Monthly Archives: September 2019

If Content is King, What Should You Be Looking For in a Writer?

Content is King

The phrase ‘Content is King’ is a recurring internet rage in today’s world. However, it is not a new one. Although Sumner Redstone of Viacom had said it quite some time back, the person whose voice gave it the popularity it has today is none other than the founder and ex-CEO, Bill Gates.

In an essay he wrote way back in 1996, Gates suggested the future dominance of the content in the world of online business. The prophecy did not only prove to be right in the next two decades, but it has more or less changed the entire way marketing is perceived. The content was always in some way or other relevant to businesses online and offline under different names such as copywriting. With the internet taking over most of the marketing agendas of corporations, content is paving the way at present.

But with content becoming the unanimous king, there rises an enormous need for skilled and qualified content writers. There is a recent surge in the demand of content writers, and many aspiring candidates are jumping the bandwagon. However, merely knowing how to write does not make a good writer of content. There are many more criteria that one needs to fulfill to fill the position of a content writer in any organization.

Here are some of the critical points that you should look for when you hire a content writer for your company.

Readability and Expertise

A content writer must have an impeccable command over the language he or she is writing in. Wrong sentence syntax, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and punctuation issues are not acceptable in this profession. Moreover, their style of writing should be free-flowing, naturally attractive, and have a positive pull to it which will draw your customer’s attention to your content and engage them in reading it. Therefore, the content writer you hire should not only be useful in writing but should know how to use the power of words for marketing your product or service strategically.

Moreover, the writer’s expertise in a particular field also counts a lot. A great blog writer will not necessarily be equally useful in the product description. Hire your writer according to the specific needs of your business and before you do, ask for a relevant sample of their work. Do not make the mistake of employing a content writer for one kind of position with the expertise of another.

Level of Experience

Experience counts a lot when it comes to the content writing industry. There are many nuances that a writer has to keep in mind while writing for business. Keyword infusion, SEO integration, and maintaining industry relevance of content are some of the essential aspects of a content writer’s job profile. To be able to successfully understand the requirements of your business and execute the rest of the tasks seamlessly, years of experience in the field matters a lot.

Knowledge of Specification

Unless you are hiring for generic blogs and articles, your content writer should be knowledgeable in the field you work in. For example, if you are a pharmaceutical company, then your content writer should have technical know how in the medicinal background. By ensuring this criterion, you make sure that the content you put out for your audience is technically correct and not vague or misleading.

Dedication and enthusiasm

Since content writing has a creative edge to the work, it is essential for the writer to be enthusiastic about new and different projects and have imaginative takes on them. In the same line of thought, they should be also flexible for content corrections and refurbishments, and up for any necessary alterations required. Flexibility is one of the most required traits in a content writer, which stems from a commitment to the work.

Professionalism

Last but definitely not the least, professionalism is a must-have. This is the bare minimum that is expected from any potential employees from their employers, and a position of a content writer should not be any different. The two pillars which determine the professionalism of the writer are authenticity and punctuality. The submitted content must be without any plagiarism and submitted on or before the deadline to be considered valid. The content industry is not a place where either plagiarism or delay of delivery is taken lightly at all.

You can always hire an in-house content writer for your company, but that would not be the wisest economic decision. Outsourcing them or hiring freelancers to do the work for you is a much cheaper affair and also helps keep the extra burden of content curation off from your head. At places like our Dream Logo Design, you are catered to with fresh, unique, and exciting quality content aimed relevantly towards your target audience.

Canonical Tags – Where and When to Use Them

Canonical Tags - Where and When to Use

Canonical tags have been around since 2009, but there are still many confusions about the same among non-technical marketers. In simple words, canonical tags give website owners a way to resolve issues related to duplicate content.

What is a Canonical Tag?

A canonical tag is a simple HTML code which defines the main version of the website. It tells search engines as to which page they should index and display in search results. For example, if you have more than one web page that describes same or similar content under different URLs, you can use canonical tags to indicate which version is the main page and needs to be indexed.

How Does a Canonical Tag Look Like?

As mentioned, canonical tags are simple HTML codes that are made of simple syntax. They are placed within the section of a webpage. A canonical sample tag may look like the following:

Importance of Canonical Tag in SEO:

If you have more than one web page with similar contents under different URLs, Google will consider them as a duplicate content. This is something which Google dislikes and is harmful to SEO. Since Google tends to index only one version of the webpage, they are in confusion as to which version of the page they should index. Also, this is directly related to the search engine rank of the webpage because google will not understand which version of the page to rank for different queries.

Mentioned below are the situations when you may consider to implement a canonical tag in your website:

There are many confusions among the SEO experts about the use of canonical tags. There is not a specific strategy which can be considered the best to take. However, mentioned below are some conditions where implementing a canonical tag could be beneficial for overall SEO.

Duplicate Content:

Duplicate content is the most common situation when you should use a canonical tag. It is essential to use a canonical tag to define the main version of the page when you have more than one web page with duplicate content. Defining the main version of the webpage by using a canonical tag ensures that google takes the right page to index and the correct version of the page comes up in the search engine rank.

Similar Content:

Sometimes, you may have a web page with the same but slightly different content under different URLs. For example, if you have an eCommerce store, you may have pages with products that are similar but may have slight differences between them. Most SEO experts would suggest a canonical tag in this type of situation to make sure Google has a clear idea as to what is the main product page. Google will give full SEO value to the main product page. This will help you rank better for the main product page.

URL Parameters:

This is another important situation when you need to use a canonical tag. Marketers often create URL parameters for a particular webpage for tracking purposes. This helps them to track campaign performance for each URL parameters easily. This is an easy way to track your web page performance when the same page is being used in different types of marketing campaigns. However, this may create a severe problem regarding SEO like Google, and other search engines consider them as the duplicate version of the main page. The only way to clear the confusions for search engines is to tell them which version to index by using a canonical tag.

You can also add a canonical tag to every page of your website regardless of whether they have a known duplicate or not. This is specifically helpful when you have many different ways to reach your URL. For example, if your webpage can be reached by using both the HTTPS and Non-HTTPS version, you can add a canonical tag to both of them to let search engines know that both the pages are individual and this is the versions that search engines should index and show in search results.

How to Use Canonical Tags?

As mentioned earlier, the best and the easiest way to add canonical tag is to insert HTML code within the section of your duplicate page. However, if you have a WordPress website, you can install the Yoast SEO plugin that adds self-referencing canonical URLs to each page automatically. You can set the custom canonical tag by using the ‘advanced’ section on each page on your WordPress website.

Similar to the WordPress, if you have an eCommerce store and you are using Shopify, it adds a self-referencing canonical URL by default. However, you can set custom canonical URL by editing the template directly.

According to Google, you should not include your non-canonical URLs in sitemaps. Therefore, you should only list your canonical URLs in your sitemap.

Why & When To Back up Your Website?

Back up Your Website

Modern-day website management is easier than it was before. However, mistakes can happen almost anytime. For example, your website could get hacked, the website could collapse once you update the same, or you could remove some of the most critical files by mistake. The only solution that can save your website in an unwanted situation is to take a backup.

A website backup is a process of storing all your website’s essential components. A website backup should include all crucial elements like website codes, databases, images, add-ons, plugins, themes, etc. As a part of your regular site maintenance, you need to take daily backups of your website. By keeping a monthly website backup, you can ensure that you have everything ready in hand in case your website faces an issue.

Why you need to back up your site:

It is tough to understand what losing all of your website data feels like unless you’ve practically gone through this situation. The only way to avoid this type of situation is to take a website backup beforehand. The best way to back up your website is either daily or weekly backups. Whether you should go for a daily or weekly backup depends on how active you are in updating your website. For example, if you only upload a blog post per week and nothing else, then weekly backups will suffice. However, if you update your website daily, upload images, videos, and if you have a vast database to manage daily, you should go for a daily backup.

Mentioned below are the situations when you need to back up your website.

Accidental Situations:

You have to admit that people make mistakes. This is true for your website as well – one of your website managers could accidentally delete an important file which can break down the website entirely. Therefore, it is vital to back up your website regularly. Many site owners assume that they can get help from the hosting providers during such situations. However, the truth is your hosting provider won’t have the latest copy of your website. Some website hosting providers perform regular backups when you take a subscription of their website backup service.

Your Website Get Hacked:

Another reason why you should perform a regular backup of your website is to regain your website in case it is hacked. The most commonly used content management system WordPress accounts for almost 30% of the website currently available online. As WordPress is an open-source platform, anyone can access the coding of your website. If you are running a WordPress site, you must take regular backups of your website to avoid critical situations.

Problem after Updating the Website:

There are times when you experience an issue on your website once you complete an update. Things can go wrong with your core files, or a plugin may start malfunctioning. Also, you may experience a situation when you click on the update button, and your site is no longer live. Taking a backup of your website ensures that you have everything handy and you can restore the website to its previous state just by making a simple click.

You Failed To Renew Your Hosting:

It can happen anytime, especially when you have a new credit card and forget to update the billing info with your hosting provider. When the billing date comes, you hosting provider attempts to charge your old card and failed. This can eventually break your website, and you may need to purchase your hosting plan again. However, in case the hosting provider is unable to restore your old site content, you are all lost. Although you can submit a restore fee to bring back your original site, the process takes time, and your customers may view a new site for a while. In both cases, a proper website backup could save your time and money.

Server Outages:

Your hosting server may encounter a sudden outage and can have severe problems with their data centers. No hosting companies can provide you with 100% uptime. During this situation, your customers may experience irregular downtime. There could be several reasons why a server is down. However, frequent outages occur due to software errors, hard drive failures, etc. Whatever the reason is, it is important to back up your website beforehand to avoid unfortunate situations.

5 Popular Alternatives to Google Analytics

Google Analytics Alternatives

Analytic is crucial for every online marketer because it helps you track website visitors and understand traffic behavior. For any online marketing campaign, it is essential to check and follow the website traffic behavior regularly. Otherwise, you can’t improve the way how users interact with your website.

New and established online marketers always go for Google Analytic since it has many useful features. Also, Google Analytics is the most used analytics tool and is incredibly popular in the field of web analytics tool.

However, there are many other analytic tools with dozens of features that you cannot find in Google Analytics. If you don’t like Google Analytics because of any reason or you are looking for any other functionality, which is not available in Google Analytics, you can consider trying the following alternatives.

Kissmetrics:

Kissmetrics is widely popular all around the globe, and it is often considered as the best alternative to Google Analytic tool. This tool offers many useful solutions focused on website analytics at the individual level. You can use Kissmetrics to perform various activities, including conversion rate optimization, visitor action tracking, A/B Split testing, data segmentation, and many more. Another critical point is that Kissmetrics offers solutions for mobile applications, Saas, e-commerce platforms, and many more. The only drawback is that the setup process is little complicated, but you can use a handful of plugins for most popular systems.

SE Ranking:

SE Ranking is one of the most popular website analytics tools, apart from Google Analytics. This is a powerful tool which shows a bunch of insights regarding your website traffic. Apart from the standard features like tracking the visitor’s location, source, and channels, you can create custom reports with SE Ranking. Also, you can follow the website ranking by using SE Ranking. Some of the other features offered by SE Ranking are competitor analysis, social media analysis, and backlink monitoring. You can also go through the Marketing Plan provided by the SE Ranking. The marketing plan the SE Ranking offers is based on your site analysis, and you can get a detailed insight about your website.

Piwik/Matomo:

Matomo (formerly known as Piwik) is another important alternative to Google Analytics. However, the same is not quite popular because of its slightly tricky setup. Most of its features are available with the paid version. To use the paid version of Matomo, you need to install the software. This is something that you cannot do without basic technical knowledge.

Nevertheless, once installed, Matomo can act as a great alternative to Google Analytics tool. It offers a very informative dashboard with the ability to set and track your goals, plugins for the marketplace, and a database for individual visitors. The support team is always ready to help you, and any concerns are addressed by the support team very quickly.

Woopra:

This is a realtime customer tracking and website analysis tool that offers solutions for product, sales, marketing, and other services. It can track a user across mobile devices at the digital touchpoint and can create a detailed report regarding user behavior. By using Woopra, it is easy to check your critical vital metrics and get an insight as to how your key metrics change over time. You can get a detailed insight into your product usage, purchase behavior changes by location, campaign performance by source, and many more.

Woopra offers two separate subscription options for Small Business Owners and Large Enterprises. Small business plans start from $0, and the Enterprise Edition pricing can be customized according to the specific requirements.

CrazyEgg:

CrazyEgg is a friendly tool that helps marketers track clicks to improve user experience and the conversion rate. CrazyEgg has a unique feature to allow you to track clicks as a heat map. Unlike Google Analytics, which only offers an Overlay report, CrazyEgg offers confetti map as well as a list view report. You can track the number of features by segments like referral source, keyword country, time of the day, and many more. Also, CrazyEgg offers a scroll map report that allows you to track your visitor’s scrolling behavior. Comparing to another web analytics tool, CrazyEgg is more affordable as its prices range from $9 to $99 per month.