But, although it’s a great tactic for improving your online visibility, coming up with a steady stream of content marketing ideas can be easier said than done. So, here, I’m going to outline how you can keep the content coming.

Consider what kinds of content your audience will share

No matter what kind of content you want to create, it’s important that you make it shareable. Shareable content is good for raising awareness of your brand, reaching the right audience, and building up your backlink profile.

But what is a backlink profile? When another authoritative and trustworthy website related to your niche provides you with an inbound link, Google takes it as a vote of confidence in your work and will give you a boost on the search engine results pages (SERPs). So, when you’re trying to come up with content marketing ideas, think about what types of content tend to be shareable. Infographics, interactive content, and free tools tend to work well because they are engaging and useful.

Let’s explore some examples to give you an idea of what shareable content can look like.

Take a look at how Code Academy, an online coding learning program, creates sharable content with their programmer sorting quiz. They ask a variety of questions to help sort the viewer into a coding program that’s right for them. This is sharable among coders, educators, and more — it’s a helpful resource for anyone interested in learning to code or attempting to start a new career.

Or, consider how LinkedIn creates shareable content for their blog. For example, they’ve produced an infographic that shows how content marketing was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Infographics are colorful, engaging, and break down information in a way that’s easy to understand. Plus, if you choose the right topic, focusing on what people are interested in reading and writing about right now, you can make yours very shareable.

Conduct keyword research for inspiration

Keyword research is a great way to come up with content marketing ideas! If you’re familiar with SEO, you might be familiar with keyword research; let’s break down how it works.

To start, brainstorm a list of phrases and topics related to your niche or business. Once you have your list, plug a few of these words into a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner. You will then be provided with a list of related topics and phrases with their average monthly searches and levels of competitiveness. Implementing these keywords into your content or using them as topic inspiration can majorly help you boost your SEO!

Try to focus on finding and using keywords that have a solid number of monthly searches, but aren’t too competitive. The more searches you can target, the more eyes you could get on your content but, if you only focus on keywords that are too competitive, you’re unlikely to rank high enough in the SERPs for it to make a difference.

Once you have these keywords, take a look and see what you can do to incorporate them into your content. You can write an entire blog post or create a video based on one of these topics, for instance, or you can use them as guidance for your titles and headers. Both of these strategies will give you an SEO boost.

Address common questions with your content

If your customers have common questions, you could create content that answers them. This will help your audience feel listened to and build trust with them. Be sure to do your research before creating content based on questions.

Start by checking in with your customer service team to see if there are any common inquiries they get. You can also comb through your customer reviews to see if people have common questions about your products or services. Then, it’s time to do some more keyword research.

Answer the Public is a great online tool you can use to conduct question keyword research. Remember that list of topics and phrases related to your business or niche you came up with? Pull it back out! Plugging those same phrases into Answer the Public will provide you with a series of questions that people are searching for related to your niche. Let’s break down a couple of examples to showcase what I mean.

Take a look at how RMIT Online, an online university, answers a relevant customer question in their post on whether we’re facing an oversupply of data scientists. This is a common question that anyone interested in becoming a data scientist will have. Because RMIT Online offers a program that helps people to pursue this career path, it’s a great question to cover in their content.

To assist in finding the answer, RMIT Online cites relevant LinkedIn data, investigates probabilities and demand for data scientist jobs, and interviews credible sources like Australia Post’s General Manager of Data Science, Silvio Georgio.

Systeme.io, an online digital marketing platform, does something similar with their article on how to create a sales funnel. Systeme.io’s target audience is full of digital marketers and influencers at all levels of expertise. So, this piece of content is going to be very helpful for people who are starting to expand their knowledge; if they enjoy it, they’ll likely enjoy their other posts and be curious about their services, too.

Lastly, let’s investigate how Webscreations Design answers customer questions in their article on good website bounce rates. This article is particularly effective because it answers multiple questions on the same topic — this means that it is able to target multiple search queries in just one article, making it super SEO-friendly! Go back to your list you received from Answer the Public and see if you can compile an article based on a series of related questions for the best results.

Look into repurposing your existing content

Different content marketing topics can be explored in a variety of different formats! So, if you’re struggling to come up with ideas, take a look at what you’ve already created and see what’s been successful. Then, repurpose it into new content! Not everyone will want to consume every type of content, so doing this can help you reach different members of your audience and build more trust.

For instance, not everyone is going to want to read a long blog post about a certain topic. So, if you have a long blog post that was particularly successful, you could break down the same information into a helpful video. Similarly, if you’ve conducted a case study for your website, you could sum up the results into a colorful infographic.

Don’t worry — Google has confirmed that presenting the same content in different formats doesn’t count as duplicate content. It will not hurt your SEO. So, dig through older types of content and figure out what you can repurpose.

Consider what kinds of interactive content will attract your ideal customers

Interactive content can be especially engaging, so it’s worth creating and publishing it on your website where appropriate. Think about how you can incorporate calculators, virtual try-ons, quizzes, games, or interactive maps into your website. Retailers might stick to style quizzes or try-ons, for instance, but service providers like accountants, digital marketers, or service providers might be able to come up with free calculators to help their viewers. Let’s take a look at some examples for inspiration.

For example, the HubSpot website grader helps attract their ideal customers. HubSpot is a digital marketing company that helps businesses boost their SEO, grow their online presence, and more. The website grader is a free tool that tells a viewer how their website can be improved. After seeing the results, a viewer can contact HubSpot for more assistance or browse through their website for tips, making it a piece of content that’s beneficial for both users and the business.

Or, consider how Helix Hearing Care, a hearing aid provider, implements interactive content with their online hearing test. This technology can help website visitors to figure out what, if any, of their products they need. People searching for an online hearing test can stumble upon Helix Hearing Care and find out if they even need hearing aids. This is a great form of content marketing that attracts the appropriate viewers and gets people to buy their products.

Consider whether you could be creating free tools to help your ideal customers, and how you could encourage them to make a purchase with you in the process.

Summary

If you’re stumped for content marketing ideas, there are a number of different ways you can come up with more! Our tips can get you started. Let’s give a quick breakdown of what we covered. You should focus on:

• Creating shareable content
• Conducting keyword research
• Addressing questions in your content
• Repurposing content
• Making interactive content

Take a look at your website and start taking notes. It’s time to get to work!

—

Author bio & headshot:

Alex Ratynski is the founder of Ratynski Digital, an online marketing consultancy that focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses achieve their goals. He set up his company after working as a local SEO director for a dental marketing agency, where he helped to turn clients’ ventures into thriving multi-million dollar businesses. He spends most hours strategizing SEO for his clients.

Everyone knows that owning a home with its own compound is always better than renting a small apartment in a huge apartment complex. This same analogy applies when it comes to the world of web hosting. Interserver has the most reliable dedicated hosting service that will ensure you do not share resources and your data is safe.

When deciding how and where to host your website, you will usually be presented with two main options- you can either host it on a shared server (resources are shared) or hosting it on its own independent server where resources are not shared.

What Is Dedicated Hosting?

Dedicated hosting is a special type of hosting which is ideal for large business and corporations where a single website is hosted on its own independent server. That means that the server and all the resources that come with it are wholly dedicated to that single website and are not shared with any other website. This means that the website owners essentially own the server and can configure, manipulate and adjust it however they see fit without having to seek permission from third parties.

How Does Dedicated Hosting Work?

Dedicated hosting usually works in two ways. The first option is that the website owners buy and set up all the equipment and software necessary for their servers and then host their website on the said server. However, the cost of purchasing all the equipment and software needed to get the job done properly is usually prohibitively high for most companies particularly the smaller companies that do not generate enough revenue to justify such expense.

The second option is much friendlier to such companies. It involves leasing or renting the said servers from a web hosting service provider. In this case, the website owners still enjoy full access and full usage of the servers just as they would if they actually owned the server except for the fact that this time they do not have to buy and set up all the necessary equipment. Apart from the actual ownership of the servers and the costs of setting up, these two options are essentially the same and website owners can use both the same way.

It is, however, worth mentioning that website owners who choose to go with the second option will usually have an added advantage in that they can access some level of technical support from their hosting providers if and when the need for the same should arise. Top hosting providers, such as Smart Web, usually have experts on hand to help out in the event of any technical emergencies or routine maintenance.

Why Choose our Dedicated Hosting?

Going back to the original analogy about home ownership, one of the main reasons why people would rather own a home than rent an apartment is because of the freedom and space that comes with the former. In our dedicated web hosting plan, website owners will have full access to all the amenities on the server and do not have to share them which means unlimited storage, greater bandwidth and better uptime for increased productivity. Other advantages include;

• Increased security
• Increased reliability
• increase flexibility

If you just bought a brand new laptop, we hope you avoided the most common buying mistakes. However, even if you’ve had your device for awhile, our tips to keep your laptop battery running longer will still be useful.

• Vehicles
• Gadgets
• Machinery
• Computers and mobile devices
• Appliances

Fixed assets comprise a large chunk of a company. As IBM shares in an article, as much as 40% of an organization’s investment goes toward fixed assets. This is a huge stake, considering that fixed assets are difficult to convert into cash. 

A robot is an example of a machinery. 

Because of that, there are certain steps that an enterprise, whatever the size, must take to ensure that they maximize their expenditure toward equipment. 

That is where fixed assets management comes in. Get your software listed on Software World

What is fixed asset management?

Asset management is defined by Asset Management Standards as the strategic use of resources, whether physical, monetary, human, or intangible. It also involves the acquisition, care, and disposal of assets. The same applies to fixed assets. 

Why is fixed asset tracking important?

Fixed asset tracking can help in the financial accounting of the company. It can prevent future issues with the assets as well through preventive maintenance scheduling. On top of that, a company can prevent occurrences of theft and promote employee accountability. 

The above advantages to fixed assets management are difficult to enjoy without the right kind of tools. That is why there is a type of software designed for this.

What is a fixed asset management software?

It is a computer program or a web-based application that helps you create a database of your fixed assets. It can then assist you in tracking every piece of equipment by connecting to RFIDs, barcodes, and scanners and GPS devices. It has a wide variety of features as well such as security and encryption. 

Asset management software

The interface of an example of a fixed assets management software.  

There are certain strategies that a business has to follow in maximizing its use and in attaining an effective fixed assets management practice, some of which we discuss below to help you optimize your processes. 

• Collect information about assets

An effective fixed assets management is similar to how to start a business. It begins by gathering as much information as possible. In this case, about your assets. You can do this by checking your fixed assets audits, which could be on a spreadsheet, a physical file, or a fixed asset management software.

This step is crucial because it can help determine whether each of the organization’s property is serving its purpose. In this case, you may want to evaluate them according to your goals, be they long-term or short-term. Later on, this will be beneficial because you can decide to keep, maintain, renew, or upgrade them or divest them based on the value they add to the company. 

• Build a tagging system 

While it is not impossible, it is certainly difficult to keep track of assets manually, especially if there are hundreds to thousands to work with. What can make it less arduous is a tagging system. You do not have to build this from scratch because even a simple asset management software has the capability for it. 

To begin, apart from the application, you need GPS devices, RFIDs or barcodes, and scanners. GPS devices will help you track the location of your vehicles and moveable equipment whether they are at rest or are on the road. Meanwhile, RFIDs, barcodes, and scanners will help you scan the presence of assets and record their location in your facilities quickly.

All of the above can integrate with your fixed asset management solution. This function prevents you from having to enter the same set of data repeatedly on different platforms. Therefore, you can save time and keep accurate records of your assets. 

• Assign unique tracking numbers to assets

In fixed assets management, it is common practice to track assets using their serial numbers. This is not advisable, though, since one item may have the same serial number as one or more fixed resources. 

What you can do instead is assign unique tracking numbers to each asset. Sounds like a tall order? Don’t be overwhelmed–it may seem like a difficult mountain to climb at first but you can use freely available tools online to generate one-of-a-kind serial numbers. After this, you are ready to tag every asset that your organization owns. 

• Create an asset database

How do you build an asset database? When it comes to fixed assets, you do not have to start from the beginning. When you acquire a fixed assets manager software and configure it, you will receive a prompt to import your asset data to the dashboard. This asset data refers to your spreadsheets-based asset tracking records or to the file imported from a previous solution. 

However, if you only have physical audits, you can input the data directly into the software. At first, it would be time-consuming. But when you have information about your fixed assets stored in the database, it will be easier to track them later on. In fact, certain aspects of the tracking workflow can be automated, thus reducing your administrative burden. 

• Decide which assets to be prioritized

There are assets that are critical to your operations and there are assets that have less impact on your business. To achieve optimal fixed assets management, you have to identify which ones need most of your attention and which ones do not require as much. You also have to factor in the cost of keeping, maintaining, and renewing or upgrading them, which would require the assistance of fixed asset software for accountants. 

The latter may be the deciding element. After all, some pieces of equipment may cost less when rented rather than owned, especially if your organization does not use them frequently. But before you make decisions to divest your business of certain assets, you have to consult with the departments that find them necessary for their tasks since they will be affected most. 

Thereon, you can arrive at a mutual arrangement that will be advantageous to the whole company as well as to the particular business unit. 

• Track the life cycles of assets

Some assets have shorter life cycles than the rest while others have longer life cycles but require regular upkeep. Regular asset performance monitoring using a fixed asset solution can help in determining the maximum lifespan of equipment or how often an item needs to be maintained. 

Both are crucial to the efficiency of a business, as a technology that is past its usability can only be detrimental. Instead of reducing hotel cost or manufacturing cost, it can only add to the expenses or losses of a company. 

Additionally, fixed assets that are not well-maintained can cause problems in the workflow. It may breakdown often, leading to interruptions in work processes. This could have a huge impact, too, especially when they are in the frontlines for serving customers. Therefore, it is imperative that you track the performance and life cycles of fixed assets to prevent damaging issues. 

• Distinguish between asset management and inventory management

Some companies mistake asset tracking for inventory tracking. However the two may sound similar, they are distinct from each other. As stated in the introduction above, asset management involves the location of equipment, items, and other resources that are used for the operations of the business. Meanwhile, inventory tracking involves the management of goods that are distributed to different locations or partners, used up by employees, and sold to consumers. 

Both are important, of course! But it is also essential to treat them as separate processes. Because when you confuse them, you can incur easily avoidable losses. 

Optimizing fixed assets management

Fixed assets management system is not a static thing–it is a dynamic process that requires continuous improvement. At one point, you may reach an optimal stage wherein everything from the addition of assets to your database to the tracking of equipment and the disposal of items are as seamless as possible. In which case, you know you are doing things correctly. But there is always room for further improvement. Though it may be a little thing, it can boost your process. When you work on it, you not only ensure that you are managing your fixed assets well but you also make certain that your company is evolving.

Topics we’ll cover:

• What is bounce rate?
• How to check your bounce rate in Google Analytics
• What should your bounce rate be?
• Why is your bounce rate so high?
• Are high bounce rates always bad?
• eCommerce and bounce rates
• How can you reduce your bounce rate?

What Is Bounce Rate?

Google’s own definition of bounce rate is: “The percentage of single-page sessions” (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

The first half of this sentence is technically incorrect, because bounce rate is actually the percentage of single interaction visits to your website. But, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll stick with Google’s definition.

Here is an easy way to think of website bounce rate. Think of a ‘bounce’ as someone landing on your website, not clicking on any other pages and then leaving. The bounce rate is, therefore, the percentage of people that do this, rather than stay and take a look around your website.

How To Check Your Bounce Rate in Google Analytics

You can check your bounce rate inside Google Analytics, under Audience -> Overview

This is your website’s overall bounce rate, but your website actually has multiple bounce rates. The bounce rate of each page tells you the percentage of visitors that landed on that page and ‘bounced’ off. Plus, the bounce rate of each device tells you the percentage of people using mobiles, tablets and desktop computers bounced off, and so on. We’ll look at these different bounce rates later on, so, for now, let’s stick to the overall bounce rate.

What Should My Website Bounce Rate Be?

Your website bounce rate will depend on a number of factors, the key ones being:

The type of traffic you are attracting. Are the visitors to your website specifically looking for your company, or are they looking for information? People who are familiar with you will bounce less than those who are in information-gathering mode. If you’re an eCommerce store, does your traffic have high ‘commercial intent’ (i.e. are they in the mood to buy?), or are they simply researching future purchases?

The sources of your traffic. Visitors that come from Google search results tend to ‘bounce’ much less than visitors from Facebook, for example. People are in very different frames of mind when they’re in work or play modes.

The pages your visitors are landing on. Blog pages tend to have higher bounce rates than product or service pages, for example. If people are coming straight to your homepage, they should not be bouncing off. But if they are landing on an old blog post which doesn’t link to anything else on your website, you should expect a high bounce rate.

The design and layout of your website. Sites that are difficult to navigate, confusing, or look old-fashioned all tend to have higher bounce rates than new clean, easy-to-use, mobile friendly websites. Is your site something that people actually want to look at? If not, they will be leaving.

The clarity of your message. Is it immediately obvious what you do and who your target audience is? People are busy and distracted, so if they can’t find the answer they are looking for, they won’t hunt around to find it — they’ll leave. This is one of the most underrated causes of high bounce rates.

The speed and usability of your website. Slow-loading websites have high bounce rates and low conversion rates. It’s that simple.

As a very broad rule of thumb, you’re aiming for a website bounce rate of under 40%. Between 40% and 55% is usually okay, whilst 55-65% shows significant room for improvement. If your bounce rate is above 90% or below 20%, that often indicates a tracking or code installation error.

This is a very simple and broad rule of thumb, and there are certain circumstances where it might be perfectly okay to have a bounce rate higher than these figures.

Why Is My Bounce Rate So High?

If your bounce rate is above 40%, this might not be cause for alarm. We’ll look now at some legitimate reasons for a higher bounce rate, then we’ll address possible issues.

High Bounce Rate Legitimate Reason 1: Paid Or Social Traffic

If you pick up a high percentage of your traffic from social media or paid ads, this can affect your average bounce rate, as these visitors tend to have a higher bounce rate. In the example below, you’ll see that the bounce rates from paid search (row 4, 88%) and social (row 5, 70.98%) are much higher than from organic search (44.79%), direct traffic (39.76%) and referral traffic (37.83%).

Whilst it’s perfectly normal for paid search traffic to bounce at a higher rate than organic traffic, in this example, the bounce rate is exactly double. This indicates that the targeting of the ads needs to be looked at. Typically, either the ads are pulling in unqualified traffic (perhaps they are showing for phrases that aren’t relevant to the business), or the landing page is not doing a good job of turning the traffic into customers.

In the example below, we see a website with an average bounce rate of 75.33%. This appears to be a massive issue until we examine the traffic sources and see that, because a large percentage of the site’s traffic is coming from social media, the average bounce rate has been skewed. In actual fact, the bounce rate from organic search is 38%. A touch higher than we’d like (30-34%), but certainly not spurting blood.

The main goals for this site should be to:

• Figure out how to keep more of that social traffic longer (mobile responsiveness issues could be key here, see below)
• Work on attracting more organic traffic, as this is currently very low, yet providing the most qualified visitors and the highest number of contact conversions
  

  

Want some FREE help to reduce your website bounce rate?

If so, request a FREE marketing review from our expert Marketing Consultants. We’ll take a look at your site and your competitors, and suggest ways that you can decrease your website bounce rate and increase sales from your site. Oh, and did we mention it’s totally free of charge?

High Bounce Rate Legitimate Reason 2: Traffic Hitting Blog Posts

If you’ve been checking our site, you’ll know that writing really awesome blog posts can bring you lots of traffic. But, this traffic is often information seeking traffic, rather than visitors with high commercial intent. So, traffic to blog posts tends to have a higher bounce rate than traffic to your homepage, or other core pages on the site.

Below, we’ll see an example of an accountant’s site with a very good blog. This screen shows the relative bounce rates of the top site pages (white) compared to top blog posts (red). Notice how the bounce rate to the blog pages is very high (93%) compared to the main site pages. You might assume that this indicates the quality of the blog posts is not high, but if you look at ‘Avg. Time on Page’, you’ll notice that, on average, people are spending almost six minutes reading the second blog post.

The question in this scenario becomes how to keep this blog traffic on the site longer. One way to do this is to use lots of relevant internal links to other blog posts, so that the reader can delve deeper into a topic that interests them. Another way to keep these blog visitors on the site longer is to use a call to action at the end of the blog post (duplicated throughout) which is likely to appeal to them.

Remember that blog visitors will often have a lower commercial intent (i.e. they are in the research phase, rather than the buy phase), so it might not always be appropriate to pitch your product or service to them. Instead, consider offering a free mini-course which elaborates on the blog post, requiring their name and email address. Do you have an email list that they can sign up for? Is there a free trial or consultancy that you can offer them?

High Bounce Rate Legitimate Reason 3: Lots Of Mobile Traffic

Visitors on mobile devices bounce more, so if your website receives a high percentage of your traffic from mobile, this will affect your average bounce rate.

Notice how this site receives almost 65% of its traffic from mobile and tablet devices. You’ll also see how the traffic from mobile is bouncing at 53%, which brings the average bounce rate up to 44%.

This mobile bounce rate actually isn’t too bad at all, particularly considering the amount of social media traffic this site gets, so whilst the site owner can always look for more ways to make mobile traffic stick around longer, the reality is that they’re doing a pretty good job already. The desktop bounce rate of 30% is very healthy and shows that the traffic is qualified and the site is user-friendly.

With the number of people now using mobile to browse the web, Google is using this information for indexing. This means it’s more important than ever to make sure that your website looks seamless on a mobile device. Reduce your website bounce rate on mobile by giving the very best user experience on mobile.

Causes Of An Artificially High Or Low Bounce Rate

If your bounce rate is high due to one of the above reasons, then read on to find out how to reduce it and engage more of your traffic. Right now, we will briefly examine some not-so-healthy causes of an artificially high bounce rate.

Evil Cause Of An Artificially High Or Low Bounce Rate 

1: Referral Or Bot Spam

Your website is frequently crawled by bots. Some are nice and friendly (Googlebot crawls your site to read your content and decide where to rank you), whilst others are mean and nasty (some bots are looking for content to scrape and put on spammy sites).

Sometimes, this bot activity is picked up by Google Analytics and can really skew your numbers, because bot traffic can often have a bounce rate of 0% or 100%.

Check out the example below, where you’ll see the average bounce rate for this eCommerce site is 27%. The referral traffic number seems a little high at 64%, bearing in mind that referral traffic is visitors that have landed on the site from a link on another site.

If we click on Referral traffic to examine it more closely, we see that a large proportion of this referral traffic is actually from two bots. You’ll notice the bounce rate of this traffic is very high because it’s not real visitors. This has skewed the referral traffic’s average bounce rate, and thus the site’s average bounce rate.

Cause Of An Artificially High Or Low Bounce Rate 

2: Misconfiguration

Misconfiguration of Analytics can cause some very short-lived celebrations among st site owners delighted to find that a grand total of 0% of their visitors are bouncing off their websites. As they prepare to open a web design school and position themselves as the Mary Portas of the Internet, they realise that Analytics isn’t set up properly and what they’re seeing is less accurate than a politician’s memoirs.

Below is an example of a site with clearly misconfigured Analytics set up. Notice how the bounce rate is always either 100% or 0%?

Some common reasons for Analytics throwing up weird stats are multiple instances of Analytics installed on the same page, code conflicts, or the tracking code being installed in the wrong place (usually the footer).

If you’re seeing some unusual numbers in Analytics, get the Google Tag Assistant extension for Chrome and use it to diagnose the issue.

How To Improve Your Website’s Bounce Rate

Now that we know what sort of bounce rate we’re aiming for and we’ve established the most common causes of a high bounce rate, let’s look at some ways to reduce bounce rate and increase engagement with your website.

The easier visitors find it to use your site, the fewer of them will react with horror and bail. Improving your website’s usability should be a never-ending process of testing, monitoring stats and talking to customers. But, in the interest of giving you something to take away and apply immediately, let’s look at the most common bounce-reducing usability tricks:

Bounce Rate Reducer #1: Clear Navigation

Clear navigation gets people where they need to be, as quickly as possible and with minimum stress and thinking. Look at how the Bathstore.com website gives bath shoppers multiple ways to narrow their selection of baths. Their menu is like a helpful sales person asking: “Do you know what type of bath you are after? No? Okay. Then do you know what style the bathroom is? No? Okay. Then would you like to take a look at all our baths? No? Okay. Then would you like to see a buyers guide to help you choose?” With each option, this awesome navigation guides the lost and confused visitor effortlessly closer to the purchase.

Credit to Exposure Ninja

Inbound linking is one way to improve your website rank and grow traffic. There are many other types of links you can build for better ranking in search engine results.

Let’s have a look at different types of links you can use to make a successful marketing campaign.

Internal Links:

As the name suggests, internal links are hyperlinks that points to another page of the same website. These links allows users to navigate and establish site architecture. Through internal links you can make it easy for crawler to index pages of your website. Here is an internal link to SEO page. (This link points to the SEO page of this website.)

Outbound Links:

Outbound link directs user to a webpage of another website from your website. By having outbound links, you can connect with other websites. You can use them for pointing to useful resource related to your topic. Having outbound links to high authority sites will improve your reputation. With the help of outbound links search engine can find relevant websites. Here is an outbound link. (This link will take you to some more information about outbound links.)

Inbound Links:

Inbound links are also called as backlinks. These links are hyperlinks from another website pointing to your website.

As shown in the above image, xyz website has an external link (outbound link) to your website and your website has an inbound link from xyz website.

Inbound links are important for your ranking because they increase website value. To understand this, let’s take one example. Consider your company representative is promoting your products and services to your prospects. On the other hand your existing clients are praising your products and services.

What do you think? Who will have more impact on your prospects?

Obviously the one who doesn’t belong to your company but still praising you. Your client praising, promoting and referencing your company have more value than promotion done by your company representative. Information received from authority makes is authentic in same way links from authoritative websites gives authenticity to your web page.

Inbound links are same, they represent vote of confidence. But these votes are not that easy to get, you have to build or earn them.  Getting inbound links is as much important as getting them from high authority, good websites rather than low quality, spammy sites.

Good inbound links can boost your website rank whereas bad links may lead you to get penalty and lower rank.

Now you must have got the answer of the question in the title. No, inbound linking doesn’t hurt rankings if they are built with good SEO practices.

Though you have found the answer but still there is much more that you need to know for building healthy inbound links which will help your website to improve its rank in SERPs.

So let’s see how to generate good inbound links:

Do-follow links:

Dofollow is a descriptor of links describing that search engines crawl them and count them as votes of quality.

Try to build do-follow links than links with no-follow attribute. In simple words you need votes from people who are happy to recommend you and strongly believe in your quality rather than having unsure votes which says we will recommend you but don’t believe that you are good enough.

Do-follow links pass the ranking power to your page from the web page it is built on. Links with no-follow attribute tells search engine not to follow these links.

You can use no-follow attribute to your outbound links when you are not sure of their quality such as links in comments of your blogs which may lead to spammy sites.

Do-follow link helps to improve authority of your site. But this doesn’t mean that no-follow links are totally useless. Links from high PR sites with no-follow attribute can boost your brand value and also they are useful for getting referral traffic from such high quality sites. You need to keep the balance between these two types of links.

Do-follow links should be more than no-follow links.

There is no standard link ratio that fits for all. Above image just shows sample data which represents the fact that do-follow links should surpass the no-follow links.

Links from Authoritative Sites:

Make sure that you are building links from authoritative sites. You need to connect to the authority blogs and sites to build high quality inbound links. You can reach out to authoritative directories, social bookmarking sites and other type of sources.

When you are getting inbound links from the site having good domain authority then quality score of your link will be increased. You will need to take efforts for getting such links from authoritative sites but once you get it, it will definitely boost your website rank and provides you long term results.

Relevancy:

You can improve the relevance of your inbound links by focusing on following factors:

1. Build inbound links from relevant sites of your industry or topic to make them more effective.
2. Content should be relevant with your link. Content tells search engine what your page is about. Relevant content increases the value of link it contains and also grows your website traffic through improved user experience.
3. As discussed in our blog “Importance of anchor text in Back-links”, relevant keywords in anchor text play an important role in getting higher rank for relevant search terms.

Avoid Paid Links:

Some sites offer you link in return of payment. Buying links is considered as spam technique and Google can remove your website from its index because of having paid links. Paid links have time limit, after certain period the link expires or breaks.

So natural link building is the best way to improve your website rank than paying for links. As Google may penalize paid links and can damage website’s linking profile and brand value.

These are some proven strategies to generate good inbound links. I hope this article will help you to build quality inbound links which will affect your ranking positively. If I’ve missed any strategy then please mention it in comments. Also you can send us any queries regarding this topic or any other digital marketing strategy, we are glad to help you with inbound linking.

The simple answer is no – search engine submission isn’t necessary. The majority of search engines nowadays (most notably Google) crawl and index pages by following links. Using that logic, a single inbound link from any already-indexed page will identify your page to the engine. Subsequently, if that page links to other pages within your site, they will also be indexed… and so on.

For this reason, inbound linking is very important. In fact, acquiring back-links may be the most important of SEO. In theory though, a website owner shouldn’t have to ’scout’ or ‘hunt’ for links. If the presented content is of interest, useful, and/or important, there is a natural tendency among web users to link to information. This is the basis for the Google PageRank algorithm.

With all due respect, submitting your site to the search engines can’t hurt. Plus, it only entails about 5 minutes of added work assuming you only submit to the big guys. And once is enough… you don’t need to submit your site more than once. It doesn’t help or get your site crawled any quicker or more often.

It should be noted that submitting your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and many others doesn’t cost a fee. Many SEO companies assert that you need to pay to be indexed. This isn’t the case and I would stay away from these companies. They are money hungry and aren’t looking out for your best interest.

Would you ever consider going on a vacation across the country without bringing a map? It is hard enough to find your way in some places with a map. How hard would it be if you tried this adventure without one? Yet, this is exactly what people do every single day in the online world. They tried to build their own businesses online without having a roadmap to success. Then, after months or years of just wandering around online, they give up in frustration and quit. They walk away saying that the Internet doesn’t work for them. The reason it didn’t work is that they didn’t pick up a map and follow it!

You don’t have to end up lost in the online shuffle. Below I will give you ten steps to help you map out your course and get you started in the right direction. It isn’t everything that you need to know by any stretch of the imagination, but it will give you a basic foundation to build upon.

Consider it your beginner’s map to Internet marketing profits.

1. Choose a targeted market

The biggest mistake most people make when starting a business is that they choose a product and then try to find people who want to buy it. If that is the direction you are starting from on your journey, then you are going the opposite direction from your destination. Wise businesses operate from a different concept. They pick a market first, and then they pick a product those people are searching for. In other words, instead of trying to find leads to sell their product to, they find targeted leads and then ask them what they are wanting to buy.

Don’t even consider starting a business until you know exactly where you are going to get your leads from. Think targeted customers first. Then, you can come up with a product for those individuals. Would you rather have 1,000 hits a day at your site of a general audience OR 10 hits a day of people who are desperate and willing to pay any price to buy your products? If you are smart, you will choose the people who are ready to buy!

2. Develop a Product

Next, you need to develop a product or service for this market. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon of affiliate programs when you come to this step. There are three major ways to selling a product online:

a. You create your own exclusive product.

This is the best opportunity you have. If you develop your own product, you can pick it’s price, sell reprint rights to others, set up an affiliate program, etc. Don’t tell me you can’t do this. Tens of thousands of innovative entrepreneurs have used their own information products to get their careers started. You can to definitely do Search Engine Submission and achieve better SEO results.  .

Throughout your life, I am sure that there is something you have learned that you can share in a How-To product. Maybe you know someone else who has the right knowledge for a How-To product and you could offer to help them create a product if you both shared the rights to it. Don’t just jump past this opportunity and say it can’t be done.

b. You buy the rights to a product or you JV for an offline product.

You can buy the rights to successful products for $500 – $20,000. If someone else has created a product that you know your targeted market is interested in, offer them a large up-front fee for the rights to it. This way you can get your own product and never have to pay a penny in royalties. You can also search through magazines your targeted market reads and look for products people are selling. Then, give them a call and ask for the exclusive Internet rights to their product for a certain percentage of the profits or an up-front fee.

c. You join an affiliate program.

If you are just starting out online, this can be a good choice. You do have to keep in mind though that it doesn’t offer quite the profit potential that creating your own product or obtaining rights to one has.When choosing an affiliate program, make sure that it is something your targeted market cannot be without. They absolutely have to have it. Also pay special attention to the profits you receive from each sale.

If you are only be paid 5% commissions on the sales of $10 books, you will only be making 50 cents per customer. It would take 2,000 customers just to product $1,000 in profits. You cannot make money like this online! Look for higher priced products and higher commissions…especially commissions in the 25% or higher range.

3. Create a USP

Create a Unique Selling Position for your product or service. Too many companies are just trying to be me-too companies online. You cannot be just like the next guy and expect to make a profit in a global economy. Just going to the next guy’s web site to order is too easy for your customers.

You have to create a Uniqueness to your product or offer. What can you offer that no one else can? Can you offer better guarantees, better customer service, more technical support, faster shipping, or lower prices. Think of something that will set you apart from all of your online competitors and tell in complete detail what it is.

4. Pick a Domain Name and Hosting Service

The next step is to pick a domain name that describes your company, USP, and offer. Try to keep them as short and descriptive about your business as possible. Avoid using dashes or misspellings of your product. Both of these things will cause people to leave out part of your domain if they type it in. Someone else will be getting free traffic that you worked hard to obtain.

For hosting, I personally choose to use Virtualis since they have the Fastest customer service and technical support in the industry. Test them out. They will respond to you within the hour…anytime 24 hours a day. No other company I have ever been with has even come close!

5. Develop a Customer Friendly Site

The next step in the process is to develop your web site and put it up for the world to see. If you are planning to own a full-time Internet business, I recommend that you learn how to design the site yourself using one of dozens of programs which are readily available at any software store.

You will save so much money if you can do the work yourself on just the editing alone as your site grows. If your main business is offline and you are just adding a secondary income, then you may want to consider having a professional do your site for you.

When designing your site, keep the customer in mind always. Provide order forms for online credit card orders. Make all of the links easy to understand. Try to keep your site simple. Think like a customer, not the business owner.

Your customers are not nearly as interested in your business as you are. Make sure to put the benefits of your site and your USP right on top of the site. More than half of the web surfers never drop down past the first screen full of information. So, you have to give them the information they need as quickly as possible. The rules for any type of business are Benefits, Benefits, and more Benefits.

6. Offer a Freebie

One of the major keys to developing traffic and sales at your site is to always offer some type of freebie as a drawing factor. For example, I offer dozens of free reports, weather reports, news, and more. My greatest drawing factor throughout the past 8 months though has been the two free e-books which we offer on our site to people who subscribe to this newsletter.

You need to come up with a freebie no matter what type of business you are in. Create a free report and give it away. Add in a message board or some other type of CGI program on your site. Give a free demo of your software. Create something that you can give away for free on your site to draw in the visitors.

7. Start Your Own Opt-In List

Almost every full-time Internet marketer I know has developed their own Opt-in email list of some type. For most of them, it is a weekly newsletter they send out by email. For others, it may be a Tip of the Day. Other people might just have a list that they send out important updates to do for Search Engine Submission.

No matter what you choose to do, odds will be on your side if you concentrate on building a list of loyal email subscribers. Very rarely do customers purchase from you the first time they visit your site. Most of them will get on your list, hang out for a few weeks or months, and then they buy from you. They have to get to know you before they are willing to spend their money with you.

I have found that the most effective leads come from offline advertising. For example, you could purchase ads in a popular targeted magazine for your business. You could also purchase a postcard in one of the card decks. Start up a co-op and get 10 other people to advertise with you and run your own ads for free. Offline leads which come to your site often turn out to contain a much higher percentage of buyers than any of the online advertising methods through Search Engine Submission.

Once you put our short 10 step outline together you have a basic map to creating your own Internet success story. You wouldn’t consider going on a trip without a map. So don’t try to go it alone online without a map.
Terry Dean’s Brand New Fr-e eBook, “10 Quick and Easy Ways to Increase Profits to ANY Web Site Overnight!” Reveals More Time Tested Proven Internet Marketing Secrets Than 99% of the Paid Products Available…Showing You Step-By-Step How to Increase Your Traffic, Drop Your Expenses, and Drive Your Profits Through the Roof with Search Engine Submission.

Every online business either small or big required lots of hard work and dedication put into it. Thus, Hacking or website security breaches are always a risk for online business website. The reason is simple, No matter how much amount of data is there on your website. Thus, it is required to pay attention to protect your brand and take the necessary tips to protect your website from being hacked.

A Data Breach involves incurred and regular attempts that are taken to steal the sensitive information during online transit through unauthorized access. Other common ways to abuse your website by hacking is performing automated scripts written to the Internet which attempts to exploit the known website security issues in software.

This article will help to know essential security tips about how to secure site from hackers and other malicious attacks. It may seem quite terrible but it is the very basic requirement and fundamental actions that can protect your site from hackers and other phishing activities.

Keep The Website Updated

Keep on updating new software on your site for its proper functioning and this is one of the best things to do in order to protect your website from hacking threats. So, all the platforms or scripts that you have already installed on your website have to be updated on a timely basis. The codes of these platforms and tools are at times created as open-source software programs, whose codes are available to the developers as well as to malicious hackers.

Basically, hackers can easily get into the codes and overlook them by taking full control. Thus, they could exploit any platform or script weakness, causing harm to the website. Making sure that all the newest versions of your platform and scripts are installed on a timely basis will reduce the risk of being hacked.

Strengthen the Security around the Website

Your website needs a shield around its data and software to protect from hacking. So what you should do to ensure the security, you need to install antivirus software on your desktop, so that when you browse any website, then antivirus software will block the  website to open that contains malicious code, so you can close all the possible doors for the hacker to come inside your system. First of all you need to setup Web Application Firewall and the next is switching website to https.

As the firewall is used to monitor & control input/output traffic, unlikely threats, identify malicious requests, and cross-site scripting etc., in a similar way switching your website from HTTP to https will ensure double protection from outsiders and high level of Bruce attacks and ransomware.  A firewall can be installed on the website and now owners can rent a cloud-based web application of firewall as well.

Enable HTTPS to your Website

Although HTTPS – HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure is necessary for all online transactions only with the latest Google update now every website should have https as a secure protocol layer.

It will help in search engine rankings as well. To enable https just before site URL, you need to buy SSL certificate and get it installed on your website. Now, Certificate Authority trusted SSL certificates comes with up to 2 years validity and available at cheapest price from authorized SSL resellers like Cheap SSL Shop.

SSL certificate will ensure the security of the site. HTTPS-enabled site marked with “Secure” label with green padlock in the address bar of most used Chrome browser. You can place secure site seal that you received from Certificate Authority to ensure your online users that that site is secured to make online transactions and also prevents hackers to intrude in the system.

Back-up is Very Important

So this is very simple, every time you work on a file on your system of the website it automatically gets saved in the backup file. Now here what is more important is that you back up the data anyway so that if any unforeseen circumstances occur you still have an option to get your back up file ready for use. Backing up once a day is not enough, back up regularly so that if the hard drive fails your data is safe.

You can’t hide your code but can secure

When you buy software it says that it will hide the codes on your webpages but it doesn’t work this way all the time. Yes, because the browsers need the access to your code in order to extract or work on your website pages. Thus, it is very simple that hackers can get in here by any means and can have the code.

Here disabling the “right-click” in order to view the website code can be bothersome to many users. However, it can also give away to the hackers to work around. Thus, securing it with encryption and SSL certificate is the way out else hiding the codes eventually is not a great idea as you can’t hide the codes.

Use parameterized queries – SQL injections

At times many websites fall victim to SQL injections. They come into play if you have a web form on your website which allows the outside users to supply information. In case you leave the parameters of the field too open, then the hacker can inject the code letting them hack into your database. Now, this is dangerous as the sensitive customer information can be leaked like – their contact info or credit card numbers.

Obviously to protect this information is our duty. How to do this – one of the most important and easiest ways is to implement the use of parameterized queries. These queries ensure that your code has specific enough parameters on your website so that the hackers don’t get room to mess with your systems.

Keep Your Passwords Strong

Never, you should enter simple password and yet tough for the hackers to crack the code. Keep changing the passwords at regular intervals and maintain the secrecy from everywhere. Do not repeat the common mistakes of keeping a simple password which you will remember easily like – #123456 etc.

It’s tempting but very dangerous for the security breach. Thus keep the password a mix of special characters; letters, numbers etc. thus it becomes hard for the hacker to access your website’s data.

XSS Effect

Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks are harmful as they inject malicious JavaScript into your web pages. It then runs on the browsers and change the content or steal the information to send back to the attacker. A powerful tool in the XSS defender’s toolbox with Content Security Policy (CSP). It tells the browser to limit the use and what JavaScript is executed in the page shall be limited. This makes it harder for a hacker to work.

Server-side validation/form Validation

It is important to have validation done on both the sides which are from the browser and the server side. This is because any point of time the browser can catch simple failures while filling the important fields. However, not to bypass it you should make sure to check the validation and a deeper validation server side.

Hide the Admin Directories – Website Security

By cracking the code of the admin directories the hackers can access and control your website and admin directories. However, You can use popular Web Content Management System (CMS) to control or hide web admin directories and files. These tips greatly helps in reducing risk of possible data breach or other malicious activity.

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