As you begin learning the SEO ropes, you may feel like you’re learning a complex second language.

Don’t let that defeat you — you’ve got this, and SEO jargon doesn’t have to be a mystery. Use this glossary of SEO terminology to help orient yourself and understand the terms you need to know to succeed in search. 

Already a master of SEO lingo? Scroll down to the bottom for additional SEO resources, including a beginner’s and more advanced technical guides.

SEO Terms: A Glossary

A

Algorithm – A computer program used by search engines. This program allows them to retrieve data and deliver results for searches.

Algorithm Change – Refers to when search engines update or change the algorithms they use.

Authority – The signals search engines use to assess and “grade” sites and pages to determine rank in search engine results. 

B

Backlink – AKA inbound link. A link from another (3rd party) site to your site or one of your webpages.

Black Box – This term is used to describe Google’s esoteric programs. Google’s algorithm is a “black box” — we can observe it in action and see its effects, but can’t fully access the program itself or know everything about it. 

Black Hat SEO – Risky and ill-advised SEO tactics that Google frowns upon. These tactics are contrary to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Engaging in black hat SEO tactics can result in penalization or removal from search rankings. 

Competitor – Your competition in the market. Generally, they fall into two categories:

• Direct – they sell similar goods and services to a similar target audience.
• SEO – competitors who bid on the same keywords as you and increase competition for the same organic traffic. 

C

Crawler – The program(s) a search engine uses to crawl the web. AKA: Bot, Spider.

D

Domain – Your website’s name. It follows the ‘www.’ in the URL, and also what follows the @ symbol in an email address. For example, in ‘www.Domain.com’ the ‘Domain.com’ is the actual domain name.

G

Google – The most popular search engine. Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in September 1998. Google created a revolution in search — moving away from human-edited web directories and toward web crawling technology using an algorithm(s) to analyze and rank websites.

H

Heading – Also called H tags, they range from H1-H6. These tags designate sections of your content from the most important (H1) to the least (H6.) Heading tags, especially the H1, should always incorporate your target keywords.

Headline – An H1 tag. The most important of your headings, and should always include your keyword(s.)

Head Term – A keyword with high search volume (e.g. “email” with 1.2 million). Since head terms are popular search terms, it’s harder to rank for them. AKA: Head Keyword, Short-tail.

K

Keyword – The word or phrase you’re focusing on in your content. Keyword selection should be influenced by the terms your target audience is using in their online searches. Including keywords in your content helps search engines know what pages to surface in search results.

Keyword Research – A process of discovery. It helps you understand what keywords your audience uses in their searches and provides insight into the topics and themes most relevant to them. You also determine the keyword volume (frequency in search) and what competition exists for the term. All of this helps you determine the best keyword(s) to focus your efforts on.

Keyword Stuffing – Spam (Black hat SEO) tactic. It’s the practice of using a keyword too many times or using irrelevant keywords, in forced and unnatural ways. By doing this, spammers hope to rank higher in search results. It could result in page demotion or removal from search page rankings.

Knowledge Graph – Google’s database of knowledge. Contains data about keywords and search intent which is used to improve search results and surface relevant or related results. Displayed in a Knowledge Panel, or carousel, at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP.)

Knowledge Panel – A specific section of results in the SERP. Appears as a box at the top of the first page of Google’s search results (or right side of the page on desktop.)

L

Link – A connection between two sites or web pages that are created with HTML code. They’re integral to how sites and pages are graded by search engines and pivotal to site navigation.

Long-Tail Keyword – Multiple-word search terms. Usually highly specific. People who use long-tail keywords are known to display greater purchase intent. These keywords are less popular and it is normally easier to rank for them. E.g. “Email marketing” with 18k in search volume instead of “Email” with 1.2m in search volume.

M

Manual Action – The term Google uses to describe a penalty. This happens after a human reviewer manually reviews a site to verify whether or not it complies with Google’s Webmaster guidelines. If not, pages or sites can be demoted or entirely removed from search results.

Meta Description – The short blurb that describes what a search result is about that appears below the title and link on the SERP. It’s a tag added to the head section of an HTML document, it succinctly illustrates what the content on a webpage or site is all about. The more accurate and engaging your meta description, the better your Click Through Rate (CTR) will be. Include keywords.

O

Off-page SEO – SEO boosting activities and tactics that do not occur on your website. E.g. — brand awareness campaigns, social media marketing, offline marketing, and link building all help improve SEO without occurring on your actual website.

On-page SEO – The SEO boosting activities that occur on your website. This can include optimizing the HTML code across your site (heading tag, H tags, meta descriptions, etc.), publishing good content that targets the right audience and keyword(s), intuitive site navigation, and more.

Organic Search – AKA unpaid or natural search results. Organic search results are ranked and displayed in order of most helpful and relevant. The ranking is done in accord with search engine-specific algorithms. You do not and cannot pay for organic search result placement.

Outbound Link – Links that direct away from the domain they’re found on, these links direct visitors to other (3rd party) websites.

P

Pagerank – This algorithm measures the importance of a page based on not just the volume of links leading to it, but also the quality of those links. Google says, “Not all links are equal.”

Page Speed – How much time elapses before a webpage completely loads. This factor affects your search results ranking.

Paid Search – Search results whose position is paid for. These pay-per-click ads are marked “Ads” in Google search results and are placed above and sometimes below organic search results.

R

Rank – The placement of a specific webpage in organic search results concerning a specific query.

Ranking Factor – Ranking factors are the various things deemed important (or not) that all influence search engines’ respective algorithms. They help search engines understand where to place a webpage in search results. You can directly influence many ranking factors on your webpages and site.

S

Search Engine – Computer programs that index websites, webpages, and countless documents and files on the Internet. They make it possible for users to input queries and receive results from the search engine’s index. They’re created and updated over time using crawlers and the information and data therein are analyzed by algorithms.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The practice of optimizing a site and all of its content so that it’s highly visible and gets good placement in organic search results. Good SEO involves keyword research, understanding your audience, creating good and relevant content, and good website structure, navigation, and loading speed. A great SEO strategy addresses content and marketing, and technical elements, too.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – This page is full of the results provided by search engines after an online search is conducted. Results are sorted in order of relevance and helpfulness. SERPs normally include a list of no more than 10 links, but they can include other sections like:

• Ads
• Images
• Knowledge Panels
• Local Pack
• Shopping Results
• And more.

U

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) – This is the string of numbers and symbols located in the address bar at the top of your web browser, which includes all of the information your computer needs to find the right page, image, or document on a website. For example, “https://www.domain.com” is the URL for Domain.com.

Put these SEO terms to good use

It’s time now to build an SEO strategy that’ll help increase the visibility of your website and drive more traffic to it. As you do so, keep this glossary of SEO terms handy for use as a quick reference.

You don’t have to do it alone though. We’ve got the resources and tools you help you create that amazing SEO strategy of yours. 

SEO Resources

Check out these blog posts for more information, advice, and next steps:

A Guide to SEO Basics for Beginners

Achieving online success — whether that be launching a lucrative eCommerce business or hitting a milestone of 10k blog subscribers — is directly influenced by SEO. You can’t build a successful strategy on a shaky foundation, so start with this post if you’re new to search engine optimization. 

The Complete SEO Checklist for Blog Posts and Webpages

This helpful infographic lays out the 10 things you must have to achieve SEO perfection on your blog posts or webpages. Hang on to this one, you’ll come back to it as you create content for your site. 

For the Love of Your Business — SEO Strategies to Implement Now

When we wrote this post, we did so with your website’s best interests at heart. We consulted Mike, our resident SEO expert, and asked him for 10 elements that together, create an effective SEO strategy. Show your site how much you care about it by implementing the tactics covered here. 

SEO Audit Your Website in 2021 [Technical Guide]

Ready to level up your SEO game? This guide lays out your path. What does a website audit entail? What tools are available to you to conduct and track the audit? What should your goals be? We get into the minutiae in this post, but don’t let that deter you. Read this post, take action, and outperform your competitor in the SERPs.

How to Audit Your Online Presence in 2021

Not all SEO-boosting activities occur on your website (reference glossary above: Off-page SEO.) Not as technical as the previously mentioned resource, but just as thorough and equally as important. First, get your house in order with on-page SEO, and then, grow your off-site reputation with the strategies you learn about in this post. 

Keep this SEO Terms Glossary handy

Download this Glossary of SEO Terms to always have on-hand when you need it. 

Yet, when you find yourself staring a new year in the face, it can be tough to decide on a resolution (much less multiple resolutions.) Should this be the year you take up yoga or kickboxing? Have you been meaning to get into meditation? After 2020, we could all use some TLC.

If you’re like most of the people we’ve talked to, you’re focusing on personal health and improvement. But why stop there?

This year, why don’t you resolve to improve your website? Whether it’s for a passion project, hobby, or small business, your website could use a little TLC too. Use the following suggestions to improve your site and attract more visitors.

A New Year’s Website Checklist

1 – Contact Information

You want your customers to trust you. If they don’t, do you honestly think they’ll do business with you?

What kind of image are you projecting if you don’t provide any contact information so they can reach out to you with questions? Contact information provides security for potential customers — it lets them know that you’re available if they have any concerns.

There are many ways to include your information on your site. Consider adding it to the footer of each web page, creating a dedicated “Contact Us” page, or creating a pop-up form where people can submit questions.

2 – Security

People will be alerted if your website isn’t secure and that leads to a loss of trust. Would you feel comfortable providing your personal or financial information to a site that’s been flagged as “Not Secure”?

Websites that don’t have SSL enabled are marked as “Not Secure” across many browsers. If that’s not the first thing you want people to see when they type your domain name into their browser bar, invest in SSL.

3 – Call-to-Actions

Attention spans aren’t quite what they used to be. Instead of making site visitors guess and figure out what they need to do on your site, tell them what to do.

Want someone to sign up for your email list? Ask them via a signup form. Want them to purchase your goods? Include a “Buy Now” button with your product descriptions.

4 – Domain Name

Having the right domain name can make a world of difference for your website and your business.

Make sure your domain name is easy to understand and avoid hyphens and creative spellings. If someone were to hear your domain name on the radio and not see it written out, could they make it to your site? If your domain name doesn’t pass the “radio test” consider updating it to something better.

5 – Content

Content is essential to websites and the Internet as we know it.

If you want to sell your goods, connect with your customers, and rank higher in search engine results then your website needs content. This can include a blog, notices and updates about your business, new product listings, and more.  

What makes for good website content? We go into detail on that in this post.

6 – SEO

Don’t let the name fool you, search engine optimization isn’t about optimizing search engines at all. SEO is all about optimizing your website so that it appears higher up in search engine results.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see your site listed as the first result to a Google query versus having your site stuck on the third page of the results?

Our beginner’s guide to SEO is perfect for getting started quickly.

7 – Reliable Hosting

If your website is down you’re not doing business. It’s that simple.

Don’t settle for a mediocre website host. You can’t afford to take hosting for granted if your business depends on online transactions.

Do your research to find the best hosting package and website host for your needs.

Domain.com offers a variety of web hosting plans to fit your needs, all of which include the features seen below.

8 – Social media

How many people do you know of that aren’t on social media? Likely, very few.

Everyone is on social media these days and they’re connecting with brands and businesses through these platforms. Make sure your website includes social media buttons so that your visitors can connect with you after they’ve left your site, ensuring that you stay top of mind.

9 – Mobile Friendly

Mobile traffic has increased by 222% in the last 5 years. Mobile internet users outnumber desktop internet users, and this is something you must account for when creating and designing your website.

Good website builders offer mobile friendly website templates that you can use and modify to create your site.

10 – Internal Links

Internal linking is part of a well-developed SEO strategy, but we thought it was important enough to single out. An internal link connects one page of your domain, or website, with another page of your domain, or site.

Internal linking helps with the navigation of your website, gently pointing people to related content. It helps with your page authority and ranking power on search engines, too.

If you’ve noticed, we’ve linked other relevant blog posts and website pages throughout this article and that’s what internal linking is all about.

Make Sure Your Site is Ready for 2021

Whether you’re just starting your first website or are a website pro, Domain.com has the tools you need to get online quickly and easily.

Our AI-powered WebsiteBuilder takes the stress out of website creation — just answer a few questions and our intelligent builder starts the design for you.

Need an extra hand with getting online? Our experts are here to help you build a beautiful site from start to finish.

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.

Creating a website today is rather easy.

You have the website building toolkits, hosting services taking care of all the server management, and useful guides and walkthroughs to get things done. All of this information overflow can make your head spin. So, what should you focus on first?

Let’s look at the top 5 things you should know when starting a website this year.

5 Things to Know When Starting a Website in 2021

1. Choose Your Domain Name Wisely

According to Wikipedia, “a domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control within the Internet.”

Keep in mind that your website’s domain name is the first thing that your visitors will see. Pick something that reflects your site’s purpose, that’s easy to remember, and preferably short. If you already have a business name in place, then use that with a combination of a domain extension.

Most domain names consist of two major parts; top-level domain and the second-level domain. For example, on our website Domain.com, the “..com” is the top-level domain, and the “domain” is the second-level domain. The most popular top-level domains, according to Wikipedia, are .com, .net, .org, and .info domains.

You might find that the major top-level domains are unavailable with the second-level domain name that you desire. In this case, try to pick something else that makes sense or make creative use of another top-level domain. Instead of using a .com domain (f.e. ordervegetables.com), you can use an .online domain (f.e. ordervegetables.online).

You can find out which domain names are available for you through our domain name search.

2. Research the Best Website Layout

According to internetlivestats.com, there are over 1.5 billion websites live today. You can guess how hard it is to make your website unique and different from others. It’s also essential to have your site looking modern and up-to-date.

There are ways to build your website as user friendly and conversion oriented as possible. Color psychology, eye movement theory, and top-notch copy, among other things, are all there to assist you in creating a website in 2021. You can find many guides and applications to help you when you start building your site.

Also, make sure your webpage is accessible by the majority of devices. The easiest way to achieve this is by building your webpage in HTML5 markup language. HTML5 supports most of today’s popular devices and browsers, and there are tons of guides and step-by-step tutorials out there. From an HTML5 Periodical Table by Website Setup to a full course from Codecademy where you can Learn HTML.

Before you delve into theories and practices, you should know what your website is going to be about. In other words, what do you want to say to your visitors? What are the most important aspects of it? And what do you want them to do next?

3. SEO Matters

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is making your website relevant, authoritative, and up-to-date in the search engines’ eyes. In simple terms, SEO makes your site attract more visitors.

According to internetlivestats.com, there are over 40,000 Google searches every second. Can you imagine that? And there are more than a few popular search engines out there, although none of them as popular as Google.

There is a lot of competition around keywords that attract the most number of visitors, and nowadays, almost everybody is focusing on SEO. But, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t focus on optimizing either. At the very least, we recommend putting in the effort so that people directly looking for your brand or company can find you.

Of course, you can go further than that and add a bunch of neat tricks and tips that you can find on the Internet. You can start from Google Adwords’ built-in keyword research tool to get a sense of the keywords in your space.

Going further really depends on your budget. You can create your copy and webpages targeting specific keywords, or hire an SEO specialist to help you. However, one thing is clear; in 2021, it doesn’t hurt to know a thing or two about SEO.

4. Get a Fast and Reliable Hosting Service

It’s no secret that your webpage’s loading speed affects your visitors’ bounce rate. A study lead by Google found that if your webpage takes more than 3 seconds to load, then the bounce rate will increase over 50% compared to the loading time of under 3 seconds. That’s huge!

Apart from the speed and uptime, you should also consider different hosting options from shared hosting to dedicated servers. Your hosting choice is very dependent on your budget, potential traffic, and the planned size of your website.

Make sure that your hosting plan supports your ideas for the website; WordPress, advanced databases, root application development, or anything else.

Check out Domain.com’s Shared Hosting plans.

5. Don’t Forget the About Us and Contact Pages

Apart from your homepage, your visitors are most likely going to look at your website’s profile and ways to contact you. Even if your main page contains the same information, these pages help to create trust in your visitors. This holds especially true when you’re a company providing a service or selling goods.

However, don’t overthink it too much and keep them looking professional and on-point. There’s no need to quote the entire history of your company or list every employee’s contact information unless there’s a reason for it.  Usually, some clean copy and a call-to-action will suffice to make these pages work for you.

There are tons of guides and tips out there for building those pages, but make sure you pick out the ones that resonate with your website the most.

Ready to Build Your Website?

That’s it, the top 5 things to focus on first when starting your website. Focus on these tips first, and you’ll have a strong base for your website this year.

What else should we know when building a website in 2021? Let us know in the comments.

Author Bio

Gert is a professional copywriter and mainly works with digital marketing companies in the US and EU. You can reach him on LinkedIn.

So, are you taking advantage of that fact to get in front of your audience?

We hate to break it to you, but if you’re not, you’re at a disadvantage. 

In this post, we’ll explain how your eCommerce efforts can benefit from email marketing. We’ll provide some tips on growing and segmenting your email lists, give a few pointers on email design, and briefly discuss your email cadence.

Using Email Marketing to Support eCommerce

Are you finding that despite your best efforts you aren’t making the profits that you’d like from your website?

It’s a tough reality that many business and website owners face. And it’s understandable considering you probably don’t have a six or seven-figure marketing budget. How are you supposed to compete with the big guys?

We recommend using email marketing and adding a sign-up form on your website. According to MarketingSherpa, “More than seven in 10 (72 percent) U.S. adults indicate a preference for companies to communicate with them via email.” There’s a lot of opportunity in that number, so don’t miss out.

Why use email marketing?

Let’s consider why people are visiting your website in the first place. 

To start, they have to be interested in you, which is great. They’re visiting your site because they want to learn more about you or they want to purchase from you. By providing an email sign-up form on site you’re giving them an opportunity to stay connected with you after they leave. 

You’re also giving them an easy way to keep you top-of-mind so they can come back to your site in the future.

Oh, and did we mention that email marketing has a return of $38 for every dollar that you spend on it?

How to Use Email Marketing on Your Site

Here are two things you must do if you want to make the most of email marketing on your site.

1. Make your sign up form easily accessible.
   1. Having a sign-up form for your email list on your homepage is great. But having it available across all the pages of your website is even better. Many people arrive at websites after finding them in an online search. Oftentimes, these people aren’t taken to your home page, but land deeper within your site, like on a blog post. Don’t miss out on capturing their email addresses by only providing a sign-up form on one page of your website.
2. Communicate value.
   1. Big, blocky letters that scream, “Sign up for my list!” aren’t cutting it anymore. By providing more context and value in your call-to-action (CTA) for people to join your list, you better the chances that they’ll be interested and driven to sign up. Wouldn’t you be more inclined to sign up for a list that promised, “Discounts, deals, and insider info — for subscribers only!”?

Designing Your Emails

Take a second to think of some well-known businesses and brands, like McDonald’s or Coca-Cola. Mickey D’s golden arches and Coke’s red colors are instantly recognizable. 

If you were to get an email from one of those businesses in a blue and gold color and written in Comic Sans, would you open it? Probably not, because that doesn’t match the idea we have of those brands and you might think they’re spam emails. 

Spam emails are a huge issue that people deal with every day, and you don’t want them to think your emails are spam, too. 

To avoid that, try doing the following:

• Use a template.
  • Consistency is key. You want your subscribers to immediately recognize your emails and know who they’ve come from. Don’t change your colors, logo, and branding on each and every email as your customers won’t know what to expect and may unsubscribe from your emails thinking they’re spam.
• Pro-tip: Make sure your website name and domain name match, too! When they see your domain name in their inbox, they’ll recognize your trusted business. 

Your key takeaway should be that the more consistency you can provide for your customers the better they’ll remember you.

What should I include in my emails?

If you’re wondering what to put in your emails to drive sales, we can help with that.

Here are some ideas that you can use to help strengthen your relationship with your email subscribers so that they’ll be more invested in you and your site.

• Coupons and offers
  • Everyone loves to feel special. Let your subscribers know that they made the right decision to let you into their inbox by giving them a special discount or coupon to use on your site.
• Expertise and know-how
  • Are you the expert in your field or about what you sell? Show off those smarts! Use your email to convey interesting, valuable information about your products or services to capture your audience’s attention and inspire trust in you.
• Images
  • Use images in your emails to help convey what words can’t. If you’re selling products and talking about them in your emails then showcase a few.
• Clear CTA
  • Use buttons in your emails to provide clear, distinct call-to-actions. Want someone to purchase a product through a link in your email? Label it “Buy Now” so there’s no confusion on their part about what you’d like for them to do.

How Frequently and When Should I Email?

Some days and times are better for sending email marketing campaigns than others. However, finding the times that are best for you involves some trial and error. 

Your audience may prefer to open emails after work hours or before they start their day. If you’re using an email marketing service, you’ll have an opportunity to review your email performance and stats, and can determine when most people are opening your emails. Use this data to inform your future email campaigns. 

When it comes to email cadence, or the frequency at which you send email newsletters, there’s one rule you need to follow: Don’t inundate your subscribers. Start slow, emailing them weekly or bi-weekly and you can increase your cadence from there. 

As you change your email cadence, keep an eye on your stats and reporting. Look for patterns in the data — do people stop opening your emails when you send more often or do they mark them as spam? Those are big indicators that you need to send less frequently. 

Email Marketing and Websites Work Together to Boost eCommerce

When it comes to business, you need to be where your customers are. Meet them in their inbox and provide them with information and links back to your site. 

Email marketing helps you build a rapport with your customers (and potential customers) and can bring them back to your site to transact. 

Do you use email marketing as part of your eCommerce strategy? What does or doesn’t work for you? We’d love to know, so comment below!

●  You’ve grown so much that you’re struggling to keep up with customer demands.

●  Your growth has plateaued.

Planning for future growth is crucial for any online business. In today’s time, entrepreneurs have to be prepared to face any unexpected challenges. That’s how you become a leader and stand out in your niche.

The only hiccup here is: preparing your exponential future growth demands a lot of time and patience.

But — it’s not as difficult as you think.

Having a vision for the future and making smart decisions from day one can help you build a scalable business model that can make a significant difference in the longevity of your business.

In this article, we explore five ways you can take your online business to the next level.

How to scale your online business

1. Get your foundation right

This involves two things — your domain name and your website. These form the foundation upon which your online business stands. Your domain name is your business’s online identity. It’s the address that you communicate in presentations, on your business cards, on your banner ads, in a podcast, and more. Registering your domain name is the sign that your idea is now a business.

When registering your domain name, think about how you can make your website more brandable. This doesn’t mean you www.stuffallthekeywordsinyourdomainname.com.

It means making use of new domain extensions that are more meaningful, industry-specific, category-defining, relevant, and most importantly, keyword-rich. For example, a technology startup could opt for a .TECH domain name, an e-commerce business could go for a .STORE domain name, a creative agency could choose .SPACE. And if you’re looking for a more versatile and open name then you could go with .ONLINE or .SITE.

These domain extensions give you a domain name that’s brandable and meaningful to your business. Add a well-made, fully-functional website to this concoction and you have a strong online foundation to build and scale your business.

2. Always plan for the future

Building a business and planning go parallel to each other. That’s because planning is vital to your business whether you’re on day one or year one.

A good way to plan ahead is to start by setting realistic goals for growth. These could be yearly goals that are further broken down into smaller quarterly goals. Doing a simple exercise such as this gives you time to prepare for the coming weeks.

As you start preparing for these goals, you’ll be able to outline the resources and features that you’ll need to move to the next level. Here are some components that you can factor into your plan:

●  Possible resources that you might need.

●  Digital marketing goals.

●  Customer acquisition plan.

All these components will all come down to one key factor: budget.

3. Arrange for funding and spend wisely

A great option here would be to get featured on Shark Tank and get the necessary funding, however, that’s not an approach most online businesses can take advantage of.

Most small business entrepreneurs have one big responsibility to run and scale their business: secure the right amount of funding and collateral.

One of the options here could be bootstrapping where you either dig into your personal savings, take a loan from family members and friends, or get crowdfunding through sources such as Kickstarter.

Another way for entrepreneurs to get funding is to pitch to investors. While investors can provide great value to your business in terms of funding, valuable advice, resources; they’ll also take part ownership of your company.

Most small businesses opt for the latter, however, if you’re unsure about partnering with an investor then you could consider other options such as scholarships and grants. Many large organizations offer scholarships to startups and small businesses. These can range from $5k and up to a larger sum to help you reach the next level.

A few that you could consider include:

●  Fundbox Small Business Funding Scholarship

●  FedEx Small Business Grant Contest

●  U.S. Small Business Administration Grants

4. Study your analytics

Monitoring your business performance gives you a clear insight into the speed of your growth. Sales performance is one of the first metrics you should be studying when your objective is to scale.

●  Is your sales trend healthy?

●  How fast are your sales growing?

●  During what period do you see a spike in sales?

●  What do you attribute that growth to?

Strong sales performance is a key indicator of the overall health of your online business. If your metrics are positive and growing, then you know your business is scaling.

Other important metrics that you could consider to measure business growth are:

●  Primary platforms – which platforms are bringing in the most sales / new customers?

●  Product performance – which products or plans (in case of a service) are your top sellers? Is there an opportunity to add another feature to your product/service?

●  Lifetime Value:Cost per Acquisition (LTV:CAC) – how effective is your marketing? Can you justify the cost per customer acquisition?

Having a strong grip on your analytics will give you confidence and a competitive advantage when pitching to investors. It’ll also give you enough data to justify any expenses on updated technology or tools.

5. Determine your resources

The more you grow, the more resources you’ll need to manage your online business. These resources could be human or technological.

Here are two instances where you might want to invest in human resources.

1. If you’re looking to build a strong content marketing strategy and build a strong company blog, you may want to consider hiring an experienced SEO professional, a content manager, and a few freelancers who can write good content that can help you lead the search results.

1. If you’re looking to build your community on social media, you may want to consider hiring a professional who understands the nitty-gritty of all the social platforms. Someone who can curate engaging posts, drive engagement, and target relevant audiences on different platforms.

For technical resources, let’s explore these two examples.

1. While you could hire an agency to manage your accounts and keep track of your expenses, you could save time by getting a simple accounting software that can do all this and more.

1. As your business grows, so will your customer queries. Instead of managing a customer line that receives an overwhelming amount of calls in a day, you could install a chatbot on your website that could resolve basic customer queries 24×7.

Identifying areas where you can be more productive will help you prioritize your investments. However, once you do invest in these resources, ensure to check their performance periodically to make sure that you’re getting value for your spend.

Ready to scale your online business?

Your next step from here is to get started!

Carve out a plan and list down all the resources that you might need to scale your business.

●  Create systems and processes.

●  Look for investment and other income streams.

●  Find new clients and collaborators.

●  Have the time to step back, relax, and work on your own development.

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. 

It’s the end of September, folks. Can you believe it?

Soon, we’ll need to put out the pumpkins, draw out the broomsticks and black cats, and prepare for the holidays to come. Do you know what to expect?

It’s one thing to deck the halls with boughs of holly, but another to prepare your website and marketing plan for the holiday season. Today, we’ll explore why you need to participate in the holiday cheer, how you can plan for holiday sales, and ways to engage your site visitors and customers. 

Create a holiday marketing plan for your website

According to Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast, holiday sales are projected to “result in sales between $1,147 billion and $1,152 billion during the November-January timeframe.” Of the $1.1+ trillion dollars in holiday sales, $182-$196 billion is expected from e-commerce alone. That’s a 25%-35% increase from last year! And the Pew Research Center states that “Today, 79% of Americans say they make purchases online.” So if you’ve been dragging your feet on creating an e-commerce website, or have been putting off giving your website a festive facelift, there’s no time like the present. 

As autumn proceeds and the days get shorter and darker, people are on the hunt for the best deals and gifts to complete their holiday shopping. Let’s discuss how you can identify your goals so you can finalize your holiday marketing plan and attract these online shoppers.

Holiday goals for your website

Stop and think through your goals before making any changes to your site. What outcomes do you most want to see from your holiday campaign? Are you looking to:

• Drive new business?
• Increase repeat business?
• Focus on sales of a specific product?
• Increase site traffic?
• Something else?

It’s important to remember that you can have multiple goals as they are not mutually exclusive. Once you’ve identified what’s most important to you, you can cater your holiday marketing plan to include campaigns that support your goals.

Building your holiday marketing plan

Your plan serves as the guide to moving prospects through your marketing funnel so they become customers.

A marketing funnel represents the pivotal steps prospects take on their journey to becoming customers. Funnels are broken down into different sections. People start at the top of the funnel, drawn in by your marketing materials (like blog and social media posts), and proceed through to the last step of your funnel which represents a conversion. A conversion happens when the prospect takes the action you want them to take on your site (like making a purchase or signing up for your email list) and becomes a customer or subscriber.

Keep in mind that not everyone makes it all the way through your funnel. There are fewer and fewer people, or prospects, the deeper they go into your funnel. This is why it’s important to make sure your marketing plan is well thought out. You want to encourage as many people as possible through all the steps in your funnel. 

Know what holidays to plan for

Can you make a holiday marketing plan without knowing the key dates this season?

We didn’t think so. 

Here are some holidays to consider planning for:

• Thanksgiving — Thursday, Nov. 26, 2020
• Black Friday — Friday, Nov. 27, 2020
• Small Business Saturday — Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020
• Cyber Monday — Monday, Nov. 30, 2020
• Giving Tuesday — Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020
• Hanukkah — Thursday, Dec. 10 – Friday, Dec. 18, 2020
• Christmas — Friday, Dec. 25, 2020
• Kwanzaa — Saturday, Dec. 26, 2020 – Friday, Jan. 1, 2021
• New Years Eve — Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020
• New Years Day — Friday, Jan. 1, 2021

Drafting your holiday marketing plan

Have you stopped to think about your goals? Are they strategic and measurable?

Good.

Know what dates to plan for?

Good.

Let’s think through a holiday marketing plan together so you understand how to build your own. 

What’s your first goal? For this example, we’re going to set a goal of increasing our revenue by $10,000 this December.

Now that we’ve decided on a goal our next step in creating our plan is to determine the strategy we need to reach our goal. This strategy can actually be comprised of various different methods that can all contribute toward reaching the goal.

If we really want to increase our revenue by $10,000 then a couple of things need to happen. We should:

1. Focus on what products to highlight to drive more revenue
2. Attract more visitors to our site in hopes of converting them into customers

Marketing tactics to include in your plan

Once you know the pivotal actions you need to drive (for us, we need to increase site visitors and decide on a product to focus on to drive the additional revenue) you can figure out the tactics to do so.

Consider the following:

• Blog posts
• Social media posts
• Email marketing
• Coupons and discounts
• Contests and giveaways

But here’s the thing — just listing out your tactics isn’t going to cut it. As you think through your tactics try setting smaller goals for them, like in the following example.

Instead of saying, “I’m going to run a social media promotion offering 20% off my top-selling product to new customers” try setting a more specific goal.

This goal could look something like, “I will use a coupon code for my top-selling product to drive 200 new customer acquisitions by XX/XX/XX date.” This is called a S.M.A.R.T. goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.) Go ahead and create S.M.A.R.T goals for all the tactics you’ll use in your holiday marketing plan.

Creating your offer

Once you have your S.M.A.R.T. goals for your marketing tactics identified you can get down to the business of creating your offer(s).

It’s vital that you have a good understanding of your ideal customer and the audience that you’re looking to attract. Sure, you could run a contest where the winner receives a free weekend getaway to the Poconos, but if you sell financial planning consultations then what’s the point? You’re likely to have folks across all spectrums enter your contest and there’s no telling if the person who wins will be your ideal customer and continue a business relationship with you post-getaway.

Your offer should be relevant to your audience. So if you do sell financial planning consultations on your site, consider running a contest where the winner receives a free planning session to help get their finances under control in the new year. This offer is more relevant to the people who are in your audience.

Make your offers look good

As a professional, we’re sure you want to be taken seriously. In that case, presentation matters. Instead of writing a normal Facebook post to announce your offer, consider creating materials specifically for your offers. There are many free tools you can use like Canva. You can “use Canva’s drag-and-drop feature and professional layouts to design consistently stunning graphics.”

Don’t miss out on getting new customers by using outdated graphics when you have free options that help make your business and offers look good.

Measuring your marketing success

In order for you to understand the success of your marketing campaign, you need to implement a way to measure it.

Google Analytics is a great way to measure your website’s performance and figure out what campaigns are working and what might need to be tweaked for better performance.

You can check out our guide to Google Analytics here.

Ready for the holidays?

We bet you are.

We wish you the best of luck in creating your holiday marketing plan and running your marketing campaigns. Let us know what has worked for you and what hasn’t in the comments below. And if you have any other tips or tricks for making the most of the holiday season on your site, let us know!

Have you started making your lists and checking them twice? Nailing down who gets what, whether they’ve been naughty or nice?

You’re probably planning to spend time with family and maybe you’re this year’s host.

What does it take to be a host for the holidays? Quite a bit!

You should be able to provide food and drink and most importantly, have a place that can accommodate all the friends and family coming over to celebrate. No one wants to have Thanksgiving at Uncle Jimmy’s house where there’s standing room only (but no one has the heart to tell Uncle Jimmy.)

Why are we discussing website hosting this holiday season?

Well, website hosting is a lot like regular hosting. We’ll explain.

Your web host is the physical location where your website lives and your domain name is the address that leads to that location.

When people visit your site it’s just like people visiting your home. If they can’t all fit inside then some will end up waiting, others will leave instead of uncomfortably waiting, and they’ll have a bad overall experience.

So this holiday season, if you’re planning on running sales and offers to attract more customers, consider reviewing your hosting package first. Make sure all the extra visitors can “fit” into your site to ensure that your website doesn’t go down during this critical time.

Domain.com’s hosting packages

Here at Domain.com, we offer multiple hosting packages to make sure you have the best fit for your site. Our hosting is powerful and reliable (over 99.9% uptime!) and the plans are scalable so they can grow with you and your site traffic.

Our Basic Hosting plan is perfect for a simple website and one domain name. If you’re not expecting much traffic to your site this holiday season and don’t run an e-commerce site, this plan is a good fit for you. You’ll still receive unlimited storage, free SSL, and more.

If you have multiple sites or are planning on creating multiple sites as you grow your business then you shouldn’t settle for anything less than our Deluxe Hosting plan. This hosting plan also comes with free SSL, unlimited storage, 25 databases, and 25 FTP logins.

Are you a web pro or are your sites heavily trafficked? Our Ultra Hosting plan is the best solution for you. You’ll receive an unlimited amount of websites, storage, scalable bandwidth, free SSL, and more. Check it out on our site today.

What if I prefer WordPress hosting?

You’re in luck because we offer that, too.

You can create your site with WordPress and enjoy unparalleled speed, security, and support with Domain.com.

When you choose one of our WordPress hosting packages you’re choosing to make life easier on yourself. That’s because you can select from any of our curated selections of mobile-friendly themes, pre-installed plugins, and a customized user-friendly control panel.

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Make sure everyone has a seat at the table

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As the air gets chilly and the year draws to a close, people look to complete their holiday shopping.

How can you take advantage of the season and convince more people to purchase from your e-commerce site versus a competitor’s?

In this post, we’re going to cover 3 ways to make your site more cheerful and less bah-humbug so you can generate more sales this year.

3 ways to ready your site for the holiday season

Be a trusted resource for your site visitors.

How often have you heard someone say that the person they’re shopping for “already has everything they need” or is “impossible to shop for”?

Take the guesswork out of shopping for your customers by compiling a gift guide (or a few) for your site visitors. By doing this, you can direct them to the products that are the best fit for their needs or highlight the products that you most want to sell.

Your gift guides should be clearly titled. There should be no confusion as to whether your gift guide is best suited for someone’s grandmother or great-nephew. Make sure to use keywords and details in your product descriptions to give people enough information to make an informed decision.

And remember that appearances matter! It’s not 1997 anymore — so as much as you might want to throw together a list of goods in a Word doc then post it to your site, don’t do it. There are so many retailers clamoring for attention and sales that you need to stand out.

There are many free graphic design sites and tools that can help you craft a good-looking gift guide. Check out Canva or do a quick internet search to find the tool you like best.

Give your site a festive facelift.

When was the last time your website got a little TLC?

People don’t keep the same clothing or hairstyles forever, and there’s no time like the holidays for updating your site, too.

You don’t have to overhaul your website, but consider updating your main banner image to something better suited to the holiday season. Coca-Cola is a great example of a company that updates its look and feel for the holidays. Before the holidays last year, they updated their site to highlight a seasonal product, Coca-Cola Cinnamon, and their banner image had also been updated to support that.

If you’re thinking, “I can’t afford a photographer or new graphic designer just for this!” then we have good news. The days when you’d need to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for good photography and imagery to use on your site are long gone, so don’t let that be a concern of yours. When creating your new banner image, consider adding a highly-visible coupon code to attract holiday shoppers.

Check out this article for free image resources you can use to spruce up your site.

Be a little less Scrooge and a little more Santa

We’ve talked a lot about shopping this holiday season but that’s not entirely what it’s about. Your customers are looking to purchase gifts for the people they care for as an act of consideration and love.

Help them know that you’re on the same page by dedicating a certain percentage of your holiday sales to charity or a non-profit organization. Even a very small amount, like 1-2% of your profits this time of year, can add up to make a big difference in someone’s life.

Don’t be shy about letting your customers know that part of their purchase is going towards a good cause. It could be the differentiator you need to stand out from the crowd and convince someone to purchase from you instead of your competitor.  

Happy holidays to you and your site

The holiday season is a great time to update your site. Give your visitors what they’re looking for with gift guides, updated seasonal imagery, and another reason to feel good about themselves with a donation to charity.

Do you have other ideas for giving your website a holiday look and feel? Share them with the rest of us in the comments below.