opportunity to attain a high-rank position on SERP.
• It attracts quality traffic from major social media networks thus enhancing your SMM signals.
• It creates worth shares, followership, and links across the web.
• Increases brand awareness, trust, and potential visit conversions.

Major Elements of On-page Search Engine Optimization

There is no one particular way or rule of thumb of implementing on-page optimization strategies. This is because objectives, nature, budget and resources vary from one site to the other.

The following aspects are useful to guide you on where to start, improve and how to implement an effective on-page SEO strategy.

1. Keyword targeting

We can never talk about SEO without a mention of keywords. Keywords are phrases that your target audience uses to query search engines to find relevant information on your website. Finding the right keywords for your website content and optimizing your pages for specific keywords increase your search engine ranking and establish you as an authority in your niche.

Keyword targeting simply involves activities of finding the right phrases in your industry to increase your audience base and draw more traffic to the site. It comprises many activities including keyword research to build a list of keywords to target, prioritize the keywords based on various metrics, and using the keywords to create user and search engine-friendly content. Finding valuable keywords to target also involves analysis of competitors’ keywords to find out which phrases your top online rivals are ranking for.

Another important aspect of keyword targeting is keyword mapping which entails aligning your target keywords with specific pages or content. Keyword maps guide your website layout, a number of pages, content development, and content updates. It also helps you to identify unique and low competition keywords as well as help you to understand your audience’s demands. Both keyword research and mapping form the foundation of an effective on-page SEO. There are many useful tools that can aid your keyword targeting including; Google Console, SerpBook SERP rank tracker, SEMRush, Moz, and Ahrefs among others.

In practical terms and as an example, if you are targeting the keywords CLICKVISION Digital, when creating new content you should add them in your title, URL, page meta description, within the body, in sub-headings and in the ALT tag of your images. Remember to mention them in internal linking too!

2. Page Titles, Formatting and Description

Each of your webpage or content post should have a unique title that contains the main target keyword you want to rank for. This helps the SE to find your page relevance to the given term more easily. The pages should also be properly formatted with the correct heading tags (such and h1 and h2), underlined, bolded or italicized parts to highlight the importance and balanced paragraph size. This makes the content more readable.

Descriptions refer to the unique explanations about the page that the users see on the search results. Page description acts as an advertisement to your webpage convincing the user to click on your link. Use of visual content such as images and videos on pages is more effective as modern users digest visual content more easily and quickly. Ensure that you use original images and videos and provide ALT tag description text display as well as optimize the size of the visual file.

3. URL Structure

Create user-friendly permanent links to your unique page; categorize your website sections for easy usability, use sitemaps and breadcrumb to enhance navigation.

Internal Linking – Internal links help users and search engines to learn about other pages on your site and also tells the search engines which of your webpage is the most important. It also increases the chances of users spending more time on your website.

4. Optimize Speed And Mobile Responsiveness

Ensure that your site is mobile-friendly and is optimized to offer high-performance speed.

This increases your mobile SERP ranking which is a plus for your digital marketing efforts.

So, what SEO is working for you in 2018?

Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear about it.