A link building strategy should therefore form part of your overall SEO strategy, in the form of backlinking. Building links to your site and to other sites will affect your search engine rankings, and drive referral traffic to your site.

Below we have some reasons why building high-quality links to other websites is crucial for your business marketing strategy.

1) You will Increase Your Website Traffic

If you build links, you are guaranteed to attract a wider customer base to your business website. Link building for SEO is able to target certain niches in your industry and attract a relevant audience from external websites.

Website traffic is one of the easiest ways to judge the success of your website, and your link building efforts will improve traffic and possibly interactions with your site.

2) You will Improve Your Search Rankings

Search engines will crawl websites looking for relevant information, and based on the information on your site, the search engine determines where you rank in the search result page.

If you want to rank higher in search results than your competitors, you should build backlinks to relevant sites, as well as internal links to other pages on your own site.

3) You can Increase Your Website Metrics and Overall SEO Scores

SEO scores are according to Page Rank, Domain Rating, Domain Authority and more. Through organic link building techniques, you will improve SEO scores as well as your website metrics.

Improved metrics means your website will be more visible. Just keep in mind that not all links are good links – nofollow links will reduce your score and bring into question the credibility of your web page.

4) Improves the Credibility of Your Website

If you have a successful link building campaign, you will rank higher on search results, which means that search engines are endorsing your site as a quality resource. This makes your business more credible and trustworthy to customers.

5) Increases your Overall Income

Simple link building strategies will drive more traffic to your site, which will allow more interaction with your site, which in turn may bring in more customers or sales. You can also use internal link building to funnel people through your website.

6) Increases your Exposure

You may already have a solid client base, but want to expand to a new audience. To do this, SEO experts like Link City and MyContentPal will recommend building links to relevant websites to reach a new audience.

If you are trying to reach a non-local audience, then link building techniques can help you attack people from a different locality, and you can enter a whole new market.

7) You will Provide Better Information

One of the main reasons to use backlinks is to provide your audience with the best information and quality content. If you incorporate link building tactics into your SEO strategy, you will provide your customers with information from relevant websites while also driving traffic from those websites to your business.

Why you should consider hiring SEO services

If you are uncertain how to get started with SEO and link building, you should employ the services of an SEO professional. Below are some reasons why you should hire an SEO expert to help you with link building.

1. A professional can almost instantly help you get a return on your investment by driving more traffic to your site, and hopefully getting more business through this increased traffic.
2. SEO can be very time consuming, especially if you are new to it. Hiring an SEO specialist will save you time as they will set up your website to make it user friendly and allow it to rank high on search engine results pages.
3. You will be able to outcompete and outrank your competitors with the help of an SEO or link building expert.
4. Good link building will help you improve your organic search rankings. SEO experts can also help you with buying links to improve your website rankings and drive more traffic to your website.

Final Thoughts

The importance of link building is undisputed, however, there are different strategies a business can use to improve its search result rankings. By including links throughout entire websites, your sites rank higher and will reach a wider audience.

If you are not certain where to start, you can hire the services of a digital marketing agency based in your area, or even remote SEO specialists, to turn your website into one of the high-quality sites that you see at the top of the search engine results.

From changes to internal communication processes to accessing servers from a remote premises, while the rise of home working throughout the pandemic may have largely been seen as a good thing, the question marks that now surround at-home cybersecurity tend to say otherwise.

This is because, according to MonsterCloud, the number of cyber-attacks has skyrocketed in recent times, with criminals now utilising many workers’ weak home-based networks to launch their attacks.

Back in May last year, for example, the FBI reported an 800% increase in reported cybercrimes – a sharp rise from only a few hundred per day to over five thousand. TechRepublic, meanwhile, reported that almost half – 46% – of global businesses had faced at least one cybersecurity threat since the start of the pandemic.

So, why has this been happening? And what exactly have the connotations been as a result? Join us as we find out.

The results of a cyber pandemic

Cyber-attacks can happen in all shapes and sizes. Ultimately though, they are defined as an attempt by hackers to damage or destroy a computer network or system.

In light of the coronavirus pandemic then – a time which has not only unleashed a number of unexpected challenges within global enterprises but also accelerated several existing ones – it’s fairly easy to see why hackers have utilised this time to their advantage.

Fundamentally, security professionals have struggled to respond as quickly to the changing work environments as cybercriminals, who have taken advantage of the unprecedented shifts in people, processes and technology over recent months.

As a result of this, a wide variety of cybersecurity experts believe that Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools will become more and more important over the coming months.

This, according to George Glass – the head of threat intelligence for Redscan – is largely due to their ability to ‘uncover malicious activity in its infancy’, by monitoring endpoints like servers and workstations, instead of ‘solely analysing file signatures’.

How cyber-attacks have taken place

One of the more alarming aspects involved in what is now being referred to as ‘the cyber pandemic’ has been the number of different ways in which attacks have happened.

As Microsoft reported last year, COVID-19 themed attacks – where cybercriminals achieve access to a system via phishing or a social engineering attack – rose to approximately 25,000 a day in America alone.

Moreover, cases of ransomware, data breaches and unemployment fraud have all been seen to skyrocket in recent months as well, with major brands like Honda, Swatch Group, and Canon among those affected earlier on in the pandemic.

Going after these major brands in this way has, therefore, shone a light on how, who and why cybercriminals are now focusing their efforts. In essence, with so many more employees working remotely nowadays, networks have become a lot more open and easier to infiltrate – in fact, over 47% of individuals are estimated to fall for phishing scams while working at home.

As such, cybercriminals can now gather large quantities of data and effectively blackmail huge companies in a new form of attack. Zohard Pinhasi – a cyber counter-terrorism expert from MonsterCloud – summarises this well.

He said: “Ransomware [has now been converted] into something called doxware – a system which says if you’re not going to pay us, we will sell your data and notify your customers that their data was compromised.”

The rise of social engineering

During one of the more high-profile and well-publicised cyberattacks of the pandemic, a 17-year-old hacker utilised a combination of traditional hacking and social engineering to bring down several celebrities, companies and politicians’ Twitter accounts, encouraging users to send Bitcoin into a certain account.

This type of attack demonstrated that not all cyber-attacks needed to be completed solely online, since the hacker in question conducted the hack by initially getting a cell phone number assigned to a new phone, before then targeting a Twitter employee working remotely.

Using a fabricated Twitter IT employee alias, the hacker was able to access sensitive information via Twitter’s remote servers and unleash the attack accordingly. This, in turn, shone a spotlight on the importance of the physical security measures used to protect remote workers, rather than a sole need for cybersecurity protection.

Final thoughts…

If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that a lot more needs to be done to limit the actions of cybercriminals – especially now that many companies are considering working remotely on a full-time basis.

The battle between security professionals and hackers is much like a cat and mouse contest, after all. In light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, however, the mouse currently looks like it’s winning – and that’s something which needs to change. Fast.

But with so many WordPress hosting providers, it can be difficult to choose the fastest and most efficient one. Here’s a guide to help you better understand hosting.

What Is a Host?

A host is an internet service that provides web space for organisations and individuals. It makes their website accessible to the World Wide Web. A host gives your website a home on the internet and stores all of its data.

There are many similar hosting services available. Most run on contracts (i.e. you pay yearly or monthly) and are renewable after the period ends. With others, you may be charged based on the traffic your website generates.

What Is WordPress Hosting?

WordPress is an open-source website creation outlet that uses PHP and MySQL database. It is an excellent platform that houses numerous websites. It offers the most powerful Content Management System (CMS) for website owners and is easily accessible. Blogs, e-commerce websites, and business websites are just some examples of the sites built on WordPress.

WordPress mainly fills in for coding when building a functional website. It has a basic free service and various paid ones aimed at businesses. WordPress hosting is a type of hosting specifically made to host WordPress websites. Some, but not all, general hosting providers issue WordPress hosting services. In hosting your data and ensuring stable performance of many other functions, WordPress hosting is vital.

Why Does WordPress Hosting Speed Matter?

Your traffic depends on various factors, and one of them is your website’s speed. Why should you have a good WordPress hosting provider? And why should you spend so much on ensuring that your WordPress hosting provider is up to standards? One of the core reasons is that fast WordPress hosting will enable you to coordinate and improve your content with ease.

A fast host makes your users feel relaxed when accessing your site. They can quickly go in, get the information they need, and leave. They get to establish a relationship with the site by responding to its content.

On the other hand, a slow host is a liability. It slows down the loading time for the user as well as the admin panel. It makes the site harder to reach and will scare away potential users.

How to Know If Your Web Hosting Server Is Fast

How can you tell if your website is running at the right speed? Here are two signs that your web hosting server is slow:

• Higher Time to First Byte (TTFB): A good website should not have a TTFB higher than 0.5 seconds. Some websites run at 0.1 TTFB. A higher TTFB is a bad sign.

• Distributed Web Page Components: You must pay attention to your website’s components when it is loading. It can reveal if your server is having issues. If this is the case, you’ll notice that it takes time to load and displays ‘error’ whenever you’re accessing a webpage that has already been cached by users.

How do you check if your web hosting server is fast? Follow the steps below.

There are a lot of tools online that can be used to check a site’s speed. Find one of these websites and input your website’s URL into it. Ensure that the URL you enter has the right server type, whether it’s an https or an Http.

Log in if necessary and choose which of the test options you’ll be using.

Confirm the information and start the test. It will load for a few seconds, calculate the time, and then give you answers for Duration (msec), Monitoring Time (GMT), Error Description, Status, and Error Code.

A Guide to the Fastest WordPress Hosting Services

Kinsta

Kinsta is one of the fastest WordPress hosting providers available. It hosts WordPress sites with Google’s cloud platform. It is well known for its celestial services. It has an excellent hosting dashboard and plenty of valuable elements. They include:

• Automated daily backups
• Simple staging sites
• Single-click installation and a free SSL certificate
• Excellent value-added features such as free CDN and premium services for DNS.

Kinsta’s basic plan costs about $30 monthly and offers vast hosting management. It’s suitable for up to 20,000 visits.

WPowl

As a WordPress user, you probably know how important speed is to successful website performance. Simply slowing down your site and offering a sub-par experience when compared to your competitors can be enough to turn away visitors and lose traffic. Try Wpowl if you’re looking for speed and performance for your WordPress site.

Many factors influence the speed of your site. WPowl WordPress hosting plans have been engineered to provide the absolute fastest performance and are backed by a state-of-the-art network.

The host optimizes every detail of the entire WordPress hosting experience, from database caching to HTML minification, from security protection to server clustering. Their Solo and Solo+ plans are for individuals or small teams, and each plan includes a free SSL certificate to keep you secure.

• Cache-control
• Free SSL
• One-click site migration
• Offsite backups
• Php version selector

WPowl are obsessed with speed. They promise that’s why they do what they do “because for us, in the end, it’s not just about making websites faster – it’s a philosophy that dictates how we live our lives.” So with WPowl, you can trust that your sites will never slow down.

WPowl’s WordPress Hosting plans start at £19.99 monthly with 100% Uptime SLA and up to 80GB disk space.

Feature Comparison

Bluehost

Bluehost is regarded as one of the best host management services. It has been around for a long time. It is fast and comes at an affordable price. They provide 24/7 support to their clients via phone and live chat. You can find their contact information and live chat form on the site.

Bluehost encompasses everything you need in a web host. Among its amazing features is an SEO tool that helps track your website’s ranking on a particular phrase or keyword.

They also offer you suggestions on how you can optimise your site for relevant search rankings, and their hosting services provide advice on how to support your business growth.

Dreamhost

Dreamhost is one of the most affordable web hosts out there. Instead of using the standard cPanel other hosts use, they provide a full custom control panel to organise your site. The method is spontaneous and user-friendly. Despite being easy to migrate in, it is, unfortunately, difficult to migrate out.

Apart from managing your website, Dreamhost also provides a free plugin that enhances the growth of your site. It offers an affordable VPS upgrade and cloud hosting service as well as a great feature called ‘Dreampress’.

Their pricing method is convenient and transparent. It includes a 97-day money-back guarantee.

• The free trial period is 97 days.
• Shared hosting is $2.59 per month.
• Dreampress plan starts at $3 per month.
• VPS plans start at $10 per month.

Dreamhost is a convenient and affordable hosting service.

Flywheel

It is a relatively prominent host management service. It is used mainly by freelancers, creatives, and agencies. Flywheel has comfortable and valuable features for those who build websites for clients. They also use the Google cloud platform to operate their site. Their excellent features include staging sites, automatic backups, free SSL certificates, and much more.

Apart from the basic plans, there is also a premium plan that offers the fastest hosting features. It comes with update management, malware monitoring, and free SSL certificates.

It also gives added advantages to developers with the praesidium N-tier layout. The layout operates in its own loading time. However, it has limited visitation that can handle only 10,000 visits.

Below are Flywheel’s list of plans:

• Flywheel’s plan starting at $14 per month
• Pressidium plan starting at $29.99 per month

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is one of the fastest shared WordPress hosting services. There is virtually no downtime for all its plans, and it is easy to migrate from any hosting site. For maximum speed, A2 Hosting is the best plug for your website.

WP Engine

This is a popular Managed WordPress hosting. At an affordable price, it provides excellent services. Since it is a fully managed WordPress hosting service, its price is higher than that of most Shared WordPress hosting services.

The lowest price for WP Engine’s plan is $30 per month with up to 25,000 visitors per month. The website loads very quickly. Furthermore, maintenance support is fully guaranteed.

If you’re looking for a web hosting service that offers the fastest WordPress hosting, then WP Engine is a strong candidate.

Others Factors to Consider When Choosing a WordPress Hosting Server

Below are some factors to take into account when choosing a WordPress hosting provider:

• Budget: Assess whether your budget fits to what the provider offers. It is important to make sure you will be able to afford the subsequent payments following the initial one.

• Speed of Operation: How fast does the support team react when you need help? How well do they treat users, and what plans are in place? You never know when you’re going to need help.

• Monthly Downtime: Downtime will derail your website. Therefore, it’s advisable to check the reviews and compare hosting services to identify which will be the most reliable.

• Server Location: People usually forget about it, but location is an essential factor. Make sure you select a web host that is close to your audience’s geographical area. If you do this, your audience will enjoy a fast web server.Sometimes, you may find cheaper web host services with a central location. Choosing this option will affect your audience. Always remember that your audience comes first.

Make sure you thoroughly investigate and compare all web hosts. This way you will know the amount of traffic the host can handle. You can get the information from the web host’s support or online platforms. Here is a list of different hosts you can use.

Types of WordPress Hosting

The most basic WordPress hosting platform can be divided into two categories: managed WordPress hosting and shared WordPress hosting. Each of these has different uses and advantages which are explained below.

Shared WordPress Hosting

This type of WordPress hosting is the cheaper of the two. With this service, you share the host server with up to 5 sites. It is still WordPress optimised, and it has a one-click WordPress installer. In some cases, you may have to pre-install the WordPress application before use.

Irrespective of the features, you will have to share them with all of the other websites on the server. For this reason, you may all decide to share the bills and maintenance costs.

Shared WordPress hosts generally have significant reductions on your first billing plan. After that, the prices will rise back to the usual level. You may pay as low as $3-$4 on your first month, but in subsequent months you can expect to pay up to $7-$10. You can also opt for more complex and expensive packages.

When using a shared WordPress hosting provider, ensure your WordPress site is updated. It will allow you to fully utilise the features. Security will also be guaranteed. Some, but not all, WordPress hosts will directly upgrade your WordPress software and even update your plugins and themes. Others may also offer specific WordPress features.

Managed WordPress Hosting

This option is a fully managed hosting service. With this type of hosting, you have all the features of the server to yourself. Though it is more expensive than shared WordPress hosting, it comes with added advantages. These include:

• Speed: Managed WordPress hosting has reasonable hardware specifications that promote the speed of the server.

• Safety: Managed WordPress hosting offers certain firewalls designed for WordPress. Security features include constant malware scans and intrusion detection. They will protect your WordPress site from security hazards.

• Better Caching: Configuration and upgrading of cache will improve your website’s growth. You are expected to install a plugin to deal with it, but managed WordPress hosts provide you with satisfactory caching. You won’t have to lift a finger!

Hosts like SiteGround, Flywheel, and a few others are the least expensive of the managed WordPress hosting services. For others, you will have to pay up to $25 per month.

Which Should I Choose? Shared or Managed WordPress Hosting?

If you are inexperienced in matters relating to WordPress, you will most likely want to choose shared WordPress hosting. But for a fast-growing site, managed WordPress hosting is more suitable.

Money will inevitably be a determining factor in your choice. It is important to assess how much you have at the moment, how much you can afford subsequently, and how much you’re willing to pay for WordPress hosting.

Although it is a more expensive option, managed WordPress is ultimately better. It makes everything easier for you while providing high-standard security and excellent speed. However, in the long run, it is better to choose what works best for you.

Why Do People Use WordPress?

There are many other content management systems with their own hosting providers, but WordPress is one of the most popular around, with millions of worldwide users. Here are some of the reasons why:

Simplicity and Reliability

Managing a website can be challenging when you do not have the required knowledge. However, if you use WordPress, the process becomes easier. WordPress provides a reliable host for your website. The sheer amount of worldwide users should be enough to convince you!

With one-third of worldwide website owners opting for WordPress, it is a safe platform for your website. WordPress is simple to understand, straightforward, and user-friendly.

Great Support Community

As the number of WordPress users increases across the globe, more and more technical problem-solving tools become available on the platform. If a user has a problem or issues with their website or when operating WordPress, there are likely answers available. You can also join a community of other WordPress users online who are more than willing to help.

WordPress provides an easy way for you to outsource your website maintenance or design. With WordPress, you can assign professional roles like editors, writers, or bloggers who will help with content management. This won’t interfere with your role as key administrator. More importantly, the WordPress support team provides direct support to its users.

SEO-friendly

WordPress makes it easy for your site to optimise its content. It has a WordPress SEO plugin that will help you with text on your site. The platform also provides a nice bonus — a free version of the plugin that allows you to trial its features before upgrading to the premium version.

The premium version of the plugin has a number of advantages that include access to additional keywords, phrases, and relevant terms. Also, it automatically regulates some of the crucial pages and sends you a notification when it’s due for an upgrade. You can also get internal link suggestions and content insight, among many other benefits.

Flexibility

WordPress can be whatever you want it to be. Whether you choose to stick to the basics or make use of the complex features, you will find WordPress useful. The flexibility depends on the level of technical knowledge of the user.

Because of this flexibility, WordPress is accessible to beginners as well as developers. It all depends on the features you want to include and the amount of knowledge you have. WordPress can be used to publish blogs and business websites.

WordPress also allows you to add widgets and install third-party applications or plugins. Third-party plugins can be used to maximise some of the features.

Security

Generally, WordPress is safe and secure. But that doesn’t guarantee you a virus-free website; hackers and intruders are everywhere. WordPress allows you to maintain your website’s security with password protection for file contents and other similar features.

For maximum security, it is advisable to keep your WordPress version up to date. This way, it will be protected from bugs and security hazards. Installing a WordPress backup plugin and similar security plugins is a proactive method in fighting off hazards. In the case of a security breach, it makes it easy to restore your website.

Easy Content Creation

Creating content on WordPress sites is easy and less demanding than on other services. All you have to do after creating your WordPress site is to go to your dashboard and select “post” in the menu.

After you click on a post, it will bring you to a page that includes everything you need (texts editors, formatting tools, media files, and other technical tools) where you will then publish your content.

Once you’ve input your content inside the text box and have made the necessary edits, scroll down the page and click “publish”. In just one click, you’ve published your first piece of content! If you notice there is an error after publishing your content, you can search for the post and click “edit post”. After you’ve made the correction, click “update”, and your content will be changed!

Optimised for Speed

The beauty of a quality website is its ability to load quickly. WordPress provides special features that can increase the speed of your website and enhance user experience. It will also decrease the bounce rate and increase your WordPress conversion.

Affordable Pricing

The basic version of WordPress is free and it includes a number of useful features. However, if you want to explore more complex features, you will have to upgrade to the paid version.

What Are WordPress Hosting Requirements?

WordPress requires a simple language and is compatible with many web hosting services.

The requirements for WordPress hosting include:

• PHP version 7 or greater

• MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.1 or greater

• HTTPS support (SSL)

With WordPress being a common option among website users, most promising web hosting services come with simple 1-click installation alternatives for WordPress. All WordPress hosting services that we have listed in this manual provide extensive assistance for operating a WordPress site.

Why Do I Need WordPress Hosting Services for My Website?

WordPress hosting improves your website’s performance levels. Since it only hosts WordPress sites, you can optimise the server to allow advanced caching. This boosts your website’s speed to the highest possible level. Optimising your website’s speed can significantly affect your SEO results and boost your rankings on Google’s search pages, thereby increasing your visibility.

Updating your digital home is a crucial part of running and maintaining a successful website. WordPress hosting offers automated updates, guaranteeing security and giving you peace of mind concerning the data on your website.

In addition, WordPress hosting saves you valuable effort and time by helping you manage basic website optimisation, which means you don’t need to depend on a barrage of plugins to get it done.

Even though plugins aren’t difficult to use, it’s advisable to reduce their amount to get better performance. Make sure the hosting provider thoroughly checks that they are completely secure and high-quality.

Besides taking these precautions, hosting on WordPress gets you free and automated backups if you lose files or data on your website. This way, you can restore your site to previous versions and recover any missing information. Its ease of use and stress-free features make hosting on WordPress the ideal choice compared to hosting package alternatives.

How Can I Start Hosting With WordPress?

Decided to start hosting your website on WordPress? Luckily for you, it’s a simple process that needs no advanced tools, technical expertise, or brow-raising budget.

1. Choose your domain name. A domain is the specific web address people use to locate your website. For instance, it could be grouphugs.com or grapefruitbandits.com. You can buy a domain name from web hosting companies or domain registrars; fortunately, many companies offer both services. Having your hosting account and domain registration in the same place makes it easier to manage your online visibility.
2. Buy web hosting. To transmit your site’s files and data to people who visit your domain name, you will need web server access through a web host. A hosting provider offers a wide range of packages depending on the website you want to build and its specific operational requirements. If you need a quality hosting account for your site, you’re in the right place.
3. Download WordPress. WordPress comes equipped with a hosting plan. Yes, you can take a load off; there’s no strenuous effort required. If you want to use shared hosting, you have the option of pre-installing WordPress when you register.
4. Add site themes and features that relate to your brand. Use an attractive theme on your website and several plugins for additional features. It’s advisable to use a simple design; you can add more features with time.
5. Kick-off your content creation. Create engaging content on web pages and blog posts on your site. Engaging content helps you attract your target audience.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can beginners use WordPress?

WordPress is a well-known brand. It is a popular topic in web creation conversations, no matter the industry. It isn’t surprising since WordPress is responsible for powering over 30% of the world wide web, covering a considerable bulk of cyberspace.

WordPress is an excellent option for newbies, and it offers scalability and premium features for experienced site owners who want to upgrade or expand their reach. WordPress provides DIY usability with dynamic functions, creating fertile ground to help you build a distinctive and high-performance site. It offers extra incentives such as easy customising, open-source features, and a well-informed, wide-ranging online community to partner with and get help in difficult situations.

In addition, using the WordPress hosting platform costs nothing and doesn’t take up much of your time.

Does running WordPress require WordPress hosting?

No, it doesn’t. The minimum requirements for WordPress are easy to match. Running WordPress requires a 5.0.15 version of MySQL or better and a 5.2.4 PHP version or better. In layman’s terms, this implies that each host must be able to handle WordPress.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean all hosts are the same when operating WordPress. If you want to achieve more than simply hosting a WordPress website, then WordPress hosting can give you better performance running WordPress.

Does WordPress work better compared to traditional site builders?

The major difference between site builders and WordPress is that a site builder isn’t a CMS (Content Management System). WordPress is an easy-to-grasp, interactive interface that makes it easy to remove and add chunks of content to your site. It is the best choice for web beginners looking to share their ideas with the world as quickly as possible.

WordPress offers its users tons of creative flexibility through its extensive range of themes, plugins, and advanced customisation features. It has a steep learning curve, offering users near limitless options. You will be surprised to realise the amazing creations and accomplishments available to you once you familiarise yourself with the system.

Do I need coding experience to build my site with WordPress?

No, you don’t. One of the major benefits of using WordPress is that it is quite easy to use. As a matter of fact, the main purpose of a CMS is to make it easy for any individual within an organisation to learn the fundamentals of uploading fresh content to the site.

In addition to simple installation and setup, newbies can enjoy easy page creation; they can upload blog posts without prior expertise in web design or coding. WordPress comes equipped with a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editing system, making it as easy as Google Docs or Microsoft Word. You can also install several visual editors as third-party plugins to get the desired result.

Nevertheless, learning coding gives you an added advantage, particularly if you plan to create your plugins and themes from scratch. However, it’s not a prerequisite, and you’ll likely find a suitable look and function with the existing plugins.

The interface allows you customise features without programming knowledge, which makes it a popular choice. It will be difficult to find a more versatile or powerful CMS that doesn’t compromise on its user-friendly interface.

What differentiates hosting WordPress sites from hosting other websites?

WordPress is an excellent choice for site owners who prioritise interfaces that are easy to use and customise. You don’t need to be an expert to use WordPress.

Which hosting type is the best for my website?

WordPress is the ideal choice for your website if:

• WordPress serves as your CMS. However, WordPress hosting doesn’t work alongside other content management systems.
• You plan to operate an online store or a medium-sized site. WordPress hosting reduces downtime and provides considerable speed for websites. It’s a good fit for business, e-commerce, and intranet sites.
• You plan to handle web content, but not server security. Alongside offering automated updates, backups, and improving your server security, WordPress takes responsibility for managing server details, allowing you to dedicate more time to content creation.

How do I use WordPress without buying hosting?

It’s possible to learn to use WordPress without having to purchase domain and hosting. You will need to install the Bitnami WordPress Stack software, which is totally free. Then you need an internet connection to install the plugins and themes.

Do Web designers use WordPress?

A large number of web development professionals use WordPress in their work. WordPress dominates the world wide web with its 28.9% share, which has made it possible for developers to remain in demand for over a decade now. WordPress is popular for its easy access and CMS capacity.

How Much Does a WordPress Site Cost?

Let’s estimate. What does it cost to set up your WordPress website? There is no definite answer, but WordPress is budget-friendly regardless of your preferred route. WordPress is available for modification by all users.

You must register your domain name and get web hosting before you can have a fully operational website. When you’re prepared to modify your website, you can take advantage of the WordPress directory’s free plugins and themes. The cost will increase if you choose premium plugins or themes.

With this information in your hands, you can determine the specifics of what you need from WordPress, the extra features you want, and a plan that matches your budget. Building a successful website shouldn’t mean breaking the bank.

In this post, we will highlight the  5 key reasons why video is crucial to your marketing strategy.

Why video?

Video is an engaging content format that not only gives us real-life pictures of course when the video production is excellent, but is also easy to share across several platforms. London consumers love it because it is engaging and easy to digest, and marketers like it because it can give a massive return on investment via many channels. Video is also easily accessible to anyone who has internet access.

Search Engine Optimization. (SEO)

Search engines love videos because they view them as high-quality content. Because of this, using videos in various content types as well as on your main web pages can work wonders for your SEO, as long as the videos are correctly optimized as well. This means incorporating a solid Meta description, a strong title and the right keywords.

Stats Prove that Local Businesses Need Video

97% of marketers claim that videos help consumers understand products more.

Nowadays, marketers are no longer taking a direct selling approach, and the reason? There is simply too much choice out there. Businesses and consumers simply don’t want to be sold to directly anymore; instead, most of them are doing an internet search to find out the best product or service in their area or even globally before they go ahead and take action.

Marketers and businesses in all fields need to approach their audiences with value-based offers instead of just a sale. Videos excel at giving consumers a real up-close and personal look at a product or service.

Staying competitive in a crowded industry

81% of business are now using video for marketing.

Videos are an excellent way in getting all sorts of messages out there, and if you think in terms of practicality, unique and short videos can make a world of difference when it comes to educating people about the benefits of a particular product. By using unique types of media and storytelling, you can catch people’s attention and retain it while they are actually entertained.

Depending on how a video matches your product or service, you may want to use an illustrated explainer or animated video to help you stand out from the crowd.

Boosting conversions

Most people who get an opportunity to see a product in action through an explainer are more likely to buy it. The landing pages are also a great place to upload videos to – supposedly boosting the conversion rates by up to 80%. Just make sure to keep the autoplay feature off so as not to scare the customers with loud noises.

Video is also a great way to boost conversions on websites because they keep people around for long enough to scroll through the site. This is particularly true for those people who don’t like reading a lot. People watching a video supposedly stick around for some three whole minutes longer if there is a video on a web page. At Coolbox, we are particularly good at producing attention seeking and conversion boosting video using our expert production techniques and experience.

Getting personal

Ever wanted to market your business through Instagram stories or Facebook Live? If you would like to market your products in social media, particularly in competitive areas like Brighton or  London, you’ll need to learn how to make basic videos and edit them for social media.

Snapchat and Instagram stories are both excellent ways for offering people intimate glimpses of what you are up to, and are a great platform for creative tools. And these videos disappear after 24 hours. Therefore they have a more real-time feel and allows you to create new videos.

Conclusion

Video is not only fun to watch, but it is one of the best ways to get up close and personal with your potential customers and give them a real glimpse of what you and your business are doing. The key here is to think beyond your products and profits, show them your philosophy or share some important information. The more they know about your commendable practices, the more they are likely to stick around.

To help boost your business, at Coolbox, we are more than willing to taking you through the steps of growing your business through video marketing.

The Relationship Between E-Commerce And SEO

SEO or search engine optimisation and e-commerce are closely related and both need to be managed carefully in order to reap the maximum benefits from your marketing strategy. Multi channel ecommerce has proven to be a very successful method for boosting your sales and turnover. The biggest advantage of using multi-channel e-commerce is the fact that your products and services will be visible on more than one platform, thus reaching the eyes of more consumers and potential customers.

Search engine optimisation is another important consideration because it makes it easier for search engines to find your website and online store. Using more than one platform to sell your products not only increases visibility, according to numerous surveys and research projects, customers perceive businesses with multiple retail platforms as more trustworthy than others. Since the digital market is very crowded, customer trust can prove to be a valuable asset and it can help your company to further boost sales.

What Exactly Is Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO is a process whereby your website is optimised to ensure that it ranks amongst the top search results. Most consumers navigate to one of the first three websites that appear when they search for a specific keyword, the aim of the SEO process is to make sure that your company’s name appears amongst those top results so that consumers visit your website instead of someone else’s. SEO can prove to be a tricky process and it might be advisable to rope in the services of a professional SEO consultant to help your company to maintain consistently good search results.

The algorithms employed by search engines differ from platform to platform and it is, therefore, important to use the appropriate strategy for the platform that you are targeting. Multi-channel e-commerce often requires numerous SEO profiles to be successful and a professional SEO consultant will be able to assist you in setting up the correct keyword profiles for each platform in order to maximise your conversion ratios.

Multi-Channel E-Commerce

Getting started with multi-channel e-commerce may seem like a daunting task at first glance but e-commerce platforms like Shopify make it easy. Managing multiple retail channels is much easier when you use an e-commerce platform that offers one central admin panel. These platforms can be integrated into your existing digital infrastructure easily and it is well worth considering using them to increase your online presence.

According to a report by StatCounter, 54 percent of total web traffic comes from mobile devices, so the only way a business can expect to grow online is to take a mobile-first approach in all of their efforts.

Having a mobile-friendly website is a given, but that’s just a bare minimum – if you want to provide the best experience for your mobile prospects, a mobile app is the best approach for giving a personalized experience and providing customized features that allow you to separate yourself from the competition.

But even if you take the time to develop an app, how can you get your customers to use it?

Well, luckily, there are methods that you can use to get your mobile app ranked on the SERPs and become the go-to option in your market.

To help you get started, here are a few of the most important things you must know if you want your app to quickly climb the search engine results pages and become visible to thousands of potential users.

Choose the Right Keywords

No matter how much effort you put in towards app development for your business, it won’t matter if you can’t get your app in front of your target audience with the help of SEO.

And the first step of the process is identifying the keywords that your ideal prospects are likely to type in when looking for solutions – once you know where your audience hangs out, it will be much easier to come up with a strategy to get in front of them.

Although broad keywords may seem appealing because of the sheer volume in queries, they are not a feasible strategy for getting your app users because those keywords tend to be hyper-competitive and are usually dominated by companies that have six-figure budgets.

However, just because you can’t target the most competitive keywords, doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways that you can still become visible to the very best customers in your market.

Instead of trying to reach everyone at once, you should try to be as specific as possible and look to get in front pockets of people that are looking for specific features that your app can offer.

This way you will not only be able to find keywords with little to no competition but will also have a much higher chance of converting those site visitors into app users because you’ll be able to answer their query with a useful solution.

There are plenty of SEO tools that allow you to search for and identify keywords that have the most potential, as well as help you come up with different keyword combinations to get you the biggest reach possible.

Once you know the keywords that you want to target, make sure you focus your app pages around them – you might even consider adding the most powerful keywords into your app’s name to make the connection even stronger.

Use other keywords in the Google Play Store’s long and short descriptions because these do get indexed and can help your app show up high in the results.

Build Backlinks by Monitoring Your Competition

As you might expect, backlinks play an integral role in getting your app ranked high on the SERPs.

Even though Google and other search engines take into account numerous factors when deciding its rankings, quality backlinks will always be something that you need to have to get close to the top of the results pages.

That’s because backlinks are one of the best positive SEO signals that show the search engines that the content on that page is relevant and valuable, so it needs to be displayed more prominently.

But how can start getting backlinks to your app page?

Well, one of the most effective methods for climbing the rankings of your target keywords is to perform a competitive analysis and see who’s already ranking at the top, analyzing their backlinks to check if there are opportunities for you as well.

You need to monitor the competition and find out where they are getting their backlinks from – this will not only provide you insights about the places that typically post links to apps similar to yours, but also give you a better understanding of what kinds of links Google values the most.

We already covered the first step of the process, which is identifying the keywords that you want to rank for. Once you know them, you can start looking at the backlinks of the top pages using one of the many backlink checking tools online.

After that, the process is pretty simple – you need to go through each backlink and figure out how they might have gotten it.

Here are some of the most common backlinks that you are likely to find:

• A blog comment left under an article or page. In this case, you should simply post a comment yourself, but make sure that it actually contributes to the discussion instead of just spamming.
• A post on a forum. This one’s also relatively easy to duplicate, as you can just need to register on the forum yourself and contribute to the discussion while sharing your own link.
• A guest post on a blog. If it’s a guest post, getting a backlink will require the most work – you’ll need to get in touch with the website owner and pitch your guest post idea. The good news is that if they’ve accepted a guest post in the past, they’re more likely to be willing to do so for you as well.

While the process may seem complicated, with time, you will find that it’s possible to accumulate an impressive number of keywords which will help you rise to the top of the rankings, especially if you take the time to find keywords with lower competition.

Positive Ratings and Reviews Are a Must

If you’ve ever searched for an app yourself, you probably noticed that most of the top results usually have an excellent rating.

That’s not a coincidence – customer reviews are one of the most critical ways that both users and search engines measure the quality and relevance of an app, so if you want to have any chance of becoming visible, you need to make sure that your app can deliver the promised results and get positive ratings consistently.

Although one or even ten reviews can be subjective, if you can get hundreds of positive reviews from your users, that will send a strong signal to the search engines that your app can be trusted and should be placed higher in the SERPs.

Once you start to get more reviews, the process will become easier – as your app becomes more visible, more users will use it and so you’ll have an easier time accumulating even more positive reviews.

Finally, the reviews themselves can be a powerful SEO tool, too – as your users leave more reviews, Google will take into account the common keywords that they use and start ranking you for them in the app store and on the search engines.

Since reviews are so important, you need to ensure that you get as many of them as possible, so don’t be shy about encouraging and reminding your users that they should leave a review if they enjoy using your app; most satisfied users will be glad to do so.

In the beginning, when you don’t have many users yet, it makes sense to promote your mobile app on Application Product Listing Websites that have millions of users who love to try out new apps.

Listing your app won’t take much time, and it can help get the ball rolling and help you gain traction that you can build on later.

Author’s Bio:

David Henzel – Serial Entrepreneur

David is a serial entrepreneur on a mission to rid the world of bad customer experiences. He’s also the founder of LTVplusHQ, TaskDrive and MaxCDN.

At face value, content marketing seems like a piece of cake, doesn’t it? All you need to is write a couple of blog posts, add a few more pages to your website, and you’re good to go, right?

Wrong.

As a matter of fact, content marketing is much more comprehensive than it initially appears. It involves a multitude of factors, such as your keyword research, the buyer personas you’re targeting, an innovative and creative approach, and your ability to write.

The most significant factor, though? Ensuring your content trumps your competition’s. With brands now competing with each other on a global scale, it’s as tough as ever to break the clutter and establish a name for yourself.

However, despite all this, content creation is at an all-time high and that’s because more and more businesses realize the importance of an effective content marketing strategy. So, without further delay, here are five reasons content marketing is crucial to your marketing strategy:

Increased Traffic and Organic Visibility (SEO)

Content marketing and SEO are two peas in a pod; one simply cannot work without the other. Your content helps build visibility on search engines in multiple ways, directly and indirectly. It does the former by appearing for long tail searches and the latter by boosting the primary category, and service and product level pages with information regarding niche topics.

More and more websites today are getting organic traffic from content-oriented pages instead of other pages like the homepage and category and service pages. This increase in organic traffic allows brands to make themselves available to a wide array of new customers and cater to their needs by providing information.

By answering their questions and acting as a knowledge base, even during the early stages of the buying process, you can attain higher traffic and a higher rate of conversions, too.

Build Brand Awareness

Creating a name for your brand isn’t an easy feat. It’s an ongoing task that requires a huge investment in terms of effort, time, and, especially, money. Compared to other methods though, content marketing has proven to be a cost-effective way of building brand awareness to new members of your target market. SEO expert Corey Batt from ClickBurst believes that content is the most important ranking factor, above even links and keywords.

For instance, let’s suppose you’ve developed a simple buying guide. Its creation doesn’t require a lot from your end, but it serves as the first potential touchpoint a potential customer has with your business. This content marketing piece answers questions for the customer and helps build a long-term relationship.

As another content marketing example, you could create an engaging video that creates ripples on various social media platforms. A viral video helps separate you from your competitors and adds personality to your brand.

Brand awareness isn’t something that can be expressed in quantitative terms, which makes it difficult to achieve. However, the main aspect of marketing involves exposing your brand to new people and an innovative content marketing strategy can help you do that.

Targets Users At Different Buying Stages

When you create a website, you think about the different pages that can be used to target customers at different stages of the buying process. However, unlike service, product, and category pages, content marketing can be used to target customers at all stages of the buying process, whether it’s the initial awareness stage or the conversion stage.

Content marketing can help to prevent your customers from leaving your site. If consumers decide to leave your site and to buy your products in a bricks and mortar store, this makes the job of measuring the ROI on your paid and organic marketing channels all the more difficult; even if you use a POS card reader.

When planned carefully, content marketing can serve multiple functions, including catering to different needs, conveying different messages, and assisting users to transition from one stage to the next.

For instance, a simple buying guide can serve as a powerful content tool for potential customers in the consideration phase and nurture them through to the conversion face by eliminating any informational questions they may have that prevent them from making a decision.

Establishes Trust

Online reviews have become extremely important today. 92 percent of customers read online reviews today, and 68 percent of customers say online reviews make them trust a business more.

So, why our reviews so important? Well, simply put, it reassures customers that they’re getting their money’s worth of products and services. User-generated content, such as online reviews, helps meet that need.  Jane Wardle the chief editor and reviewer at financial comparison website Lendingexpert.co.uk comment that provider reviews have played a major part in their business strategy over the past 12 months. She goes on to comment that reviews allow our visitors to see comments and feedback from our customers, and as a business, we get real feedback which can help us to improve and see which areas we are going well.

Content is a great way to display a brand’s integrity and establish trust with your target audience. With such importance, it’s no surprise why content marketing helps drive sales. By reassuring customers that you’re reliable, you can set yourself apart from your competitors.

• You can incorporate this in your content marketing strategy in different ways:
• Invite a guest contributor to add their own content to your website or blog
• Ask satisfied customers to leave reviews on sites, such as Foursquare and Yelp
• Work with a blogger or influencer to endorse your product
• Create authority branded content
• Contribute your own guest column or post on an established vlog, magazine site, or website

Feeds Other Platforms

Great content is the heart of various memorable and successful social media campaigns. Without a constant stream of entertaining and compelling content, people don’t have any reason to follow your brand across multiple social media platforms.

Content acts as bait that helps people engage with your brand and deems it worthy of a follow. Engaging content also generates exposure for your brand through retweets, reposts, and shares. However, with infinite information available on social media platforms, brands need to do better with the quality of their content.

Content marketing also serves as the fuel that drives successful marketing automation and email campaigns. Content, again, serves as the bait that pushes users to sign-up and open your emails.

Content marketing is especially crucial for businesses utilizing various marketing automation tools to deliver targeted emails to users most likely to engage with your business.

Content marketing is here to say. Not just that, but with the increase in competition and quality, the only way it’s going is up. Content marketing, today, has become an integral part of the marketing strategy for online businesses and business not partaking will undoubtedly fall behind the competition. Quality should always be prioritized over quantity, and particular focus needs to be given to the distribution of content too.

So, why do you think content marketing is important? Are there any content marketing strategies that have proven successful for you? Let us know in the comments below!

Author’s Bio:

Dave Schneider is the founder of LessChurn, churn reduction app. In 2012 he quit his job to travel the world, and has visited over 65 countries. In his spare time, he writes about SaaS and business at DaveSchneider.me.

The issue that some companies can have is protecting their reputation online. With anyone being able to post critical reviews, comments and articles about your business digitally, it can be a challenge to do this.

Online reputation management – what is it?

In a nutshell, online reputation management is the process of protecting your organisation’s online brand image. Many consumers now will simply search for a company on Google to find out about it – and they believe what they see. Very often, this involves not getting past the first page of results!

It is important to protect your online image so that your business is not negatively affected by false accusations, historic incidents that have been dealt with, or just plain lies. By taking steps to protect your online reputation, you are making sure that the truth about you now is what consumers see.

How does online reputation management work?

As this is a process that happens online, the work that needs to be done around it also happens on the internet. The first step usually is to perform a thorough online search to see the extent of the harm to your reputation there and the exact causes. Is it a few bad consumer reviews on a site such as Trustpilot or a scathing blog article that has got traction?

Once you know exactly what is harming your online reputation, you then need to take steps to deal with it. The first step for bad reviews or outdated information in articles is to contact the source to resolve them there. While it can be impossible to remove the causes altogether, you can try to make sure that they do not show up as much in the search engine results. This often involves working on popular keyword searches in your sector so that you can boost positive news about you related to these.

This is quite a specialised task though, so many businesses will choose to use an external online reputation management company. ReputationDefender is a solution that many UK businesses turn to for just this reason.

One fix may not be enough over time

One key thing to note around fixing your online reputation is that it must be monitored into the future once complete. This is because the negative sites or reviews may suddenly gain more authority or be ranked highly if a search engine algorithm changes. If this kind of thing does happen, then it can see the offending online URL begin to show up and damage your reputation once more.

Protect your online reputation

A positive online reputation is essential for any business in the modern world and this also includes contract management. This is because it is what most people see and believe about you. Very often, one single incident from years ago or one unreasonable review can have serious consequences for your company. Online reputation management is therefore key to fix this quickly.

It’s easy for novice marketers to fall into the trap of assuming that any link is a good link, but that’s not the case. The emphasis should be on the quality of the links coming in, and how closely they relate to your niche. Bad links could actually harm the perception that the search engines have of you and which any professional SEO company will know.

Broken Links Annoy Visitors

One common pitfall is for webmasters to set up a site, build links, redesign the site, and then delete some pages that they don’t use any more. What they’re forgetting is that broken links will irritate your users, and the search engine spiders will pick up on them too, and potentially de-value your site because of them. The search engines want to be known as services that will help people to reach really interesting and engaging content. They want their users to have a good experience, and that can’t happen if the search engine is presenting them with a lot of broken links.

You can mitigate this issue by setting up something to catch broken links and present the user with useful information instead of a 404 page. Use 301 redirects where possible. Long-term, however, it is better to get all broken links updated to point to a better page.

Bought Links Will Ruin Your Reputation

In the 90s and 00s, there was a trend towards buying links to sites that were similar to yours, or engaging in a link triangle, or even more sophisticated network, where you will link to one site, then the owner of that site will give you a back link from another one of their sites. The idea is to fool the search engines into think that the links are all ‘organic’, rather than paid for or a part of a link trading scheme.

This algorithm takes into account hundreds of different elements of a webpage. These ranking factors are used to determine the authority, credibility and relevance of webpages. The most common ranking factors known to webmasters include backlinks, keywords, page speeds and mobile friendliness. https://seokent.net/london-seo-services/

The search engines are more sophisticated than you think, and their algorithms are good at catching that sort of thing. Trading links and buying links creates what is known as an “unnatural looking link profile”, and no good SEO service would advocate for this. You will end up with lots of links pointing to the promoted pages (often the home page). If you let your links grow organically, then they will point to specific products, articles and other pages all over the site.

Directories and Spam Pages Are Harmful

There was a period when disreputable SEO services would say “we will get you 5000 links in no time”. You can still find the occasional SEO company that does that sort of thing even today. Those links typically come from link farms, and Google will notice that you are trying to inflate the number of links you have by using those services. Link farms will get you penalised quite severely. Especially if you end up with links that are on a page that is full of adult, gambling, or otherwise controversial links.

A good SEO company understands the importance of relevance and quality. A handful of high-quality links from pages that are closely related to your niche is worth a lot more than a large number of directory, article marketing, forum spam or blog spam links. Indeed, it’s not just ‘the links’ that matter. If you are fortunate enough to get a link from a respected blogger who has written a long and informative guide that mentions your brand alongside other, much more respected brands then that will really help to boost your reputation.

If you aren’t sure where to start with SEO, then don’t rush out and try using link building tools yourself. It’s easy to cross over the line from ‘assertive link building’ to spam. Working with a qualified SEO professional will give you a much better chance of achieving link building success.

Recovering From Bad Backlinks

If you mistakenly acquired a huge number of ‘bad’ backlinks and your site has been penalised, then it is possible to recover from the penalty if you can remove or disavow the bad links. The major search engines understand that external links are not always within your control, and that ‘bad’ SEO could actually be the work of a rival that is trying to conduct a negative SEO campaign against you, or someone simply maliciously targeting sites for fun. Because of this potential threat, it’s difficult to end up with a site that is close to ‘un-recoverable’ in the eyes of the search engines. There is always a way back, even if the road to positive rankings is a long one for a site with a poor link profile.

Google Ads has a number of different settings available that can have a dramatic affect on your Pay Per Click performance.  One of the most overlooked elements within Google ads is the language setting. 

Where Most People Go Wrong

Most advertisers tend to think that if the website, keywords and search ads are in English then by default people generally select the English language.