5 of the best Google Chrome Extensions to try right now Chrome extensions serve a variety of purposes but this list will speed up & optimise your workflow. Each extension listed can either vastly speed up your workflow or serve Strict Workflow For anyone who suffers from procrastination or needs help focusing on tasks. The strict workflow time management strategy forces you to focus on your work for 25 minutes. After the 25 minutes are finished you can have 5 minutes to unwind and spend time on social media etc. The extension is pre-loaded with a list of popular distracting websites and you can add more websites or add a ‘whitelist’ of websites you’re only allowed to visit during that time period. Once the timer is started you can’t undo it without uninstalling the extension or restarting the browser. If time management and optimisation is your thing then you might …
WordPress comment spam – Why do people do it?
If you’re a new WordPress owner, you might not have set up the necessary anti-spam measures to ensure your website notifications and even more annoying – emails aren’t spammed every day with comments varying between attempting to look legitimate, to plain obvious bot spam. Why do people use bots & software for WordPress Comment Spam? When you add your comment to a website with a profile built up including your name, business URL & email address. It adds an additional backlink to your website and can be part of a successful link building strategy if done right. It should not, however, be the main source of incoming links to your website nor should you set out to leave out ‘X’ amount of comments each day as part of a strategy as Google will pick up on it and consider it spamming. The comment spam software you see is a result of …
Full Guide to: What is Content Marketing?
What is content marketing In order to understand content marketing from a business perspective, you have to understand that every potential user entering your website is a potential lead or customer. Once you understand this simple fact, you can understand why content marketing is a hugely valuable & often free method of reaching customers and converting them on your website with effective sales funnels. So what is Content Marketing? Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. Almost every service or product available in the world is there to solve a problem. As such in 2018 and for the last 20 or so years, with the introduction of the global brain hive that is the internet, people have been able to search for solutions for their …
Why is SEO important?
Why is SEO important? SEO or Search engine optimisation is vital for any size of business that wants their website to succeed online but you might be asking why? Why should I invest money in something I can’t see immediate results from? You might be saying something along the lines of… “I’ve already invested money in a website and someone runs a social media platform for me so that’ll be enough.” Well, unfortunately, it’s not if you want to grow online or make the most of the potential of your online ability. An effective SEO campaign could result in anything from an extra 5-10% of sales to tripling your business’ performance over a few years. SEO in action Let’s use the example of an organisation that has just lost an employee to maternity or another company has headhunted their employee. The work this employee did is vital to their …
Full Guide to: What is Organic Traffic?
Full Guide to: What is Organic Traffic? Industry terms can be confusing to the average business owner but when it comes to growing your online presence and brand, there are a few terms and meanings you would do well to learn. Industry Traffic terms Organic Traffic Social Traffic Referral Traffic Paid Traffic Each of these methods are used in growing your online presence. Some are more useful in circumstances than others but for this article, we’ll be focusing on what is organic traffic and how can we improve the amount your website is receiving So what is organic traffic? Organic traffic is customers/leads that have found your website naturally through a search engine such as Bing, Google or Yahoo. It’s the complete opposite of Paid traffic and the main goal of any legitimate SEO campaign is to improve the growth of organic traffic over time. Organic traffic is …
What The Heck Is Black Hat & White Hat SEO 2018
What The Heck Is Black Hat & White Hat SEO? You’ve probably heard the terms White Hat & Black Hat SEO thrown around before. You might have even had a few spammy emails in your inbox mentioning them, most business owners have a fairly poor grasp of what SEO even is, so why would you need to know about the specifics? Failing to understand the difference or worse, investing in the wrong service for the wrong business could be catastrophic for your business’ online presence, resulting in the complete loss of organic growth (free traffic) for your website after being added to Google’s dreaded blacklist. What is Blackhat SEO? ( And why you should avoid it ) Blackhat SEO is known by many terms but it was frequently used in the early years of the internet as a quick way of boosting your way up the search engines in …
Blog or website – What’s the difference?
Should I have a blog or website? Every blog is a website but not every website is a blog. You can have a website but not have a blog. Blogs are fantastic for content creation and marketing but it’s another thing to work on. Whats in a blog? Blogs are essentially electronic journals available for everyone to see (unless you make them private). The posts are categorized into sections, have authours & timestamps for easy navigation. Advantages of blogs Fantastic content marketing – according to Hubspot, websites with active blogs are 13 times more likely to see a positive ROI than those websites that do not. Increase the engagement rate of your website. Having great shareworthy content is a huge plus for your website. Users are more likely to share your content on social media or blog about it themselves. Blog consistently and often. It’ll result in your website climbing …
1.4 Billion passwords hacked in December 2017
1.4 Billion passwords hacked Over 1.4 Billion passwords were hacked across numerous websites in early December and pasted on the dark web. Hackernews confirmed this became common news after being posted on Reddit. It’s also been confirmed these passwords have been not only been verified but have been pasted into plain text for anyone to use. Wordfence has also confirmed the news and has recommended users upgrade to their premium version which includes the list of the hacked passwords in their password strength measuring test. These passwords were likely used in the brute force attacks that occurred during an odd spike in December. Am I at risk? As always, Creative Wavelength recommends you use a strong password at minimum incorporating multiple special characters & caps that you can still remember. I also recommend you change your passwords since this news & use a unique password for each website. Especially for …
Basic SEO Requirements for Success in 2019 – Updated
Basic website SEO Requirements & how to improve your ranking Domain Authority Domain authority is often overlooked or overbought into depending on what way you look at it. Cheap, quick fix SEO companies which no doubt fill your email spam boxes promising the moon and back with next day delivery, often buy in too much. Domain authority means other websites link to your website as a reference or authority in the subject area. The domain authority of the website linking to your website will also affect the ‘boost’ your website receives when linked to ie a council/government website linking to your site will provide a much larger boost than a local blogger with little traffic. Sharing the same or similar industries also plays an important role. I.e if a textile recycler linked to this website – a web design company – the benefit would be minuscule compared to if a web hosting …
How to make your website your best employee
How to make your website your best employee As business owners managing income & expenses of your business is among the fundamentals of the job. So why is it then many business owners neglect the investment of a good website which will do the job of many employees 24 hours, 7 days a week? A good website will become your best employee The answer is most go for the cheapest option or fail to ensure the right things are being implemented If you ask for a website with the average web designer you’ll get just that – a website. Basically an online brochure for your business. Most commonly I’ve seen clients come across from web designers who’ve designed them a beautiful website but left them with no idea how to edit the various sections of the website to update information, quickly leading to an out of date website as the business …