SEO Checklist for Blog Posts

Do your keyword research.

It may feel tedious, but this is a game-changer. Aim for keywords that match the intent and lingo of your reader. 

There are many free keyword search tools available to help you choose the most targeted ones for your audience. 

Be smart about keyword usage.

Keyword stuffing is a no-no. Instead, work your keywords into your headlines, image alt tags, & meta description. 

A blog post stuffed with keywords reads awkwardly and can drive away your readers. Search engines will take note and won’t reward that behavior or tactic. 

Use supporting keywords too.

Throw some secondary keywords in too, like synonyms for your targeted keyword. Search engines pick up on this.

Include internal links.

Give visitors a chance to engage with other pages on your site by linking to them. This also signals to Google that people like your content.

Pro tip: Make sure those links are set to open in new tabs.

…and external links too.

Throw in some links to helpful content from other sites too. Search engines & visitors alike appreciate the nod to additional info that’s relevant.

Build relationships with other bloggers by giving them a heads up that you’ve linked to their site. You never know, they may reciprocate the favor.  

Keep it conversational.

Technical jargon can be uninviting and dissuade visitors from staying. Keep your writing at an 8th-grade reading level and use an active voice.

Use a tool like the Flesh-Kincaid reading scale to grade your writing’s reading level and adjust accordingly. 

Don’tcrowdyourwords.

Proper formatting can make or break you. Make use of white space, plus your H & title tags. The more skimmable your post, the better.

Nail your title.

Make sure to include your keywords and keep it under 60 characters so it isn’t truncated in search results. 

Finesse the URL.

Your URL should include your keywords, but don’t fill it with conjunctions, adjectives, and articles. Separate your words with dashes.

Update your meta descriptions.

And make ’em good. These short blurbs are often what capture a visitor’s attention. And of course, don’t forget to include your keyword!

Want to start a blog?

At Domain.com, we understand that you’re busy. That’s why we developed our AI-powered WebsiteBuilder. It’s here to help you get online fast without sacrificing quality. 

Prefer WordPress? We’ve got you covered with a great selection of curated, mobile-friendly themes and pre-installed plugins for optimal functionality. 

Let us help you find the perfect domain name and launch your blog to share your great ideas with the world. 

Do you want to make the most out of your website — increase your conversion rate, improve your SEO, and have the most engaging content? Because to do so you’ll need to audit your site on a regular basis.

In this post, we’re covering ways you can perform a review of your site so you know what’s working and what needs improvement.

How to Perform a Website Audit

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

In order to successfully audit your site, you need to know three things:

1. What a website audit entails.
2. Who your ideal audience is.
3. What your goals are.

The first because, well, how can you perform an audit without knowing what it is? And the second because your site should be designed with your ideal audience in mind. Any improvements you make to your site based on your audit should make life easier for them, not harder. Finally, you need to have identified your website goals. The improvements you make to your site should support your goals (e.g. – increase conversions by 5% month over month.)

Many people and online resources will tell you that a website audit has everything to do with SEO. While that is a large part of it, your site is more than just an SEO machine and we have to look at the bigger picture.

We appreciate BluLeadz’s definition of a website audit. They say that “a good website audit takes into account all the factors that can influence your website’s success: From your perspective, your customer’s, and Google’s.” Considering Google held 88.47 percent of the search engine market as of 2019, their perspective and opinion of your site is absolutely crucial to your success. Your customers’ perspective is essential, so part of your audit will revolve around reviewing the user experience of your website. And of course, your perspective is vital. Who knows your goals and motivations better than yourself? Now is the time to make sure your website is aligned to support them.

Website Review and Audit Tools

It’s difficult to determine where you should begin working on your site if you don’t have a solid understanding of how it’s currently performing. It’s best to first perform your audit and then plan your improvements based on the results.   

A good thing to do at the beginning of every website audit is use a tool built for that specific purpose. You can find both free and paid website audit tools by doing a quick Internet search. Many free tools require that you provide an email address in exchange for their services (it’s called lead generation), or you can pay for a tool to provide a more in-depth review of your site.  

Website Grader

HubSpot created a popular tool, Website Grader, that provides information on your site’s performance, mobile-friendliness, security, SEO, and more. Check out Domain.com’s grade below.

What isn’t pictured here is the plethora of information you’ll receive by starting your website audit with this beginner-friendly tool. You can use the insights from the audit to hone in on the areas where your site needs the most or immediate work. In fact, the last section, titled “What Should I Do Next?” lays it out for you.

Google’s Site Audit Tools

Google offers multiple tools to help you review and understand your website. Here are three of their resources that can best assist you with your audit.

PageSpeed Insights

The name, “PageSpeed Insights,” is pretty telling isn’t it? It’s a tool that “reports on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved.”

Insights ranks your webpages using a numeric grade — 90+ is a fast page, 50-90 is middling, and anything below 50 is without a doubt a slow webpage.

Note that this tool only reviews the webpage URL that you supply, not your entire website at once. Depending on the size and complexity of your site, it may not be feasible to enter the unique URL for each and every one of your webpages.

Maximize the efficacy of this tool by identifying the most important pages on your site and reviewing those first. You can figure out what pages are most important and receive the most traffic by using heatmapping tools, or by utilizing the next Google tool in this list.

Google Analytics

Analytics provides an incredible amount of information and insight into your website. If you’ve never used it before, here’s a great beginner’s guide to Google Analytics to help you get started.

Now, some of you might be wondering why we’re focusing on this tool since it provides in-depth information on your site visitors’ behavior. But think about it: Your site visitors’ behavior, in large part, correlates to the quality and efficacy of your website and its content.

Have a slow loading site? You’re going to see some big bounce rates and small dwell times. People won’t hang around waiting for the page to load; instead, they’ll leave and find another faster loading website that suits their needs.

Google Analytics helps you identify your most popular and well-trafficked landing pages. These could be the pages that people are landing on from search results, other sites, etc. most often. Consider running these pages through the PageSpeed Insights tool to make them as good as can be before moving on to less trafficked pages.

Google Search Console

Once upon a time, Google Search Console was known as Google Webmaster Tools. We like the newer name, because it speaks to this tool’s purpose: to help you “…monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.”

If you have a website, you can benefit from Search Console. It’ll tell you things like:

• How often your site appears in Google search results.
• What terms and queries people search by that lead to your site in the results.
• Indicate any issues you may be experiencing with indexing.
• And more!

Google provides instruction on getting started with Search Console here. The information and insights you gather from this tool will be instrumental in improving your website’s SEO and overall success.

Questions to Ask During a Website Audit

Going into things blindly isn’t a great plan. This is especially true for your website audit.

Before spending a lot of time with the resources we mentioned in the last section, make sure you know what questions they’re supposed to be helping you answer.

Auditing Your Website for the User Experience

Your website’s user experience is integral to its success.

When you create a user-friendly website, you’re really inviting those users to stay longer, interact more, and hopefully, convert (that just means they take the action you want for them to take — purchase, sign up for email, etc.) on your site.

To audit your site for user experience, ask yourself the questions below. (Bonus: Many of the improvements you’ll end up making for user experience will directly improve your SEO!)

• Do I know my target audience?
• Are my CTAs (call-to-actions) and content geared toward my audience?
  • Good CTAs are effective. They are clear and deliberate in telling someone what action to take.
• Is my marketing funnel optimized for these users?
• Is my site’s load time too slow or experiencing any issues? (If so, it could mean the answer to the following question is “Yes.”)
• Are my site visitors bouncing?
  • Follow up by looking into their dwell time.  
• Is my site mobile responsive?
  • If your site doesn’t display well on mobile devices, you’re missing out. As of the end of 2019 mobile devices drove the most website traffic, coming in at 52.6%.
  • This is also important for SEO because Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.
• Does your site navigation make sense?
  • Once someone lands on your site, will they be able to easily find what they’re looking for and move around?
  • Here’s an (admittedly extreme) example of a site with terrible navigation.

• Is your website design up to par?
  • If your site looks like it walked straight out of the 90s then you’re in trouble.
• Do you have a lot of broken links?
  • It’s a bad look, and your visitors won’t think of your site as reliable.
• Is your contact information easy to find?
  • We recommend making it available on every page, even if at the footer.
• Do you have any intrusive pop-up ads or is your site cluttered in ads?
  • Use a browser in incognito or private mode to get a sense of the ad experience for your visitors. 

Audit Your Website for Technical Issues

A technical audit helps get down to the nuts and bolts of your website: Are the systems and technologies working, or are they not?

• Is my website secure?
  • SSL is integral to the security of the information exchanged on your site.
    • Without SSL, information passed from an end-user (site visitor) to unsecure sites (like during a purchase or email sign up) and vice versa isn’t encrypted. This means it can be intercepted by lots of bad actors out there on the Internet.
  • Secure websites are favored by Google in search results.
  • Browsers display whether a site is secure or not, and that can make all the difference in a visitor’s trust (remember, they’re your potential customers.)
    • Below are examples of sites with and without SSL.

• Is your personal information protected from the Internet’s prying eyes with Domain Privacy + Protection?
  • Keep your site safe from both hackers and human error.
• How does your site display across the most popular browsers?
  • Test your site across all the major browsers so there are no surprises or bad experiences for your visitors. Make any necessary changes to improve how your site renders on these browsers.
  • Don’t forget to test the mobile versions of these browsers!
• Are you using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress?
  • If yes, are you using the most up-to-date and secure version?
  • Audit any plugins to make sure they’re running the newest versions and don’t pose security issues. Remove any no longer needed or used.  
• Is your site backed up?
  • Before making any big changes to your site, you should create a backup. Wouldn’t it be terrible if something went wrong while making updates to your site? Without a backup created of your site, that can equal lots of heartache, time, and lost revenue. 

Audit Your Website for SEO.

An SEO audit helps you optimize your website so that it performs well and ranks higher in SERPs, search engine result pages.

• Do you have a sitemap created so that Google and other search engines can easily crawl and index your site?
• Is your robots.txt file accurate?
• Are all the pages on your site optimized according to the various SEO ranking factors?
  • Moz provides a run-down of different On-Page SEO ranking factors here.
• Are you using appropriate and relevant SEO keywords across your site and content?
• Do all your pages have title tags and meta descriptions?
  • Title tags and meta descriptions are HTML elements that appear in the header on a web page. When a page shows as a search result, its title tag and meta description normally display right along with it on the SERP (search engine results page.) This is important because it can influence whether someone clicks through to your site from the SERPs.
• Is your website accessible?
  • Do your images have alt text?
• Do you have any broken or misdirected links?
  • Domain.com’s resident SEO expert, Mike, thinks SEO Minion, a free 3^rd party SEO tool, is good for checking broken links. Please note, this is not a Domain.com product or resource.
• How many backlinks do you have?
  • Backlinks are links created when one website links to another. You may also hear them referred to as “inbound links.”
  • Are they quality backlinks?
  • Moz created Link Explorer, a free tool to help you identify your backlinks and provide other link metrics, but it does require that you sign up for a free Moz account.
  • SEOquake is another 3^rd party tool (free plugin) that offers great insights into your SEO.
• Is your URL structure optimized?
  • URL structure matters to both search engines and the people visiting your site.
  • Here’s Search Engine Journal’s guide to an SEO-friendly URL structure.

Wrapping up Your Website Audit

Auditing your website can seem overwhelming at first. If that’s the case, break it out into smaller sections and complete them one by one. It could take a few days or a few weeks, but either way, audits are necessary for the success of your site.

You should plan on auditing your website at least a couple of times each year. For more complex websites, consider auditing them more frequently.

Reviewing and auditing your site will give you a leg up with search engines, your customers, and your competitors.

Did you have any other tips or recommendations for auditing sites? Let us know in the comments!

A large part of that success consists in understanding the performance of your cumulative digital efforts. You have to take stock of everything you’ve done, and beyond that, your total digital presence.

You may think that means reviewing the actions and things you directly control online, like your website, your social media profiles, and your on-page SEO. And you’d be correct… to an extent.

Don’t forget that you can’t control the entirety of the conversation around your business on the Internet. If you want to audit your total online presence, look to the areas you can’t directly manage, too.

We’re going to discuss the various parts of a total online audit in this post, and we’ll point you in the direction of some tools that can help you accomplish the task. A comprehensive audit takes time, but is vital to your business’ online success, so if you can’t dedicate any time to an audit, consider hiring an expert who can help.

Performing a Complete Online Audit of Your Web Presence.

You should go into your audit with a plan, and you should be able to put one together using this guide. So let’s get to it.

We’ll be learning a lot about performing a web presence audit today, like:

• The issues it can help you uncover and solve.
• The items and areas to be reviewed in your audit.
• The insights you’ll gain into your online presence [Office1] and business post-audit.

Why You Should Perform a Total Online Presence Audit.

There seems to be this recurring trope in Hollywood — the one about someone who’s born lucky, or has some magical event befall them, and then everything they do works out in their favor. Do you know the one?

Somehow, that mentality has gotten into entrepreneurship. We hate to break it to you, but that happens in the movies and only in the movies.

If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, blogger, or side-hustler, you’re going to have to make your own luck. And fair warning: It’s going to look a lot less like luck and a lot more like dedication and hard work. But the end result — success on your own merit, is so worth it.

The first step to success is understanding your business.  

Do you know who your ideal customer is? Can you describe your marketing funnel(s)? Wondering why some competitors perform better than you do for certain keywords in SERPs? Or why certain pages of your site have high bounce rates?

These are all questions you need to know the answers to, and your audit will help you gain these crucial insights.

Tracking Your Audit Findings.

Before getting started, make sure you have a way to track and record your audit and your findings.  

If you use a cloud-based solution for record-keeping, then you can quickly and easily share your findings with anyone who needs to access them.

Depending on your preference, we offer and recommend both GSuite, which comes with all the Google tools you know and love, like Gmail, Sheets, and Docs, and Office 365, that offers all the familiarity of Outlook, Excel, and Word plus a host of other features.  

Parts of a Complete Online Presence Audit.

Now that you have your tracking tools at hand it’s time to plan your audit. It will consist of reviewing the following areas:

• Website
  • SEO analysis, both on and off-page
  • Content
  • Analytics
• Marketing and digital campaigns
• Social media platforms and profiles
• Local directories
• Review sites
• Google My Business Listing

As we move through each section we’ll tell you what to look for and provide you with a set of questions to guide you. Feel free to add your own as you go.

How to Audit Your Website.

Your website is your home base online. It’s where you drive customers and generate business, so you need to treat it well.

We really like that John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, recommends starting website audits with your homepage. He writes that, “If you find issues on your homepage, odds are you’ll find issues throughout the rest of your website as well.”

When you review your site, you’ll discovers answers to things like:

• What actions are your site visitors taking?
• Where are people clicking on your homepage?
• What landing pages receive the most traffic?
• How long are people staying on site?

And all of these insights can be used to further refine your site and improve your marketing funnel.

A website audit, in and of itself, is a large but fruitful task, so don’t hesitate to ask for help from a professional if you need it. We wrote an entire guide dedicated to auditing your website, and it includes tips and the tools you’ll need to accomplish it. Check it out here. This guide also includes the instructions for performing your on-page SEO reviews. In the next section, we’ll cover how to review your off-page SEO, or SEO factors that aren’t on your website.

How to Audit Off-Page SEO.

If you haven’t heard of SEO yet, let us explain. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Don’t let the name fool you though, when performing SEO tasks you won’t be directly affecting any search engines. Instead, you’ll be optimizing different factors on your site so that they rank higher in search engine result pages, or SERPs.

Along with those website SEO factors, referred to as on-page SEO, there’s also off-page SEO.

Off-page SEO mainly consists of building back links to your site from other online sources. That could mean a variety of things, like linking back to your site from social media or other blogs and sites. In fact, backlinks can be bucketed into three general groups:

• Natural Links
  • Links made to your site organically by others. Like if someone were to link off to your site in a blog post they write without you having to ask them to do it.
• Manually Built Links
  • These are links that appear on 3^rd party sites or platforms, but you’ve had a hand in getting them there. This could mean you’ve asked a customer or friend to share it, or maybe you hired an influencer to do a social media campaign that links back to your site.
• Self-created Links
  • These are the bad boys of backlinks, and we recommend you use caution before plastering your site links all over the Internet. Search engines don’t look fondly on spammy links, so if you’ve inserted them where they don’t belong — like random blogs and websites that don’t relate to you in some meaningful way — you could be doing yourself a disservice. Only post your links where it’s appropriate and makes sense.

You can use Google Search Console, a free tool, to audit your links. Use Google’s instructions to start your free account and then you can download a list of all your backlinks. Then, if you can, remove any that fall into “spammy” territory.

How to Audit Social Media.

Your social media profiles comprise a good portion of your total online presence. Social media is a place to connect with and grow an audience, identify new business opportunities, and tell your story the way you want it told.

Auditing your social media can help you find new audiences, improve relationships with existing ones, direct people to your site to transact, and more.

You’re going to want to start your social media audit by tracking down all your social media profiles. In your Google Doc or Excel Spreadsheet, record the platform (like Instagram, Facebook, etc.) and the link to your profiles. Also include:

• Your social media username, or handle.
• What your goals are for the channel.
• How frequently you post to support those goals.
• Top performing content.
• Information on your audience or demographic.

Then, stop and reflect on the different social media platforms and channels. Are they supporting your goals as-is? What needs to be refined? Are there any you don’t need to be on?

Remember, it’s not about being everywhere, it’s about being where it counts, or where your audience is.

How to Audit Marketing and Digital Campaigns.

Are you running any marketing or digital campaigns?

Those should be part of your complete web presence audit, too. As you compile your different campaigns, make sure you’re clear on their goals. Create S.M.A.R.T. goals for each of your campaigns.

Once you know the goals of your campaigns, you’ll want to review their looks to make sure they’re on-brand. Is your type consistent? Are your logos the same?

Check out this thorough guide from FlypChart to help you analyze the headlines and copy of your campaigns to make sure everything is support of your goals.

How to Audit Online Reviews.

When it comes to online reviews, there’s not much that can be done to change any that exist, but it’s a good idea to audit them anyway.

Auditing your online reviews, on sites like Yelp or Facebook, can help you keep your finger on the pulse of what people are saying regarding your business.

Lots of positive feedback? You must be doing something right.

Too much negative feedback? Use the critiques and criticism you see to improve your business and after doing so, encourage people to leave new, positive reviews if they’d had a good experience.

No reviews at all? That doesn’t mean people don’t like your business, but it may mean that you’re not exactly memorable enough. You can work to implement a word-of-mouth-marketing strategy that can help increase what people say about you — online and off.

How to Audit a Google My Business Listing.

Have you set up a Google My Business Listing (GMBL) for your business?

If not, you’re missing out. Google is by far the most popular search engine, so it’s good to have a GMBL. These listings have all of your important business information like your hours of operation, contact information, and website links, along with the ability for customers to leave reviews on your listing.

We recommend using Google’s guide to setting it up, or making sure yours it set up correctly, as part of your audit.

Audit Your Web Presence to Better Your Business.

Total online audits have a lot of parts to them, it’s true. We don’t expect that you’ll be able to complete your audit in one day, and that’s ok.

Break your audit down into manageable chunks and record your findings and results as you go so that you don’t forget where you left off.

If you need help, don’t hesitate to contact an expert.

And when something is valuable, it deserves protecting.

We’re here to help you understand and navigate the security issues your website faces so that you’re prepared to handle them should they occur. Today, we’re delving into website security risks, website owner responsibilities, and how SiteLock Security helps keep your website secure.

SiteLock and Website Security

The state of cybersecurity

You might think that as a small business or independent contractor you’re not on any hacker’s radar, because who’d want to waste their time when there are bigger targets, right?

Think again. Small business websites are prime targets for hackers because they’re often not well secured, yet they still harbor a wealth of data and information.

In 2015, (which already seems eons ago) Ginni Rometty, IBM’s Chairman and CEO, stated that:

We believe that data is the phenomenon of our time. It is the world’s new natural resource. It is the new basis of competitive advantage, and it is transforming every profession and industry. If all of this is true – even inevitable – then cybercrime, by definition, is the greatest threat to every profession, every industry, every company in the world.

That statement rings truer today than it did a mere five years ago. 4iQ says in their 2019 Identity Breach Report that “Cyber criminals [have] shifted their focus, targeting more small businesses, resulting in a 424% increase in authentic and new breaches from 2017.”

Whose responsibility is website security?

At its most basic level, website security is any action taken to protect your website from harm.

But whose job is it to make sure a website is secure? Well, as a website owner — it’s yours.

And there’s a lot to keeping a website safe, like maintaining secure passwords, patching vulnerabilities in different applications, and keeping plugins and tools up to date. But a website owner’s responsibilities don’t stop there. If a website does get infected with malware or hacked, it’s also their job to fix it.

Luckily, you don’t have to do these things on your own (okay, the password bit you probably should). There are tools, like SiteLock Security, that are designed to prevent and mitigate attacks and harm to your website.

Sometimes, we get asked, “Isn’t it my web hosting provider’s job to keep my website secure?” And the answer is no, it isn’t.

Jessica Ortega created this great, short YouTube video that explains the responsibilities of both website owner and web host when it comes to security.  In it, she interviews Ryan Austin, who paints the following analogy.

Think of your web hosting provider as the superintendent of an apartment complex. It’s their responsibility to make sure the building is secure from the outside, to keep the lights on in the parking lot, and ensure all is well outside of your apartment. Your website is like an apartment in the complex and it’s your responsibility to keep it secure — lock the doors and do your part to prevent intruders. If someone does get in because you’ve left a window or door unsecured, your superintendent isn’t at fault.

What happens if my site gets hacked?

Your website is central to your business, so if it gets hacked or infected with malware you face a number of potential consequences that range from a suspended site, to data theft and ransom, and loss of revenue and consumer trust.

If your web host detects malware on your site, they’re liable to suspend or take down your site. This is because they don’t want the malware on your site to spread and infect other sites. It’s similar to the idea of using quarantine to keep viral infections at bay.

A site infected with malware isn’t something you can keep under wraps. Google’s Chrome browser is the most used internet browser in 2020, and it’s not shy in warning its users away from websites that are possibly infected with malware. If they detect that your site is infected they’ll blacklist it and alert their users, as malware can spread to people who visit and interact with your site. Your potential customers won’t want to take the risk. Instead of doing business with you they’ll turn around and find a (safe and uninfected) competitor’s website.

And if your website is infected with malware, chances are you’ll have to restore it to an older version (assuming you have backups) or re-build it altogether, both options meaning you’ll have lost a lot of time and hard work.

The effects of website hacking are many and varied, but never pleasant. Here are five real-life examples of small businesses that got hacked and their devastating consequences.

How to keep your website secure with SiteLock Security

The security of your website should be a top priority, and there are things you can do today to help prevent and mitigate attacks to your site.

We know that small business owners, entrepreneurs, and people with side hustles wear a lot of different hats. It’s tough enough keeping up with the day-to-day aspects of running your business much less staying on top of online threats that are hard to see and harder to predict.

That’s why we’ve partnered with SiteLock Security to give you, and your website, some peace of mind.

Benefits of SiteLock Security

SiteLock Security protects your website from malware, viruses, hackers, and spam. It does this by scanning your site for these malicious things, automatically removing any malware it locates, and alerting you when something doesn’t look quite right.

In addition to the services they provide behind-the-scenes, SiteLock Security comes with a seal that you can display on your site. The SiteLock seal inspires confidence in your site; in fact, when SiteLock and Domain.com did a user study in 2014, we found that displaying the SiteLock seal can increase conversions by up to 15%.

SiteLock Security plans and features

At Domain.com we offer three different SiteLock Security plans: Essentials, Prevent, and Prevent Plus, to suit the varying needs of website owners.  

If you think you might need even more protection to maintain your website performance and security, we can help. Call us toll-free at (800) 403-3568 to speak to an expert and make sure that your website gets all the protection it needs.

Don’t delay when the security of your website and site traffic is at stake.

Hackers, malware, suspended websites — it all sounds like the stuff of small business nightmares… because it is. Save yourself a headache or ten by investing in your website’s security now. 

Get SiteLock Security today and rest easy knowing that your website is in good hands. 

If so, you need to learn a thing or two about SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO is made up of various strategies and best practices that exist to improve your position in search engine results.

Google, the dominant search engine, relies on different SEO ranking signals to determine what websites or pages are the best results for different search queries. These ranking signals consist of things like: a secure website (SSL enabled), appropriate keywords, a site’s mobile friendliness, and quality of links. When your site is optimized for SEO, you have a better chance of ranking higher in SERPs, or search engine result pages. This is vitally important considering “75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines.”

There are two kinds of SEO: On-page and Off-page, though we’ll mostly focus on the former in this post. So without further ado, let’s look at some SEO strategies that can help boost your business in search results.

SEO Strategies for Your Business

We asked our resident SEO expert, Mike, what strategies and tactics he recommends as the most impactful that you should implement ASAP. He’s developed successful SEO plans for small businesses, agencies, and large corporations, so he’s well-versed in what helps a website rank higher in search results.

Here’s what he had to say.

Understand Users and Their Intent

Remember when typing three keywords into Google would still give you decent, relevant results? That doesn’t cut it anymore. Now, people are searching the Internet using more complex, natural speech patterns. Considering how voice search is on the rise, this trend doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere. To make the most of it, you need to know a thing or two about your users.

How well do you know your audience and user base? Understanding them will give you a leg up in search results.

Are you wondering how that’s possible?

Search engines value content and sites that users themselves find valuable. So how does Google know what content and sites users find valuable? They use information like bounce rates and dwell time to determine whether someone is staying on your page, consuming relevant content, or bouncing away because your site doesn’t meet their needs or answer their query.

You can use Google Analytics to help you understand who your users are. You can figure out how they’re reaching your site, where they’re landing, and more information to help you refine the user experience of your site.

Google BERT (one of Google’s newer search algorithms released in October 2019) supports your need for a user-focused site. BERT, “is Google’s neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP)…” and “in short, BERT can help computers understand language a bit more like humans do.”

Optimizing Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Page titles and meta descriptions are some of the first things users and search engines see and they influence how your page is understood.  

Page titles are the clickable titles that display in SERPs, like you see in the example below, circled in red. Depending on the browser you’re using, you may also see page titles in your tabs.

Meta descriptions are little snippets of HTML content that describe the content on a page. Optimizing them for SEO is crucial. You can see Domain.com’s homepage meta description circled in blue below.

Page Title Optimization

Your page title is one of the most important on-page SEO ranking factors. To make the most of it, keep these tips in mind:

• It should be no more than 65 characters in length (including spaces.)
• Your most important keyword should feature in your page title.
  • Don’t stuff it full of keywords. That’s ineffective and search engines see right through it.

Meta Description Optimization

Meta descriptions are brief snippets created to describe a page or site. Good meta descriptions increase the click-through rate from search results to your site. Create effective meta descriptions by:

• Including a CTA (call-to-action) in your meta description.
• Keeping your description between 50-160 characters, including spaces.
  • While you can write longer meta descriptions, Google tends to truncate them if they’re too wordy.
• Including keywords is important, but don’t keyword-stuff for the sake of keyword-stuffing.  

Create and Write Longer, Better Content  

Articles and pages that appear on the first page of Google search results tend to average ~1890 words. If you’re still writing 500-word fluff and puff pieces, your SEO is in trouble.

Let’s hearken back to the first SEO strategy Mike suggested, understanding your audience. If you can find out why people are coming to your site, you can cater your content to them.

Writing good content takes time, but it’s worth it because the quality of your content matters. Good content is:

• Engaging. It keeps people on your site longer.
• Shareable. If your content is good and trustworthy, others are more likely to share it and that gains you backlinks (a form of Off-page SEO.)
• Editable. Good content needs to be tweaked. Google likes “fresh” content, so be sure to revise your content to include updated keywords, newer facts, or reflect changes in user-behavior.

Remember, search engines want to display the best results for search queries. If your page has the best, most comprehensive content that answers a question, naturally, it’ll rank higher over time.

Secure Pages

Having a secure website is essential to your success. You might think you can get away without SSL if you’re not running an e–commerce website or asking for user’s personal information (like via an email sign up form), but you’d be mistaken.

SSL isn’t just vital for site security; it also matters for appearances’ sake — never discount the power of perception. We’ll explain below.

Since Google introduced security as a ranking signal in 2014, SSL has been a must-have. SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer” and it protects and encrypts the information passed between an end user (site visitor) and your site, and vice versa. It keeps information safe ranging from credit card details to email addresses. Without SSL, hackers and bad guys can intercept, read, and alter that information.

Remember how we said perception matters? Consider this: Sites with SSL enabled have a visual indicator in the URL bar that signals the site as safe and secure.

Sites without SSL, or not secure sites, show up with an ugly indicator, like you see below, that can cause site visitors to lose trust and confidence in you.

Don’t push your site visitors away before they’ve had a chance to peruse your pages. Enable SSL on your site and reap the benefits of increased customer trust and the secure exchange of information on your site.

Use Your SEO Tools

If you’re working on SEO, it makes sense to use SEO tools designed specifically to help! As an added bonus, many of them are free. Let’s look at two resources created by Google that are indispensable to your SEO efforts.

Google Analytics

Use this tool to understand basic KPIs (key performance indicators) and benchmark performance. With Analytics you can:

• Understand your audience.
• Gain insight into performance fluctuations.
• Visualize user behavior.
• Create reports.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console has one main purpose: to help you understand how GoogleBot has interacted with your site.

What’s GoogleBot? It’s Google’s Search Engine Bot that crawls webpages. It uses sitemaps and links to catalogue sites on the Internet. Google stores this information in their index, which is like a massive repository of sites that exist online.

GoogleBot crawls sites using different SEO ranking factors and looks for things like broken links or updated content. When it finds these things, it updates and makes note of them in the larger index.

When using Search Console, don’t forget to look at your Index Coverage Report (ICR). Your ICR:

• Lists both the pages you’ve submitted to Google (like via a sitemap) and all the pages Google has discovered on its own.
  • Each page displayed in the report will fall into one of the following four buckets.
    • Valid
    • Valid with warnings
    • Error
    • Excluded

Use the status of your pages to make any necessary changes to your site. For example, if you find a webpage that’s excluded from search results that shouldn’t be, you’ll need to correct it.

Search Console also lets you see the queries people made to find your site! Neat, right? This is incredibly insightful information that allows you to:

• Improve your keywords, and therefore, your content.
• Understand your most valuable organic keywords.
• Gauge and monitor keyword movement to see what you should be targeting.

Technical SEO

Have you ever completed a technical audit of your site? If not, now’s the time to start. As a best practice, you should audit your site at least once a year (more if you have a complex site.)

Technical site audits help you understand various things about your site, like:

Are You Searchable?

• When people make search queries, are your pages surfacing as results?
• Help you understand what “noindex” tags exist on your site that shouldn’t be there.
• Check the validity of your webpages (especially by using Google Search Console in your audit.)

Clean up Your Redirects

• When you click on a specific URL, but the page that loads has a different URL, it means you’ve encountered a redirect. Redirects are ways of getting people from one webpage to another.
  • Here’s an example of how it could work. Let’s say you used to sell tons of Product A because people just loved it. But you discovered Product B, something far superior, and stopped carrying the other one.  If someone has the old page for Product A bookmarked, you can use a redirect to get them to Product B’s page instead of seeing an error.  
• Over time, your redirect chains can get longer and longer and that can dilute your SEO equity.
  • This also adds load time to your pages.
• Check for temporary redirects and make sure they stay that way, temporary! They shouldn’t be used as long-term solutions.
• If you need a permanent redirect, make it a 301. We repeat, 301 redirects are permanent, but they transfer the SEO equity of your old page to your new one, unlike a temporary redirect.

Evaluate Site Traffic

• To evaluate your site traffic you’ll need to use either Google Analytics or Google Search Console.
  • For Google Analytics:
    • Click on Acquisitions > All Traffic > Channels > Organic Search (under default channel groupings) and select your time frame.
    • We recommend choosing a longer time frame to really get a sense of any patterns or issues.
    • Use this information to identify landing pages with irregular performances.
    • Evaluate these pages individually looking for potential errors.
  • For Google Search Console:
    • Navigate to Performance > Search Results > Change date to “Compare.”
    • Sort results by significant differences in your KPIs to identify and evaluate your site performance trends.
    • Seeing a big gap in click and impression data? Bridge them by identifying the keywords you’d like to strengthen and then focus on those terms within that page(s).

Update Your Robots.txt File

Robots.txt files are made to communicate with web crawling robots (like GoogleBot.) These files tell the bots what webpages they can and can’t access for crawling on your site. It’s a file that creates “rules” around your domain.  

• Robots.txt files
  • Make sure no important elements from your site are being blocked from crawlers and therefore, search engines.
  • Block elements of your site (of your choosing) from crawlers and search engines.
• You should always check your Robots.txt file.
  • You can view its real-time performance from within Google Search Console, just look for the Index Coverage Report we mentioned earlier.
  • For example, anything that results in “valid, but with warnings” means your Robots.txt file should’ve prevented those URLs from being crawled, but they’ve surfaced anyway. If this happens, make sure your Robots.txt file is set up appropriately.
  • You could also see things marked as “excluded.” This means those URLs are appropriately and correctly blocked from SERPs by the robots.txt file.
    • We recommend giving anything an “excluded” status a once-over to make sure you haven’t accidentally blocked any pages that should be crawlable.

Review Your 404 pages

• 404 errors surface across pages that have been removed, deleted, or are otherwise categorized as “Bad Requests.”
  • Do you have any 404 pages that have actually gained significant value for your site?
    • This could be because they’ve generated a lot of backlinks, have great keyword ranking, bring in decent traffic, revenue, or a variety of other reasons.
    • If yes, you should consider redirecting those pages (remember, 301 redirects maintain all the SEO equity that a page has built) or reconfiguring them so they’re still relevant.
• View your 404s with a web crawl or with Google Search Console.
  • In Search Console, go to your Index Coverage Report and then navigate to the “Errors” section. This will display all the 404 errors that came from your sitemap.xml file.
  • In that same report, navigate to the “Excluded” section.
  • This will report on any pages with a 404 crawl anomaly or any pages throwing soft 404 errors.

Implementing These SEO Strategies and Tips Will Boost Your Business

We want your business to succeed as much as you do. That’s why we’ve compiled these SEO strategies and hope that you implement them on your website.

SEO is crucial to surviving and thriving online, so don’t let your website and business get behind. If you’ve never worked on your SEO before, consider starting with this beginner’s guide to SEO.

If you have any questions, or other SEO strategies you’d like to suggest, let us know in the comments.

In large part, that’s due to something called Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. SSL is a technology that keeps internet connections secure. It encrypts and protects sensitive information and data as it’s sent between two systems (like your browser and another website or two servers). SSL stops bad people and bots from reading or changing the information being sent between the systems, like credit card information during an e-commerce transaction.

If you have a website or are in charge of the web hosting for your business, you need to understand the importance of data privacy and securing internet connections. As you begin your research, you’ll come across the term “SSL port” and that’s what we’re focusing on today.

What is an SSL port?

Data can be communicated between systems (like your web browser and your favorite online shopping website) with or without SSL. But the SSL port number is what indicates whether or not your connection is secure.

How can I tell if my connection to a website is secure?

Look at the URL in the address bar in your browser. You’ll see that the URL starts with one of two things: it’s either HTTP or HTTPS. The HTTPS indicates a secure connection and it uses port number 443. HTTP, an unsecure internet protocol, uses port number 80.

What is a port?

Whenever you open up your computer to visit a website you’re quite literally docking into the Internet, like a boat would dock at a port. Internet ports are numbered differently to indicate what the ports are used for and what they offer. These ports are called “TCP Ports” and that stands for Transmission Control Protocol.

If you’re diving into the world of websites and hosting, it’ll be helpful to know what the most commonly-used ports are and their assignments, or their purpose.

How Are TCP Ports Used?

TCP is pretty reliable. In order for TCP ports to work, there must be an “anchored connection” between Point A, where the data or request originates, and Point B, where the data or request is being sent. The only way that transmission of data will fail with TCP is if the connection between Points A and B is lost, like if you lost your internet connection.

What are the more common TCP Ports?

What’s the relationship between HTTPS and SSL?

To understand how SSL and HTTPS work together, let’s first go back to the unsecure HTTP. HTTP and HTTPS aren’t that different. In fact, the only difference is that when HTTPS creates and maintains a secure internet connection, it’s doing so with SSL.

How do I secure my website with SSL?

You want your site visitors and customers to trust you. You want them to have faith in your site and know that the information they’re sharing with you during a purchase is safe and secure. The way to go from HTTP (a visual marker of an unsecure site) to HTTPS (the visual marker of an SSL-secured site) is to install an SSL certificate on your website server. This certificate verifies your site’s identity so that information can be passed securely from your web server to your visitors’ browsers.

Is SSL a certificate or a protocol?

SSL certificates and HTTPS protocol are two separate things. But together, they make for a mighty secure internet connection.

Think of the HTTPS protocol as the physical structure that allows encrypted information to travel securely from point A to point B.

SSL certificates are what encrypts the information being shared over that HTTPS structure. However, you must keep in mind that the SSL certificate itself isn’t going to do anything for you. It only works once you’ve configured and set it up on your server.  

Isn’t SSL outdated?

If you’re researching SSL then you’ve probably come across the term “TLS.” Is it really a new and improved version of SSL? What are we all doing still talking about and using SSL? Don’t worry folks, we’ll explain.

TLS stands for Transport Layer Security, and it’s definitely a newer and better version of SSL. However, the term SSL is so well known that it stuck around even after TLS was introduced. So when you purchase SSL you’re in fact purchasing TLS (it’s like SSL plus).

What are the differences between TLS and SSL?

The original SSL was developed back in the wild & wooly 90s by a company called Netscape (remember them?). TLS isn’t too different, it uses many of the same technologies and protocol, but it’s been updated to withstand the security risks and issues of today’s world. TLS provides stronger encryption, but remember, it’s still referred to as SSL because that’s the more well-known name.

Why does my SSL port matter?

You need to configure your SSL certificate on your web server to get “HTTPS” to show in your website’s URL in the address bar. This indicates that you’re using an SSL port, which means the connection created between your site and someone’s browser is secure.

People are growing evermore distrustful of seeing “HTTP” in their browser and for good reason. With the amount of hacks and data theft happening today, people want to know you’re doing what you can to protect their information. Your SSL port indicates there’s a secure, encrypted connection that will keep their data away from malicious prying eyes.

Advantages to using SSL

• Faster web page loading
  • HTTPS loads pages faster than HTTP. Who waits around for a webpage to load nowadays when there’s always a competitor around the digital corner whose site might be faster?
• SEO Improvement
  • Your site is likely to rank higher in search results if you’re using HTTPS as opposed to HTTP.
• Stop hackers and bad actors in their tracks
  • SSL encrypts the data transferred back and forth between two systems. Even if these bad people and bots could somehow see the data being transferred, they won’t know what it says.
• Maintain PCI Compliance
  • PCI Compliance stands for Payment Card Industry Compliance. This is required by all credit card companies when making transactions online to further secure and protect against data and identity theft.
  • Part of the PCI Compliance guidelines are that your site must use HTTPS, which means your SSL certificate needs to be configured on your site before you can accept payments via credit card for purchases.
• No scary alerts
  • If you’re using HTTP then chances are your site visitors are receiving notices telling them your website isn’t secure when they land on it. Frankly, this looks bad. It causes them to lose confidence in your site and odds are good they won’t be back.

Where can I get SSL for my website?

Domain.com offers a variety of different SSL certificates to suit you and your websites’ needs.

Only need basic SSL protection so your customers see your site is secure and you improve your Google search rankings? We offer that.

Do you have multiple subdomains that need SSL protection? We offer that, too.

And what if you have an e-commerce site and require even more protection for your customers’ data? Yeah, we’ve got you covered.

All of our SSL offerings come with a warranty ranging from $10K – $1,750,000 USD and a visual indicator that your site is secure.

Take a look at our plans and let us know if you have any questions about those, or SSL in general, in the comments.  

Domain Names and Voice Search

Search engines are evolving at a constant pace making their user experience as simple and hassle-free as possible. The introduction of voice search has, in many cases, eliminated the need to type your queries. Every phone and computer is now powered by a voice assistant (such as Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and more). The presence of voice-first devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home are now highly common.

Voice search is all set to be the next big thing, and for good reason. Conducting a search through voice takes a lot less time than typing out a query and it even offers faster results. A user doesn’t even need to look at the phone or the device in order to get the answer.

A revolution in the way people use search engines also requires a revamp of SEO strategies. In fact, Comscore predicts that more than 50% of all searches will be done by voice in 2020, with Gartner predicting that 30% of all searches will be done on a device without a screen. Since users are asking questions differently, experts need to find better ways to be able to give what search engines will see as the best possible answer. Apart from SEO, there’s also a need for Voice Search Optimization.

What is Voice Search Optimization (VSO)?

Voice Search Optimization is essentially the process of optimizing your webpage content, business listings, and brand information in order to improve your ranking in the search results. VSO is, in a lot of ways, similar to SEO. Users are widely using search engines to find on-the-go answers for everything from “Best restaurants that serve sushi” to “Will there be snow tomorrow?”.

You may think that it’s too early to get into voice search but this is the perfect time to prepare for it. In fact, the sooner you get your VSO right, the better its benefits will be for your business.

How can voice search benefit your business?

Voice search optimization is a phenomenal way for small and medium businesses to attract potential customers to their website. According to Google, 39% of voice searches center around finding out more information about businesses. This is especially true for local businesses. The more you strengthen your brand presence locally, the better you’ll fare in voice search. A lot of voice search queries are local such as “Where can I get the best burrito in Los Angeles?” Or “Best hair salons near Sunset Boulevard.”

Therefore, highlighting the details of your local business such as the location, office hours, pictures, etc. can help increase the number of visits to your local store, office or working space.

By properly implementing voice search optimization, both B2B and B2C businesses can enjoy a variety of business benefits. Some of those are:

●      More website traffic.

●      Better brand awareness and visibility.

●      More foot traffic to your stores.

●      Stronger, more relevant connection with the users.

●      Enhanced user engagement.

●      Better chances of conversion and sales.

How can your domain name help you win at voice search?

A meaningful keyword-rich domain name can go a long way in ensuring that you win at voice search. Mentioned below are a few tips that can help you get the right domain name that is a perfect fit for this new search era.

1. Get voice-search-friendly domain names

The right domain name can be a huge aid in performing well in voice search results. A domain name that is clear in its intent and incorporates the right keywords can enhance the chances of your website being picked up by the voice search assistant.

To ensure you have the most voice search-friendly domain name, ensure it has the following characteristics:

●      It is short and simple.

●      It is devoid of hyphens, numbers, or creative and incorrect spellings.

●      It is keyword-rich.

For example, let’s assume someone wants to visit your website. Between www.gothicskullz-stuff.com and www.gothicstuff.store, which website do you think will be more easily comprehended by a voice search assistant?

A domain name can be your secret weapon in fighting the competition and ranking well in voice search. In fact, the use of new domain extensions such as .tech, .store, .online, .space, and more is on the rise and for good reason. They help optimize your domain name voice search.

2. Use natural speech patterns

Text based searches are very different from voice searches. When people type their search query, they prefer to use as few words as possible. However, when they use voice search, they will phrase their query as if they were asking another person. On average, people can only type around 40 words per minute, but they can talk at 150 wpm. Longer tailed queries are more natural for speech, so make sure your content is suited for this.

Let’s imagine that you’re using voice search to look for websites that sell Batman posters. Here, a domain name such as www.batmanposters.online has a stronger chance to beat the other competing websites. That’s the benefit of having keyword-rich domain names. Just remember, instead of only using single, to-the-point keywords that sound robotic, ensure that the sentences and phrases used on your site and in your content are more conversational.

According to a study by Backlinko, Google tends to answer voice search queries with short, 29-word results. This means that it is important that you keep your answers short, simple, and crisp and avoid any super technical jargon.

3. Optimize for local searches

According to research, 58% of consumers use voice search to find local business information. Just think about the number of times you’ve searched for things that include the words “near me”.

While the content on your website plays a crucial role in optimizing for local searches, your domain name can also be of great help. Domain names such as www.miamioxfordshirts.store or www.floridatacos.online are direct and to the point; they’re optimized for city-based voice search queries such as “Order tacos in Florida” or “Buy oxford shirts in Miami”.

Localized searches are no longer just about the city or state, but also about particular neighborhoods or localities. Local businesses would do well to factor this into their decision making process when choosing a domain name. For example, www.queensapparel.store is a good, local VSO-optimized domain name for anyone looking for apparel in Queens, New York.

With relevant domain extensions such as .store, .tech, .online, .press, and others, you can pick a short and definitive name that clearly highlights the nature of your business and where you are located.

A relevant domain name coupled with your business listings on search engines will make it easier for customers to find you.

Conclusion

In many ways, the era of voice search is already upon us. Marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs must identify this enormous opportunity to power such searches and take the necessary steps to optimize their content for a voice-first future.

Author Bio

Alisha is a Senior Content Marketing & Communication Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .STORE and .TECH. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

We’re happy you’re here. Thanks for choosing us!

Perhaps this is your first time purchasing a domain name or maybe you’ve transferred from a different registrar. Either way, we want you to feel comfortable navigating your Domain.com account. We’re here to help, so don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have.    

Let’s explore a Domain.com account together. In this post, we’ll start by showing you what it looks like once you’re logged in. We’ll go through the toggles and options you’ll find in your account’s Control Panel and discuss what they mean. By the time you’re finished with this post you should have a great understanding of your Domain.com account.

Understanding your Domain.com account options

To start managing your domain name and update your Domain.com account you’ll want to navigate to Domain.com and click Login in the top right corner of the page.

Then, type in your username or domain name and password and click the red Log in button.

And you’re in!

The first screen you’ll see once logged in gives you an overview of your domains. You can switch to see an overview of your hosting plans by clicking on Hosting toward the top left on the page.

The domain names you’ll see on this page are all of the ones associated with the particular Domain.com account you’re logged into. You can filter by All Domains, Active Domains, Expired Domains, and even opt to show your subdomains on this page.  

Is there a particular domain name you’d like to manage or want to know more about? Go ahead and click on the blue Manage button underneath it to access more information on that domain.

Your domain name summary page

Here’s what that page looks like.

We’ve numbered the different sections so we can go through them and make sure you understand what you can do with your domain name.

Section 1 – Domain Settings

The domain settings area of your summary page offers a quick, convenient look into your domain name. Here, you can see if your domain

Is set to Auto-renew.

• Your domain name represents you online. Do you really want to risk having someone else swoop in and purchase it if you forget to renew your domain?
• No surprise charges. We’ll always email you prior to automatically renewing your domain name.

Is locked.

• It’s always in your best interest to keep your domain name locked unless you are actively transferring it.
• A locked domain name prevents unauthorized domain transfers and prevents any changes from being made to the domain’s settings.

Is encrypted with SSL.

• You want your site visitors to trust you, right? Let them know right off the bat that your site is secure with SSL.

Is your primary domain.

• By default, your primary domain is the first one you registered or transferred. Your primary domain is the one you want representing your site or business. This domain is the default when accessing FTP (file transfer protocol) or configuring mailboxes.

Turn any of these settings on or off by clicking on the toggle icon next to it. If the toggle is entirely grey then the item is turned off. If the toggle is green then the selection activated.

Section 2 – Domain Information

This section provides a brief overview of your domain name. It lists your domain, your registrar, the date your domain was registered, and when it’s set to expire. If you have auto-renew enabled then you’ll also see your renewal date listed in this section.

Section 3 – Domain Privacy + Protection

Domain Privacy + Protection keeps your personal information out of the WHOIS database and away from prying eyes. Whenever a domain name is purchased, the person or company registering it is required to supply their legal, accurate personal information. ICANN mandates that this information be made publicly available via the WHOIS database, but that means it can be scraped by spammers for unwanted emails and phone calls unless you enable Domain Privacy + Protection. It also helps keep your site and domain secure by running malware scans and working to prevent your domain from getting blacklisted.

If you already purchased Domain Privacy + Protection then you’ll see something else for Section 3 on your summary page. This is what it will look like.

As with Section 1, when the toggles are green that means that those items are activated. You’ll want to click on the arrow next to SMS Notification Settings to make sure the information there is correct. Here’s what you’ll see.

Section 4 – Email Accounts

If you haven’t set up a professional email address to match your domain name then you can do so right here! An email address that matches your domain name establishes credibility, supports your digital identity, and looks professional.

If you’ve already purchased email, then Section 4 will look a little different for you. This is what you’ll see.

Section 5 – Account Settings, Billing, Log Out

This is an important part of your account. If you need to update your personal information including phone number or address, or if you need to add your EIN/Tax #, you can do so right here. First click, Account Settings from the drop down menu and on the following page click the three dots next to Contact Information like you see below.  

Beneath Account Settings in the drop down menu you’ll see Billing. This section should be pretty self-explanatory, but you can click here to update your payment method and billing address.

You’ll also find the option to log out in the drop down menu under the Billing section.

Section 6 – Advanced Tools

If you’re looking for more information on your server or perhaps FTP, then this is where to go.

Section 7 – Help

Stuck on something in your account? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back.

We’re here for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week by phone or live chat. If you click on the Help tab you’ll see a menu pop out on the right hand of your screen. From here, you’re able to search for what you need help with, view some popular articles, and connect with our team via live chat.

Section 8 – Option between Domain and Hosting Summary

You can click between the Domain or Hosting options seen here to view either summary page.

Section 9 – Summary Menu

This summary menu provides a quick, easy way to access everything you need for your digital presence. Here’s a close up of what you’ll find in that menu.

From here, you can learn more about our options for easy website creation by clicking either WebsiteBuilder, to learn about our easy to use AI-powered builder, or WordPress.

If you’re looking for email and productivity solutions, click either G Suite or Office 365.

You can learn more about site security by clicking on SSL Certificate and SiteLock.

Next on the menu is Pointers & Subdomains. Your domain pointer determines how you intend to use your site (you can point it to your home directory, a URL, or even park it.)

Need to edit your DNS & Nameservers? Click on the appropriately titled link in the menu and have at it!

DNS stands for “Domain Name System.” The main concept behind the DNS is that people have an easier time remembering names than numbers (could you imagine typing strings of numbers for IP Addresses instead of a quick domain name?). In essence, the DNS is an extensive directory that’s regulated and contains information on all the unique, one-of-a-kind domain names that exist and the IP addresses tied to them. And in order for people to type in your domain and arrive at your site, there needs to be a nameserver attached to it. Be careful when editing this section and ask for help if you need it. We’re available to assist.

And while we’d hate to see you go, if you need to transfer your domain name you can do so through the Transfer link.

Looking for the WHOIS contact information for your domain? You can find that by clicking on Contact Information at the bottom of the menu. This information should always be current and your legal information — no aliases or pseudonyms.

Navigating Your Domain.com Account

We hope this guide to your Domain.com control panel and account is helpful and that it’s pointed you in the right direction.

Whether you’re looking to build your domain name portfolio, claim your online identity, start a website or a business, you can do it all with Domain.com.

And if there’s something you’re looking for and can’t find, let us know in the comments below!

If that’s what you’re thinking, we’re delighted to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.

If you have a website, you’ve likely heard of SEO, and with good reason — it isn’t going anywhere. Understanding and implementing SEO fundamentals directly contributes to increased digital and business success, so it’s time you learned what SEO means and how it works.

In this guide, we’re covering the SEO basics you need to know to help optimize your website. We’ll discuss:

• What is SEO?
• Why does SEO matter? How will SEO help me?
• The anatomy of a SERP.
• How to track your progress.
• Simple SEO strategies you can start today.
• What not to do with SEO.
• Where can I learn more on SEO?

Let’s jump in, shall we?

What does SEO mean?

SEO is an abbreviation that stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the practice of positively influencing your search engine result rankings, thereby increasing the quantity and quality of your website traffic. To put it simply, SEO gets your website in front of more people on search engines (like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo) without needing to pay for ads.

Although search engine optimization sounds like you’d be making changes to the search engines themselves, the enhancements you’ll be making will be to your website, blog, or content.

Why does SEO matter, does it affect my business?

Need more convincing as to why you should implement a SEO strategy? Consider these facts gathered from Search Engine Journal:

• 91.5 percent: The average traffic share generated by the sites listed on the first Google search results page.
• 51 percent of all website traffic comes from organic search, 10 percent from paid search, 5 percent for social, and 34 percent from all other sources.
  • Over half of all website traffic comes from organic search — this is website traffic you AREN’T paying for, so refining your SEO strategy can save you money.
• 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information.
• ~2 trillion: The estimated number of searches Google is handling per year worldwide. That breaks down to 63,000 searches per second; 3.8 million searches per minute; 228 million searches per hour; 5.5 billion searches per day; and 167 billion searches per month.
• ~20: The number of times SEO has more traffic opportunity than PPC (Pay-Per-Click) on both mobile and desktop.

Does SEO affect your business? Without question, yes. But exactly how much it affects your business is up to you. If you don’t do anything to optimize and edit your website and content for SEO then it can’t work for you. But if you take a few minutes to optimize your website, you’ll reap the benefits of SEO — an increase in the quantity and quality of traffic to your site due to improved search result rankings.

SEO is uniquely different from other forms of digital marketing in that, with SEO, people are already searching for you. They need your services or products and they’re going to a search engine to figure out where they can get them. With SEO, you aren’t paying for ads in an attempt to woo fickle prospects back to your site — these people are already interested in what you’re selling, so help them find you by implementing an SEO strategy before your competitor does.

The anatomy of a SERP

What happens after you click “Search” on a search engine?

You’re taken to the SERP, or Search Engine Results Page.

(We’ve pulled the following SERP examples from Google because they dominate the search engine market worldwide with a 90.46% market share.) Depending on your search terms your SERP could include different types of results; however, there are some components on the results page that don’t change. Here’s what’s always included:

• Paid Ads (or PPC, Pay Per Click): These results appear first because the businesses they advertise have paid money for their top placements.
• Organic Search Results: Organic, or owned, search results aren’t paid for; instead, these results appear further up or down on the page depending on how well they’re optimized for SEO.

Both paid and organic results can also display as:

• Basic search results
  • These results display as links with metadata (the description under the URL.) Basic results don’t include images, graphs, or shopping suggestions on the main SERP.

Pro tip: If you do decide to pay for ads, avoid clicking on those search results yourself. You’ll cost yourself money since you’re charged per click on those results.

• Enriched search results
  • This is the most common SERP you’ll see, although it won’t always look the same. Enriched search results can include paid ads, organic results, sponsored links, local packs (local businesses that meet your search criteria), product carousels, and more. Google is always making updates and changes to its SEO algorithms to display the most relevant search results, so enriched search results won’t always show the same things.  

If you click on a local search result it will take you to a page where you can find out more about those businesses. It looks like this:

Pro tip: If you have a business, claim your “Google My Business” listing so you can control and edit information displayed about your business. “Add missing information” isn’t a good look when trying to attract visitors to your site.

Before we continue, when was the last time you performed an online search to see how your business or website ranks? If you haven’t done that in a while, we recommend doing so. It’s a good idea to know where you stand in search rankings so you can better gauge your SEO efforts and improvements.

Can I measure my SEO efforts?

You certainly can! And with Google Search Console — it’s free.

Google Search Console gives you deep insight into your website. You can discover how people are getting to your site — where they’re coming from, what device they’re using — and what the most popular, or heavily trafficked, pages of your website are. The Search Console allows you to submit your sitemap or individual URLs for search engine crawling, alerts you to issues with your site, and more.

If you haven’t used it before, don’t fret. Click this link to get to the Search Console. Then, click “Start now.” On the next page you’ll need to input your Domain(s) and/or URL Prefix(es.) If you choose the Domain option, you will have to verify your pages using DNS to prove that you’re the owner of the domain and all its subdomains.Verifying your site and pages is for your security. Google Search Console provides great insight into your website and that’s information only you should have. By requiring verification, Google ensures a competitor won’t have access to your website data. If you choose the URL Prefixes method, you’ll have a few options to verify your account; you can upload an HTML file (a bit more advanced, and requires access to a site’s root directory), or if you already have Google Analytics set up you can verify your site on Search Console that way. This beginner’s guide to Google Search Console by Moz walks you through all the ways you can verify your site.

What SEO tactics can I implement now?

Here are three ways you can vastly improve your SEO.

• Write good content
  • Good content pays off when it comes to search engine results rankings. What makes for good content?
    • It’s linkable. Search engines like content that can be linked to from other pages. If you create content, but have it gated (i.e. – you can only access it once you’re logged in or completed a similar action) then search engines won’t rank it as highly. They’re in the business of providing information to those who are seeking it, so make your content discoverable and linkable.
    • Aim for at least 1000 words. Search engines reward robust content, so that 300-word blog post you’re hoping rises to the top of the search results? — that needs to be fleshed out, and with relevant, valuable content.
    • Valuable, informative content drives demand. Search engines reward in-demand content with improved search result rankings. So if all you’ve done is write 1000+ words that no one cares to read, and doesn’t address your audience’s needs, you’ve wasted your time as it won’t rank highly in. You can figure out what your audience wants to know and what’s in demand by looking at keyword research.

Use WordPress? There are many free SEO tools and plugins that can help you and provide suggestions as you work, like Yoast or ThirstyAffiliates.

• Keyword research
  • Why is keyword research important? If you know what your desired audience is searching for, you know what words and terms to include in your content — thereby giving yourself a boost in results ranking.
  • There are a variety of free tools that exist to help you identify trending keywords, like Google Trends. This tool allows you to search keywords and terms (and compare them against one another) to discover how well-searched those terms are. This information can influence what keywords you use in your content. If there’s a term that’s searched a lot and relates to your content, use it. Here’s a list of 10 free keyword research tools put together by Ahref, many of which provide an even deeper level of insight into the keywords you should use.
• On-page SEO
  • Moz describes On-page SEO as “… the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.”
  • So what are the optimizable components of your individual webpages?
    • Content, which we touched upon earlier.
    • Title Tag

• Title tags are important because they dictate the display title on SERPs (search engine results pages). It’s likely the first thing people will see when they scan their search results, so a good title tag can draw them in and get them to click on the result.
• Trying to write a good title tag? Avoid ALL CAPS, don’t stuff as many keywords as possible into it, and keep it under 60 characters. Some characters take up more space than others, so you can use free title tag preview tools to help visualize what your title tag will really look like.
  • URL structure
  • It’s easy to make sure your URLs are working for you on search engines instead of against you. How’s that? Make sure your URLs display page hierarchy. By doing so, your URL is easily read by search engines and explains where the content or page can be found on your site.
  • What does a good URL look like?
  • www.domain.com/domains/transfer and here’s the breakdown of the page hierarchy:

• Now, imagine if the URL listed above looked something like “www.domain.com/int489/trans74087.” What does that tell the search engines? Not a whole lot, and definitely not where the page resides on your site.

For more information on On-page SEO ranking factors, take a look here.

What should I avoid when getting started with SEO?

For every piece of good SEO advice out there, there are a few bad pieces floating around. No matter whose friend’s cousin’s uncle tells you it’s a good idea, avoid the following practices.

• Keyword stuffing
  • Search engines are constantly improving and refining their algorithms to make sure the most valuable content is surfaced first. You can’t fool them by stuffing your content full of keywords and calling it a day.
• Duplicate content
  • When the same piece of content appears on the internet in various places using different URLs, it’s considered duplicate content. It may seem like having your content available in more places, with different URLs, is a good idea — more ways for people to find you, right? — it isn’t. Duplicate content confuses search engines. Which URL is the primary or correct one for the content? Should they split the results and show half the searchers one URL and the other half another? What page, or URL, ends up getting the credit for the traffic? Instead of dealing with all of that, chances are you’ll suffer a loss of traffic because the search engine won’t surface all of the duplicates.
• Writing for search engines instead of people
  • Search engines are in the business of getting the correct and best information to the people who need it, or search for it. If you’re writing choppy, keyword-stuffed sentences they’ll be pretty painful for a human to read, so they won’t. If you don’t have people reading or interested in your content, there’s no demand. No demand = poor search result rankings.
• Thin content
  • You should never create content for the sake of creating content. Make sure it’s quality content — relevant to your audience and at least 1000 words long — so search engines are more likely to surface it higher on SERPs.

Where can I learn more about SEO?

This introduction to SEO serves to get you acquainted with search engine optimization and lay down the groundwork, but don’t forget, the more you invest in SEO the better off your website will be. Once you’re familiar with the topics we’ve discussed here, challenge yourself to take it to the next level with these topics.

White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO

You know how in movies the bad guys are normally in dark, depressed colors while the good guys wear bright, or white colors? You can think of white hat and black hat SEO in the same way.

Black hat SEO tactics may seem to pay off at first, but just like with bad guys, what you do will come back to haunt you (like getting blacklisted from search engines!) Google, for instance, is constantly updating and refining its search algorithms. If it notices questionable behavior (like keyword stuffing) they’ll penalize those behaviors in their updates — so that “hack” you discovered that allows you to rank on page 1 of search results? That won’t work once the algorithm is changed, and you’ll lose your authority. Good SEO habits, or white hat SEO, won’t put you at risk of being penalized by search engines, so your authority will continue to climb.

Off-page SEO

Unlike on-page SEO, off-page SEO (or off-site SEO) consists of tactics to improve your search engine result rankings that aren’t done on your site. There are a variety of things you can do, but link-building is the most well-known. The more links that exist to your site and content, the better (within reason, if you spam every website you can think of with your links in comments that’s not ok.) Link building happens a variety of ways; naturally, when someone finds your content to be relevant and links to it in one of their posts or pages, manually, when you deliberately work to increase the number of links that exist for your site, say by asking clients or associates to link to your content, and self-created. Self-created links, including links to your site or content on random social media posts and blog comments, can be good in moderation. Too many spammy posts or comments ventures into black hat SEO territory, so tread carefully.

Putting it all together

If you work on improving your SEO tactics, your website and business will thank you. A good SEO strategy increases the likelihood of your content and pages displaying higher in search engine results. When your content shows up sooner in search results you get more website traffic and better quality website traffic, after all, those are people already searching for what you have to offer.

As you dive into SEO, remember to take stock of where your pages and content show up in SERPs today so you can gauge your progress and SEO results tomorrow. Use this introduction to SEO to help you write better content, create informative URL structures, and understand the SEO tactics to avoid.

• What is Google Analytics?
• How does it work?
• Is Google Analytics a marketing platform?
• I don’t understand how to set up Google Analytics on my website.
• I don’t understand what the different Google Analytics metrics mean.

There’s no need to feel intimidated, because we’re here to answer these questions. At Domain.com, we’re determined to help our customers achieve success with their websites, so there was only one obvious solution: Roll up our sleeves and demystify Google Analytics so you don’t have to. Your time is precious, we get that, so we’ve made this Google Analytics Guide easy-to-follow.

In our Google Analytics guide you’ll learn:

• What Google Analytics is.
• How to set up your Google Analytics account.
• How to add tracking codes to your site.
• How to understand and begin using your analytics data.
• How to set up automated reports.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a set of free tools that Google created as part of its marketing platform. These tools help you analyze and understand your website traffic, which has a far greater reach and importance than you might realize.

Your website is the heart of your digital presence, so knowing whether or not it’s healthy is vital. Analytics allow you to understand what parts of your website and site content are performing well, and what else needs some attention. They give you a picture of your digital customers and that allows you to cater and serve those customers better (happy returning customers = revenue). Any way you slice it, understanding your website performance so you know what to expect and where to improve will help your bottom line.

Ready to get started? So are we.

From sign up to set up: Covering your bases

• Sign up for a free Google Account if you don’t already have one. Your Google Account is your ticket to the world of Google, including Analytics.

• Navigate to the Google Marketing Platform and sign in with your Google Account.
  • Once signed in, click “Set Up” under Google Analytics.

• Fill in the required fields, review your data sharing settings, and accept Google’s Terms to receive your tracking ID.

• Add the Global Site Tag (gtag.js) tracking code, which includes your newly created tracing ID, to your website. It’ll look like this:

Google provides explicit instructions on what to do, so follow them as they relate to your site for specifics. Copy the code you’re given and paste it as the first item into the <head> section of each and every webpage you want to track. Or, if you already have a Global Site Tag on your webpage then Google says to only add the config line from the code they provide to your existing tag.

Are you a WordPress user?

If so, you have a few options for adding Google Analytics to your WordPress site.

First, you can use 3^rd party plugins to add your tracking code. There are a few different plugins available, but the most popular one was created by MonsterInsights.

MonsterInsights offers a few different plans including a free version, and that’s the one we’ll show you how to use today.

• Navigate to MonsterInsight’s website to download and install their free plugin.

If you’ve never installed plugins on WordPress before, this guide by WPbeginner will walk you through it.

• Activate the plugin and then click the new “Insights” tab on your WordPress admin menu. Now, you’ll be able to configure the plugin quickly and easily by answering the following prompts.
• Choose what type of category best describes your business (Business Website, Publisher/Blog, or Ecommerce) and click “Save and Continue.”
• On the next screen, click the blue “Connect MonsterInsights” button. This will open a pop-up.
• The pop-up will ask you to select or sign into your Google Account. Make sure you’re selecting the account that’s associated with your business or site.
• You’ll be prompted to give MonsterInsights access to your Analytics account. Click “Allow.”
• To complete the connection, select the profile you want to track. This should be your website. Once you’ve added your website click “Complete Connection.”

Once you’ve completed those steps then MonsterInsights will install Google Analytics on your website and you’ll need to choose the recommended settings for your site. Generally, the default settings will suffice.

• You’ll see a couple more prompts, like to purchase a Pro account or install WPForms, but those are optional. You can select them or skip those steps.
• Click “Finish Setup & Exit Wizard” and you’re done!

Did you know: MonsterInsights pulls Google Analytics information right into WordPress? It’s true! Click “Insights” then “Reports” to see an overview of your data.

If you’d rather not use a 3^rd party plugin, that’s ok. You have the option of installing Google Analytics in your WordPress Theme. A word of caution: This way is more advanced so we recommend having a familiarity with code if you choose this method. If you were to change themes in the future, you’d need to update the code in your new theme.

Did you install the code or use a plugin? Congratulations! Google Analytics is now set up on your website or WordPress site and soon you’ll reap the benefits. Analytics gathers data to keep you apprised of your site’s performance — what are people engaging with, where are they coming from, how long are they staying on your site — it offers these insights, and so much more.

It all starts with a great domain name. Get yours at Domain.com.

Google Analytics is set up, now what?

It’s time to see yourself out (of your data, that is.) You’re using Google Analytics to understand how others interact with and use your website, not to see your own behaviors and clicks tracked.

Here’s how to stop your IP address (and your business’ or coworkers’ IP addresses) from Google Analytics tracking.

• Log into your Google Analytics account.
• Click “Admin” then “All Filters” then “ADD FILTER.”

• Name your filter.
• Filter type should be “Predefined.”
• Under Select Filter Type choose the following options in this order from the dropdowns:
  • “Exclude.”
  • “Traffic from the IP addresses.”
  • “That are equal to.”
• Click on “All Web Site Data” in the Available Views area on the bottom left of the page and click “Add” to move it to the Selected Views area on the right.
• Click “Save.”

That’s it, you’re officially on the blacklist (in a good way.)

You’ve got Google Analytics tracking your website activity and you’ve excluded yourself from the data, so what’s left to do?

Using and Understanding Your Google Analytics Data

As you familiarize yourself with Google Analytics and learn about the data it offers you, keep in mind your business or website goals. These goals should influence the data you prioritize and any enhancements you make to your site.

Breaking it down: Important data definitions as defined by Google

• Unique Visitors – Unique visitors tells us how many unique web browsers accessed a website during a specific, or pre-determined, time period. Cookies are used to calculate this metric. If some of your visitors use multiple browsers or delete cookies frequently, this can inflate your visitor count.
• Unique Pageviews – Unique pageviews tell us how many sessions included views of a specific page (or pages) at least once. Think of it this way: you can view a webpage 100 times within a session, but that will count as only 1 unique pageview.
• Unique Event – When you think “Event,” think “Action on page.” Unique events tell us how many sessions included a specific action (event). Events can include things like clicking on a CTA button you created or downloading a file from your site. Think of it this way: A visitor on your site can download the same file 5 times in a row, but unique events will only count it once.
• Unique Session (or Visit) – Sessions tell us how long a visitor spent on a certain website. A session begins as soon as someone hits a page on your website and it loads; it ends when the visitor leaves your site, closes their browser, or is inactive for 30+ minutes.
• Average Session (Visit) Duration – Average session duration tells us the average amount of time that a session lasts. This is normally displayed in seconds and calculates the time between the visitor’s first pageview and the last event that happened. So, if someone lands on your website and doesn’t do anything, thereby causing no event (like a click), average session duration will reflect as zero seconds.
• New Sessions (Visits)– This metric tells us how many first-time visits your site or pages receive during a specific timeframe. Cookies are used to calculate this metric, so if someone has deleted their cookies after visiting your site and then they come back, they’ll show as a new session.
• Return Sessions (Visits) – This is the pretty much the opposite of new sessions. The return sessions metric tells us how many repeat sessions, or visits, occurred during a specific timeframe. Cookies are used to calculate this metric.
• Bounce – A bounce is calculated as a visit that only has one pageview.
  • Keep in mind: Sometimes, a bounce is a good thing. It can mean that someone entered your site and found the information they needed on the first page, then left. Oftentimes, it’s not so nice. If your site or pages experience a lot of bounces it could mean your visitors aren’t finding what they need, or are confused by your website, so they’re leaving your site before getting to the page or information they need. Do your due diligence and track what pages receive the most bounces and decide whether or not they make sense. Adjust your site accordingly.
• Bounce Rate – Bounce rate is calculated by dividing the total number of bounces by total number of visits (not unique visits.)
• Goals – There are 4 types of goals. Here’s how Google breaks it down.

These are a selection of the important metrics offered by Google Analytics and the ones you should know as you get started.

It all starts with a great domain name. Get yours at Domain.com.

I know the lingo, now what?

Once you’ve had a chance to review the available metrics and think about both your business and Google Analytics goals, we’re betting you’ll want to view the collected data in a convenient, easy-to-interpret manner. We’ve got good news: Google Analytics offers reports that allow you to quickly surmise your website and page performance, visitor behavior, and more.

Analytics offers a great deal of customization when creating reports. You should customize your reports to track your goal performance and cater them to your business needs; however; here are two things we think everyone should track.

• How are people finding your website?
  • This information helps you understand the different channels through which people arrive at your site. You’ll be able to tell if visitors are finding you via social media, organic traffic, email, paid advertising on certain channels, and more. With that kind of insight, you can optimize your marketing messages and spend.
  • You can find this information by selecting “Acquisition” in the menu on the left of the page, then by clicking “All Traffic” and finally “Channels.”

• What pages are people landing on when they arrive at your site?
  • If people are landing on some pages more than others it can mean a few things, like:
    • Some pages are better optimized to appear in search results (SEO) than others. Can you duplicate any of the SEO tactics on your other pages?
    • You’re putting more spend behind certain landing pages and campaigns than others. Is this intentional or do you need to readjust your spend?
  • You can find this information by selecting “Behavior” in the menu on the left of the page, then by clicking “Site Content” and finally “Landing Pages.”

At this point you might be thinking, “Wow. That’s a lot of information. How am I supposed to remember where everything is in the reports each time I need to look at the data?”

Are there people who could? Yes, sure. But they’re few and far between. As we mentioned earlier, we know your time is precious and you wear a lot of hats, so …

Thanks be to Google, you can save and schedule reports (and view them in a convenient Dashboard)! Google says that “Saved reports remember your settings so you don’t have to reconfigure a report each time you open it.”

Scheduling and saving Google Analytics reports

What gets saved in a report?

• Custom segments YES ✔️
• New metrics you’ve added YES ✔️
• Changed dimensions YES ✔️
• Date range NO

How do you save a report? Great question. It’s simple. Assuming you’re already signed and looking at the correct property:

• Click “Reports” from the left-hand menu.
  • Find the one(s) you use from the categories offered or from the tab labeled “Customization.”
• Make any changes or edits you’d like to the report. Configure it how you see fit.
• Click “Save” from the action menu located above the report.
• Name the report.
• Click “OK” to save your report.
  • Note, this will automatically take you to the “Saved Reports” section of your account.

Can you make changes to a report once it’s saved? Yes, you can. Here’s how:

• In the left-hand menu click “Customization.”
• Select “Saved Reports.”
• Select the report you’d like to edit and
  • Make any necessary updates or changes then
  • Click “Save.”

Looking to rename or delete one of your reports? You can do that, too.

• In the left-hand menu click “Customization.”
• Select “Saved Reports.”
• Use the “Actions” menu to
  • Rename or
  • Delete.

If logging into Google Analytics to look at your reports is too time-consuming, you have another option, make your data come to you.

Here’s what to keep in mind when scheduling reports:

• How often do you need this data?
  • Whether it be daily or monthly, you can customize the frequency of your scheduled reports.
• How many reports do you need?
  • You are limited to 400 scheduled email reports per user per view. 
• Who needs to see the report?
  • You can have scheduled reports emailed to more than one person at a time.

Once you’ve created or identified the report(s) you want scheduled, go ahead and open it up. Then you’ll need to:

• Click “Share.”
• In the “To” field, type the email address where the report should go. Separate multiple email addresses with commas.
• Enter a Subject Line.
• Choose the type of attachment you want to receive (CSV, TSV, TSV for Excel, Excel (XLSX), Google Sheets, or PDF.)
• Select the frequency of the report.
  • Did you select something other than “Once” for your frequency? If so, click “Advanced Options” and select the “Active for” period that you’d like.
    • Example – You can select a weekly frequency and have that report scheduled and active for 6 months, meaning you’ll get a weekly report for the next 6 months.
• If you have additional information to share you can type it into the text field in the body of the email.
• Click “Send” and you’re good to go.

We’ve got one last helpful hint in our Beginners’ Guide to Google Analytics, and that is: make sure your Analytics account is set to the correct time zone. The time zone you choose will affect the data that you collect. Your data will display in your time zone and the beginning and end of a day will be designated by the time zone.

Once you’re logged into your account, go ahead and:

• Click “Admin.”
• Click “View Settings” in the View column.
• Update “Time zone country or territory.”

It all starts with a great domain name. Get yours at Domain.com.

Putting it all together

Use our beginners’ guide to help you get started with Google Analytics in less than one day. By following this guide you’ll be able to create a Google account, install Google Analytics tracking code on your website or WordPress site, create regularly scheduled reports containing the information you need to better your site, and understand what that data means so you can act upon it.

For your website to be successful you must understand how it’s performing and identify areas of opportunity. Google Analytics, and our guide to it, will help you do just that.