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Bitwarden is an open source password manager that has had success growing organically through the open source community and has been named best password manager by US News, Wired UK, and more (https://bitwarden.com/newsfeed/). We are a collaborative, nimble group working from around the world, committed to making the internet more secure.
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If you can get your client’s website to the top of user search, you’ll have a much easier time improving their ROI.
Of course, mastering SEO is no easy task.
There are so many things to consider, from on-page SEO to off-page SEO, copy, content, and even technical SEO.
A truly effective SEO strategy includes all of these strategies, plus regular optimization to ensure consistent returns.
This post dives deep into technical SEO and how you can use it to increase organic traffic, show up in search, and improve your overall site experience.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is an area of SEO that covers optimizations that improve search engine ranking by making your site easier for search engines to crawl. For example, improving site load time, checking robot.txt files, and making redirects work properly.
Essentially, it’s the process of ensuring your website can be seen, crawled, and ranked by search engines.
Search engines, such as Google, give preference to websites that meet their webmaster guidelines. The basic principles state your website content should be accurate, easy to access, and user-friendly.
If your website loads slowly, has an unresponsive design, or lacks a secure connection, your content will not meet these guidelines.
This is where technical SEO comes in, as it can help you improve the technical characteristics of your website to improve organic traffic.
Why Is Technical SEO Important?
Imagine you wrote the most amazing content in the world. It’s content that everyone should read.
People would pay buckets of money just to read it. Millions are eagerly waiting for the notification that you’ve posted this new, incredible content.
Then, the day finally comes, and the notification goes out. Customers excitedly click the link to read your article.
Then, it takes over 10 seconds for your web page to load. Readers are annoyed and they don’t want to wait.
For every second that it takes for your web page to load, you’re losing readers and increasing your bounce rate.
It doesn’t matter how great that piece of content is—your site isn’t functioning well, and you’re losing precious traffic.
That’s just one example of why technical SEO is so critical.
Without it, Google and other search engines are incapable of finding, crawling, and indexing your site.
Even if your site can be found, user experience issues, like page load times and confusing navigation, can still negatively impact SEO.
Other issues like mobile optimizations, duplicate content, and site security can cause search engines to rank your site lower.
Elements of Technical SEO
While crawling and indexing are important factors in SEO, there are many more aspects to consider when performing a technical SEO audit. These include:
mobile optimization
page load speed
link health
duplicate content
schemas
crawl errors
image issues
site security
URL structure
404 pages
301 redirects
canonical tags
XML sitemaps
site architecture
At a minimum, a technically sound website should be secure, quick to load, easy to crawl, have clear and actionable navigation, and not contain any duplicate links or content.
It should also have systems in place to engage users even if they do hit a dead end, such as content created for 404 errors and 301 redirect pages.
When conducting a technical SEO audit, be wary of over-optimizing your website. Too many improvements can work against your best intentions and actually damage your SEO rankings.
What Is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is the process of evaluating your website to see how well it is performing on search engines.
SEO audits are a great way to create actionable plans to outperform your competitors, identify opportunities within your website, find and fix exit points, and create better customer experiences.
You should perform technical SEO audits, on-page SEO audits, and off-page SEO audits regularly.
As you go through your audit, you’ll find places where you can improve or optimize your website performance to improve performance and keep site visitors happy.
You may not be able to fix every error at once, but you can figure out what’s going wrong and make a plan to fix it.
What Are the Key Elements of a Technical SEO Audit?
There are three key factors to look at during an SEO audit:
back-end factors, such as hosting and indexing
front-end factors, such as content, keywords, and metadata
link quality and outside references
Sometimes, you won’t have the time to address each pain point. So, when deciding which audit insights are worth taking action on, use the 80/20 rule.
The most important part of your site’s SEO is the part that your incoming traffic actually sees.
That’s all washed away if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, though.
With the introduction of the mobile-first index, you need to make sure you understand how your site performs on mobile to ensure proper placement on SERPs.
What does the mobile-first index mean?
Due to 52.2 percent of global web traffic coming through mobile, Google has adjusted its algorithm to crawl the mobile version of websites.
It boils down to this—if your site doesn’t perform well on mobile devices, you are not just losing traffic; your site also looks bad to Google. That can result in lower rankings, and even less traffic.
How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit
SEO guidelines are constantly changing. Every time a major search engine significantly updates its algorithm, SEO has to adapt.
The good news is the frequency of changes in technical SEO tends to be lower.
After all, it’s not like search engines or readers will suddenly decide they’re okay with slower speeds.
If anything, you will see the average acceptable speed continue to drop. Your site simply has to be faster if you want to keep up with SEO demands.
Your website has to be mobile-friendly. This is only going to become more important over time, too.
It has to work without errors, duplicate content, and poor images.
Search engines also have to be able to crawl it successfully.
These things are all crucial to your success on search engines and site visitors. If you want to prioritize your SEO efforts, make sure you tackle the technical aspects first.
Before you do anything else, start a crawl of your website. You can use Ubersuggest to make it a simple process. Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Enter your URL and click “Search.”
Step 2: Click “Site Audit” in the left sidebar.
Step 3: Run the scan. Upon completion, you’ll see this:
Crawling is useful for identifying problems such as duplicate content, low word count, unlinked pagination pages, and excess redirects. Ubersuggest will even rank issues in order of importance, so you can focus on what matters most.
If you find anything here, click on it for more information and advice on how to fix it. For example, our website has 32 pages with a low word count.
You can then review these pages to determine if you need to add more content.
What does this all mean?
In short, it gives you a glimpse into how the Googlebot is crawling your site.
If you don’t use Ubersuggest for your technical SEO audit, you can also search your site manually. We’ll explain that below.
2. Perform a Manual Google Search
A few Google searches can tell you approximately how well your website is ranking. This will help you figure out where to start your technical SEO audit.
How many of your pages appear in relevant search results?
Does your site appear first when you search for it by name?
Overall, where does your site appear in the results?
To figure out which pages are actually being crawled, you can use a “site:rootdomain” search to see what shows up.
Here’s what this looks like in action:
Missing pages don’t automatically mean that your site is un-crawlable, but it’s useful to understand what’s happening behind the scenes.
Your website doesn’t need to be at the very top of your searches, either. By using the site search, it will show you only pages on your own site.
3. Make Sure Only One Version of Your Site Is Browseable
If your website has multiple “versions” of itself, you send search engines a mixed message about how to crawl your site.
Basically, the crawlers don’t know which one is the right one.
If search engines don’t even know how to show your site to prospective traffic, your site’s SEO ranking will be negatively impacted.
The impact of HTTP vs. HTTPS on a site’s SEO is debated in the SEO community. Some sites using AdSense saw a decrease in revenue after making the switch to HTTPS.
With this change from Google, it seems you will need to make sure that your website only uses “https.”
4. Conduct On-Page Technical SEO Checks
When evaluating your site and the results from your crawl, there are tons of things to check. Don’t get overwhelmed! Start by looking for duplicate pages, headers, and title tags.
If you’ve published a lot of content with similar themes, like me, some seemingly unrelated content will show up in your crawl.
That’s okay. You’re looking for duplicates of the same content.
You can use a tool like Copyscape to assess potential technical SEO problems arising from duplicate content.
From there, closely examine a few key criteria that Google evaluates in their rankings.
You’ll want to make sure these are relevant to the content on your page. The content should also answer the questions your users are asking as fast as possible.
Essentially, you want to make sure the placement of pages makes sense—all your service pages should be under your “services” tab, for example. Make sure users don’t have to click through four levels of pages to find best-selling products. The goal is to make it easy for Google —and users—to find the information or products they are looking for.
Keyword Placement
Every page on your site should have a focus keyword included in the first 100 words.
Overall, on-page SEO checks are incredibly important, but they are only one part of your overarching technical SEO strategy. There are also other SEO checks to consider.
5. Manage Your Internal and External Links
Sites with logical hierarchies have improved SEO rankings. That’s why it’s important to check your internal and external links—to make sure visitors can navigate your site intuitively.
Pages might be deleted or moved, which can result in broken links and annoyed site visitors.
Don’t worry; you don’t have to do this manually.
Integrity and Xenu Sleuth can help you identify your broken links on your site. (Note: Integrity only works for Mac.)
While both tools are straightforward to use, I’ll use Integrity as an example.
Once you download it, add your URL in the text bar at the top of the page and click “Go.”
Then the tool will begin testing all the links found on your site and provide you with the results.
In the top-left corner, you see a snapshot of links and how many are bad.
Depending on the size of your site and how many links you have, you might consider viewing the results by link, page, status, or flat view to understand the results.
You’ll want to change any links marked in red with the “404 not found” label. These dead ends can negatively impact your technical SEO.
There are three different aspects of SEO, and technical SEO is the most important of the three.
It won’t matter how amazing your on-page SEO is if you fail at technical SEO.
It also won’t matter how great you are at off-page SEO if you’re horrible at the technical stuff.
Don’t get overwhelmed by the idea of it being “technical” or complex. Start with the big, critical aspects discussed above and tackle them one problem at a time.
How have you found success with technical SEO on your site?
British barrister Graham Stoker announced on Tuesday his candidacy to succeed Jean Todt as head of Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, with Denmark’s record nine times Le Mans 24 Hours winner Tom Kristensen in his leadership team.
Not because content is hard to write (worse case you can just hire a writer or agency), but due to the fact that no one can guarantee that your blog post gets read or not.
Just think about it… you spend all this time writing content, but no one can guarantee that it gets seen, shared, or even linked to.
So, I thought it would be fun to analyze popular blog posts and see what common characteristics that they have.
That way you can replicate what they are doing and increase the likelihood that your post gets read.
Now for this study, we deemed a popular blog post as anything that generates at least 1,000 visitors a month from Google organic search (this was based on Ubersuggest data).
We also didn’t exclude any countries and looked at the data from a global level.
Here’s what we learned.
A popular post tends to rank for at least 38 keywords
A big thing in common was that popular blog posts rank for at least 38 keywords.
What’s interesting though is posts that generate at least 5,000 visits a month from Google rank for 51 or more keywords.
But the big difference between posts that generate at least 1,000 visitors versus 5,000 wasn’t the number of keywords that they were targeting, it was more so that they were ranking for keywords that were searched on average 984 times a month.
Now granted they didn’t get 984 clicks for each keyword that they ranked for, as no site really gets all the clicks, and there is no guarantee that they were in the number 1 spot.
When looking at this data we decided to dig in a bit more and we randomly picked 300 blog posts that generate at least 1,000 visits a month from Google to see how many keywords they mentioned on their page that contained at least 50 searches a month.
Can you guess what the number was?
Well, after we removed generic one-word terms that aren’t really considered keywords (such as how I mentioned words like “analyze, month, generate, data” within this post but I am not really targeting those keywords), the number comes out to a staggering 76 keywords.
But wait, how do you come up with 76 keywords for every blog post you write?
Before I break down how you can come up with a laundry list of keywords to include in every blog post you write, keep this in mind…
You should never stuff keywords in a blog post for the sake of getting SEO traffic. Your post should flow and adding the keywords should feel natural. (If you are hiring a writer, a good writer shouldn’t struggle with this.)
There are outliers and some blog posts generate a lot of traffic without targeting dozens of keywords within their content.
You shouldn’t write blog posts just for “Google traffic”. If the content doesn’t provide value to the user, it is going to hurt your website rankings in the long run as you can get hit by Google algorithm update if your site is deemed to have low-quality content.
Now that we got that out of the way, you can head to Ubersuggest and follow the steps in the video below to come up with blog post ideas as well as 76 plus keywords per post.
The average blog post that is popular contains 1839 words
And Google doesn’t really care about word count these days as much as they do for user experience.
See, a user doesn’t really care if a blog post is short or long, they just want to be satisfied with what they have just read.
Nonetheless, we looked at the word count to see what the average post length was for a popular post.
What’s interesting is that posts that generated over 5,000 visitors a month on average weren’t that much longer than posts that generated 1,000 visitors.
The biggest difference was they included more popular keywords within their content. They didn’t necessarily rank for each of those terms, but this gives a post more opportunity to potentially rank and be found.
As I mentioned though, there are always exceptions to the rule. For example, there are popular topics like “how to tie a tie” and you don’t really need tons of words to explain how to tie a tie. You more so need images or even video.
Blog posts that are popular are somewhat new
When we looked at every popular blog in our database, we noticed that a lot of sites didn’t include a publish date or an updated date (updated date is used for content that was originally published years ago but was more recently updated).
But for the posts that did contain a date, whether it was the publication date or when the content was updated, we did notice something interesting.
Content that generates 1,000 visitors or more a month on average tends to be 388 days old.
And content that generates less than 1,000 visitors tends to be 593 days old.
This doesn’t mean that Google doesn’t want to rank new, fresh content as in both categories there was fresh, new content that did generate traffic. But a lot of the ranking blog posts were a bit old (but not too old).
Again, keep in mind there are always exceptions to the rule. Going back to the how to tie a tie example, even if that article was 3 years old, it probably would still be relevant as much hasn’t changed when it comes to ties.
But with over 1 billion blogs on the web, it seems like Google prefers newish content over outdated content.
If you have older content, don’t worry, you can always update it to ensure that it continually gets more traffic.
The way you would do this is by following these steps:
It’s so effective that I have a team of people who just update my old content.
Conclusion
Whether you like it or not, if you are going to write content you should do keyword research first.
Picking the right keywords versus the wrong ones can mean that your content doesn’t get traffic or gets thousands of visitors a month.
Now of course there are other elements to your SEO like links and on-page SEO, but for this analysis, we wanted to focus on the characteristics (ones that you can easily control) that make a popular post.
Out of curiosity, do you do keyword research before you write content?
Do you need business funding for bad credit? You may feel that – or you may have heard – that you can’t get business funding for bad credit. The best, easiest, and fastest way to do so is to build business credit. Because then your bad credit won’t matter quite so much. Any Small Business … Continue reading Is it Possible to Get Business Funding for Bad Credit?
No matter how great the content on your website is, your hard work could amount to nothing without proper technical SEO.
Technical SEO gives your site structure, makes it super easy for search engine bots to crawl and index, and helps Google understand what each page is about.
URL structuring, robots.txt, redirect codes, canonical tags, .htaccess files, load time, and many others. It all matters.
Do all those things sound unfamiliar to you? No?
Well, you don’t need to.
Tons of companies already know this stuff and it’s really easy to work with them.
That’s where this guide comes in.
Our team at Neil Patel Digital researched, reviewed, and listed the top technical SEO companies on four criteria:
Outstanding customer reviews.
Awards, impressive clientele, and a long history of delivering stellar technical SEO work.
Thought-leadership—consistently publishing of insightful articles and trends on the topic.
A strong reputation amongst other SEO professionals.
From these criteria, we found technical SEO companies you can trust and what they’re good for:
Without further ado, let’s dive into what makes us trust and bet our reputation on these companies.
1. Neil Patel Digital – Best For Technical Content Structuring
It’s been touted over and again that content is king. While there’s truth in this, what most people never take into consideration is content structuring.
Neil Patel Digital is the go-to SEO company for excellent content structuring.
Well, don’t take my word for it. Let me show you why.
From our years of extensive search engine optimization experience, we found that for content marketing to work and power long-term SEO strategy, it must have the right structure.
Today, we’ve developed a content marketing program with content structuring (in the form of content clusters) to help clients get technical SEO right from day one.
2. Webris – Best for Technical SEO Audits
Almost all great endeavors begin with taking in-depth audits of what’s already existing.
Technical SEO is no exception.
You won’t achieve much in your effort to optimize your site for search engine bots’ crawling and indexing without first doing a proper audit of your site’s structure.
And Webris is the company we recommend for technical SEO audits.
If you a do quick Google search for “technical SEO audit,” you’ll find this excellent content piece by Webris:
Ranking on Google’s top spot for this search term is another way of saying that earned its stripes on this list.
No company can earn that by accident.
This proves that Webris walks the talk when it comes to technical SEO audits and is a reliable option if you’re just getting started.
Founded by Ryan Stewart, the core strengths of Webris is technical SEO audits and conversion-focused UX. This company boasts of an incredibly talented team of advanced technical SEO consultants.
Major brands like Shopify and Accenture trust Webris and have worked with them.
3. Salt.agency – Best for Enterprise Technical SEO
Salt.agency prides itself on “Technical Excellence” and that’s for a good reason. This company breathes technical SEO before anything else:
Massive enterprise sites can have all sort of crazy technical problems.
If you’re running one of these sites, you need a team that’s worked with that type of complexity before.
In this case, Salt.agency is the best option.
With offices in Boston, Leeds, and London, Salt.agency’s clients include Cloudflare, Hartley Botanic, Brex, Travel Supermarket, and many others.
4. Orainti – Best for Ecommerce Brands
Orainti specializes in providing technical and strategic SEO services for brands in competitive industries.
This company approaches digital marketing and search engine optimization with a technical mindset, which justifies its inclusion in this highly-vetted list.
And they work mostly with ecommerce brands selling internationally.
International ecommerce businesses have tons of unique challenges like dealing with multilingual sites, getting product and category pages ranked properly, and avoiding duplicate content.
Orainti comes highly recommended for this.
Aleyda Solis is the Founder of Orainti. She is a veteran SEO practitioner, speaker, and author who has earned recognition and awards for her technical SEO expertise by organizations such as Forbes and European Search Awards.
Orainti boasts an impressive portfolio of top brands, including Zillow, Under Armour, Sage, Eventbrite, and others.
5 Characteristics That Make a Great Technical SEO Company
What separates the good technical SEO shops from the great ones? What would you specifically look for when choosing someone to work with?
Here’s what I look for.
1. A Complete Implementation Process that Includes Technical SEO
Technical SEO brings structure to your site. It helps search engine bots crawl, index, and rank your website correctly, which is essential for driving traffic.
Also, it helps to boost your site’s load time.
However, this doesn’t mean that once you have an excellent technical SEO, everything search engine optimization will fall in place automatically.
The best technical SEO companies have a complete SEO program including manual site review, technical SEO implementation, content strategy, and others.
If you’re really good at SEO already and just need a quick SEO audit to double check everything, you could get value at working with a specialist. But for everyone else, I recommend working with someone that understands the complete SEO strategy. It’s the only way to build a site with tons of traffic.
2. Thought leadership
It takes lots of experimentation to implement technical SEO strategies that move the needle. Companies that embark on this kind of excruciating work always like to document their experience and findings.
Working with SEO thought leaders increases the odds of a successful project.
After all, if someone can successfully teach technical SEO, they can also help your business directly.
Publishing cutting-edge content about technical SEO is a great sign that they’ll deliver amazing results.
3. An Impressive Client Portfolio
An excellent way to see if the expertise and processes used by a technical SEO company works is by looking at its client portfolio.
There is nuance here.
Having a ton of major brands is great. But that doesn’t mean that you can get help with your exact situation.
Ideally, the technical SEO company has worked with similar companies like your own.
4. Real Life Results
The nice thing about technical SEO is that it’s extremely practical. Technical problems come up that tanks traffic. Then technical SEO experts fix those problems.
It’s cut and dry.
Any great technical SEO company should have plenty of case studies where they turned around a site after it got hit. The more obscure the technical problem, the more likely they’ll be able to find weird problems on your own site.
Sometimes, these case studies are published on their site. But a lot of companies don’t like sharing the best stories. So ask their team as you talk to them. They should be able to give you plenty of examples during a call.
5. A Diversified Team
Covering every last technical SEO requirement is way too big of a task for a single person. You’ll need a fully-staffed team to do it all. Especially on major sites.
Go through the company’s team pages and LinkedIn employees, then look for lots of depth and expertise across the entire team.
What to Expect from a Great Technical SEO Company
If you’re like most people who only realize the need for technical SEO late on, you’ll probably be wondering what you should expect from one.
The most significant things to expect are what follows.
1. A discovery session
After you reach out to a technical SEO company, they’ll want to get on a call to understand what you’re looking for.
It’s the only way to understand the goals that you have for your site.
If a technical SEO company wants to jump straight into an audit without even getting on the phone, it’s a sign they’re running an “audit mill” and aren’t going to spend much time on your project.
Find a company that wants to go really deep and understand the full picture.
2. A one-time audit proposal
Most technically SEO companies will perform a one-time audit for a flat fee.
Since this is a standard part of their practice, they can usually jump into this right away.
Assuming their fee works with your budget, you could have someone get started within a week. That’s how easy it is to get going.
Before starting the audit, ask them for everything that they’ll check. It should include everything like canonical problems, indexing issues, duplicate content, other Google Search Console errors, everything.
If the list doesn’t feel extremely comprehensive, get a few quotes from other companies.
3. Completing the audit
Once you’ve agreed to move forward with an audit, the company will get started.
These usually take a few weeks to complete, depending on the size of your site.
Of course, you’ll need to give them access to your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, WordPress account, and possibly your web host.
During the audit, there shouldn’t be much work for you or your team. The company performing the audit may have questions but they can do the vast majority of the work on their own.
4. Implementation proposal
Most technical SEO audits only include the discovery of site issues. The project doesn’t usually include the work that’s required to fix any problems.
This is because most problems don’t have easy fixes.
For example, if your site has terrible site speed that’s impacting your rankings, you’ll need to do a ton of front-end work in order to fix it. That will also involve your marketing team and possibly other agencies.
So once the audit is complete, expect to see a proposal that includes implementing any solutions.
Something to watch for here: a great technical SEO company will know the limits of it’s expertise. When they find problems outside their capabilities, they’ll tell you and advise you to work with someone else on fixing them. Site rebuilds and content marketing are good examples of this.
If a technical SEO agency tells you that it can fix every single problem, double check and make sure they truly have real expertise in those areas.
Should I take Technical SEO Seriously?
Yes!
Technical SEO is like the frame of your house. Only with good bones can your content and marketing drive traffic to your site.
But, as things add up, and you have hundreds or thousands of pages on your site, something is going to break.
Search engines have a harder time crawling your site, content isn’t indexed, and your site speed slows way down.
Even if you start with a great foundation, you need a healthy rebuild every few years.
If you haven’t done a deep technical SEO audit recently, now’s the time.
Covid-19 has turned the world topsy turvy. There is no way around it. Most businesses need a little extra financial cushion at the very least. Most need much more than that. What happens in this post COVID-19 economy is literally unfolding as we watch. A commercial line of credit could be just the thing to keep your business going during a recession.
Get a Commercial Line of Credit Fast
The thing is, most business owners need money right now. That means you need the fastest, most cost-effective commercial line of credit that you can get. Why a line of credit rather than a loan? There are a few reasons, but one main reason.
Commercial Line of Credit vs. Loan
The most basic definition of a commercial line of credit is that it is a revolving credit, similar to a credit card. You have a limit and continuous access to that limit while making payments only on the portion you use each month.
For example, if you have a $10,000 line of credit, you can use however much of those funds you need each month for whatever you want, unless your lender issues some sort of restriction. If you use $2,000, then when you get your statement you will have to pay $2,000 plus the interest, rather than a payment plus interest on the entire amount of the loan.
If you were to pay $1,000, then spend another $500, you would pay on the $1,500 balance the next month. Your payments change as your balance changes. Just like with a credit card.
What is the advantage of a line of credit over a term loan? Flexibility, hands down. With a line of credit, you do not have to repay or pay interest on any amount that you do not use. You have access to the funds as needed, but you do not have to repay the entire amount unless you use the entire amount.
Now, you’re probably thinking that credit cards are super easy to get, and they work the same way. It’s revolving credit. You only use what you need. You only pay back what you need.
Why is one better than the other? In some cases, a credit card may be the better option. This is a choice to make based on several different factors.
The main difference between the two that most borrowers need to know is that a line of credit typically has a lower consistent interest rate. However, there are no perks like 0% interest or cash back that you sometimes see with credit cards.
Another benefit with a credit card is that it is typically unsecured credit, meaning you do not have to have collateral. Many credit lines do require security, or collateral.
Middle Ground: Credit Line Hybrid
There is middle ground between unsecured and secured credit, and between a commercial credit line and credit cards. It’s called a credit line hybrid. A credit line hybrid is revolving, unsecured financing that allows you to fund your business without putting up collateral, and you only pay back what you use. It’s quickly accessible, lower interest, and high limit. It’s the best of both worlds.
Who Qualifies for this Type of Commercial Line of Credit?
Who qualifies for a credit line hybrid? Well, if you have a personal credit score of at least 685, you’re off to a good start. In addition, you can’t have any liens, judgments, bankruptcies or late payments. Furthermore, in the past 6 months you should have less than 5 credit inquiries, and you should have less than a 45% balance on all business and personal credit cards. It’s also preferred that you have established business credit as well as personal credit.
If you do not meet all of the requirements, it’s okay. You can take on a credit partner that meets each of these requirements. Many business owners work with a friend or relative to fund their business. If a relative or a friend meets all of these requirements, they can partner with you to allow you to tap into their credit to access funding.
What are the Benefits of This Type of Commercial Line of Credit?
There are many benefits to using a credit line hybrid. First, as already mentioned, it is unsecured. That means you do not have to have any collateral to put up. Next, the funding is “no-doc.” You do not have to provide any bank statements or financials.
Not only that, but typically approval is up to 5x that of the highest credit limit on the personal credit report. Furthermore, frequently you can get interest rates as low as 0% for the first few months, allowing you to put that savings back into your business.
The process is pretty fast, especially with a qualified expert to walk you through it. One other benefit is this. With the approval for multiple credit cards, competition is created. That means it’s likely if you handle the credit responsibly, that you can get interest rates lowered and limits raised every few months.
Private Lenders: Another Way to Get a Commercial Line of Credit Fast
Private lenders generally operate online. They typically offer lines of credit to those with credit scores that are lower than what is generally required by traditional banks. In addition, often you can get the funds within a few days of application, rather than a few weeks. Here are a few examples.
Kabbage
Kabbage offers a credit line of up to $150,000 with no credit score required. The catch is that the interest rate is between 32 and 108%. The business must have been in existence for at least one year and have revenue of at least $50,000.
Due to the extremely high interest rate, this is really only an option for those businesses that cannot get financing due to a low or nonexistent credit score and need something immediately.
StreetShares
The credit line that StreetShares offers goes up to $100,000 for those who have a business credit score of at least 600. You also have to have been in business for at least one year, and have at least $25,000 in revenue. It requires weekly repayment.
This is a good option for smaller businesses that are okay in the credit department but have trouble meeting higher revenue criteria. Also, the interest rate minimum is lower than some. The low end at 9%.
OnDeck
If you have a credit score of at least 600 you can get a credit line of up to $100,000 with OnDeck . The interest rate is a little higher than some that require a higher credit score minimum. It ranges from 13.99 to 39.99 percent.
Again, due to the higher interest rate, this should only be an option if you cannot meet the higher credit score requirement with a lender that offers a lower interest rate.
The credit line at Lending Club goes up to $300,000. It requires a credit score of 600, at least one year in business, and $50,000 or more in revenue. The repayment term is 25 months. In addition, they require collateral for limits over $100,000.
This is a good option for those who meet the requirement as there is a higher limit available with collateral, and the interest rate can go as low as 6.25%. Also, the repayment terms are more manageable.
Credit Card Options
Of course, while not the perfect solution, credit cards are an option. You have to be careful, and you want to research to ensure you get the best rates and terms possible. Here are some to start with.
Brex Card for Startups
The Brex Card has no yearly fee. Also, you will not need a personal guarantee. However, this card does not work for every industry.
To determine creditworthiness, Brex checks a company’s cash balance, spending patterns, and investors. Rewards include 7x points on rideshare and 4x on Brex Travel. Also, you can get triple points on restaurants and get double points on recurring software payments. Get 1x points on everything else.
Capital One® Spark® Classic for Business
The Capital One® Spark® Classic for Business is another good one to consider. It has no annual fee, but there is also no introductory APR offer. The regular APR is a variable 24.49%. However, you can get unlimited 1% cash back on every purchase for your company and there is no minimum to redeem.
While this card is within reach if you have fair credit scores, beware of the APR. If you can pay promptly, and completely, it’s a good deal.
Ink Business Unlimited℠ Credit Card
The Ink Business Unlimited℠ Credit Card has no annual fee and a 0% introductory APR. After that expires, the APR is a variable 14.74 to 20.74%.
Earn unlimited 1.5% cash back rewards on every purchase made for your company and get $500 bonus cash back after spending $3,000 in the initial 3 months from account opening. Rewards rewards for cash back, gift cards, travel and more using Chase Ultimate Rewards®. You will need superb credit to get approval for this card.
Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express
Get double Membership Rewards® points on everyday business purchases like office supplies or client dinners. This applies to the first $50,000 spent each year. You get 1 point per dollar after that. Your credit has to be really good to qualify.
American Express® Blue Business Cash Card
Another one to check out is the American Express® Blue Business Cash Card. It is identical to the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express. However its rewards are in cash instead of points. You get 2% cash back on all eligible purchases up to $50,000 per calendar year. After that, it’s 1%.
There is no yearly fee, and there is a 0% introductory APR for the first one year. Afterwards, the APR is a variable 14.74 to 20.74%. You will need awesome credit to qualify for this card.
The Capital One® Spark® Cash for Business card is another great option. It has an introductory $0 annual fee for the first year. After that, it costs $95 per year. There is no introductory APR deal. The regular APR is a variable 18.49%.
You can get a $500 one-time cash bonus after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months from account opening. Also, you get unlimited 2% cash back. YOu can rRedeem any time without any minimums. You will need fabulous credit scores to qualify.
Discover it® Business Card
Another good one is the Discover it® Business Card. It has no yearly fee. There is an introductory APR of 0% on purchases for twelve months. Then, the regular APR is a variable 14.49 to 22.49%.
You get unlimited 1.5% cash back on all purchases, with no category restrictions or bonuses. Also, they double the 1.5% Cashback Match™ at the end of the first year. There is no minimum spend requirement either.
You can download transactions easily to Quicken, QuickBooks, and Excel. This one also requires great credit scores.
The thing with credit cards is, you have to be so careful. As with all debt, payments must be made on time. However, the higher interest rates make this a little harder than it typically is with a commercial line of credit.
A Commercial Line of Credit Can Help You Right Now
In this post COVID world, most business owners need money fast. A commercial line of credit is the best way for that to happen, especially if you can get a credit line hybrid. Truly, with the ability to use a credit partner, virtually everyone can access this type of funding. It’s low interest, high limit, fast access to the funds you need to make sure your business thrives regardless of the state of the economy.
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