Bitwarden | DevOps, QA, Dir of Sales, Dir of Marketing, Support, Technical Trainer | Full-time | 100% REMOTE
Bitwarden is an open source password manager that has had success growing organically through the open source community and has recently been named best password manager by US News, Wired UK, and more. We are a collaborative, nimble group working from around the world, committed to making the internet more secure.
But there’s such a wide range of web hosting costs out there. It’s overwhelming for beginners and experienced website owners alike. How much should you pay for web hosting? Are you overpaying for web hosting? How much does web hosting really cost?
Some plans start below $1 per month. Others start at over $2,000 per month!
To make matters even more complicated, there are 330,000+ web hosting providers on the market today. Trying to find the best web hosting plan for your site without overpaying can feel like an impossible task.
Fortunately, I’m going to let you in on a little secret—you don’t need to overpay for web hosting.
This guide will teach you the truth about web hosting costs. I’ve identified the top costs associated with web hosting and how to evaluate those costs as you’re shopping around. You’ll learn more about how much you should pay for certain web hosting benefits and whether or not you even need specific features in your hosting plan.
My Favorite Tool for Keeping Web Hosting Costs Low
Bluehost is my favorite tool for keeping web hosting costs low.
As an industry leader in the web hosting space, more than two million sites worldwide rely on Bluehost for hosting. They have packages for everyone. Whether you’re starting a small personal blog or looking for a new provider to host your business site with millions of monthly visits, Bluehost can accommodate your needs.
To be clear, Bluehost is not necessarily the cheapest web hosting provider on the market. Some providers offer free web hosting or web hosting for less than a dollar. But you should avoid free web hosting at all costs—there is always a catch.
But Bluehost really delivers in terms of value. They offer low entry-level pricing for new websites, and their web hosting services help keep other costs low over time.
Continue below to learn more about general web hosting costs. I’ll even explain how Bluehost can help save you some money in some of these categories.
Cost #1: Web Hosting Type
The type of web hosting plan you select will have the most significant impact on the price. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking, here’s the order listed from cheapest to most expensive:
Shared web hosting
Cloud web hosting
VPS (virtual private server) web hosting
Dedicated server web hosting
Depending on the hosting provider, cloud hosting and VPS hosting might be switched. But the list above is a good rule of thumb.
Check out this pricing page from Bluehost as an example:
As you can see, there’s a significant price gap between each type of web hosting. The starting price of a dedicated server is roughly 20 times higher than the shared starting rate.
Unless you’re expecting huge traffic surges out of the gate, the vast majority of new websites should stick to a shared plan. That’s the best way to save some money, and you can always upgrade down the road as your site grows.
Most shared plans can accommodate anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 monthly visits. Once you start getting into the 50,000 monthly visit range, you should consider upgrading to a VPS or cloud package. I wouldn’t consider a dedicated server until you eclipse 100,000 monthly visits, and even at that point, it’s not 100% necessary.
Cost #2: Contract Length
Generally speaking, you’ll need to commit to a longer-term contract to get the lowest possible rate. This is one of the best ways to save money on web hosting costs, especially as a new customer.
Depending on the provider, plans are typically offered in 12, 24, 36, and up to 48-month contract terms. Month-to-month web hosting isn’t very common. So expect to commit to a year, at a minimum.
Here’s an example of the different prices offered by Bluehost based on contract length:
As you can see, there’s a $2 per month difference in price between the 36-month contract and the 12-month contract. This isn’t life-changing money or anything like that. But it will save you $72 over the course of three years.
Just understand that you’ll need to pay upfront for your contract in full when you sign up. In this case, $3.95 per month for 36 months actually means $142.20 today.
Cost #3: Renewal Rates
Locking in a long-term contract also helps you avoid renewal rates. It’s standard practice in the web hosting industry for providers to offer low promotional rates and then jack up the prices when your contract renews.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like they aren’t upfront about it. But most people don’t think about the costs they’re going to incur three or four years down the road. Some providers double, triple, or even quadruple your rate upon renewal.
Let’s take a closer look at the shared hosting packages from Bluehost. You can clearly see the renewal rates below each introductory price.
In this case, the renewal rate is more than double the introductory price. Believe it or not, this is actually fairly reasonable compared to some of the other web hosting providers on the market today.
There’s not a whole lot that you can do to avoid this increase. Your best bet is to just lock in a long-term introductory contact. That’s the best way to save the most money.
Once your website has been up and running for a few years, the extra costs upon renewal shouldn’t feel like too much of a burden.
Cost #4: Hosting Resources
Every web hosting plan allocates a certain number of resources to your website. While this might vary slightly from one provider to another, here’s a basic overview of what to expect:
Bandwidth — How quickly your server can transfer data.
CPUs — Central processing units to handle all the requests on your site.
RAM — Short-term memory for processing multiple requests simultaneously.
SSD Storage — The maximum allowed size of your website.
Generally speaking, the more resources you have, the higher your hosting costs will be.
Here’s a screenshot from Bluehost’s VPS pricing table to illustrate my point:
As you can see, the SSD storage, RAM, and bandwidth increase at each tier. The number of CPU cores remains the same from the Standard to Enhanced plan but doubles at the Ultimate package level.
Some providers offer “unlimited” or “unmetered” bandwidth. Just be forewarned that you’re not actually getting unlimited bandwidth. Unlimited bandwidth doesn’t really exist. Even the best servers have limits. Unlimited bandwidth just means that you can use as much bandwidth within a particular range offered by the provider.
So, how much bandwidth do you need? This isn’t an exact science, but generally, 5 GB of bandwidth can accommodate up to 15,000 or 20,000 visitors per month browsing pages with an average size of 50 KB.
Consider a cloud hosting plan if your traffic varies significantly from month to month. These packages typically allow you to scale resources on-demand to accommodate traffic spikes.
Cost #5: Setup Fees and Site Migrations
Most web hosting providers offer free setups. This is especially true with entry-level packages, like shared hosting plans. However, if the provider actually needs to take in-depth steps to get you started, you might incur some setup fees.
Setup fees are more common at the dedicated server level, where providers need to physically add hardware components based on your plan requests.
If you’re transferring your website from one hosting provider to another, you might incur a site migration fee as well.
Bluehost charges $149.99 for site transfers. Other providers offer this service for free, but it shouldn’t make or break your decision to use one web host over another.
You can justify the cost by having a professional handle this for you. I don’t recommend trying to migrate a website on your own. Too much can go wrong, so pay the fee and don’t think twice about it.
Cost #6: Domain Registration
Normally, I wouldn’t mix domain registration and web hosting. It’s usually in your best interest to get your domain name from a domain registrar and your hosting package from a web hosting provider.
That said, new websites can bundle the two, especially through Bluehost. All new Bluehost customers get a free domain for one year with a web hosting subscription.
It’s cheaper long-term to get your domain directly from a registrar. Bluehost’s domain renewal rates will be a bit higher. But overall, the added cost is pretty marginal.
Most new website owners will just find it easier to bundle everything under one roof, as opposed to using different platforms for a domain name and hosting plan.
Cost #7: Security
I don’t care what type of website you have; security needs to be a top priority for everyone.
There are a handful of different security measures that should be added to your site. I’m referring to things like network protocols, spam filtering, malware scans, firewalls, and more. But you can get additional security directly from your web hosting provider.
At a minimum, every web host should be offering you a free SSL certificate. That’s become an industry standard, and I wouldn’t recommend any host that charges an extra SSL fee.
The exact security options vary from provider to provider, but here’s an example from Bluehost.
For $2.99 per month, SiteLock Security Essential gives you automated malware detection, unlimited page scans, blacklist monitoring, file-level scanning, automatic malware removal, plugin scanning, weekly reports, and more.
Alternatively, you could always skip this and beef up security on your own. If you’re using WordPress, there are plenty of great WordPress security plugins to consider.
Cost #8: Managed Support and Server Maintenance
Managed web hosting has become increasingly popular over the years. The term has different meanings depending on the plan and provider you’re using, but in short, a managed web host will take care of all the server operations behind the scenes. This typically includes setup, maintenance, server monitoring, support, updates, and more.
Alternatively, high-traffic websites could consider a managed WordPress plan.
The entry-level managed plan from Bluehost starts at $19.95 per month and can accommodate up to 50,000 visitors per month. These plans scale all the way up to sites with 500,000 monthly visitors.
If you’re using a dedicated server, you definitely need to think about the maintenance costs. Dedicated servers are typically offered with managed or unmanaged options.
The unmanaged plans will be cheaper if you’re just comparing rates side-by-side. But you’ll be responsible for the cost of maintaining and updating the server on your own. Unless you’re really technical or have a dedicated IT team, it’s generally better to just get a managed plan from your hosting provider. Long-term, it’s cheaper than managing a server on your own.
Cost #9: Package Extras
Every web hosting provider makes an effort to sign you up for as many different services as possible. Navigating through upsells is just part of shopping around for web hosting.
With that said, you can skip the vast majority of add-ons and upsells offered by web hosts, especially the ones that aren’t directly tied to web hosting.
Here’s an example to show you what I mean:
The web hosting costs highlighted above come to $142.20. But if you add-on all of the package extras to your plan, your total becomes $277.83. That’s a big jump from an advertised price of $3.95 per month.
Believe it or not, Bluehost actually doesn’t even offer that many extras compared to other hosting providers. Some will offer double or even triple this amount.
The key here is knowing what to select and what not to select.
A single domain SSL isn’t necessary, as you’re already getting a free Let’s Encrypt SSL with your plan. You don’t need the marketing or SEO tools. SiteLock Security Essential is something we discussed earlier.
If you’re not going to get security features elsewhere, adding it on now is a good choice.
Codeguard Basic is another 50/50 option. It includes daily backups, one-click restores, and other helpful tools. But you could always get this later on from other plugins or services.
Cost #10: Downtime
Downtime is an indirect cost of web hosting. It’s not something that you’ll see on your bill.
But every time your site goes down due to a server crash or network error, it costs you money. The type of website you have and your monetization strategy will dictate exactly how much money you’re losing.
Don’t just look at an uptime guarantee from a hosting provider and assume you’re in good shape. Those guarantees typically come with all types of contingencies. In the event that they fail to meet the uptime agreement, you’ll just get credit off of a future bill.
But that $0.50 or $1.25 credit two years from now isn’t worth the cost of losing customers today.
Always look at reviews to see what real people have to say about the uptime reliability of different web hosting providers. Frequent downtime can be costly long-term.
Conclusion
What’s the truth about web hosting costs? You don’t need to pay a fortune.
Your total cost to host a website will depend on several different factors. I’ve identified the top ten costs associated with web hosting above. As you can see from this list, it’s actually fairly easy to keep hosting costs low if you understand what to look for.
Bluehost is my favorite way to save money on web hosting. So if you sign up with them, you’re on the right track. You’ll even get a free SSL certificate and free domain name.
In a firm that gives contracting out solutions, a collection of ideal techniques need to be enforced. This declaration applies in the location of phone call facilities given that it is essential to keep in mind that there have to be a particular collection of phone call facility customer support methods to make sure that the firm will certainly supply the very best of all the very best phone call facility customer care.
The term “call facility client service techniques” in this feeling is connected with the nature of the means on just how to obtain or brighten a certain provided customer support. As it is generally kept in mind, call facility customer support methods actually telephone facility flourish due to the fact that with telephone call facility customer care techniques individuals behind the telephone call facility will ultimately discover to establish as well as excellent their abilities.
Many call facility consumer solution techniques intend to totally improve the procedures as well as various other relevant points in the globe of phone call facilities, specifically those incoming and also outgoing client solution procedures. Many of phone call facility client solution techniques are made to enhance the monetary and also solution efficiency as well as the degree of commitment the consumers and also the phone call facility representatives would certainly present.
The phone call facility customer care techniques that a lot of the telephone call facilities somewhere else supply differ from staff member source administration, outbound telemarketing as well as outbound/inbound phone call monitoring, to solitary consumer procedures. Amongst the most up to date telephone call facility customer care methods that many phone call facilities used right into their very own firms are the vibrant, data-driven telephone call resolution assistance that make it possible for the telephone call focuses to supply even more constant client service. Substantially, with such sort of telephone call facility customer support methods, the effectiveness as well as the top quality of the customer support will certainly enhance, as well as in this setting of telephone call facility customer support methods, the high quality will certainly be obtained by thinking about the real-time stats as well as by implementing adjustments to call manuscripts.
Some various other phone call facility client solution techniques are made, such as the efficient consumer solution demand transmitting to raise consumer complete satisfaction as well as smart concern acknowledgment and also resolution to offer solution representatives with an extra well organized collection of demands from the consumers. Call facility consumer solution techniques deal with value-based client involvement modeling that advertises extra bought collection of timetables.
Amongst the most recent phone call facility client solution techniques that a lot of phone call facilities used right into their very own business are the vibrant, data-driven phone call resolution assistance that make it possible for the telephone call focuses to supply even more constant consumer solutions. Substantially, with such kind of phone call facility client solution techniques, the performance and also the top quality of the consumer solution will certainly enhance, as well as in this setting of telephone call facility consumer solution techniques, the high quality will certainly be gotten by thinking about the real-time data as well as by making feasible adjustments to call manuscripts.
Some various other phone call facility consumer solution methods are made, such as the effective consumer solution demand directing to boost client complete satisfaction and also smart problem acknowledgment and also resolution to give solution representatives with an extra well organized collection of demands from the clients.
Hi there! I just graduated college and am looking for Data Scientist positions! Location: Boulder, CO Remote: Preferred Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: SQL, Python, Hadoop, Spark, Jupyter Notebook, Git, Scala, Java, JavaScript Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christoph98/ GitHub: https://github.com/Christoph98 Email: christophuhl07 AT gmail.com
I know that sounds contradictory because if you are an SEO, why wouldn’t you obsess about traffic, right?
Well, it’s because I’ve learned some hard lessons over the year… mainly because I’ve made a lot of mistakes.
So today, I wanted to share them with you so that you can learn from my mistakes… so here goes:
Lesson #1: Don’t obsess over rankings, obsess over conversions
I used to check my rankings every single day. Literally.
On top of that, I would log into Google Analytics 4 to 5 times a day and continually check my traffic.
That’s all I cared about back in the day… boosting my organic traffic.
But here is the thing: As my rankings and traffic went up over the years, my revenue didn’t go up proportionally.
For example, during one quarter in 2017, my SEO traffic went up 39.52%, but my revenue from SEO went up only 4.29%.
I quickly learned that traffic isn’t everything. If you can’t convert the traffic into revenue it doesn’t matter.
That taught me that you need to focus on the right keywords that drive conversions and continually optimize your site for conversions.
An easy first step for you to take is to install Crazy Egg and run a heatmap to see where people click so you adjust your design and copy to get more sales.
Lesson #2: The easiest way to grow your SEO traffic is international expansion
You already know that I get a lot of SEO traffic, but do you know what country drives most of my traffic?
If you guessed United States, you are wrong.
Brazil is my most popular region, followed by India.
International SEO is the easiest way to expand and grow your traffic. Here are a few posts that you should read before you expand your SEO globally:
Lesson #3: Keywords are very, very, very, very important
When I used to write my content, I didn’t obsess about the keywords when I should have.
My team actually proved me wrong on this.
I used to focus on writing content for humans and didn’t worry about search engines. My team, on the other hand, obsesses about keywords.
Just look at the growth of our traffic in Brazil because of our obsession with the right keywords.
One simple thing I do before writing that has really helped is I head over to Ubersuggest and type in a few of the keywords that I want to go after.
Once it loads, you’ll see a report like the one above. I want you to then click on “Keyword Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.
You’ll see a report that contains a list of keywords that you could potentially be targeting.
Make sure you click on the “Related” tab, as well as “Questions” and “Comparisons” … scroll through the list. You’ll see hundreds of keywords. Pick all of the ones that are relevant and ideally have a high cost per click (CPC). These are the keywords that’ll not only drive traffic but revenue as well.
Whenever I write a blog post, I go through this step. Every single time.
Lesson #4: AMP pages can drive more SEO traffic
AMP pages load faster on mobile devices than non-AMP pages.
If you aren’t familiar with the AMP framework, read this.
What most people won’t tell you about AMP pages is that:
In regions like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, countries with decent Internet infrastructure, you won’t see much of an increase in traffic.
In regions with poor Internet infrastructure, like Brazil, you’ll see a 10 to 15% lift in mobile SEO traffic by having AMP pages.
AMP pages don’t convert visitors into customers as well as normal responsive web design. So, you’ll have to work on testing your AMP pages so you can boost your conversion rates.
Lesson #5: SEO will never convert as well as paid ads
When I started off with SEO, I would run projections on how much the traffic would make me.
But the numbers were always off, even if I was able to get the rankings.
Here’s the main reason: If you are bidding on terms like auto insurance through ads, you can drive people to a landing page that looks like this:
But if you want to rank organically, you’ll have to do it through content. So, your page that ranks well will look more like this and convert less…
It doesn’t mean SEO is bad. In reality, it’s much cheaper in the long run than paid ads and will produce a better ROI. But don’t just assume that if you get 100 visitors from paid ads and 3 purchases that you’ll have the same conversion rate with your SEO traffic.
Chances are it will be significantly lower by maybe 2 or 3x, but because SEO is cheaper, it will be much more profitable.
Lesson #6: Remarketing is one of the best ways to generate an ROI from SEO
If you get a ton of traffic from SEO, there is a simple strategy you can implement to boost your conversions.
Remarket everyone on Facebook, Google, and YouTube.
That way people come to your site, read your content, and build trust with you and your brand.
Then you remarket them throughout the web with ads that prompt your products or services and send them to a landing page that will drive sales.
I’ve been doing this for years, just look at my old remarketing ad…
For the regions I use remarketing in, it is responsible for 46% of my leads.
Lesson #7: Don’t forget to update your old content
I publish one new blog post a week. I’m working on increasing this as I get more time, but for now, it is one a week.
Can you guess how many blog posts I update on a daily basis? Technically it is 0 (me at least), but my team focuses on updating at least 3 old blog posts per day. That’s roughly 90 a month.
Once you have a few hundred pages, make sure you focus on updating your old content or else your traffic will quickly drop.
You can use this content decay tool to see which posts you should update first.
This will help you continually grow your SEO traffic instead of hitting plateaus or seeing your traffic take massive drops.
Lesson #8: Don’t forget to optimize your title tags
One of the easiest ways to grow your rankings is to optimize your title tags.
If you can write persuasive copy and get more clicks, you’ll quickly move up on Google.
In Brazil, we spend more time doing this than we do in the United States.
We get a similar amount of impressions in Brazil, but we have more people focusing on improving our title tags and testing. Hence, we get 95% more SEO traffic in Brazil.
Another simple hack is to use the “Content Ideas” report in Ubersuggest.
On the right side of that report, you can see social share counts from Facebook and Pinterest. And on the left side, you see titles of articles.
Typically, if people like a title they share it more. So, look for titles that have a lot of shares as it will give you ideas on what you can use on your website to get more clicks and boost your rankings.
Lesson #9: Don’t put dates in your URL
I used to put dates in my URLs like:
Neilpatel.com/2017/12/title-of-post/
This causes search engines to assume that your content is related to a specific date. And after that date gets old, search engines assume your content is irrelevant and outdated.
The moment I removed the date from my URLs, I grew my SEO traffic by 58% in 30 days.
The majority of your pages that will rank are blog-related content. And blog posts tend to drive fewer direct conversions because people are on your site to read the content.
In order to maximize your conversions from SEO, you should consider using exit popups so you can convert more of those visitors into customers as they leave.
When you leave this site in most cases, you’ll see a popup that looks like:
And it drives you to this quiz, which allows me to convert SEO visitors into customers.
You can easily copy me by using Hello Bar. It works for all industries including B2B and ecommerce and even lead generation sites.
Lesson #11: Brand queries affect rankings
Everyone talks about how you need links to boost rankings.
One of the big reasons for my growth in SEO traffic is the growth in my brand. I’ve seen a direct correlation in which the more people who find me from my name, the more SEO traffic I get.
Just look at my brand growth over time:
I’ve received over 1.9 million visitors over the last 16 months from people typing in variations of my name in Google.
Lesson #12: Don’t waste your money on paid links
I’ve been doing SEO since I was 16 years old. That’s a long time…
When I started off as a kid, I dabbled in paid links and I used to dominate Google for terms like online casino, online poker, web hosting, auto insurance, and even credit cards.
And I was making a killing off of affiliate income from these sites.
But it was all short lived.
Why?
Because I bought links. And eventually Google penalized all of those sites.
If I never purchased links, those sites would have taken longer to rank, but they would have been around today, and I would have generated more income overall.
Don’t buy links, it’s bad and shortsighted.
Lesson #13: Guest post to build a brand, not to build links
I already covered the importance of branding above.
A great way to build your brand and indirectly boost your SEO traffic is through guest posting.
It’s pretty easy to spot a guest post for both a human and algorithm…
But if you are using it to build a brand, great. Focus on the content quality and not links.
Lesson #14: Don’t forget to interlink
Do you know what some of my highest ranked pages are?
The ones that are interlinked.
It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year for many of the interlinks to kick in, but it is still effective none-the-less.
Every time I wrote content, I used to make sure I link out to my older pieces of content when it made sense. But I made a big mistake… I wasn’t going into my older pieces of content and then adding links to my newer pieces of content.
That one change was game-changing for me. It took time to see the results but it worked exceptionally well.
It’s how I rank high for terms like “email marketing”.
Lesson #15: Google isn’t the only game in town
Although Google is the most popular search engine, it isn’t the only one you need to focus on.
Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine?
Focus on writing high-quality content. It’s why I blog less and try to make my content amazing.
Lesson #18: Tools are better than content marketing
I used to focus all of my energy on content marketing because it drove a lot of links and SEO traffic.
But over time, I realized that creating free tools builds more natural links than anything else I have ever tested.
Just look at Ubersuggest. I spent years creating it and look at how many links it has generated…
30,603 backlinks! That’s a lot of links.
If you don’t have the resources to build a custom tool like me, you can always start with buying a white label tool from Code Canyon for $10 or $20. They literally have tools for almost all industries.
Lesson #19: Don’t rely only on SEO
When I first got started in SEO, all I could think about was SEO.
To me, it was the best marketing channel out there because it allowed me to compete with large companies.
Even to this day, I still love SEO more than any other channel.
But it doesn’t stop me from leveraging other marketing channels.
See, years ago you could build a business off of one marketing channel.
Yelp was built through SEO. Dropbox through social media referrals. Facebook through email invites…
Those days don’t exist anymore. You can’t just build your traffic from one channel.
Although you should do SEO, you should also try paid ads, social media marketing, email marketing, push notifications, and anything else that comes out.
Diversify your traffic sources and don’t just rely solely on SEO.
Lesson #20: People love linking to data
Spending money and time to gather your own unique data is an easy way to build links.
Within a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, 47 infographics generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains. They also generated 41,359 tweets and 20,859 likes.
If you don’t have money to hire a designer, you can use Infogram or Canva to create one on your own.
Lesson #22: Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content
You don’t want to post tons of duplicate content on your site as it’s not the best user experience, but keep in mind that Google doesn’t penalize you for duplication.
They may not just rank the duplicate content as well.
So, if you spend all of this time producing amazing, unique content, why not publish it FIRST on your own website.
Then after a few hours or days if you want to be safe, take that exact content and publish it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and anywhere else that will accept your content.
Literally, take all of the words and paste them onto those social channels.
It will get you extra awareness and branding. Plus, the content should already be indexed on your site, so Google knows it came from your first… and I doubt you care if the duplicated version on LinkedIn ranks. That’s still great branding.
In other words, don’t be afraid to repurpose your content even if it causes duplication.
Just look at this post, for example. I’m also repurposing it into a 4-part podcast series.
Lesson #23: Don’t recreate the wheel
I used to spend hours a week doing keyword research trying to figure out what new terms to rank for.
Eventually, I figured out an easier and better way to find new content topics and keywords to go after.
Go to Ubersuggest, type in your competitor’s domain name and hit search.
In the left-hand navigation click on Top Pages.
You’ll see a report that shows you all of the popular pages on your competition’s website. This will give you ideas for the type of pages you should create on your website.
Then I want you to click “View All” under Est. Visits (estimated visits). This will show you all of the keywords that drive traffic to that page.
You now have a list of topics and keywords for each topic to go after.
Lesson #24: Don’t pick a generic domain name
Remember how in Lesson 11 I talked about brand queries and how they helped rankings?
After I learned that, I decided to go buy exact match domain names where the domain name was the keyword.
That way I would get lots of brand queries without trying.
Well, there’s an issue… even if you rank high, what you’ll find is you will have a low click-through rate in most cases.
If you have a low click-through rate, it tells Google your brand isn’t strong and people don’t prefer it, which can hurt your ranking.
So instead of focusing on exact match domains, unless you have millions to spend on branding like Hotels.com, focus on building a memorable brand.
Pick something that is unique, easy to spell, and easy to remember.
Lesson #25: Learn from blackhat SEOs, but don’t go over to the dark side
Blackhat SEOs come up with some interesting data and experiments.
Many of them don’t work for long, but they are interesting none-the-less.
Although I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, I do recommend following them.
The easiest way you can learn from them is by reading Blackhat World.
People there share some interesting insights, especially every time there is a major Google algorithm update.
Again, I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, but following them may help you uncover “white hat” techniques that can increase your rankings. Not everything they do is bad… many of them use legitimate tactics as well.
Lesson #26: Short URLs rank better than long ones
My URLs used to be the title of my blog post.
For example, with this post I would have used this URL in the past…
URLs at position #1 are on average 9.2 characters shorter than URLs that rank in position #10. So, keep them short.
Lesson #27: The power’s in the list
If you want your content to rank high on Google, you need more people to see it.
Whether it is from social shares, or from push notifications or email blasts… the more people that see your content, the more engagement it will get, and the more people that will link to it.
I used to do a ton of manual outreach every time I published a new blog post and I would email people asking them to link to me.
And it works, it’s just time consuming and a pain.
These days, I have a better strategy… send out an email blast every time I publish a new post.
I can now get anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 clicks per email I send out.
Now of course you won’t get that from day one as it took me years to build up my email list.
But you can start today by collecting emails. You can easily do that through Hello Bar.
And as your list grows, so will the clicks to your blog and the number of links you get, which in turn will increase your rankings.
Lesson #28: Don’t let your foot off the peddle
This was one of the hardest lessons I learned.
It’s exhausting to continually blog and do your own SEO. Sometimes you just want a break.
With my old blog, Quick Sprout, I used to publish 12 blog posts a month and I did that consistently for 3 years.
One day I decided that I wanted to stop for a month. So, I took a 30-day break.
Guess what happened to my traffic?
It tanked by 32%.
So, then I started blogging again. And guessed what happened to my traffic after I started blogging?
It didn’t come right back.
It took me 3 months to get back to where I was.
When things are working for you, don’t slow down. Keep pushing harder, even if you are exhausted. Because the moment you stop, you’ll drop, and it is a lot of work to get back to where you were.
Lesson #29: The best SEO advice comes from conferences
The best SEO advice I have ever learned over the years has come from conferences.
And no, I don’t mean by sitting in on the sessions, although you can learn from those too.
The best SEO secrets and advice I learned came from networking. When you go to these conferences, hundreds if not thousands of other SEOs are there. And when you go to the bar after hours and mingle with people, you’ll quickly pick stuff up.
You’ll be shocked at what people tell you. It’s how I learned a lot of the good tactics that I still use today.
Lesson #30: Never stop learning
This one may sound obvious but when things are going well, people get complacent.
Just think about that for a bit… that’s roughly 9 algorithm updates per day.
Because they are changing so quickly, you won’t survive if you don’t stay up to date.
Yes, the ideal strategy is to do what’s best for your users or visitors as in the long run, Google wants to promote those sites, but it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the changes happening in the industry.
Read all of the SEO blogs out there, attend conferences as I mentioned above… experiment on test sites… push yourself to be better.
That drive of always improving and always wanting to learn more has helped me tremendously. It’s one of the reasons for my growth in rankings over the years.
Conclusion
There are a lot of lessons that you will learn as your rankings grow and as you spend more time on SEO.
But hopefully, you don’t have to waste time and go through the same mistakes I made. You don’t want to learn these lessons the hard way.
That’s why I decided to share them. I want to save you the time and help you achieve your traffic goals faster.
Are you digital providing marketing services? Is usability and ADA compliance part of your auditing process? If not, you are missing out… Here’s why: What is ADA Compliance? ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for … The post What Digital Agencies Need to Know about ADA Compliance: Paper.li Blogs & More appeared first on Paper.li … Continue reading What Digital Agencies Need to Know about ADA Compliance: Paper.li Blogs & More
Do you want to eliminate business failure? Of course, you do! Don’t we all?
The Hottest and Most Brilliant Business Tips for YOU – Eliminate Business Failure and More
Our research ninjas at Credit Suite smuggled out ten amazing business tips for you! Be fierce and score in business with the best tips around the web. You can use them today and see fast results. You can take that to the bank – these are foolproof! It’s the Holy Grail to eliminate business failure.
Stop making stupid decisions and start powering up your business. Demolish your business nightmares and start celebrating as your business starts to fulfill its promise.
And these brilliant business tips are all here for free! So, settle in and scoop up these tantalizing goodies before your competition does!
#10. Yes, We Really Want You to Get Paid
Our first jaw-dropping tip is all about invoicing best practices. Kabbage says creating invoices means you need to be consistent and organized. This means itemizing and it means basics like dates and numbers and project names.
And don’t send an invoice late! You are only harming your own cash flow when you do so. Our favorite tip concerned following up.
There’s a reason why companies send friendly payment reminders just before a bill is due. They want to be at the top of your mind. And, of course, they want to be paid. You should do the same. After all, you want the same thing.
Following up also allows you to have a touch point to the customer. Maybe they need more time to pay. Or maybe they’re ready for an upsell. Don’t just sit in the dark, hoping they’ll pay you eventually.
The next awesome tip is about creating a video sales letter. Foundr notes you can’t just brain dump the first 30 seconds of whatever you think of. Rather, you need to be intentional when it comes to a video sales letter. Because a bad video or script is a lot harder for prospects to forget.
We highly recommend reading the entire article. So, we’ll just concentrate on one tip here.
It’s All in the Script
You are not writing Shakespeare here. It’s not meant to be dramatic. Rather, your script exists so you don’t forget any detail. And it also exists so you can have a good, well-crafted call to action in your video. The article recommends cribbing from sales copy, and we agree!
After all, your sales copy was written by your marketing people. And it must be working – so repeat the process. It’s a lot better than reinventing the wheel.
If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Eliminate business failure – and more!
#8. Grow, Little Business, Grow!
Our following life-changing tip concerns measuring and achieving business growth. Fundera lays it all out for us. There are a half a dozen growth strategies you can try. And it doesn’t matter what kind of a business you’re in.
The strategies are:
Increase demand through strategic partnerships.
Improve your profit by removing unprofitable products and services.
Boost revenue by improving your conversion rate.
Increase sales by creating a sales funnel.
Fortify your workforce with new recruiting tactics.
Shore up market share with a customer relationship management system.
Consider each of these in turn. They are all ways to get more cash or lose less money. It makes sense to look at them all systematically. We recommend you check out the article in its entirety. So, we’ll showcase one of these strategies.
Remove Unprofitable Products and Services
It can sometimes feel a bit counterintuitive, eh? But recognize that you may be unnecessarily attached to, say, the first type of widget you ever sold.
With your sales figures in hand, take a good, long look at your underperforming products and services. But also consider the costs of creating them. If you make $5 from a $1,000 product, but it takes you only a minute to get that product out on the shelf, then it costs $300 to make that product every hour. If you only make two of these products per quarter, and they both sell, they might be worth it. But also consider the costs of shelf space. Plus, there can be a cost of ‘shelf space’ even if your business is solely online. Maintaining one more selling or landing page isn’t free.
The corollary is also true. If your $1,000 product costs $900 to make, and you make $950 on the product, then it might also be a candidate for weeding.
They’re products or services, not a marriage. You can change them up if they stop working out for you.
#7. Crush It on Instagram
For our next sensational tip, we looked at Instagram marketing (very, very hot these days). Business Knowhow says that Instagram has over a billion active users each month. Yes, that’s billion, with a ‘B’.
Over a third of all US adults use it. So, shouldn’t your business be there, if it isn’t already?
Now, the tips are mainly the kinds which we see for social media of any flavor. That is, be sure to have a business profile, engage with your readers, and track the right metrics. So, we’d like to zero in on the one tip which is more specifically Instagram-centric.
Tell Me an Instagram Story
Stories are a kind of fast-moving, almost disposable content. They don’t last for very long. Still, they get decent engagement – a good 20% get a direct response from users.
The best tip we can tell you is not just to use Instagram stories. It’s also to not take your business quite so seriously when you’re creating them. Hence while, yes, you want them to be brand-correct and accurate, maybe take the sales talk down a notch. How?
Let’s say you’ve got a long-haul trucking company. Your story might be about your favorite stop in Texas. “Hey, Instagram, I’m in San Antonio! Love this town – be sure to check out the Alamo. And if you need anything delivered here, I’m your guy.”
And then, whoosh, it’s gone.
Short, sweet, and to the point.
#6. Sales + Marketing = Best Practices
This tip is so cool, and it works! Heinz Marketing tells us all about the handshake between marketing and sales. Their article outlines seven best practices. We’ll home in on just one of those here.
Practice Empathy and Assume the Best of Intentions
Have you ever worked at a company where there was perhaps a little too much competition between departments? At times, these departments can even turn hostile toward each other. After all, even unintentionally, there’s competition for resources.
Still, you’re all supposed to be on the same page.
When the sales department assumes marketing is hiding all the good prospects, there’s a problem. And when marketing assumes sales isn’t following their directions deliberately, then there’s also a problem.
What to do?
Assume the best of intentions. The first time, every time. This can also get you to contact the other department if everything isn’t running smoothly. Maybe there was a breakdown in communications? These things happen.
Get the problem fixed before it gets bigger. And the start is to assume good intentions and work from there.
#5. Everyone Wants to Eliminate Business Failure
Grab this mind-blowing tip while it’s hot!
Look at a new way to eliminate business failure right here.
Success Harbor says business failures tend to come down to five issues:
Misguided intentions
Poor management
Lack of funds
Poor location (obviously, if your business is purely online, this is less of an issue. But you still need to have your goods available in places like Amazon or eBay, and you need to be positioned well on Google)
Unclear plans
Today, we’ll focus on all of these, but from my own perspective. See, I’m a writer. Have I mentioned that before? Well, I am. Published and everything.
A True Story
I hang around with other independent writers all the time. I see people who want to get rich, or who think this will be the perfect job due to their anxiety. Or they feel they will become famous. Or they will be treated well by reviewers and commenters.
Folks overspend and underdeliver. Or they have little to nothing to put into their projects, and it shows. Another issue is when they do very little marketing, or don’t do it well. Or they’re just plain vague about not only what their work is about, but how they’re planning on taking it to the next level.
They also have no idea that they’re not just writing. They’re also starting a small business, like it or not.
In short, they suffer from every single issue in the article.
Sometimes, dear readers, there just plain aren’t enough facepalms.
Let’s Turn Things Around
Maybe we can’t completely eliminate business failure for these folks. But we can make them a lot more likely to succeed, in some capacity.
How?
Manage your expectations. Even overnight successes had to start somewhere. And they’re often nowhere near as overnight as you might have been led to believe.
Also, as they say, don’t quit your day job. A surprisingly small number of books have to be sold for you to have a New York Times bestselling novel. No, seriously. So, that means, while being a bestseller isn’t stratospheric, it also doesn’t make the writer a mint.
And, treat a business like, well, a business. This means budgets and planning. And if you’re up for neither, then you hire someone who is.
Oh, and speaking of locations…
#4. Be a Motivator, Even When Things are Tough
Check out this spectacular tip, all about motivating employees during stressful times. Talk about eliminating business failure right there! Entrepreneur notes that it’s impossible to get rid of all stress. Much the same as it’s impossible to truly eliminate business failure, of course. The basic idea is to lower both, yes?
Beyond being an empathetic manager and encouraging clear communication, we wanted to highlight one rather specific tip.
Encourage Vacations
Does that feel counterintuitive?
It shouldn’t.
Do you remember when you were a worker bee? You probably wanted your vacation time to come sooner. And you probably hoped it was longer than it truly was. Furthermore, you likely dreaded coming back to backlog.
Your employees have those exact same feelings and desires.
If you can’t afford to offer more than 2 weeks of vacation per year, then so be it. You can still make that a better time for your employees. You can be cheerful and encouraging when they want to take time off. And you can assign someone to help alleviate the backlog so they don’t come back to a huge tsunami of work and get stressed out all over again.
Besides, cross training is good for teams!
#3. Put Together Your Business’s Own Personal Think Tank
It’s not your imagination: this winning tip can help you build a high performance team. Logic 2020 tells us this isn’t exactly the same as the people you hire for a work group. A work group solves basic, quantifiable problems. Such as, you need to expand into New Mexico. Or maybe you need to raise production by 20% this year.
A high performance team, on the other hand, is for abstract, creative problems. They might still be tackling a problem like raising production. But instead, they would be approaching it from an angle like adding AI or buying new software. In contrast, the work group would be looking at hiring more workers or coaxing faster delivery times from suppliers.
Here’s our fave tip of the bunch.
Pay Attention to Recruitment and Hire Specialists, Not Generalists
This is a favorite tip because it has a personal angle to your intrepid blog writer.
Because I have been hired to work on problems which were existing for the first time. Case in point: one job was to create a legal vocabulary for a voice recognition product. The team already had medical vocabularies. But they had no idea how to start with legal.
Rather than being good at voice recognition, the truth is, I had never worked on it before. But I knew legal and I knew (still do!) writing. This meant thinking about use cases which I had personally experienced. Those included dictation with spelling and creating legal citations. A lawyer or police officer would have to add new names and street names just about every single day. Contrast this with a doctor who could add the names of diseases and treatments maybe once and then be done.
It’s this kind of lateral, off the wall thinking that you want in your high performance team. It’s one way to eliminate business failure.
If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Eliminate business failure – and more!
#2. Come on Board, New Employees!
Our second to last unbeatable tip can give you a new perspective on your onboarding process. Manta reveals all about what to do with that awesome, high performance team once you’ve hired them.
One way to help eliminate business failure is to treat your employees right. And you need to do so from the very start. This goes beyond education and training and providing regular feedback. Although we’re not knocking those.
Being in a remote work location, we wanted to focus on one aspect of the article.
Employee Social Connections
When I’m in Boston, you’re in Boise, and our coworker is in Biloxi, we aren’t going to go out for drinks after work. Maybe ever.
So, what can we do?
Work toward connections. Part of this is programmatic. That is, you spend time on virtual meetings, and maybe more of those than you would have if you were in the same office. Make it a regular habit to check in and check in regularly.
Another thing you can do is to keep teams from being isolated from each other. We at Credit Suite do this via collaboration using a tool called Slack. You may find other ways to do so.
And here’s a tip, straight from me to you: organize some sort of an employee gathering, once a year. You probably can’t invite everyone, but at least get the team leaders in. Give them the opportunity to get in some face time. Add in some teamwork – and that can be bowling or a trivia competition or whatever. It doesn’t all have to be about work, 24/7.
Your employees don’t have to be close pals and love each other. But they should be at least collegial to each other.
#1. Save Your Startup $
We saved the best for last. One way to eliminate business failure is, of course, to save money. Here’s how.
For our favorite remarkable tip, we focused on trimming startup operating expenses. Young Upstarts says there are a few areas where you can cut expenses which you may not have thought of.
One is to negotiate with your suppliers. We agree with this and also see it as a prelude to getting vendor credit with them. Perhaps you could get a trade reference if your supplier likes your business that much (and you have a good payment record with them).
Another option is outsourcing. Could you work with freelancers, or even people overseas? The beauty of this approach is, you can try people out with less risk than a full-blown hiring process. Like them? Then hire them full-time when you can. Don’t like them? Then cut your ties.
So, which one of our brilliant business tips was your favorite? And which one will you be implementing now?
If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Eliminate business failure – and more!
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