With the May 2018 deadline for GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) approaching, people are still trying to figure out what it is and what it implies.

It is predicted that by the end of the year 2018, more than half of companies will not be fully compliant with the new set of rules and requirements.

I bet you do not want to be among them, but if you are still wondering how GDPR will affect your small business and your email marketing, in particular, you are in the right place.

Here you can find your essential guide to achieving compliance.

What is GDPR?

It took four years of work and negotiation until the officials of the European Parliament and European Council have adopted the General Data Protection Regulation in April 2016.

GPDR is the new framework for data protection laws and is aimed to replace the 1995 Data Protection Directive.

It will come into force on May 25, 2018 (GDPR compliance date), a date when you, as a small business, will have to demonstrate that good data protection is a key element of your policies and practices.

Starting with this day, you will have to comply with the new laws. Otherwise, you will pay huge fines; the GDPR fines are up to €20 million (about $24.5m) or 4% of your global annual turnover.

It is one of the most significant legislation in the past two decades, based on the experts’ statements, and the truth is that the comprehensive reform of data protection rules was necessary.

Since the former directive was created, the amount of digital information we store, produce, and capture has increased considerably. In other words, the old data protection rules were insufficient and no longer appropriate for its intended use.

So, what is new? Read further for a GDPR overview.

What are the benefits of GDPR?

At first glance, the General Data Protection Regulation which will be enforced in May 2018 is a revolutionary change that will affect millions of organizations inside and outside of Europe.

Although the compliance obligations may cost your company an eye-watering sum, it’s best to prepare and meet the new requirements instead of paying significant fines.

The EU drafted the Regulation to give people more control over how their data is used. Any GDPR-compliant app or process will have a better adoption.

The legislation increases the consumer trust due to enhanced security and provides your customers with more transparency.

You know that companies like Google and Facebook condition the use of their services in return for the access to the customers’ data; that’s because the current laws were adopted before the businesses developed new ways of exploiting data.

Another benefit of the GDPR is that organizations have to implement controlled business processes. Now, they have to organize the data, which will result in increased business efficiency and productivity.

Personal data of citizens is collected and organized in one centralized location – the General Data Protection Regulation Software – which is then secured and backed-up in hosted servers. The IT Security is enhanced, compared to last years, and data will be accessed and used only on request.

For email marketing, GDPR will help you become more transparent with your customers, get a more engaged audience and increase customer satisfaction.

Here are a few other advantages offered by GDPR:

• Better and more transparent customer interactions
• More engaged audiences
• Increased customer satisfaction
• More economical marketing campaigns
• Lower security risks
• Less email spam

What types of private data does the GDPR protect?

Buying email lists without collected consent is illegal in countries like the United States and violates the CAN-SPAM Act, but it is still a practice among businesses all over the world.

However, if these lists contain data of EU citizens, you will have to stop it or find a method through which your consumers give you their consent to store and use their information.

Furthermore, your users should be made aware of any profiling. They must know if their personal data is processed to analyze, evaluate, or predict any of their characteristics.

Here’s what information is protected by the GDPR:

• Identity information – name, address, and ID numbers
• Web data such as location – cookie data, IP address, and RFID tags
• Biometric data
• Health and genetic data
• Racial or ethnic data
• Sexual orientation
• Political opinions

If you collect any of this information about individuals, then you need to comply with the GDPR regulation when collecting and storing their data.

What areas does the GDPR cover?

There are quite a few areas of change introduced with GDPR, like the “right to be forgotten” or “data breach notifications,” which are common sense and shouldn’t require a regulation to enforce them.

Apart from the fact it gives EU customers the control over their personal data, the General Data Protection Regulation also changes the approach of companies towards data privacy.

The rules are much stronger than the existing laws; compared to the “EU cookie law,” for example, the GDPR is more restrictive.

First, people will have to confirm that their information can be collected, and the consent is harder to obtain.

The privacy policy is much clearer and ought to say what type of data is stored and how it will be used.

Then, users will have the right to withdraw the consent to use the personal information. Thus, the organizations will be forced to delete the data.

GDPR implies binding corporate rules for the legal transfer of data. If companies do not comply with the Regulation, they will deal with increased fines and enforcement powers.

Here you can find some of the most important changes brought by GDPR and a short description of each of them:

1. Right to access

If your customers request a copy of their data, you will have to provide it for free. They need to know what personal information is processed, where it’s stored, and why you use it.

2. Right to be forgotten

Once a client requests the controller to delete their personal data, you will have to comply. Thus, any other third-parties will not have access to the data, either.

3. Right to rectification

Your customers will need to have easy access to the data you collected about them and have a way of edit it when they want to.

4. Data portability

The Regulation gives individuals the right to request the access to their information in an electronic format. Then, they can transfer their data to a different controller.

5. Data breach notification

Both controllers and clients ought to be informed in case of lost data, hacks, leaks, or other data breaches within 72 hours from the moment they become aware of it.

6. Privacy by design

All systems should be designed bearing in mind the data protection and data compliance. You can read more about this topic below.

7. Data protection officers

GDPR mentions that companies and organizations that have as core activities processing personal information or monitor individuals on a large scale have to appoint a data protection officer. It replaces the previous laws that required notifying the local Data Protection Authorities concerning their activities.

What else is new?

As a business, you will have to invest in pseudonymization, which includes changes to the information so that it cannot be personally identified.

The Regulation covers only the personal data – what the US refers to as personally identifiable information (PII) – name, address, email, account names, phone numbers, and IP address (location data). Through pseudonymization, the organizations will replace the identifiers with codes.

Is it better than encryption? Let’s see!

Your company cannot strip the personal data from the content. You’ll say now that minimizing the files with the personal information isn’t such a bad idea.

Well, although it is a legitimate way to address the security of the data collected, and you will not have to notify your customers in case of a breach, encryption is a trick that doesn’t come cheap.

Consult the experts, and they will explain to you that encryption is impractical when it comes to securing the file data. It demands a lot of work, and adding a layer of encryption to the file system will become challenging to manage.

Yes, you read that right! Your company needs pseudonymization since it reduces the burdens of the GDPR and you can do it on a large scale, as well.

What you need is an intake system that processes and converts the personal data into codes. Then, use a master table to connect the codes with the real identifiers. It is necessary for the processes that demand the original raw data.

Also, Brexit does not matter to GDPR. The UK government declared loud and clear that they will maintain GDPR as a national law. Instead of using Brexit as an excuse, learn how to stick to the rules and attain compliance.

What about Privacy by Design?

A significant improvement of GDPR is the introduction of the concept Privacy by Design (PbD).

It is a personal data minimization technique explicitly mentioned as a “data by protection by design and by default.”

The concept demands controllers to implement organizational and appropriate technical measures which specify that, by default, only the information required for a particular purpose of the processing is collected and processed.

As a result, businesses and organizations will minimize the amount of the personal data collected. At the same time, the data controllers will reduce the information’s period of storage, the extent of the processing, and accessibility.

By default, companies will not store personal information of their users for longer than it is necessary for a specific purpose.

Plus, they will have to ensure their customers that their data will not be available to an indefinite number of individuals without the express consent of users.

The approach of Privacy by Design is vital to minimize the privacy risks and build confidence.

Why do you have to design the products, processes, systems, or projects with privacy in mind? Because it will help you to detect the potential problems at an early stage; thus, you will address them timely and at minimum costs.

The actions will no longer be privacy intrusive, and they will not hurt customers.

Additionally, the overall awareness of privacy and data protection increases in business, while the companies will be less likely to breach the DPA (Data Protection Act).

Now that you’ve got a good understanding of GDPR let’s see what the implications for marketing are (and email marketing in particular).

What type of companies does the GDPR affect?

The dense 88-page document eliminates unsolicited information and offers, and its purpose is to protect the customers’ privacy.

Since it is a regulation, the GDPR applies automatically “as is” in all EU states and to the processors and controllers of data who are dealing with information belonging to residents within the European Union.

The new data protection laws will affect any business or organization, whether it is a government, a charity organization, or a profit-seeking company.

Even when the processors and controllers of the personal data are based outside the European Union, you will have to comply with the GDPR to handle the data of your EU citizens.

Who is affected most by GDPR in marketing?

GDPR may shake up the digital marketing landscape. Some marketers are guilty of collecting more personal data of their customers than they need.

But starting with May 2018, things will change. You will have to legally justify the processing of the information, and keep it for a minimum of time.

GDPR will affect everyone in the companies or organizations that have customers.

Though, the most significant changes in the everyday work will occur in the marketing department, particularly for these areas:

1. Email Marketing

From now on, copying or buying email lists is strictly forbidden. Instead of automatically adding users to your email list and waiting for them to opt out, you will have to begin the sales process by ensuring users opt-in to your B2B email marketing campaigns.

If they give you their email address and consent, you’re on the right track.

2. Public Relations

Contacting journalists about company information or product releases will be different.

You may have them in your list of the traditional email outreach program, but you cannot send them messages if they do not give consent to be contacted by you.

Consider getting in touch with them through platforms or social media where they expressly approved to receive texts from PR execs.

Though, if they contact you first, it means that they are interested in hearing from you.

3. Marketing Automation

Although it is a powerful tool, marketing automation can result in penalties if any communications will reach users who have opted out.

Does your marketing automation system deliver messages on behalf of your CRM system?

Make sure that every subscriber in your database gave consent to market to them.

Do you already have the next email scheduled? Check if your systems are updated before sending the communications.

What does GDPR mean for email marketers?

The Regulation covers a lot of different aspects concerning the data and privacy of your customers.

But how will GDPR affect your business?

You will have to get the consent of your clients to collect and use their personal data, and you should keep a record of their choices and preferences.

Does it ring any bells? It’s one of the features of the Canadian Anti-Spam Law.

Email Marketers will have to respect an individual’s choices and employ opt-ins that maintain a preferences page on their account. Give your customers options regarding marketing and set expectations.

Since email filters are regularly improved, they detect what kind of emails are wanted by recipients. And, based on the most recent studies, a user marks a message as spam in their inbox when they are not clear on the reasons why they received it in the first place.

So, what can you do?

As a marketer, you will have to be clear that you obtained the email address from the recipient.

Then, you ought to explain to them what are your intentions – who you are, what you do, what kind of marketing communications they will receive from you, and why.

Plus, you need to give your customers the possibility to opt-out of receiving further messages.

It may seem obvious, but you need to include an unsubscribe link in each of your email marketing communications.

This time, you have to remove the email addresses whose recipients have withdrawn consent.

My recommendation? Remove those who stopped engaging with your business for a while, as well.

If someone agrees to receive marketing communications from you, it does not mean that the consent is forever.

Even though they did not unsubscribe or haven’t sent a spam complaint, you should stop addressing them email newsletters when you haven’t heard a word from them for a long time.

What is the benefit? It will help you to accomplish a good reputation at major email service providers like Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo or Outlook.

But what can you do if some of your targeted audience is under 16 years of age?

If you used to send regular one-to-one conversations to teenagers, well, things are about to change.

According to the GDPR’s Article 8, when the consent is obtained from a user that is under 16 years old, companies and organizations must get the parental consent.

Hence, you must make reasonable efforts and check if the approval comes from the parents. Yes, it is tricky to verify age on an address collection page.

However, if you have a simple policy that prohibits users younger than 16 years old from registering or using your services/product, you will comply with GDPR’s rules.

It is recommended to update your Privacy Policy and Terms of Service pages, and state explicitly that children under 16 years old cannot obtain an account without the permission of their parents.

Marketers who run a service which is mostly used by children should consider an age-gating mechanism or similar measures.

Do I have to change my entire email marketing program?

Most marketers are now worried that the strict privacy and opt-in regulations will prevent them from growing their email list at the rate they were used to.

No, you don’t have to delete the European addresses, nor block the signups and traffic that comes from the European Union.

Take time to review and adapt your existing opt-in processes up to the GDPR standards.

In the short term, re-permission campaigns and changes to opt-in processes will slow down the list growth. But in the long run, it will improve the list quality overall.

Setting up separate sign up processes for users coming from different parts of the globe may be a solution to this, but you can end up putting a lot of effort into it.

Instead, try to be GDPR compliant, and this will help you to maintain a healthy email list, which will grow your business in the long run.

Why is the Regulation a golden opportunity for marketers?

Perhaps you’ll have to rethink your entire marketing strategy. But if you bring your email program up to the GDPR’s standards, you will be compliant with other international email regulations, as well.

Although it sounds intimidating, the new legislation does not throw you back. It’s your opportunity to show that you’re a professional when you develop targeted marketing campaigns with subscribers that are engaged with you.

This way, you gain their marketing consent. Instead of opting in for a simple yes or no when asking users about data, provide them more options, which will help you to learn what are your customers interested in, and how to segment them.

From this point forward, your communication will be based on their specific interests.

As a marketer, you will get to know your customers.

Plus, you will keep track of all your permissions data and store it in a single place.

Because you will have a single platform that will allow your subscribers to switch consent on and off, for various purposes, you will find more about your clients and how to build more relevant campaigns.

People love transparency. Most of them prefer to work with organizations or individuals that they know and trust.

How can you as a marketer earn your clients’ confidence? The answer is simple: with transparency.

Comply with the Regulation, be honest about who you are, and be transparent with your clients’ data. If you prove them that their information is held securely and being treated with respect, you will strengthen the engagement and trust with your subscribers. And how can you do this?

Practical tips on GDPR for Email Marketing

The Regulation isn’t about massive fines, nor ceasing contacting your subscribers. GDPR aims to uphold the rights and freedoms of EU citizens to privacy and facilitate the free transfer of data between the countries within the European Union.

Did you know that, according to a Consumer Privacy study, 92% of online customers perceive data security and privacy as a concern?

Obviously, you want to avoid this. You could use the tips below to comply with the GDPR and earn the confidence of your clients.

1. Evaluate and audit. Evaluate how well your current mailing list complies with the Regulation. Rumors are that 75% of marketing email lists will become obsolete by the time GDPR will come into force.

Start auditing your email list and remove the addresses that do not have a record of their email opt-in. If your users freely and willingly gave their consent to handle their information, you must keep accurate records of their permission.

If you already use double opt-in for list building, then you will be okay with having valid consent for your existing subscribers.

Also, investigate if the email marketing solution that you use as well as other tools that collect customer data are GDPR compliant. If they are, your life will be much easier.

2. Deal with the gaps identified during the audit process, and request external expertise, if needed.

3. Evaluate the existing policies and procedures, such as terms and conditions, privacy policies and the way you interact with your contacts and customers. Then update them to let people know what type of data you collect and ask for consent.

4. Estimate the risks to the personal data collected from users. If you believe that you collect data that is not needed and could affect your reputation in case of a security leak, then choose to no longer collect that data.

5. Use double opt-in. New subscribers must confirm through an automated email that they want to join your list. As for the email consents that were obtained in the past – and it fulfills the Regulations’ requirements – you don’t have to re-request your contacts’ permission, based on the GDPR’s Recital 171:

Where processing is based on consent pursuant to Directive 95/46/EC, it is not necessary for the data subject to give his or her consent again if the manner in which the consent has been given is in line with the conditions of this Regulation, so as to allow the controller to continue such processing after the date of application of this Regulation.

6. Stop buying email lists. If you used to purchase mailing lists, you should review the way you are collecting users’ data. Sorry, folks, but you have to start fresh with a new marketing database, especially if you want to play by the rules and avoid paying exorbitant penalties.

Look at the bright side! You will achieve a list of engaged and interested subscribers.

7. Ask for explicit consent during opt-in. Use opt-in forms (email or account creation) on your website and invite more users to add themselves to your email list. Consider specific opt-in forms for blog posts, product news, and general business news.

If you need some inspiration, here are 10 examples of best practice UX for obtaining marketing consent.

Also, remember to keep email consent separately from your terms and conditions.

8. Improve your content marketing strategy. Invest in a content marketing strategy, especially if you create messages tailored to your potential clients. Create eBooks, guides, and email courses that your subscribers can download or access in return for them sharing their contact info. It’s a win-win situation!

9. Run a re-permission campaign. If you have the feeling that your email list might be stale, then it is time to run a re-permission campaign. This will help keep people that are still interested in hearing from you and remove those that no longer find your content relevant to them.

Plus, if you do not have explicit consent from your email list and proof to show it, then you need to run a re-permission campaign before May 2018 to be sure that you have a GDPR compliant email list.

10. Use social media for outreach. Your sales team must learn about social selling techniques. Instead of reaching new prospects by email, connect with them on social media.

Give your potential clients relevant content and obtain their affirmative consent to join your mailing list.

11. Verify if you have to install age verification controls for your email marketing business.

12. Keep records of what personal information you store, why you collect and process it, or for how long.

13. Prepare for any data breaches and, if it’s the case, report it to the relevant data protection agency within 72 hours from the moment you become aware of it.

14. Appoint a Data Protection Officer, considering the number of your employees and your market size. If you run a small business, with 250 staff members or less, and you do not process and monitor data on a large scale, nominating a DPO is not mandatory. However, for best practice, you are advised to appoint someone with the reasonable capacity for the job.

15. Erase the personal data of your users when a service/agreement comes to an end, or they revoke their consent.

16. Map your data flows and keep in mind that you cannot share it with companies within non-EU states.

What happens if you don’t achieve compliance?

According to a PwC survey, 92% of U.S. organizations consider GDPR a top priority. Consequently, most of the companies have already updated their terms of service and privacy policy.

Perhaps you switched into “panic mode,” considering the substantial fines of not being compliant with the new Regulation.

Instead of making mistakes regarding the use of personal data, you should take a step back, and leave it to professionals.

Did any of your subscribers opt out, but you haven’t deleted their data, yet? The B2B marketing companies who do not correctly process an individual’s data will be fined.

Although a €20m penalty is possible, the plausibility of an organization being fined to this extent is small.

According to ICO chief Elisabeth Dunham, issuing fines continues to be a last resort.

As an example, in 2016-2017, 17,300 cases were concluded, and only 16 of them resulted in penalties.

As far as we know, the highest fine issued by ICO didn’t exceed £400,000. What happened? Over three million people were affected by the Carphone Warehouse breach.

More likely, authorities will carry out audits, issue warnings, or demand you to erase the data stored. Perhaps you will be forced to fix things within a strict deadline or stop the data transfers to other countries.

If you cannot manage every aspect of the business-wide compliance, give your IT an overhaul.

So, what should you do?

Request professional assistance for your business and use Elevatr for email marketing.

My approach to GDPR

When you first look at it, GDPR seems to be a monster that makes you feel like running away from it.

However, I don’t see GDPR as big of a problem, especially for small businesses.

As a small business owner, your most significant responsibility would be to make sure that you use tools which are GDPR compliant and let the burden on their shoulders.

Personally, here’s what I plan to do before the deadline this May:

1. Customer Data

I’ve been taking clients for years now, and almost every project required me to create backups, save login information or have some client data on my end.

When a project finishes, I make sure that I remove any client data from the tools I use or my hard drive.

Now, before the deadline in May, I will do an audit and remove any customer data that may still be on my end.

2. Email Marketing

Email marketing is something that I am excited about, mainly because I run Elevatr, so here’s what I plan to do about it:

• Run a re-permission campaign to ask contacts if they still want to hear from me; this will lead to a considerable drop in subscriber numbers, but I will end up with a much cleaner email list which will then will lead to higher open and click-through rates.
• Continue using double opt-in – I’ve been using double opt-in since like, forever, and I will continue to do that from now on to keep track of consent and have a clean email list.
• Update my privacy and cookie policies to make sure that I added all the information that is collected on my websites.
• I will use Elevatr for all my email marketing communication.

Further reading on anti-spam laws and regulations

Here you can find a list of the primary anti-spam laws and regulations across the globe:

• United States: CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act)
• Canada: CASL (Canada’s Anti-Spam Law)
• Australia: Spam Act 2003
• EU: GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in May 2018

Current laws in some of EU countries:

• United Kingdom: Data Protection Act
• France: Confidence in the Digital Economy Law
• Germany: Federal Data Protection Act
• Spain: The Information Society Services and Electronic Commerce Act
• Italy: Italian Personal Data Protection Code
• Sweden: Swedish Marketing Act
• Netherlands: Dutch Telecommunication Act

For more information about GDPR, here you can find a few resource:

• Full law text: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as of April 27th, 2016
• DMA UK: Webinars, facts, and updates about GDPR
• European Commission Fact Sheet: Questions and Answers on Europe’s Data Protection Reform
• European Commission: Protection of Personal Data
• ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office, UK): Preparing for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 12 Steps to Take Now.

Over to you

Do you feel prepared for GDPR? Have you done any changes yet? If not, what is your plan?

Join the conversation about GDPR and all things online marketing in our private group here.

Disclaimer: this guide has been created strictly for information purposes and does not contain any legal advice. I recommend you reach out to professional counsel about how GDPR can impact your organization and what you need to do to achieve compliance.

Also, the guide has been an extensive research study, it is still work in progress and should be taken as is. If you have any feedback that will help complete it, feel free to send it my way.

In the rush to get more things done you can miss details or be sloppy and you might even make things worse for yourself.

That is why I created this 12-point checklist to make sure you set your blog up for success in 2019.

If you get stuck with any of the following tasks, leave a comment below and remember that I am always available to help.

Make “List Building” your #1 Goal

If list building is not your number one goal and the thing you focus most on, then it should be.

In case list building is already the highest priority on your list, then you just have to double down on it.

1. Get Started with List Building Today

When you are starting out things are pretty simple. First, you decide what incentive you want to offer to people so that they subscribe to your newsletter and make it enticing.

Then you need to make a list with all your friends and acquaintances.

Next, email them from your Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail account and invite them to your newsletter.

The final step should be to make a list with those that said “yes” and only then decide on what email service provider to use. To start with you can just use pen and paper.

You can also take this step if your list is old and you want to start from scratch.

2. Double Down on List Building

If you are looking to increase the number of people on your email list, then you need to put a little more effort into it.

First, you will need to make sure you have the right opt-in forms on your blog. I know it’s a no-brainer but I’ve seen people not doing this efficiently.

Be sure to add forms to the following locations of your blog:

• homepage
• about page
• footer
• sidebar
• below posts

Next, you will need to look at the most popular blog posts on your blog (use Google Analytics) and add a better incentive for people to signup on those pages.

Those incentives need to be relevant to the content of the blog post.

They can be:

• a checklist
• a to-do list
• a printable form of the article
• a cheatsheet
• a list of additional resources

Using these incentives will boost your conversion rate to over 20% for people subscribing to your email list.

You can choose to step up your game and use webinars and giveaways to grow your list more.

Webinars are very powerful when it comes to list building because they can help you quickly increase the number of people on your email list.

You can do monthly or weekly webinars for your existing audience, or partner webinars, where the best content is presented to someone else’s audience.

Giveaways can also offer you a big boost if done strategically. With giveaways, it’s best to choose prizes that are relevant to your audience and give people more chances to win if they share the giveaway or invite friends.

Bryan Harris got 2,239 email subscribers in 10 days.

This way the giveaway can become viral, and you will get more people subscribed to the giveaway.

3. Use the Right Email Marketing Service Provider for You

Choosing the right email marketing service provider is no easy task. Many times you get into analysis paralysis when choosing a new provider and you often remain with the old one or make the wrong choice.

Unless you are doing sophisticated launches that require an entire team to handle, you should not need most of the functionality you currently get from your email marketing service provider.

All you need is simplicity to save you time and the right level of support to help you take your business to the right level.

When building Elevatr, a new email marketing software I launched this year, simplicity was our number one goal. It takes 2 minutes to get a form on your blog or send a campaign.

After we launched Elevatr we focused on making our customers successful and helped them with product launches to show how serious we are about helping them to become successful.

My recommendation would be for you to look beyond functionality and focus on benefits.

If you are serious about your online business you should also be serious about using the right email marketing tools.

Measure your Results

Knowing what works and what doesn’t on your blog can make the difference between failure and success, it’s just like flying blind.

If you do not know who is sending you customers and what content converts best, you will focus your efforts in the wrong direction.

4. Add Goals to your Google Analytics Account

Google Analytics is the most used analytics tool out there. Everyone adds the tracking code to their blog, but most people don’t take advantage of the insights they get from it.

If I advised you to do only one thing with Google Analytics it would be set up some conversion goals.

Google Analytics will help you look beyond sessions and will let you identify your most valuable content and traffic sources.

To do that you will need a thank you page for every goal you want to track where you can redirect readers after they complete the goal (email signup or product purchase). This is only one type of goal you can setup, but there are more.

Then you have to take that page and tell Google Analytics that it should treat it as a conversion. Remember also to add a value to the goal so you can see some $ in your Google Analytics reports.

It is even better if you use eCommerce because you can send eCommerce data to Google Analytics and it will show better insights about your products and conversion rates.

Get your Content More Visible in Google

Once you are done with setting up your list building and are ready to measure your results it’s time to get more exposure for your content in Google.

5. Add Yoast SEO to your Blog

First, you will need to add Yoast SEO to your WordPress blog if you don’t have it already.

There is no advanced setup that you need to do right now and you don’t need the premium version yet.

All you have to do is install it and go through the default setup once you activated it.

6. Switch to HTTPS

Google has become serious about you using HTTPS for your blog and it’s no only bumping secure blogs in search results, but Google Chrome will also mark all HTTP sites as “not secure” starting with July 2018.

This is why now it is the right moment to switch to HTTPS.

Depending on your existing setup there are a couple of options available.

1. Get a free SSL certificate from your host

Managed WordPress hosting providers, like StudioPress, offer free SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt. It is very easy to add a SSL certificate if your hosting provider has your back.

2. Use CloudFlare for security and performance

CloudFlare acts as a proxy between your server and the visitor, thus serving the traffic through their network of servers.

It adds a layer of protection to your blog to help you from mitigating potential attacks, it provides a free SSL certificate and also delivers your content through their network of servers to improve the loading speed of your blog.

This setup is very straightforward: signup for an account, enable “Full” SSL Certificate from the [Crypto] menu, download the SSL certificate from CloudFlare and send it to your host to install it on your server.

3. Use Let’s Encrypt

If none of the above works for you then you can use Let’s Encrypt directly.

You can set it up yourself or integrate it with your hosting provider.

Here you can find a list with all the hosting providers that support Let’s Encrypt.

7. Add your Blog to Google Search Console

If you haven’t added your blog to the Google Search Console to get information about how your blog does in Google you are missing out.

Google Search Console will show search data on what landing pages show in Google results, what keywords people search for when visualizing results from your blog and the most important errors that Google encountered while crawling your blog.

Plus it integrates with Google Analytics so you can see search data straight in your Google Analytics account.

The process of adding your blog to the Google Search Console is simple:

1. Use your Google account to signup here.
2. Use the [Add a property] button to add your blog.
3. Remember to add all variations of your blog: https, http+www, https and https+www.

8. Submit your Sitemap to Google Search Console

From your property dashboard go to [Crawl] > [Sitemaps] and add your sitemap.

You can also do it at this link.

If you are using Yoast SEO, then your sitemap should look like mine: http://eugenoprea.com/sitemap_index.xml.

9. Verify Google Search Console for Errors

One crucial step that you need to follow for your SEO health is verifying if you have any crawl errors in your Google Search Console.

If you have any errors displayed there, check why they are there in the first place and fix them.

Most of the errors can be fixed with a redirect to a resource that is available.

You will need to add all the errors you have in a spreadsheet and in the next column of each row add the URL where you want it to be redirected.

Then send it to your hosting provider and they will add the redirects at the server level.

Before you do that make sure that the URLs you are sending are from your blog and that they are genuine errors. Sometimes Google can also have some false positives.

10. Invest Time in your On-Page SEO

Fixing your on-page SEO is something simple that you can do while creating content for your blog.

There are a few things that you need to keep in mind as you write content:

• Add a meta title that will catch people’s attention in search engines
• Add a meta description to support the title and get people from Google to your blog
• Use a short and descriptive URL (check out the URL of this article)
• Use your target keyword in the meta title, description, URL and naturally in the article

If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, you will also get some good suggestions from it.

Elevate your Blog

11. Invest in your Hosting

If you want to switch from having a “homemade craft project” to building a real business then you need to invest in the hosting of your blog.

You need to set aside a budget and use a service you can rely on when you need it most.

An excellent hosting service has to be reliable, secure, fast and work for you, not against you.

That is why I always recommend hosting on StudioPress Sites.

12. Make your Blog more Appealing

Most people usually start with this step and then get busy and forget about the rest.

While this is an important task that will make people trust you more, it shouldn’t be the first item on your list. A beautiful design won’t necessarily bring you customers, but done at the right time it can help tremendously.

To make your blog more appealing you need to have a clean and simple design.

The easiest and fastest way to get a design that is clean, simple and affordable is to switch to a new StudioPress theme.

The latest StudioPress Sites theme is impressive. It’s called Authority Pro, and it’s created by Rafal Tomal, the lead designer from Rainmaker Digital.

All you have to do is just get it from StudioPress, add it to your blog, tweak a few things and you are done.

Conclusion

Now that you finished going through the entire article, here’s what I need you to do next:

1. Get the printable checklist.

2. Block time in your calendar to work on each item on the checklist.

3. Complete the tasks when you are prompted by your calendar.

4. If you have questions, let me know.

5. If you need additional help with the items above I am here to help.

Have you managed to stay up to date with the latest changes and feature enhancements in Google Analytics?

Keeping track of every new improvement or new feature in Google Analytics is pretty difficult, especially if you are not active in the community or have someone dedicated to staying up to date with all the changes and reporting them to you.

That is why I decided to show you the seven most important features and enhancements added to Google Analytics recently and how to make the most of them.

I also asked top Google Analytics experts what they think about these features, and you will find their opinions in this article.

1. Calculated Metrics

Calculated Metrics is a new set of metrics that gives you the ability to create your metrics computed from existing metrics (users, sessions, conversions, conversion rate) to help you get better insights from your Google Analytics data.

In a nutshell, you can create your metrics and add them to your custom reports and dashboards.

I find ‘calculated metrics’ feature quite useful because it provides the ability to set up and use compound metrics in GA. Its ability to work retroactively on historical data is super helpful.

Himanshu Sharma – http://optimizesmart.com/

You no longer have to be tied down to GA’s standard metrics or your custom metrics. Easily create additional metrics that are a function of your standard and custom metrics.

Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar – https://www.sparkline.com/

Calculated metrics – my number one! They provide you with greater flexibility in deriving actionable insights directly in GA. You can perform basic calculations in Google Analytics based on already available metrics and dimensions. This enables companies and individuals to better replicate their most important KPIs directly into Google Analytics and take it from there. In the free GA version, there are five slots available per view and make sure to use them all!

Paul Koks – http://online-metrics.com/

You can create Calculated Metrics from Admin > select View > Calculated Metrics > New Calculated Metric.

On the new screen you will have to add the following info:

1. Name – add an easily recognizable name for your calculated metric.
2. External Name – this is added automatically and used to identify the calculated metric via the API. You can change it to something else that is unique when you create the calculated metric but once saved it cannot be modified.
3. Formatting type
   • Integer (with customizable decimal places)
   • Currency (Decimal)
   • Time
   • Float
   • Percentage (with customizable decimal places)
4. Formula – Here you can enter the formula for your calculated metric, which can include:
   • Plus (+)
   • Minus (-)
   • Divided by (/)
   • Multiplied by (*)
   • Parenthesis
   • Positive cardinal numbers (0-9), can add decimals

Once you start typing, you will see the predefined that you can use in your formula. Also, it’s important to note that formulas are limited to 1024 characters and that it doesn’t support the minus operator as a negative.

Once created, you can add Calculated metrics in custom reports, dashboards, widgets and analytics reporting via API.

If you use the Standard Google Analytics version, you will be able to create 5 custom metrics, while the Premium version allows you to create 50.

Now that you know why Calculated Metrics are useful and how to add them, let’s see how you can use this functionality to get more from your Google Analytics account:

1. Conversion Rate per user

The default conversion rate is calculated based on the total number of sessions, and this is not accurate because users do not convert from the first session and sometimes they need more than one to convert.

Instead, you can use calculated metrics to see the exact conversion rate per user, which will give you better insights into what works best for you.

To see this information, you will have to setup a custom metric with the settings below and add it to a custom report, as Avinash Kaushik explains here:

• Name: Conversion Rate Per User
• External Name: (automatically populated)
• Formatting Type: Percent
• Formula: {{Goal Completions}} / {{Users}}

2. Transactions per user

Similar to the Conversion Rate per user calculated metric, if you have an E-commerce site, you can use Transactions per user instead:

• Name: Transactions per user
• External Name: (automatically populated)
• Formatting Type: Percent
• Formula: {{Transactions}} / {{Users}}

3. Revenue per user

Also, another useful calculated metric, Revenue per user, will help view the average revenue for each visitor instead of looking at the less accurate default revenue reports:

• Name: Revenue Per User
• External Name: (automatically populated)
• Formatting Type: Currency (Decimal)
• Formula: {{Revenue}} / {{Users}}

4. Calculated profit

Now that revenue came up, I would like to add another example that Avinash suggested, Calculated profit, which will show the profit from particular products or services sold on a website:

• Name: Calculated profit
• External Name: (automatically populated)
• Formatting Type: Currency (Decimal)
• Formula: {{Revenue}} * 0.30

This example uses 30% as the profit margin, but you will have to figure out what is the profit margin for you and use that instead.

5. Currency Conversion

If you are selling in multiple currencies or just need a currency conversion, this calculated metric can help you get that in your reports.

• Name: Revenue from GBP to USD
• External Name: (automatically populated)
• Formatting Type: Currency (Decimal)
• Formula: {{Revenue}} * 1.28

Additionally, if you want to see more examples of Calculated Metrics, check out these articles from Jill Quick, Amanda Schroeder, Georgi Georgiev, Yehoshua Coren, Benjamin Mangold and Martijn Scheijbeler.

Also, if you are looking for a more detailed analysis on how to create Calculated Metrics, you can check out Himanshu’s article on Calculated Metrics.

2. Deeper Integration with Search Console

If before there was only the option to link the Search Console with Google Analytics and see some of the Search Console data inside Google Analytics, now you can see Search Console metrics in the same reports with Google Analytics metrics.

This new integration and reporting allows you to discover and get insights about search data end-to-end, by viewing data from the acquisition stage down to the conversion stage.

Among the benefits of this integration there are two that are incredibly useful:

• You will be able to view what landing pages have high organic traffic (high impressions and click through rate), but they do not engage or convert users. The report will help you identify those landing pages and improve them to increase engagement and conversions.
• You will be able to view what landing pages have high engagement and conversion rates, but they are not attracting enough users from an organic search. The report will help you identify those landing pages and improve their titles and meta descriptions in the search engines to make more people click through. You will also be able to know where to dedicate more resources to improving SEO for them.

In addition to this, you will be able to use the [Queries] report, which was available before this update, and the [Landing Pages] report to spot the keywords (and landing pages) for which you rank on the second page of Google.

You can then use this data to improve the landing pages that rank on the second page to get them on the first page of Google. Improvements can sometimes be made very quickly with updating the meta titles, description and the actual landing page to be more relevant for the keywords you are targeting.

Other times they may require additional resources, but the results will be fantastic most of the time and could lead to a high increase in organic traffic to your site.

It’s important to mention that Search Console keeps data only for the last 90 days, so you won’t be able to see more than 90 days back in Google Analytics.

The data is available in Search Console only after Google processes it and that takes about 48 hours. That means that you will also see the data in Google Analytics after 48 hours, once it’s processed and added to the Search Console.

Next, before diving into how to make this work for you, let’s also see what experts are saying about it:

The feature I am most excited about is the new deep integration between Google Analytics and Search Console. Adding context to data is what makes it useful and actionable.

With this new integration, you have a whole new set of data that provides context to your SEO analysis, enabling more data-driven SEO. So instead of looking only at Search Console to learn how specific pages are performing (pre-click metrics), now it is possible to understand on a page level how your SEO is working to convert users into buyers.

Daniel Waisberg – http://online-behavior.com/

The deeper integration between Search Console and GA allows marketers and analysts to get a better feeling on how their SEO campaigns perform and it reveals key areas for improvement. The valuable post-click data for organic search – with landing page as the key – should be used by anybody who is serious about their organic performance. Yes, the post-click keyword data isn’t available still, but you have lots of other options to improve your SEO now!

Paul Koks – http://online-metrics.com/

To use this functionality, you will need to enable Search Console data sharing in your Google Analytics account, under Property Settings.

If you already have enabled Search Console data sharing, then you are all set. There is no further action you need to make.

However, if you haven’t enabled Search Console Data sharing you will need to go to Admin > select the account where you want it enabled > Property > Property Settings > scroll down to Search Console Settings.

On this section, you should see the URL of your website, and this means that you verified your site in Search Console. Otherwise, you will need to add your site to Search Console and check it.

3. Move a Property Between Accounts

Another useful feature requested for a long time is property moving.

Moving a property is necessary when your agency set up your Google Analytics tracking in their account as separate property or if you are doing a business merger or acquisition.

In the past, it was impossible to move properties without starting with a new account. However, now you can move properties between Google Analytics accounts quickly.

Often accounts are set up without forethought as to how the business is going to evolve and how to handle multiple stakeholders. The ability to move properties between accounts allows greater confidence in starting off with one account structure but knowing that they can then be shifted around as the business evolves.

Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar – https://www.sparkline.com/

Regarding GA account structure I so often come across organizations who made a mess of their GA account, property and view setup. This is one of the reasons why this feature is very handy. You are flexible in changing your account structure which is helpful for all of us. Getting the account setup right is a crucial starting point!

Paul Koks – http://online-metrics.com/

To be able to transfer a property to a different account, you will need to have “Manage Users” permissions for both the account you are transferring from and the destination account.

Before moving your property here is what you should keep in mind:

• Moving a property will delete it from the source account, but the empty account will still count against the maximum number of the accounts you can have in Google Analytics.
• The tracking ID won’t change, so you do not have to adjust the tracking code on your site.
• When moving a property, you have the option to replace existing property and view permissions with permissions of the destination account or keep existing property and view permissions.
• All views associated with a property are moved, along with any custom settings, filters, linked accounts, and integrations, tracking customizations, remarketing audiences, dynamic attributes, custom definitions, data import, and custom tables.

Also, there may be situations when you won’t be able to move your property to a new account. The following is a list of some of the reasons:

• The destination account already has the maximum number of properties (50 by default or 200 for Google Analytics 360.)
• You do not have the required permissions for the target account.
• You linked the property to DoubleClick for Publishers.
• The property is a Roll-Up Property or a Source Property of your Google Analytics 360.

In case you want more details about the benefits of this functionality, you can check out this article from Carlos Escalera (Ohow) and this Google Analytics Help article.

To move a property from a Google Analytics account to another you will have to go to “Property Settings,” then click “Move property” and select the destination account.

Finally, you will have to choose your permissions settings, and you’re done. The move should take only a few minutes, and there you will see the property in your destination account.

4. Google Analytics Demo Account

If you ever wanted to get a better perspective on what data you can have available in Google Analytics, experiment with data, and learn how Google Analytics works, then the new Google Analytics demo account is something you want to check out.

The Demo Account, using the Google Merchandise Store, is a great way for users to dive in and try out Google Analytics without having their site. It’s a fully functioning E-commerce store with all the integrations set up (AdWords, DoubleClick, Search Console, etc.) and gives marketers and students an excellent resource to dig into learning with.

Krista Seiden – http://www.kristaseiden.com/

Often people aren’t sure what are the benefits of implementing a particular set of features. Using the GA demo account, you can see what enhanced E-commerce reports, for example, look like with fully populated data. You are then able to make a decision as to whether you want to invest resources into the additional tagging work required.

Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar – https://www.sparkline.com/

The data in the demo account comes from a real E-commerce store, the Google Merchandize Store. Data coming from a real account is great because you have access to real data, especially E-commerce data, which is something hard to get when you want to have a sandbox account with which you can experiment.

Because the account contains real data you can use it to:

• Learn more about how Google Analytics works and interpret data.
• Use it as a tool to demonstrate Google Analytics and create learning materials for your students, if you are teaching others how to use Google Analytics.
• See enhanced E-commerce reports.
• View data from integrations such as Google AdWords or Search Console.
• Change reports using filters, secondary dimensions or segments.
• Create dashboards and custom reports.
• See calculated metrics.

If you want to learn more about the benefits of the demo account and what else you can do with it, be sure to check out this article from Emily Rosche (LunaMetrics) and this article from Michelle Noonan (Seer Interactive).

To get access to the Google Analytics demo account, all you need to do is click this URL.

Once you do that, you will be prompted to log in, if you already have a Google Analytics account you will be given access to the demo account.

If you do not have an account, then you will be prompted to create one, and then the demo account will be added to your new Google Analytics account.

5. User Explorer Reporting

The User Explorer report is a recently added report that allows you to see data at the user level.

Before this feature, the only way you could explore the activities of an individual (anonymized) user was if you had Google Analytics 360 and had hit-level data being imported into Google BigQuery. Now Google Analytics Standard users are also able to explore the activities of individual users to optimize your UX for certain cohorts of users.

Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar – https://www.sparkline.com/

In most of the Google Analytics reports you will see only aggregate data and this is the first report that drills down at the user level.

The user level reporting can be especially helpful when you identify issues with a segment of your users and want to investigate further. For example, you may have users coming from a particular source or using a mobile device that have a high bounce rate or that do not convert very well. By looking at a few individual reports, you may be able to identify the issue and fix it.

Another use case of this would be to take a closer look at your customers to see what they are doing right on your website and what you can do to make more people follow the same path to conversion. Or how you can help them convert faster.

Then, you can review what information you can change to see how you can get more conversions faster.

To view the User Explorer report navigate to Reports > Audience > User Explorer.

Initially, you will see data by Client ID, which consists of a random number and the first time stamp, attributed for every unique hit. If the same visitor does subsequent hits, then the same Client ID will be set.

However, please note that this works very well as long as the users do not block their cookies, clear their cookies or change devices.

To make this work across devices, you can implement User ID, which can identify users that log in to your site across devices and even if they clear cookies.

Using a User ID can lead to more accurate data because those users will be tracked across multiple devices as long as they log in.

If you would like to read more about Client ID and User ID, here you can read more about the difference between them, as well as get more information about the data collection, processing, and reporting.

For each client or user ID, you see the following initial data:

• Sessions
• Avg. Session Duration
• Bounce Rate
• Revenue
• Transactions
• Goal Conversion Rate

Then, once you click on a client or user ID, you will be able to view an individual report for that ID, which contains the activity log, acquisition date, and channel.

You will also see data for:

• Sessions (LTV): Total sessions over the user’s lifetime
• Session Duration (LTV): Average session duration over the user’s lifetime
• Revenue (LTV): Total revenue over the user’s lifetime
• Transactions (LTV): Total transactions over the user’s lifetime

Finally, here you can read more about the User Explorer report from Paul Koks (Online Metrics).

6. Custom Funnels (Google Analytics 360)

Of all of the reporting features that Google Analytics 360 has launched in the past few years, I think Custom Funnels are, quite possibly, my favorite. This report fills a significant need for analysts who are used to the traditional goal funnels in Google Analytics

Krista Seiden – http://www.kristaseiden.com/

Here you can find some of the benefits of Custom Funnels:

• Define steps based on any dimension criteria. With Custom Funnels you can build funnels on the fly based on events, page views, etc. There are no limits now to just using a page URL as a funnel step, which is the way it works with regular Google Analytics goals.
• They are retroactive! Unlike the Goal funnel visualizations which allows you to start viewing data from the day you create the goal and set up the funnel, you can create Custom Funnels to analyze your user behavior during any period you choose.
• Create a new segment from a drop-off point and remarket to that audience with AdWords or use that audience to target a test variation in Optimize 360.

If you are using the Measurement Protocol for offline data import or looking at cross-device tracking with a user ID, this can be an especially awesome way of building a complete picture of your full funnel or customer journey.

For example, the first screenshot shows what a funnel would look like with just your online data:

When using an offline system, such as a CRM, you are no longer able to track leads once they leave your website.

However, you can use Measurement Protocol to send hits to Google Analytics and then you can use them as steps in your Custom Funnel:

7. Data Studio

Data Studio is a new tool that will help you visualize Google Analytics data, along with data from other sources in a way that is much easier to understand.

The newest feature in GA I am most excited about is the data studio product. Why? Because for years I have been frustrated with the way classic dashboards work in Google Analytics. They were rigid, limited, and didn’t give much of an option for making changes.

Sure, you could look at sales for your E-commerce store, or top pages visited from social, but you couldn’t tell a narrative. You couldn’t get a pulse on your business. If your data was incorrect, you couldn’t change it. Doing much of anything with these dashboards was difficult. You couldn’t introduce your data sources, you had to have perfect data and configuration, and even then reports were severely limited.

You needed a third-party product to do anything with your Google Analytics data. That is before they released data studio. Data Studio solves all the pain points I mention above, and introduces new opportunities that were previously reserved for our “wish list of things that might happen someday.”

The year 2016 became someday with Data Studio, and that is why I’m so excited.

Jeff Sauer – https://www.jeffalytics.com/

With Data Studio you can connect multiple data sources like Google Analytics, Search Console, YouTube, AdWords, Google Sheets, upload custom documents and more.

Once you connect data sources, you can add to your report and customize bar charts, pie charts, time series, bullet charts or heat maps.

Then, when your report is ready, you can share it with your team, clients or management.

For an in-depth review of Data Studio, you can check out this article from Daniel Waisberg (Online Behavior).

Recap

If you want to be up to date with the latest Google Analytics features and make the most of them, you need to look at:

1. Calculated Metrics
2. Integration with Search Console
3. Property Moving
4. Google Analytics Demo Account
5. User Explorer Reporting
6. Custom Funnels
7. Data Studio

Your Turn

Now that you’ve seen the new and most exciting Google Analytics features from top Google Analytics experts, I would love to hear what your preferred Google Analytics features are?

Also, let me know if there is anything we missed and should have included in the article.

Well, we’ve all been in this situation, but things have changed since 1994 when people were not that used to scroll.

Even if everyone is not willing to admit this, people have learned how to scroll. It’s 2017 after all.

“Above the fold” comes from newspapers because the upper half of a newspaper was where the most important stories and images were added.

But this is the present and there is research that supports the fact that “Above the Fold” is a myth.

Plus, I will show you in this article a better place to put your calls to action (CTA).

Nowadays, we use “above the fold” to mean the visible part of a screen (usually the first 600px) where most people like to stick everything they can to make it visible.

If you are willing to dig into it, you can see what’s below the tip of the iceberg.

Research has shown that while users spend 80% of their time reading the information above the fold, they do know how to scroll. And it turns out that scrolling beats paging, because it’s easier for the user to just keep going down.

Additionally, Bnonn Tennant, who wrote about “Why “The Fold” Is A Myth – And Where To Actually Put Your Calls To Action,” has an interesting perspective on the “above the fold” myth the Kissmetrics blog.

Again, backed by research and testing.

He starts by mentioning research done by MarketingExperiments which got a 20% increase in conversion rate just by moving the call to action from above the fold:

… below the fold.

And then he shows research done by Michael Lykke Aagaard from Content Verve (among others) who revealed a test where he moved the call to action (CTA) way below the fold. That move led to a 304% increase in conversion.

Bnonn also mentions that “Higher conversion rates have nothing to do with whether the button is above the fold, and everything to do with whether the button is below the right amount of good copy.”  I completely agree with him.

If you do a good job writing good copy that will keep your visitors engaged, it will have a positive return for you.

A CTA always does better if it’s accompanied by some really well written copy.

Chris Lema also ads some compelling reasons why we should stop talking about the fold.

Now, let’s see how you can apply this to your website and what is the best place to add your calls to action.

How does this apply to your website?

Based on some of the above research, last year after I redesigned my website, I decided to do my own research on this topic.

I started by getting myself an account with CrazyEgg and installed the tracking software on my blog.

After the website received a fair amount of traffic (over 1,000 visits) I started to look at heatmaps. They looked like this:

You can see that most of the visitor’s attention is essentially below the fold (look for the brightest areas) and interest areas, such as the email signup form from the top of the sidebar, are essentially invisible for them.

This was the point when I started to think at what I later called the “Cloud Box”.

What is the Cloud Box?

The Cloud Box is essentially a floating box generated by a script, which moves along with the reader when reading an article.

You can add some code in a text widget, link it to a script and boom! there you have it (read more and I will show you how to create one for yourself).

You may not know this yet, but you are already familiar with the Cloud Box. You have already seen it just by looking at the right sidebar now.

However, I am not the only one that is using this. It has been successfully used by Neil Patel on his QuickSprout blog…

… and on the The Daily Egg, which is CrazyEgg‘s blog.

In one of his articles, when talking about how you can convert blog readers into customers, Neil even mentioned the fact that the ad he has in the Cloud Box gets clicked on 2.58% of the time.

And if you compare this with .94%, the CTR (click-through rate) of the static ad in the sidebar of the same blog, that’s a difference of 274%.

Just think about improving your CTR with 274% or 670%!

For my ads, out of the total traffic that this site sends to Elevatr through the sidebar ads, 87% is being sent by the Cloud Box. This is essentially 670% more traffic than the static ad from the top of the sidebar sends.

But it’s not just for ads!

I found more smart people who use this with success, such as the Freshome blog.

Mihai Micle, the founder of Freshome, says that he has seen significant improvements for the Pinterest and Facebook widgets.

You can get really creative with this and add quite anything you want to promote on the Cloud Box, such as:

• Twitter follow buton
• Facebook like widget
• Pinterest button
• Your about me/us information
• Information about your products

Essentially, anything that you want to be more visible for your readers.

But it’s important to rotate what you promote in the CloudBox because people get “widget blind” and will not see it anymore.

This way, your visitors will always have something new to interact with.

That is why Mihai started with a Pinterest button, now he uses a Facebook like widget and at some point he may use that spot for ads.

Additionally, you may have noticed on the Kissmetrics blog a call to action to signup for the Kissmetrics app, which I bet will be effective if they keep it there.

What Happens When the Ad is Replaced With an Email Cloud Box?

This one of the first things I was thinking about when working on Elevatr.

Elevatr is a premium WordPress plugin that helps you easily create signup forms and one of my goals was to also have a Cloud Box.

Before Elevatr, I was successfully using the cloud box on my blog for list building and kept adding people to my email newsletter by adding the Email Cloud Box manually.

But after I launched Elevatr, more people started to use it, like Henri Junttila from Wake Up Cloud.

He started to use Elevatr soon after I launched it and just in January alone, the Email Cloud Box was responsible for 15% of his subscribers.

But, you should be aware of the fact that Henri had already optimized his blog during the most recent redesign and placed the signup boxes strategically.

How to Create Your Own Cloud Box

Now, because I am really happy with the results that the Cloud Box can bring, I want you to be able to use it.

So I put together the code that you need and a short tutorial on how you can add it to your website below.

First, you will have to download the following JavaScript and upload it to a directory called js, within your theme folder (wp-content/themes/your-theme/).

If it doesn’t exist, just create a new one and upload the file to that location (wp-content/themes/your-theme/js/).

Again, just to make sure that you get it right: download the following file and upload it to wp-content/themes/your-theme/js/.

Remember to unzip the file before you upload it.

Next, you need to add the following code to your functions.php file. You can do that from [Appearance > Editor] in your WordPress admin account. But please do this with caution as if you delete something from this file, you can break your website. In case you are now familiar with this, please ask someone to do it for you.

Finally, all you have to do is just upload your ad image and include it in a text widget at the bottom of your sidebar.

Here’s an example of what I use for my Elevatr ad:

Just copy the above code and paste it in a text widget after you replace the links.

What About an Email Cloud Box?

If you want to have an Email Cloud Box in your sidebar, all you have to do is just replace the link and image with your signup box code.

Remember to keep the code within the tag.

Looking for an easier way of adding the Email Cloud Box?

In case this looks like a language that someone from Mars is speaking or maybe brain surgery, then you may want to look at a simple way to do this.

And yes, there is a simple way of adding an Email Cloud Box to your sidebar and get more subscribers.

You can actually create an Email Cloud Box with my premium plugin, Elevatr and it should take you about 5 minutes to do it.

With Elevatr, all you have to do is just connect to your preferred email marketing provider (MailChimp or Aweber + iContact coming soon) using your API key and choose Cloud Box while building your form.

And creating the form is a darn easy process – just point-and-click.

You should check out Elevatr today.

Back to you

Before I ask you to go and try this, what are your thoughts about the “Above the Fold” myth and the Cloud Box?

I would love to hear your opinion.

So, once you leave a comment below with that go and test the Cloud Box and then come back to let us know your findings.

That may sound impossible, but it’s not.

In the past 6 months I’ve been working on a tool that will make this possible for you.

This tools is easy to use. It’s fast. Secure. It just works. And it’s called Elevatr.

Is this you?

Keep reading if you:

• Have been unable to make decent looking email signup forms yourself
• Want an easy way to integrate signup forms with MailChimp or Aweber
• Need a solution that’s hyper customizable
• Use tools that don’t always work right and it takes them forever to load
• Want an easy way to create prettier forms and webinar landing pages
• Find the design process time consuming and frustrating
• Don’t have strong coding or HTML knowledge

Introducing Elevatr

Earlier this month you learned about increasing email conversion rate and one of the points there was to place your signup forms strategically on your website.

But you need to create them in the first place, right?

Well, this is where Elevatr comes in handy.

Elevatr is a WordPress plugin that helps you easily create signup forms and webinar landing pages so that you can increase leads through email marketing and webinars.

Even if you are not a designer, Elevatr’s point-and-click design controls help you build amazing signup forms and webinar landing pages.

Within minutes of installing Elevatr you can have your signup form or webinar landing page ready to add new subscribers to your list.

Plus, it doesn’t require you to have any coding or HTML experience.

If I were to summarize the benefits of Elevatr, I would say that:

• It’s super easy to setup
• It’s fast
• Builds beautiful forms
• Has an amazing price (compared with designer costs)
• Just works
• It’s hacker-proof
• Provides fantastic support
• Integrates seamlessly with email marketing providers

How you can use Elevatr

Elevatr lets you quickly and easily build custom signup forms and webinar landing pages. And the creation process is dead simple.

For start you will have to add the Elevatr license key to activate it and then connect Elevatr to your preferred email marketing provider.

Signup Forms

To build your form, first you have to add your message/copy. Then you can make your signup forms unique by changing the form and font styles, colors, backgrounds and textures.

Next, you have to choose the list where you want to add your subscribers, select the form type and save it.

Once you have done that you can essentially place the forms in any location you want.

Choose [Custom Location] and use the [Elevatr Form Widget] to place your form in the sidebar and footer.

Or use the shortcode to place it in any post or page you want.

The [Cloud Box] (a floating box for your sidebar) can be added in your sidebar using the [Elevatr Form Widget].

To use [Below Post] you will have to choose the form that will be used below your posts from [Elevatr Settings].

Webinar Landing Pages

For webinars, all you have to do it’s just craft your landing page, just as a regular page, connect to GoToWebinar and insert the webinar form on your page.

Then, all you have to do is just drive people to the webinar page you just built. It’s as simple as that.

Once you finish setting up Elevatr, the real fun begins.

Now, all you have to do it’s just relax, provide amazing content and watch how your list grows.

The Offer

There’s going to be a great introductory offer for Elevatr. And if you act fast, you will get it at a really good price: $37.

But it won’t last long, so hurry up!

Your Turn

Now, here’s what I want you to do:

• If you like what you read, go and check out Elevatr
• If you know a friend that needs this, please send her to this post
• If you have questions or feedback, please use the comments section below

Enjoy!

But you don’t have enough time to put everything together, do you?

If that’s you, then I have some tips that will help.

These tips helped me increase my email conversion rate and I am positive that they will also help you.

First, what I recently learned about managing my time and getting things done is the importance of planning my activities.

You may be planning your activities, but just like me, you’re probably not always sticking with the plan.

So, my advice before getting started is to block time on your calendar for each of these activities.

Now, let’s see what you can do to increase your email conversion rates.

1. Offer an Incentive to Signup

Most of us are adding a signup form in the sidebar and ask people to subscribe for updates, but is that good enough?

I’ve compared my newly launched website – WP Backpack with this one and I’ve come to the conclusion that “subscribe for updates” it’s not a good enough incentive for people to signup.

Even if the launch article got some really good traffic from my existing list and social media, my signup rate was really low.

Why?

Because it doesn’t have a good incentive to convince people to signup.

On the other hand, on EugenOprea.com, you get my Free Google Analytics course when you signup for updates.

This has been working really well for me, so I keep sending traffic to this landing page.

That is why the next action point on my to do list for WP Backpack is to add a small course for my subscribers.

I am also more inclined to create a course, and deliver it though an auto-responder, than to write an eBook.

This is more effective because, with an eBook, people will get it and unsubscribe or even worse, get it and forget about it.

But with a course, readers will have a consistent reminder of you, and they will become used to clicking the links in your emails and coming to your site. Doing this will, hopefully, help them take action and follow the advice from your course.

A course will also be easier to get done.

With an eBook you will need to write and design it before being able to offer it to your subscribers, but with a course, you can build one lesson at a time.

One lesson per week is a really good starting point and you can also setup your auto-responder to deliver your lessons every week.

So don’t make your job harder by trying to finish it in one go.

Instead, block time each week to write a new lesson and send it to your subscribers once it’s ready.

Shortcut: Start an auto-responder and offer a free course for your subscribers or offer a freebie to incentivize visitors to signup for your newsletter.

2. Place your Signup Forms Strategically

This year I redesigned EugenOpea.com after 6 month of research.

I’ve put into the new design everything that I learned about increasing visitor loyalty and conversion rates.

And one of the things I’ve been focusing is the signup form, or better signup forms.

If you browse the website you will notice that I placed them in strategic locations:

• on the home page
• in the sidebar
• in the footer
• on the landing page for my course
• in an Email Cloud Box

Now, let me tell you a bit about each of them and why you should use them, too.

On the Home Page

For most of us, the home page is the most visited page on the website, so it’s really important to make a good impression for new visitors.

That is why I’ve chosen to first share some content with them, so they can see that I am knowledgeable and genuinely provide value.

Only after that I add the signup box, with the benefits of signing up, and a link to the landing page of my Google Analytics course, which contains more details about it.

So my advice for you is to first show your visitor valuable content and then present a reason to signup.

In the Sidebar

Every site has a signup box in the sidebar and you can, just as I did, add it to make it easier for people to signup.

But make sure that you also include a strong incentive for your visitors to take action.

In the footer

I am one of those people who, when I research something, I check every pixel of that website.

For this reason I decided to add a signup form in the footer, so those like me, who reach the end of the page, get a reminder that I want to share more content with them.

On the landing page

Landing pages are a great way to convert visitors into subscribers and this is the main reason why I’ve built a page specifically for my course.

I would recommend you to do the same and if you have more benefits for your readers, create a landing page where you can tell them more about those benefits.

You can use Premise to build really good looking landing pages, so you don’t have any excuse to not do it.

In a Email Cloud Box

Now, you’ve gotten to the most interesting part.

After doing some tests and checking heatmaps for my website with CrazyEgg, I’ve come to the conclusion that my visitors’ attention is not on the signup box from the sidebar.

Visitors are immediately scrolling to the next screen once they get on a page/article.

This is the reason why I added, what I call an Email Cloud Box, which moves with the visitor as she scrolls down.

I will show how to add it in a future article.

Additionally, you should also add a signup box below your posts, so once a visitor reads one of your articles, they can choose to signup for your newsletter.

But, please be aware that not every box works for everyone and if you add signup boxes all over your site, they will not be effective anymore.

If you would like to get started faster with creating signup boxes, have a look at Elevatr, my premium WordPress plugin. It can help you easily create signup forms and webinar landing pages so that you can increase leads through email marketing and webinars.

Shortcut: Take your time to think where you should add your signup boxes, do some tests and implement them. And definitely use Elevatr for your forms.

3. Ask for the Signup

A lot of people don’t know or try this, but asking for the signup has so much power.

When you close an article, when you share it on social media or when you talk about your website, ask people to signup for your newsletter.

Do it in a nice manner and also tell them the advantages. Tell them what’s in it for them.

More than this, ask them to share your newsletter with their friends and colleagues, or with their audience if they have an established business.

You will be amazed how many people will come to help you if you ask them.

But, you will have to also return them the favor.

And be genuine about it. This is very important.

Shortcut: Here’s what you should do right now: go in your favorite Facebook group, favorite forum and on the social media outlet where you have the most followers, and ask people to signup for your newsletter.

4. Start Guest Posting

Everyone sees this as a really hard task to do, but as long as you master your topic and put everything you know in writing the article, you can’t fail.

Yes, it can take months until it gets published and you may work hours to write it, but it’s worth it.

I got my first 1,000 subscribers from 3 guest posts I did at the beginning of the year and guest posting is always on my to do list.

You know that you can’t always increase conversion rates without increasing traffic, so guest posting, just like SEO, can help you drive more traffic to your website and gain more subscribers.

But here’ what I would recommend you to do to make sure you of success:

• brainstorm 3-5 post ideas and choose a website were you want to submit your post
• contact the website owner and present your ideas
• if one of them gets approved, start writing it
• send the traffic to a landing page that has a signup form and an incentive to signup

Additionally, when writing the article, make sure that you include your best tips, but think that you are writing it for your own blog.

Don’t get hung up in making it perfect, because there is no such thing as perfect.

Shortcut: Block some time and start brainstorming ideas for your guest post. Then send your pitch and once it gets approved, write the articles. Most of the time, it is as simple as that.

5. Improve your SEO

Just like guest posting, you may think that SEO is fairly difficult, but it’s not.

All you have to do is to build awesome content that people love and share.

Essentially, you will need to make sure that you write for people and not search engines.

I am saying this because search engines try to emulate human behavior when deciding what website is best for their search results.

So, put your best into writing great content and a really good headlines.

Then you can add a good description for your article to show in the search results page, get some links from friends and through guest posting and write more good content.

Plus, for additional peace of mind, I would strongly recommend you use Scribe, which is a fantastic piece of software that can help you better optimize your content.

Shortcut: Check this article about WordPress SEO and take some time to implement the advice there. Once you do that, you will be all set. Oh, and subscribe for Scribe. It’s worth it!

I won’t upgrade my WordPress blog because I am afraid of breaking it.

Does this sounds familiar?

In this article I will show you how to break this fear and start doing more yourself if you want it.

Why this type of article?

Well, I was reading The Flinch by Julien Smith and it occurred to me how many times I’ve heard my clients avoiding to take action because they were afraid of breaking something.

Fear it’s natural, especially when it’s at stake something you have invested a lot of time and money in.

That it’s why you need to take some measures that will help you be more confident in yourself.

Let’s say that you want to install a plugin, tweak the design, upgrade WordPress or test a new signup form.

If you are like most of us you will be put off by the thought that you might break something.

But if you will make sure you can repair what might break, you are covered. Here’s how…

Backup

The first and most important thing you need to do when you want to try something new is to backup. Backups are really useful not only for testing, but also to have something to restore in case of server failure or hacking.

I’ve heard a lot of stories where people lost months of work and money because the didn’t have a backup. Plus, it happened to me once, so I am speaking from experience.

In this case you will need to backup your website before testing, tweaking or upgrade anything.

To do this, just install one of the WordPress plugins that help you backup your site.

Create a Sandbox

Better than a backup is to work locally or on a different instance on the server and not on the live version of your website.

This way nothing will get lost and if something breaks it will not affect your main website.

Then if everything works you can go ahead and apply the changes to your main website.

Learn and Test

Once you get your setup ready and you are sure that you have a backup in place or your work locally, it’s time to have some fun and try new things that you’ve been afraid of.

You may want to learn how to update your logo or how you can change the spacing of your articles.

Or you may want to learn some CSS and change your footer. In order to do this you will need to learn how to do it. Obviously, right?

You will need to look for a WordPress blog, a Web Analytics book or an SEO guide and search the things your want to learn.

The Internet is full of information now and you will be able to find anything you want.

Then, once you’ve gathered the needed knowledge, you can start to apply what you’ve learnt. It’s as simple as that.

In Closing

I hope that this article helped you take action and I am glad if I contributed to that.

If the article helped, do share with us what you’ve accomplished or post your questions in the comments below if you have any.

In this case it’s time to tweak it a little bit.

I won’t hide from you that optimizing your WordPress website is not an easy process, but I can assure you that it’s worth it.

In this article I will show you 3 simple fixes that you can apply straight away to improve the speed for your website.

Plus, it will take you minutes to complete them.

You may consider these tips as being too simple, but I would like to start with actionable information that you can apply right away.

There will be more advanced tips on how to improve your WordPress blog speed in the next articles. So stay tuned!

1. Keep the number of  WordPress Plugins to a minimum

WordPress plugins add a large overhead to your WordPress website and this is the reason why you need to keep their number as low as possible.

Before doing this, I would suggest you to get the P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler), which will help you see what plugins add the most overhead to your website.

I know that this is an extra plugin, but you will temporary use it to audit your website and delete it once you finish the audit.

The P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) will show you the number of plugins you have on your WordPress site, what is their load time and their impact on the page load time.

Then you will see a nice pie chart with a runtime breakdown by plugin.

In this chart you will see which of your plugins add the most overhead to the WordPress installation.

Once you have this information, you can easily delete those plugins and replace them with others that behave nicer.

I would also recommend you to hire someone to help you better implement the functionality you are looking for.

2. Delete Spam Comments

It may be obvious that you need to delete your spam comments, but you would be surprised how many people ignore to do this.

Spam comments will not add a large overhead to your database, but when you have thousands, things may change.

That is why I would recommend you to empty the spam comments, especially if you get hundreds every day.

It’s a simple process and all you have to do is click on the [Spam] comments from your dashboard and then select the [Empty Spam] button.

That’s all!

3. Delete Posts Revisions

Posts Revisions is a feature that was added to WordPress in the 2.6 version and it automatically saves a draft of your article/page as you write it.

It’s nice to have it while you are working on it, but once you publish the article, you will not need the revisions anymore.

Then, if each post is saved 20 times while you work on it and you have 100 posts on your site, then you will have 2,000 extra revisions on your WordPress site.

This will make your database slower and your pages will take more time to load.

In order to avoid this, you will need to delete your post revisions at least monthly. But if you publish every day or multiple times a day, I would recommend you to do this weekly.

This way, you will not ad a large overhead on your database.

However, I would not recommend you to delete them every day, as you may change something that breaks the article/page and posts revisions as a saver.

Also, for the same reason avoid disabling posts revisions.

Now, in order to delete them you will need a tool. You can do it straight in the database if you are comfortable with that or using a plugin.

For my blog I’ve done it both from the database, but also using a plugin: Better Delete Revision.

Better Delete Revision allows you to delete old revisions and also optimize your database if needed.

All you have to do to use this plugin is to install it and look for [Better Delete Revision] under the [Settings] section.

Once you are on that page press the [Check Revisions Posts] button and you will see a list with all your old revisions.

Finally, select the button to delete all of them and you are all set.

Conclusion

This post will be the first in a series that will teach you what you need to do to increase your WordPress site speed.

Again, these are simple tips that you can start with which will not take you hours or days to implement.

Later on we will look at other ways of improving your WordPress site speed.

In the meantime, I would love to hear what other simple ways you use to do this or what troubles you had while trying to increase the loading speed of your website.

But that’s just the platform and when it comes to promoting your website on the web you need to think seriously at SEO among others.

That is why in this article you will learn what WordPress SEO means and how you can optimize your website for search engines.

Before getting started I would like to inform you that robots are getting smarter and you cannot trick them anymore.

That is why, I would encourage you to write and optimize with your audience in mind and not Google or other search engines.

If you do this, you will see that results will come. But, they will come easier if you apply the following hacks to your WordPress SEO.

Get it Right from Start

I know that you’ve heard this a lot while building your website, getting started with SEO, diving into Google Analytics and even when you started your business, but it’s true:

You need to get it right from start!

By this I am referring at the fact that you need to understand the SEO process, prepare the tools that will make your job 1 million times easier and setup goals for what you want to achieve.

Additionally you need to have a clean design with nice fonts that makes articles easy to read, uses a smart theme (if you are on WordPress) with good coding that Google loves.

Setup Goals

Always, always setup goals when starting a new project. In this case you can have as a goal a specific ranking for your keywords, a targeted number of links to your site or visitors that come to your site from search engines.

Personally, I set as a goal for my articles to rank fast and then get on the first page of Google.

Sometimes they do get there and sometimes they don’t, depending on how competitive the keyword is.

If they are on the first page I already have a boost in traffic and all I have to do to get them higher on the page is just increase my site authority.

Do your Research (Keyword Research)

Before starting to get traffic from search engines you need to target the keywords that you would like to rank for.

But in order to target keywords, you need to research them and see if they are the best fit for your business.

To do that you need to use the Keyword Tool from Google to brainstorm some keyword ideas that you can use to decide which one is most suitable for your articles.

In order to do that just think at some words related with the topic you want to write about.

Once you have those clear in mind, just head over to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and start researching those words.

They will help you find really god keywords that will offer you a great start on your search engine optimization efforts.

While doing this research you need to look for the keywords that are balanced in terms of Global Monthly Searches, Competition and CPC.

• Global Monthly Searches – this will help you see how popular a keyword is and how many people are looking for that keyword with approximation every month. The higher the number, the more chances you have to get a large amount of traffic for your website if you rank high in search engines.
• CPC – this will tell you what is the average cost per click for that keyword in AdWords. Why is this important? Because high converting keywords are really expensive and those keywords with a high CPC will most likely give you visitors that relate with your business and convert better.
• Competition – this metric will tell you how hard is it to rank for a specific keyword. With a high competition you will have a really hard time trying to rank higher in search engines, so look for medium and low competition.

Now that you know what each metric means, you need to find keywords that are balanced with a decent Global Monthly Searches number, a high CPC and a low competition.

Another thing to consider is the match type that you are analyzing. By default Google will return Broad Global Monthly Searches, which means that it will include searches that contain your keyword and other words.

On the other hand the [Exact] match will count only those searches that match exactly your keyword.

For example, an [Exact] match will count only the “seo software” queries for the “seo software” keyword, while a Broad match will also count “seo software reviews”, “seo software comparison”, “seo software free” for the same keyword.

You can select your match type from the left sidebar.

When you optimize a webpage or when you write an article think about what you want to achieve with that page/article and choose 1 main keyword for which you want that to rank.

For my articles I prefer to do keyword research before writing them, because I want to write the article with those keywords in mind and naturally spread them across the article. Sometimes I am so inspired and I just start to write, so I leave this process for the time when I finish writing, but most of the times, I do this prior to writing the article.

Others prefer to do keyword research for articles after they write them. I am fine with that and in my opinion everyone should have it’s own process, so really, create your own process and follow that.

Advanced users will also test the keywords before implementing them into their website using an AdWords campaign. You can setup an AdWords campaign using exact match keywords and measure the traffic that you get after a couple of hundred clicks.

Track clicks, impressions and conversions. See how many converted and work out how much traffic and revenue you will get using the leaked AOL data mining.

As a final note to keyword research, consider following these best practices:

• Do not target keywords that have a high competition
• Do not target keywords that have a high search volume
• Look for exact match instead of broad match
• Target keywords that are relevant to your business
• Target the singular form of keywords and not plural
• Pay close attention to CPC (Cost Per Click). Higher CPC give you higher conversions.

URL Structure

One of the first WordPress SEO hacks you need to apply is related with your URL structure.

By default WordPress will use for your URLs question marks and lots of numbers, which don’t really have a value for your search engines and can’t improve your SEO.

However, you can change this by setting WordPress to generate SEO friendly URLs.

To do this you need to go to [Settings] > [Permalink Settings] and change the Common Settings to [Post name].

If you post multiple times a day and plan to publish a large number of articles over time, then you might consider using dates in the URLs.

But the downside of this is the fact that some visitors might consider some articles too old if they see the date and they will leave your website.

Plus it’s a best practice to keep the URLs shorter, so [Post name] is the best way to go about this.

Remember that you can change your URL to whichever you want while editing an article or page to keep it short and relevant

Title Tags

Title tags are really important because they are shown in the browser title and used by Google in the search engine results pages.

The first thing that visitors will see when browsing the results will be the title tags.

That is why title tags are also a really good call to action which should make the users click your link.

To improve this make sure that your title is compelling.

Also, remember to always use the keywords you are targeting towards the beginning of the title tag and make sure that each title tag is unique.

Meta Description

It’s what users see in search engines along with the title tag and you should carefully write it because the meta description can increase or decrease your click-through rate.

Additionally, place your target keywords towards the beginning of it and make each of them unique.

Body Copy

When talking about WordPress SEO the copy of your articles/pages is really important.

This is probably one of the most important factors for getting a good ranking in search engines.

There are a couple of important things that you need to focus on when writing the copy of your article/pages.

First you need to make sure that you write for people, not for search engines, because you will get the attention of your audience. They will know that you are genuine.

Again, the search engines are smart enough to see when you over optimize your copy.

Second, use the keywords that you researched and place them naturally in your article. Just by knowing them from your research your brain will automatically place them where they are appropriate.

Additionally, if you are looking to read more about the perfectly optimized page, check Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization, written by Rand Fishkin, the CEO of SEOmoz.

Blog Privacy

If you have installed your WordPress blog using an automatic script provided by your hosting company, I would recommend you to check the privacy settings of your WordPress blog.

To do that you need to go to [Settings] > [Privacy Settings] and make sure that [Site visibility] is set to [Allow search engines to index this site].

This way search engines like Google will be able to come, crawl and index your website.

In case the other option is selected, then they will come, read the message and leave without indexing your WordPress blog, thus your blog will not exist for them.

Internal Linking

Interlinking between articles and pages on a WordPress blog is not only a common SEO practice, but also a good way to keep your visitors engaged with your content, thus keep them longer on your website.

To do this, just add a link to related articles while writing, just as I did above.

I’ve seen some WordPress plugins that do this automatically, but I would recommend you to keep the links at a decent level and place them manually.

These automatic plugins will place 5 links in a phrase and this will look spammy for both visitors and search engines.

Link out

Linking out might not be a proper SEO technique, but it has a couple of advantages.

One of them is that you will provide to your readers additional resources that they might find interesting and helpful.

This way you will add even more value, which will make visitors to come back or subscribe to your blog.

Another advantage is the fact that when you will link out to other people and send traffic there, they might notice it and return the favor.

If they will appreciate it they will come to comment on your articles, share them with their audience and even link back on a different occasion.

Use ALT Attributes for Images

Using ALT attributes for your images is mainly an accessibility factor for your visitors with disabilities.

But because search engines encourage making websites more accessible is also considered a ranking factor.

That is why it’s strongly recommended that you should use ALT attributes for your images.

To do this, you need to make sure that you when uploading images to WordPress you also add text for description and ALT fields.

WWW vs non-WWW

By default you can access your website by typing WWW before your address on not.

Example: http://eugenoprea.com and http://eugenoprea.com

However, if you keep it this way, you will loose a lot of link juice because some people will link to you using the WWW version and others using the non-WWW version.

This way, you will have 2 versions of the same page splitting Page Rank and link value.

But you can solve this problem by 301 redirecting all your traffic from the non-WWW version to the WWW version or the WWW version to the non-WWW version.

To do this you will need to add a couple of rows of code in your .htaccess file.

The .htaccess file is located in the root directory of your website and you can access it via FTP or your hosting Control Panel.

Once you edit your .htaccess file it should look like in the example below to redirect traffic from WWW to non-WWW.

# Redirect Non-WWW to WWW
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourwebsite\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourwebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# END Redirect Non-WWW to WWW
# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

Remember to replace yourwebsite with your website URL.

Additionally, you will need to add WWW to the [WordPress Address (URL)] and [Site Address (URL)] in the [General Settings] section of your WordPress blog.

Note: Once you press the save button, you will be logged out and you will need to enter your login credentials again.

XML sitemaps

It’s recommended to have a XML sitemap, update it regularly and submit it to search engines, so you can get your articles indexed faster.

If you are not doing this already, I would recommend you to create a Google Webmaster Tools account and submit your XML Sitemap.

To create an XML sitemap in WordPress, use Google XML Sitemaps.

The Google XML Sitemaps plugin will allow you to automatically build and submit your sitemap to search engines. It also let you configure how the sitemap is created, where it’s stored plus other options you can check out.

Use WordPress Update services

One of the default options of WordPress is to notify popular update services by sending a XML-RPC ping when you publish a new post or update one.

Everyone uses Ping-o-Matic, which is sending one “ping” from you and lets many other services know that you have updated the content of your blog.

The Ping-O-Matic’s server (rpc.pingomatic.com) is listed by default in the WordPress [Update Services] list. All you need to do is sit back and let it work for you!

But if you would like, you can also add other update services that can be pinged when publishing posts.

Personally I have added these services to my blog and I noticed that my articles are indexed and ranked within 1 hour from when I publish them.

If you would like to also add there services to your blog, just copy the list and paste it into the [Update Services] section from the [Settings] panel > [Writing].

XML-RPC Ping Services

http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.twingly.com
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://blo.gs/ping.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://geourl.org/ping
http://ipings.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.feedsubmitter.com
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.pingerati.net
http://www.pingmyblog.com
http://www.weblogalot.com/ping

Getting Links

Authority is something that Google likes and it will give you good SEO rankings if it sees you as an authority.

You can start building this authority by asking your friends to link to your site. Now almost everyone has a site and every link counts even if it’s from a site with low authority.

Next, in order to get links and traffic, make sure that you optimize your social media profiles.

Sites like Google+ and About.me allows you to have backlinks to your site that send link juice and improve your rankings.

Once you do this basic link building, you can move to the next level and start commenting on other people’s articles.

This can send back link juice from blogs who have a dofollow policy and traffic if your comments are compelling enough.

Then you will need to move into guest posting, which is the best way of building links from authoritative websites.

With guest posting you will not only get backlinks to your website, but it will also help you build traffic and trust among the readers of your host blogs.

You can get links back to your articles and landing pages of your website.

Additionally, add your website to major directories (Yahoo Directory, DMOZ, BOTW or JoeAnt), which still offer link juice for your website. Yahoo and BOTW have paid listings and your DMOZ submission might take a while to be approved, but JoeAnt is definitely a winner.

Finally, here they are, your easy to get backlinks in the order of their SEO value. If you don’t have links from these websites already, get them right now:

• JoeAnt
• Google+
• YouTube Channels
• Biznik
• About.me
• Your Facebook page
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Quora

Setup Google Webmaster Tools

One of the tools that will help you in your efforts to optimize for SEO your WordPress website is Google Webmaster Tools.

You can signup for this with your Google account and then you need to verify your website.

Once you do that Google will provide you access to a wide range of metrics about your website such as who is linking to you, which of your keywords have a good ranking in Google or +1 reports.

Additionally you get access to a variety of tools that will help you submit a sitemap, configure your website for Google and much more.

Google Webmaster Tools also provides status reports about your website crawlability and if Google finds any malware.

Tools: Scribe SEO

Scribe SEO gives you a chance to see how your article scores before you even publish it.

And this is important. Really important.

This way you will be sure that when Google will come to index your articles, they will get a good score from start.

Next, all you have to do is just build some authority and your article will improve it’s SEO rankings and it will be boosted on the first page of Google.

To start using Scribe SEO just get a license, install the plugin on your site or use the web tool to analyze other pages and start analyzing your articles before you publish them.

Using the best practices I was talking about above, Scribe SEO will tell you what you did right and what you did wrong, so next time you will not make the same mistake again.

All you have to do is analyze your article and follow it’s guidelines to score 100%.

Then, once you start to use it regularly you will see that your articles will score 100% from the first analysis because your subconscious will learn the rules and it will not let you do the same mistakes over and over again.

Tools: WordPress SEO Plugin

The WordPress SEO plugin from Yoast helps you optimize your WordPress website if you don’t use a premium theme with SEO options.

The WordPress SEO plugin will allow you set custom meta title and meta description tags, give you control offer what you should index and what not, create XML sitemaps and much more.

One interesting thing that I like about the WordPress SEO plugin is the fact that you can strip the /category/

Tools: SEOmoz

I talked before about SEOmoz, which is an online service that will help you manage your SEO campaigns, do keyword research, track your rankings and do competitive backlink analysis.

I would recommend you get a trial and see how it can help you increase your keywords rankings.

Tools: Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking helps you track your keyword rankings in search engines, see who is linking to you, displays traffic data from your Google Analytics account and provides you insights about your social media activity.

Read more about Advanced Web Ranking in my SEO 101: Keywords, Ranking, Links and Analytics article

DO NOT Overly Optimize your Blog

If you have worked a lot to optimize your website for search engines, but you’ve overly optimized it, then you are in danger.

Google is rolling out updates that will address this and you need to make some changes so you can avoid getting penalized:

Takeaways:

1. Use authentic, non-spammy titles for your articles
2. Avoid manipulative internal linking
3. Take out links from your footer if it’s too crowded
4. Avoid text content blocks built especially for search engines
5. Don’t get links from penalty-likely sources
6. don’t create different pages which target similar keyword with slight variations.

You can check the video transcription here.

Analyze your Results

Making sure that what you do works is really important because you know if it’s worth continuing to do it.

That is why I would recommend you to dive more into learning Google Analytics.

If you are eager to do it, signup for my free Google Analytics course or take it at the next level and get my Web Analytics Blueprint paid course.

Your input

Now that you’ve learned more about the WordPress SEO process, please let me know what action you are going to take right now to improve your rankings and the traffic you get from search engines.

Use the comments section below to do that or lave questions if you have any.

Am I right?

If indeed I am, then you can take this opportunity to learn more about Google Analytics Advanced Segments, what they are, why you should use them and how you can use them to get more insights from your data.

I will show you how you can create Advanced Segments and give you some examples you can apply for your website immediately.

What are Advanced Segments?

Advanced Segmentation is a tool you can use to slice and dice your Analytics data with great precision. Advanced segments allow you to choose what types of visits you want to be considered when generating the data for a report.

This is the official definition provided by Google for Advanced Segments.

In other words, by using Advanced Segments you can easily filter the data so you can properly analyze it and get more insights out of it.

Say for example that you want to see how engaged are the visitors that come from a social media profile or a guest post. You can use Advanced Segments!

Or to discover long tail keywords (keyword phrases that consist of between two and five words) that are used by visitors to reach your website from search engines. You can use Advanced Segments!

And the possibilities are endless with this Google Analytics feature.

How to create Advanced Segments?

If I got your attention, let’s see how you can create an Advanced Segment.

From the default view of Google Analytics, click on the [Advanced Segments] button.

Once you do that a list with the default segments will appear and you can click non the [+ Create New Segment] button to create a custom segment.

Then, using [AND] and/or [OR] statements you can filter the traffic of your website and create new segments to see that traffic filtered on all reports.

Advanced Segments Examples – Social Media

Now that you know how you can create Advanced Segments it’s time to add them to your Google Analytics account.

Social Media is a powerful medium and it’s important to see how the visitors that come from Social Media outlets behave.

To measure that you can track different segments for all social media sites or segments for individual sites, so you can compare them.

Social Media Segment

For start let’s have a look at a Social Media segment that will filter the traffic from more than one outlet.

To create this segment you will need to select [Include] > [Source] > [Matching RegExp] as condition and paste the code below:

(twitter|”t.co”|hootsuite|tweetdeck|bit.ly|facebook|plus.url.google|
linkedin|pinterest|youtube|reddit|digg|delicious|stumbleupon|ycombinator|flickr|
myspace|popurls)

copy it on one line

This regular expression will match all the above sites and if you get traffic from them, they will be included in the segment.

Once you do that, you can press the [Test Segment] button to see how many visits your segments matches.

When you are ready hit the [Save Segment] button to save your segment.

Twitter Segment

If you would like to filter traffic only from specific Social Media sites, you will need to apply the conditions that will match just that website.

Let’s take Twitter for example:

You can see that in this example are included multiple sources that contain specific terms. These terms are actually sites or Twitter clients that are known in Google Analytics to send traffic to your site.

Facebook Segment

Now that you have a Twitter segment, it’s time to also add Facebook and other social media sites in the mix.

Using the same technique add one segment for Facebook:

Google Plus Segment

Google Plus is already an established network so it makes sense to track the traffic that comes from it:

Pinterest Segment

Pinterest seems to be the faster growing social network and more people use it for marketing purposes. If you also do that, the create an advanced segment for Pinterest:

If you want to learn more about how you can track Social Media traffic with Google Analytics, check out my guest post on Social Media Examiner.

Now that we’ve checked out how to track social media traffic, it’s time to see how you can use Advanced Segments for SEO purposes.

Advanced Segments Examples – SEO

The following 3 segments will help you filter the traffic that arrived to your website based on the number of words the keywords contain.

But to make the most of them, be sure to check the [Organic] report under [Traffic Sources] > [Sources] > [Search].

1 Word Keywords

You can use the [1 Word Keywords] segment to see if you rank for any keywords that are powerful, like “insurance”, which is quite difficult, by the way.

Most of the times, you will not get good results but it’s good to check anyway.

To create this segment use the following regular expression:

^\s*[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+){0}\s*$

2-3 Words Keywords

Analyzing [2-3 Words Keywords] will give you really good insights, because these keywords convert really well they usually direct targeted visitors to your site.

Use the following regular expression to create this type of segment:

^\s*[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+){1,2}\s*$

4+ Words Keywords

The long tail keywords are really good to analyze, because if you are a blogger they can give you a ton of ideas for future articles.

Sometimes visitors can be directed to your articles/pages even if they look for something different and even if they leave, this will help you find your next post idea.

Use the following regular expression to create this type of segment:

^\s*[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+){3,}\s*$

The next 2 Advanced Segments relate to each other and you can use them the way you find it easier.

You can filter branded keywords and see what are your fans searching when looking for your website or filter non-branded keywords and analyze only those keywords that are used by new visitors.

Branded Keywords

In this example you will need to add an [AND] statement.

Use as a regular expression something similar with the one below, but with your own terms:

(eugen|oprea|eugenoprea|eugen oprea|eugene)

Non-Branded Keywords

Again, use your own terms, just like in the example above for the regular expression.

However, in this case, [Exclude] your branded terms.

Advanced Segments Examples – Referrals

You can also create Advanced Segments that will help you segment the traffic you receive from a friend or a guest post, referrals in general.

To do this use the examples in the Social Media section and replace Google Plus, Facebook or Pinterest with the website you receive traffic from.

This way you will be able to see how visitors from a specific guest post behave and how they compare with the ones from another.

How you can use Advanced Segments?

Advanced Segments are a really powerful method of filtering your traffic.

If you are still wondering how you can benefit from them, think at the fact that they can isolate specific data to analyze it and discover behaviors.

Then you can take that data and compare it with another batch.

You are able to see visitor engagement, loyalty, what sources convert better, what visitors are readers, customers, subscribers and so on.

Segmenting is truly powerful and today it’s your chance to start diving into it.

Back to you

Now you don’t have any other excuse, so let us know in the comments below what Advanced Segments you have implemented.

Or if you have other that are not shared here, please add them below.