The Google Visibility Checklist For New Websites

Robots.txt. Make sure your robots.txt file is not inadvertently blocking search engine crawlers and bots from the content you want Google to index. If you’re not familiar with the robots.txt file, you can learn about it here. The person or company that built your website should know how to check your robots.txt file to make sure it’s set up correctly.

WordPress Dashboard. If your website is built on the the WordPress platform, there is a setting in your WordPress dashboard saying “discourage search engines from indexing this site”. It is common to have this setting turned on when a new site is under construction and you don’t want search engine crawlers trying to index your site. But after launching your site, you must remember to turning this setting *off*.

Google Search Console. Connect your site with Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools). This is a free service offered by Google that analyzes your site and notifies you of any errors. Google Search Console allows you to submit your sitemap and/or individual page URLs directly to Google for consideration for indexing in their database.

Google Analytics. Make sure to integrate Google Analytics with your site. Like Google Search Console, this is a free service but it focuses more on logging and analyzing the traffic to your site. Connecting your site to Google Analytics is another way to “ping” the Google ecosystem to let them know you exist.

On-Page SEO. To show up on Google, your pages must be formatted correctly so they’re search-engine friendly. It’s beyond the scope of this article to tell you everything you need to know about On-Page SEO, but here’s a good On-Page SEO checklist to get you started. Perhaps the most important part of On-Page SEO are the meta tags — specifically the title tag and description tag. Although there are no guarantees, if you configure your meta tags correctly Google will often use your meta tag info word-for-word, which means you’ll be able to sculpt how your search listings appear in Google.

Local SEO. Remember to set up your free Google My Business listing. If you need help with this, here’s a great resource. Google My Business is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get visibility in your local market. Even if it takes a few weeks for your site to show up in Google’s organic SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), at least you can occupy some first page real estate on Google with your Google My Business listing.

Backlinks. Another way to get Google’s attention is to have as many other websites as possible linking back to your site. The more, the merrier. You don’t need to resort to any spammy, blackhat SEO tactics to get backlinks. All you need is a little time and elbow grease. Start with the obvious. Go to all your social media properties like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and make sure they all link back to your website. Then start updating your profiles on places like the online Yellow Pages, Manta, Yelp or your local Chamber of Commerce. There are tons of opportunities for easy backlinks if you just roll up your sleeves and dig a little bit.

Content. Publishing high-quality, useful content on your website helps your search engine visibility in two ways. First, it gives Google’s search engine crawlers raw data to consume and index in their database. One well-written piece of content could result in page 1 listings on Google for many search terms. Second, a high-quality piece of content can result in backlinks to your site from other website owners or bloggers. Remember, backlinks are one of the main ways Google keeps score to determine if website content is valuable and deserving of a page 1 listing.

If you implement this checklist, the likelihood of showing up on Google sooner rather than later increase tremendously versus just sitting there doing nothing.

7 Top SEO Tools for Your Website to Be Discovered

1. SEO Book Keyword Density Analyzer - The site offers marketing tips, search analysis, online business tips, and general commentary on the evolution of the web from an algorithmic, publishing & business model perspective. SEO Book Keyword Density Analyzer is a free tool which will help you find which keywords to target and how competitive they are. By knowing the most popular keywords of your competitors then you can apply those words into your content strategy to rank first on Google Search.

2. Yoast - Yoast helps you with your website optimization, whether it be through the widely used SEO software or Yoast online SEO courses.

3. Moz Link Explorer - Links (also called backlinks or inbound links) are created when one page links to another; you can think of them like votes that can pass visitors and link equity to your site from other pages on the web. Links are known to influence your rankings and are an important part of off-site SEO. With Link Explorer's vast link index you can uncover valuable prospects, create a solid strategy, and track your progress.

4. Google Page Speed Insights - The PageSpeed Insights API (PSI) reports on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved.

5. Keywordtool.io - Keyword Tool is free online keyword research instrument that uses Google Autocomplete to generate hundreds of relevant long-tail keywords for any topic.

6. Google Trends - Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages.

7. Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker - Audit your website, explore competitors, research keywords & backlinks - all in one place. Powered by seriously big data & trusted by top SEOs.

34 Google Analytics Terms You Need To Know

1. Analytics solutions - Google Analytics solutions refers to an umbrella term encompassing all products -- both paid and free -- that are part of the Google Analytics product family. Users can differentiate between a paid product and a free product easily: paid products include the “360” modifier after the product name, free products do not.

- For example: Google Analytics 360 (paid product), Google Analytics (free product)

- Additionally, all paid products are part of Google Marketing Platform, an enterprise-class data and marketing measurement toolset.

Paid products:

- Audience: large enterprises

- Google Marketing Platform offers a set of integrated data-and-marketing analytics products with one consistent user experience which has been designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers at large organizations. Products are sold individually.

- Platform Home: Use the Overview and Admin tabs to manage Google Marketing Platform.

- Google Analytics 360: Develop insights into how users engage with your business online and offline.

- Google Attribution 360: Model cross-channel, cross-device attribution that focuses on ad impressions and ad clicks.

- Google Audience Center 360: Consolidate audience lists and user data to build new audiences, publish those audiences to your marketing platforms, and report on their performance.

- Google Tag Manager 360: Use an enterprise workflow to manage web and app tags from a single interface.

- Google Optimize 360: Run website experiments and personalize content for different audiences.

- Google Surveys 360: Create online surveys.

Free products:

- Audience: small- and medium-size businesses

- Google Analytics: measure how people engage with your business online via your website, app and other online and offline touchpoints.

- Google Tag Manager: easily manage and update website and app tags.

- Google Optimize: run website experience with this A/B testing tool.

- Google Data Studio: turn data into visual dashboards and informative reports that are easy to share.

2. Attribution - The process of assigning credit for sales and conversions to touchpoints in conversion paths.

- Attribution allows marketers to quantify each channel's contribution to sales and conversions. For example, many people may purchase on your site after searching for your brand on Google. However, they may have been introduced to your brand via a display ad or a blog. A marketer uses attribution to appropriately distribute monetary credit for purchases among the many marketing channels that may have contributed to each sale.

3. Attribution Model - A rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths.

- An attribution model is the rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths. For example, Last Interaction attribution assigns 100% credit to the final touchpoints (i.e., clicks) that immediately precede sales or conversions. First Interaction attribution assigns 100% credit to touchpoints that initiate conversion paths. These are two examples of attribution models.

4. Bounce Rate - A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.

- Bounce rate is single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.

5. Channel Grouping - A roll-up of traffic sources in the Acquisition reports that groups several marketing activities together. Channel groupings allow you to view and compare aggregated metrics by channel name, as well as individual traffic source, medium, or campaign name.

- In the Acquisition section's Overview and Channels reports, you can see your data organized according to the Default Channel Grouping, a rule-based grouping of the most common sources of traffic, like Paid Search and Direct. This allows you to quickly check the performance of each of your traffic channels.

6. Content Grouping - A roll-up of content in the Behavior reports that groups several pages or screens together to better reflect the structure of your site or app. Content groupings allow you to view and compare aggregated metrics by content group name, as well as individual URL, page title, or screen name.

- Content Grouping lets you group content into a logical structure that reflects how you think about your site or app, and then view and compare aggregated metrics by group name in addition to being able to drill down to the individual URL, page title, or screen name. For example, you can see the aggregated number of pageviews for all pages in a group like Men/Shirts, and then drill in to see each URL or page title.

7. Conversion - A completed activity, online or offline, that is important to the success of your business. Examples include a completed sign-up for your email newsletter (a Goal conversion) and a purchase (a transaction, sometimes called an Ecommerce conversion).

- A conversion can be a macro conversion or a micro conversion. A macro conversion is typically a completed purchase transaction. In contrast, a micro conversion is a completed activity, such as an email signup, that indicates that the user is moving towards a macro conversion.

8. Custom Dimension - A user-defined descriptive attribute or characteristic of data. Custom dimensions can be used to describe data not included in the default dimensions in Analytics.

- There are several ways to get custom data into Analytics, such as modifying your tracking code, uploading it using Data Import, or sending it via the Management API or Measurement Protocol.

9. Data Set - A container that holds the data you upload to Analytics.

- Data Sets are an essential component of the Data Import feature.

- A Data Set's type corresponds to the specific type of data you want to import. For example, there are Data Set types for User Data, Cost Data, Content Data, etc.

- When you create a Data Set, you define a schema, which is the structure that joins the data you upload with the existing data in your hits.

10. Dimension - A descriptive attribute or characteristic of data. Browser, Landing Page and Campaign are all examples of default dimensions in Analytics.

- A dimension is a descriptive attribute or characteristic of an object that can be given different values. For example, a geographic location could have dimensions called Latitude, Longitude, or City Name. Values for the City Name dimension could be San Francisco, Berlin, or Singapore.

- Browser, Exit Page, Screens, and Session Duration are all examples of dimensions that appear by default in Analytics. Dimensions appear in all of your reports, though you might see different ones depending on the specific report. Use them to help organize, segment, and analyze your data.

- Analytics also lets you create custom dimensions to hold additional types of data you send via the tracking code, or by using Data Import, or by using the Analytics API.

11. Event - Event is a type of hit used to track user interactions with content. Examples of user interactions commonly tracked with Events include downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, and video plays.

12. Goal - A configuration setting that allows you to track the valuable actions, or conversions, that happen on your site or mobile app.

- Goals allow you to measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. You can set up individual Goals to track discrete actions, like transactions with a minimum purchase amount or the amount of time spent on a screen. Each time a user completes a Goal, a conversion is logged in your Analytics account.

13. Hit - An interaction that results in data being sent to Analytics. Common hit types include page tracking hits, event tracking hits, and ecommerce hits.

- Each time the tracking code is triggered by a user’s behavior (for example, user loads a page on a website or a screen in a mobile app), Analytics records that activity. Each interaction is packaged into a hit and sent to Google’s servers. Examples of hit types include: page tracking hits, event tracking hits, ecommerce tracking hits, social interaction hits

14. IP address - Short for Internet Protocol address. Used to identify computers on the Internet.

- When your computer or device sends a request, like a search on Google, it tags the request with your IP address. That way Google knows where to send the response. It works like a return address would on a piece of mail.

15. Measurement Protocol - A standard set of rules for collecting and sending hits from any internet-connected device to Analytics.

- The Measurement Protocol lets you send data to Analytics from any internet-connected device. It's particularly useful when you want to send data to Analytics from a kiosk, a point of sale system, or anything that is not a website or mobile app. Because, while the Analytics JavaScript and mobile SDKs automatically build hits to send data to Analytics from websites and mobile apps, you must manually build data collection hits for other kinds of devices.

- The Measurement Protocol defines how to construct the hits and how to send them to Analytics.

16. Metric - A quantitative measurement of your data. Metrics in Analytics can be sums or ratios.

- Metrics are individual elements of a dimension that can be measured as a sum or a ratio. For example, the dimension City can be associated with a metric like Population, which would have a sum value of all the residents of the specific city.

- Screenviews, Pages per Session, and Average Session Duration are examples of metrics in Analytics.

17. Pageviews - A pageview (or pageview hit, page tracking hit) is an instance of a page being loaded (or reloaded) in a browser. Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed.

18. Permission - The right to perform administrative and configuration tasks, to create and share assets, and to read and interact with report data.

- In order to use certain features in Analytics, you must have the appropriate permission. There are 4 permissions:Manage Users, Edit, Collaborate, Read & Analyze

- Each permission can be granted at one or more levels: account, property or view.

19. Property - A sub-component of an Analytics account that determines which data is organized and stored together.

- Any resource tagged with the same Property ID is collected and stored together.

- A single property can be used to track one website or mobile app, or be a roll-up of the data from multiple sites or mobile apps.

20. Reporting API - A set of protocols and tools designed to extract data from your Analytics account into custom scripts or programs for more automated and efficient reporting and analysis. API is short for Application Programming Interface.

21. Roll-Up Reporting - A feature of Roll-Up Properties, which aggregate data from multiple source properties into a single property.

- Roll-Up Reporting is a special kind of reporting that lets you analyze the aggregated data that's in a Roll-Up Property. Roll-Up Reporting is only available for Analytics 360 Accounts, and only works on designated Roll-Up Properties.

22. Sampling - The practice of selecting a subset of data from your traffic and reporting on the trends detected in that sample set.

- Sampling is widely used in statistical analysis because analyzing a subset of data gives similar results to an analysis of a complete data set, but can produce these results with a smaller a computational burden and a reduced processing time.

23. SDKs - The tracking-code snippet is only for collecting data from websites. Use the Analytics SDKs to collect data from mobile apps, and use the Measurement Protocol to collect data from other digital devices like ticket kiosks and game consoles.

- The SDKs and the Measurement Protocol need to be set up by a developer.

24. Segment - A subset of sessions or users that share common attributes. Segments allow you to isolate and analyze groups of sessions or users for better analysis.

- Segmentation allows you to isolate and analyze subsets of your data. For example, you might segment your data by marketing channel so that you can see which channel is responsible for an increase in purchases. Drilling down to look at segments of your data helps you understand what caused a change to your aggregated data.

25. Sessions - The period of time a user is active on your site or app. By default, if a user is inactive for 30 minutes or more, any future activity is attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes are counted as part of the original session.

26. Solutions Gallery - Lets you share and import custom reporting tools and assets, like dashboards and segments, into your Analytics accounts.

27. Source/Medium - Source: the origin of your traffic, such as a search engine (for example, google) or a domain (example.com).

- Medium: the general category of the source, for example, organic search (organic), cost-per-click paid search (cpc), web referral (referral).

- Source/Medium is a dimension that combines the dimensions Source and Medium. Examples of Source/Medium include google/organic, example.com/referral, and newsletter9-2014/email.

28. Tag - A snippet of JavaScript that sends information to a third party, such as Google. The Analytics tracking code is an example of a tag.

- A tag is snippet of JavaScript that sends information to a third party, such as Google. Tags collect data, target your ad campaigns, track ads, and perform other functions. The Analytics tracking code is an example of a tag. If you don't use a tag management solution such as Google Tag Manager, you need to add these snippets of JavaScript directly to the source code of your site.

29. Tracking code - The Analytics tracking code is a snippet of JavaScript that collects and sends data to Analytics from a website.

- The Analytics tracking code may be directly added directly to the HTML of each page on your site, or indirectly using a tag management system such as Google Tag Manager.

30. Tracking ID and property number - The tracking ID is a string like UA-000000-2. It must be included in your tracking code to tell Analytics which account and property to send data to.

- The tracking ID is automatically included in the JavaScript snippet for websites, but also needs to be included in other tracking technologies like the SDKs and the Measurement Protocol for Analytics to work.

- The first set of numbers (-000000, in the example above) refers to your account number, and the second set of numbers (-2) refers to the specific property number associated with the account.

31. Universal Analytics - Universal Analytics is the most current data collection technology for web-based Analytics. It uses the analytics.js tracking code for websites, an SDK for mobile apps, and the Measurement Protocol for other digital devices.

32. User ID views - A special type of reporting view that only includes data about the subset of traffic that has a user ID assigned.

- User ID views include a set of Cross Device reports, which aren’t available in other reporting views. The Cross Device reports give you the tools you need to analyze how users engage with your content on different devices over the course of multiple sessions. All other standard reports and tools are also available in User ID views.

- User ID views do not include all of your data. To analyze all of your data, use a different type of reporting view.

- User ID view are only available to Universal Analytics properties in which the User ID is enabled. You must also create User ID views. They do not exist by default in your account.

33. View - A view or reporting view is a subset of an Analytics account property that can have its own unique configuration settings. You can create multiple views for a single property and configure each view to show a different subset of data for the property.

34. View filter - A configuration setting that allows you to add, remove or modify your data during processing before it is displayed in your reports.

- View filters allow you to limit and modify the traffic data that is included in a view. For example, you can use filters to exclude traffic from particular IP addresses, focus on a specific subdomain or directory, or convert dynamic page URLs into readable text strings.

How Do Blogs and Websites Make Money Online

Are you wondering how do websites make money? You are about to find out! There are a lot, I mean a lot of ways to make money with a blog or a website. If you are wondering how you will monetize your site, then you’ve come to the right place.

I’ll discuss all the strategies and methods that the most successful websites use to generate income. When you are done reading this post, you will be aware of how a website can make money and you will be armed with the knowledge and tools necessary to convert your site into a cash machine.

Before we start, I’d like to reiterate as I have in the past. First and foremost, provide value to your readership. Making money will be easy once you’ve created a loyal readership in the right niche. If you want to create a cash cow of a site, you need to pick an industry that is thriving and you know a lot about this subject or at least are willing to learn. It also helps if there is less competition in search engine ranking in that niche. You can use a tool like SEMRush to help you with that. But enough of that, let’s look at how you can make money online!

You’ve hit the jackpot if you have created a high/medium traffic site in the right niche. But we have to dig a bit before we hit gold, using the right revenue generation model can make an enormous difference to your revenue numbers.

Generally, site owners make money bySelling your own stuff (services, products of their making both digital & non-digital, eBooks and other premium content)

Advertising & Affiliate Income (selling and promoting services and products made by others)

At the end of it all, it comes down to one of those mentioned above two – You either sell your products and services or you can act as a conduit for the sale of another’s product or services.

Let’s look at how you can monetize your blog or site.

Sell Advertising Space

You can sell advertising space in the form of banner adverts to businesses and people. It isn’t quite that simple, though, you get paid differently by different advertisers.

CPM – Pay Per Impression Advertising

Your website receives revenue as and when you generate impressions for the sponsor. This rewards a website for every thousand impressions that it generates. Depending on your sponsor’s industry, you may get paid anywhere between $1~$7 per thousand impressions. The most well-known CPM advertising network is BuySellAds.

PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising

You make pennies every time someone clicks on a banner or link. It generally works out to a higher amount per click when compared to CPM but it might depend on your niche.

You can run adverts on your site with one of the many ad networks. Google AdSense, Monumetric, Rev Content, Undertone and AdBlade are few options available to you.

For those of you who use WordPress as a platform to run their websites, you can try out BuySellAds. If you’d like a free plugin, check out Advanced Ads.

Selling advertisements via contextual ad networks is best when you have a site that covers a large spectrum of subjects. If your site targets specific niche or keywords, you’ll find that Affiliate Marketing is probably a better money-making strategy for your site.

Also known as CPA or Cost Per Action, Affiliate Marketing is an extremely profitable way to generate revenue for your website. The section of Affiliate Marketing goes into a lot of detail, rightly employed it can make your site very profitable relative to running CPM or PPC advertisements. It’s also tougher to utilize, so let’s talk about affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing

As the name might suggest your website acts as an affiliate for someone else’s product or service.

How does affiliate marketing work?

You promote a certain product on your site, your visitor identifies the product as an effective solution to their necessities and purchases the product. You get a predetermined percentage or fixed commission for each purchase made by a visitor or reader who passes by your site to discover the product or service and then purchases on the affiliate sponsor’s website. This works because the company that sponsors the affiliate program finds a new customer, your visitor found a new product and you get a commission. All three parties involved end up with something they might not have had otherwise. You works as a middleman between buyer and seller and get paid for doing so.

Affiliate marketing campaigns produce new leads for the sponsor and generate commissions for your site effectively only when the niche of the campaign is close to your site’s niche. The further the distance between your niche and the campaign’s niche, the less effective the affiliate marketing efforts.Tip #1: Keep the niche of any affiliate campaign as close to your site niche as possible. Ad networks ensure that the right adverts are displayed on your site with PPC & CPM, but with CPA you need to find the right affiliate to endorse.

Write honest content/reviews, never go over the top and recommend a product or service you have not used. It is okay to verify the features of a product and write a dispassionate review. To give a positive review for any product, use it first or read extensively about the product, reviews provided by domain authoritarians who have a history of being impartial and fair in their assessments (Your eventual aim should be to make your site in their image). And be informative, add value, and help your readers find the best products. If you’ve used the product better still, be insightful.Tip #2: Be honest & informative. And if you have used the product be insightful. Else you stand to lose your reader’s trust and you lose revenue.

Write about alternate choices. Never recommend a single product, always offer choice to the reader. Your site’s business is to inform your readers. Aigars writes about 20~50 themes in our collection roundups, it is to help provide choice and that’s for free themes. The choices provided should cover as wide a net as possible, when you expect your reader pay for a product.Tip #3: Present reader with alternate choices. Doesn’t mean you can not recommend the best choices in your opinion but try to include as many alternates for your reader as possible.

This is going to be a bit strange, but bear with me! People look for your opinion, put your reputation on the line by recommending one or two products above other choices, but only if you can identify them as the very best options for your readership.

Recommend what’s best for your reader, not yourself. Different affiliate programs have different commissions, some much more profitable than others. But these more profitable programs may not necessarily have the best solutions to your reader’s necessities and problems.Tip #4: A small piece of a bigger pie is better than, well you know how it goes!

Disclose affiliate income, always inform your reader that you receive a commission for products that you recommend. Let your reader know that, this is how your site generates income to pay for writers, website development and hosting. I am sure they’ll understand.Tip #5: Disclose affiliate marketing on your site on pages where there are affiliate links.

Do not push products on your readers. Stop cramming your content with multiple links, try to keep it to a minimum. It might turn off someone, allow for the possibility that your reader is skeptical about someone who profits from their suggestions. Never allow anyone to ever feel that you are merely trying to sell them things.

Always attempt to connect with your audience by being informative, insightful and very importantly helpful. After you’ve described the problem that you’re attempting to solve which should be one that your readers can relate to, only then should you proceed to promote a product as a possible solution. I think subtlety is underrated.

Remember that affiliate marketing can help make a great deal of money if you target the right niche. Your site should be relatable to that niche, but your niche should have sufficient traffic from the specific niche. Affiliate marketing tends to be very targeted, it will not work if there is no money in that market, to begin with.

Before you decide to run an affiliate marketing campaign on your site, try reading the about the affiliate programs offered by the ten biggest players in your industry. Look at their customer numbers and their commission percentages. See if the numbers make sense and whether affiliate marketing is right for your site’s niche.

MyThemeShop offers a 55% commission on any new customer you bring to them. We use their affiliate program on our website and highly recommend it.

In comparison, Elegant Themes offer a 50% commission and StudioPress offer a commission of 35%. If either of them had sales exceeding MyThemeShop by a great extent, they will make for better affiliate options but given that there isn’t too much of a difference, you will be better of using all three affiliate programs. This way you can present your readers with multiple choices.

Check out for how long the tracking is valid when you bring new traffic to these sites under affiliate programs. This also known as the tracking cookie period. Most reasonable affiliates have periods of 60 days or greater. After that any sale made as a result of traffic your site brought them, doesn’t earn you a commission.

My examples may have been specific to the WordPress niche because I am familiar with WordPress. The commissions vary from sector to sector as the size of the deals vary. Look at all affiliate programs and identify the likelihood that they will generate a steady cash flow that is sustainable and builds over time. And test a few of them out before you settle on one or two of them.

Bluehost has a great affiliate program for many reasons, rather than boring you with “Why?”. I’d like to talk about Pat Flynn who made $424,800 which accounts for about 40% of his site’s revenue in 2022 via BlueHost’s affiliate program and about $670,000 from all affiliate programs. Now remember his website has multiple sources of income and apart from his BlueHost affiliate program all his other income sources are at best $50,000 and not more. I’d recommend that you look at Pat’s site and his income statements, you’ll notice that despite the diversity in his income sources he makes about 65% of his income via affiliate programs. This should quite clearly illustrate the power of affiliate marketing. Remember that we might receive a commission if you decide to purchase through these links.

A Few Things About Advertising – PPC, CPM and CPATip #6: Banner adverts are not really your best option, their click through rates are rather low in comparison to in-content links. But if you aren’t using all the space on your website, then perhaps you could add banner advertisements to add to your revenue.

Tip #7: Cut out the middleman, many ad networks take out a chunk of your revenue. Remember direct deals are always better than going through an intermediary. It’s also a lot harder.

Tip #8: Never crowd your content out with too many advertisements banners or in-text links.

Tip #9: Use a heat map plugin and try to figure out which parts of your website attract the most attention. Place your adverts appropriately.

Tip #10: While plain banner adverts (Not based on PPC, CPM & CPA) pay on a monthly or bi-monthly basis and offer some security of income, even if your traffic doubles or triples, you still get paid the same. PPC, CPM & CPA based advertising on the other pay based on how well your site does and how well it converts traffic into sales/impressions.

Sell Your Product/Service

Creating a website to generate revenue is primarily based on projecting yourself and the people who post content on your site as domain experts. Sometimes it is very easy to prove that you know your stuff, an example would be a WordPress theme developer and writer. Aigars writes a great deal about themes and he gets a lot of interaction because he is a pretty awesome web developer.

Projecting yourself as a domain expert is crucial as it is what your site relies on to generate revenue. It is aided by creating products in that particular niche or in the alternative offering services in the same niche or even a related niche.

Of course, this works both ways web developer turns writer and the otherway around, the same is applicable to any niche.

We publish a great deal of content about WordPress – Caching plugins, Themes, Hosting, etc. You can read more about it here. It helps boost credibility and therefore helps with product sales.Tip #11: Generating good and most importantly useful content will help project authority and domain expertise and bring more sales.

This is not limited to digital products like themes, it can be extended to almost any industry for which there is sufficient interest on the internet. Companies of any niche or sector can sell their own products via the internet.Tip #12: Selling stuff services/products and generating good content on the same industry/niche/sector brings in more visitors and as a result more prospective customers to your site.

You may have noticed by now selling products and generating useful content go hand in hand. One aids the other and vice versa.

Whilst selling your own products and services creating an affiliate program will help sell your product better. You will obtain a greater reach by sharing a percentage of your product’s price for a sale that may have gone unrealized otherwise.

Some people may be reluctant to share their profits, but they fail to realize that the profits you share would not have been realized at all had there not been an incentive for your affiliate to share and recommend your products.

Enable Directories On Your Website

Basically the online version of paid classifieds and an easy way to make money. The best thing about directories is you have no limit to the number of companies, businesses or freelancers who can list themselves.

You can charge a flat rate or charge a commission on business your site directs towards the sponsors. And depending on your blog’s primary focus, directories are a handy tool to help your users. You could create a directory for the real estate agents for a real estate blog.Tip #13: It can be a really helpful feature for your readers, especially in primary services based niche or industry.

For WordPress users, a few handy WordPress themes to help you out. Although, I wouldn’t recommend a directory theme if that isn’t the crux of your site.

You can use Business Directory Plugin to add the functionality to your site or get some custom web dev work for your site which is preferable.

To find out more about how to make a directory using WordPress please read our detailed guide.

Job Boards

This idea is rather similar but the polar opposite of creating a directory on your site. Job Boards can be an extremely useful source of site revenue wherein the person who posts the job pays a monthly fee for their job posting.

Pro Blogger is an excellent example of a site with a very profitable job board system. When I checked out their job board, they had about 30 job openings advertised on 4 different pages, which means about 120 job postings. That translates to roughly $6000 revenue per month. To start your own job board you can use any of these WordPress themes and plugins.Tip #14: Generating revenue with directories and job boards is a really smart idea because you have very little work and you get a lot of revenue. Both methods involve significant web development work to start off but subsequently, it requires very little effort for its upkeep.

Offer Sponsored Reviews

Websites with reasonable clout and domain authority often receive requests from small businesses to post reviews of their new products. You can offer sponsored reviews for a fee. We offer sponsored reviews on ColorLib. While it’s okay to publish content as part of a sponsored review, you should never offer your opinion for sale. Sponsored reviews really bring in a good amount of cash for relatively little work.Tip #15: Sponsored reviews are a great way to make money! But please add a sponsored review disclosure whenever possible, sometimes sponsors make request that you not reveal that it is a sponsored review. Personally, I feel you should provide a dispassionate review with a disclosure.

Even if you do not disclose sponsored reviews, most websites will have a sponsored review section. This will indicate to your reader that you do write sponsored reviews. If you do not disclose sponsored reviews, maybe a few of your readers may get upset. But I guess they really can not complain much about it, if you are honest in your product reviews.

On Colorlib, we offer paid reviews at $560. Not only do we get the benefit of the cash, but sometimes we get our hands on a product that hasn’t yet hit the market which is an added benefit. And review content generally tends to be in depth content about specific products which almost all readers love.Tip #16: Sponsored reviews help you get your hand on products that haven’t yet reached the market yet. Many gaming related YouTube channels receive access to games as beta testers and some tech websites are able to get their hands on new laptops and graphic processing units before, they hit the market. This can offer a significant edge over your competitors.

Create Premium Content

You can craft content that is very difficult to come by on the internet and package it for sale. It can be an eBook or an interactive tutorial/course. You need to provide some free content to entice the audience into buying your content. Also, it helps a lot if you’re specific about what the premium content will teach or reveal to the buyer.Tip #17: Premium content will not work if you offer something that is available for free on the internet.

I’m currently trying my hand at Data Science and I want to learn R. I’ve used Data Camp, they have an awesome strategy. You get access to the first part of their course for free. After that, you’ll need to pay for access to the subsequent sections.

When it comes to premium content, you can choose either one-time purchase models or recurring subscription models for continued access to content and support.Tip #18: With a sales models for paid content, I believe a freemium + subscription hybrid model is best for most content. They have shown tremendous success. In Asia, the freemium App Store model accounts for 90% of all revenue. Many WordPress plugins & theme houses work with freemium and subscription models, again they’ve been very successful.

Write a great book

Most successful blogs and websites are run by good writers and journalists. This can also include web developers, programmers, search engine optimization, marketing specialists who’ve become good writers. Many highly ranked websites are run by people with years of experience in their chosen field. Sometimes a single post is not big enough to convey all the information you have to offer.

However, a book is a great channel for delivering a wellspring of useful information to your readers. After you’ve exhibited considerable domain/niche expertise and your site receives some traffic, a book can be a great idea.

eBooks are a useful idea, even if you decide not to monetize them. But, the better thing to do would be to provide limited access and full access for a small fee.

Useful information is hard to come by and a book preferably was born out of personal experience sells well. Generally, ebooks provide some form of self – improvement information (How To Get Ask A Woman Out?, Grow Your Blog By 300% With These 3 Steps) at least many of them do.Tip #19: These books offer actionable insight for real people to help themselves personally or professionally.

If you feel providing limited access will perhaps create a disgruntled readership, then divide the book into multipart series and offer one of them for free. As I mentioned before the freemium model is the best way to go when it comes to paid content.Tip #20: Apart from all the monetization incentives, books also help develop and solidify your brand. Make sure you get just right, it can be a very powerful marketing tool and enable you to reach a greater audience.

Webinars

Writing useful content for your users is great but webinars are a powerful tool. It doesn’t just rely on a sense of vision. Webinars can help set your site apart from your competitors. You shouldn’t underestimate how useful it can be for your business.

Webinars are way better than just plain text when educating and informing people. Connecting with people is difficult, reading content and watching webinars are worlds apart.

Host one or two free webinars and teach people something. You can then teach people something and you can proceed to sell them the remaining webinars in the series. You can use a service like GoToWebinar.Tip #21: Try making YouTube videos for practice, perfect your delivery and get it just right for your webinar series.

The same can be said for podcasting as well.

Email Marketing

Building a strong mailing list is always a useful asset to any blog as it helps build your readership. You do not have to rely entirely on social media shares and search engine rankings. People will keep visiting your site long after their first visit if they sign up for weekly or monthly newsletters. Most sites with loyal readership have fat email lists.

You can employ email marketing to sell products as an affiliate or you can sell your own products. Either way, email marketing is a powerful tool to build sustainable revenue and traffic for your site.Tip #22: An email list is probably a group of people with very similar characteristics and demographic features which is why they’ve subscribed to your site’s blog. You can certainly expect a better conversion when selling products via emails.

Use AWeber or MailChimp to help build your mailing list.Tip #23: Using pop-ups effectively will increase your subscriber count dramatically in just one or two months.

How Colorlib Makes Money?

We get this question a lot and there is no simple answer to this because we combine many things and here are the main ones in no particular order:Selling our own themes, templates, plugin mockups and other downloadable products.

Affiliate income from theme, plugin, hosting mockup sales.

Selling banner places

AdSense

Paid product reviews

We try to monetize our website using various methods but we try to keep ads and other promotional content to a minimum to keep our users happy.

Final Thoughts

I hope this answers your question about how do websites make money. I’ve described in my opinion some of the best revenue-generating solutions for websites and blogs. I can not, however, predict how well each advertising method is going to work. Only you can be the judge of that. And the only way you can do that is to try things out!

But before you start advertising, always remember to ask yourself “Am I providing something valuable for my reader ?, Is there something new under the sun in my content ? “. People will trust you and purchase the products you throw at them if the answer to the previous two questions is a resounding “Yes!”.

When selling your products and premium content, always remember to go above and beyond the reader’s expectations. I’d recommend the freemium model for all your premium content. In a freemium model, you offer a significant chunk of your content. But, you just need enough content to entice someone to purchase it. But suppose it is a digital product like for example a plugin or any other product that requires continued assistance, support and updates. In that case, a subscription model is a better choice.

And as for advertising on behalf of others, via any of the multiple previously discussed methods. Ask yourself “Would I buy this service/product I am recommending if I have the same requirements as my readers?”. It’s far easier to convince someone else to purchase something if you are convinced about the quality of the product you are recommending.

Don’t get stuck on any one method of revenue generation. Be sure to try out each of them for three months. Nevermore than three or four at a time, and make sure you give each monetization technique a fair chance, give each its own space.

If you insert all affiliate advertising in the form of in-content links, you can not possibly compare it to a banner that is always on display on every page of your site. Place all monetization techniques on almost equal footing and give them a fair trial. It may take a while, but it’ll be well worth the effort!

No matter how many statistics you read about advertising, no one can predict the outcome of your website. You need to try things out and perfect your ideal hybrid of revenue-generating techniques.

Thank you for visiting and reading this article! We highly appreciate it!

7 Best Search Engine Optimization Tools for Higher Google Rankings

1. Neil Patel SEO Analyzer - If you want more search traffic, all you have to do is follow the website analysis report. It will point out all of the SEO errors you need to fix in order to increase traffic.

2. SEO Web Page Analyzer - A free SEO tool for content optimization of your web pages. Easy to use and will help you improve your web page content for good SEO.

3. LinkMiner - Get the best of backlink analysis with a step-by-step LinkMiner guide. Find out how to replicate powerful backlinks of your competitors.

4. SimilarWeb - Grow your market share and website traffic with SimilarWeb's digital market intelligence platform. Compare any website traffic statistics & analytics.

5. Browseo - View any web page like search engines see it. Browseo helps you to identify issues with your site and with competitors' sites. Browseo is 100% free.

6. SEO Site Checkup - Get useful information about the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your website, ordered by their importance. Save your backlinks lists, export them in different formats and track your backlinks status over time.

7. Robots.txt Generator - Generate effective robots.txt files that help ensure Google and other search engines are crawling and indexing your site properly.

Google AdWords Terms You Should Know Before Creating a Google Ads

1. Campaign: A campaign is a set of related ad groups that is often used to organize categories of products or services that you offer. Each campaign is centered on a goal that aligns with the main thing you want to get from your campaign, such as sales or website traffic. You'll need to make at least one campaign before you can create ads in your account.

2. Ad groups: An ad group contains one or more ads which target a shared set of keywords. Each of your campaigns is made up of one or more ad groups.

Use ad groups to organize your ads by a common theme. For example, try separating ad groups into the different product or service types you offer.

3. Campaign Type: The campaign type determines where customers will be able to see your ads, but you make this more specific by targeting your ads. Campaign types include: Search Network with Display Select, Search Network only, Display Network only, Shopping, Video, Universal app

The campaign subtype determines which settings and options are available, such as the types of ads you can design. These options let you tailor your campaign to match your business goals and focus on the features most relevant to you. Campaign subtypes include: Standard, All features, Marketing objectives

Campaign types are centered around Google's advertising networks: the Google Search Network, the Google Display Network, and the YouTube Network. These networks make up all of the places where your ads can appear, including Google sites, websites that show relevant Google ads, and other placements—like mobile apps. Choose a network setting by selecting a campaign type for your campaign.

4. Keywords: Words or phrases describing your product or service that you choose to help determine when and where your ad can appear. The keywords you choose are used to show your ads to people. Select high-quality, relevant keywords for your ad campaign to help you reach only the most interested people, who are more likely to become your customers.

When someone searches on Google, your ad could be eligible to appear based on the similarity of your keywords to the person's search terms, as well as your keyword match types. Keywords are also used to match your ad to sites in the Google Network that are related to your keywords and ads.

A great keyword list can help improve the performance of your ads and help you to avoid higher prices. Poor keywords can ultimately cause you to have higher prices and lower ad position. You can add match types to your keywords to help control which searches your ad can be matched with.

5. Quality Score: Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.

You can see your Quality Score (Quality Score is reported on a 1-10 scale and its components (expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience) in your keywords’ “Status” column.

The more relevant your ads and landing pages are to the user, the more likely it is that you'll see higher Quality Scores. Quality Score is an aggregated estimate of your overall performance in ad auctions, and is not used at auction time to determine Ad Rank.

6. Impressions: How often your ad is shown. An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google Network. Each time your ad appears on Google or the Google Network, it's counted as one impression.

In some cases, only a section of your ad may be shown. For example, in Google Maps, we may show only your business name and location or only your business name and the first line of your ad text.  However, when someone searches using Google Instant, an impression can be counted when one of these occur:

o Person begins to type and then clicks anywhere on the page like a search result, ad, or related search

o Person types a search and then clicks the "Search" button, presses Enter, or selects a predicted query from the drop-down menu

o Person stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds

- You'll sometimes see the abbreviation "Impr" in your account showing the number of impressions for your ad.

7. Ad Rank: A value that's used to determine your ad position (where ads are shown on a page relative to other ads) and whether your ads will show at all.

Ad Rank is calculated using your bid amount, your auction-time ad quality (including expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience), the Ad Rank thresholds, the context of the person’s search (for example, the person’s location, device, time of search, the nature of the search terms, the other ads and search results that show on the page, and other user signals and attributes), and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats.

When estimating the expected impact of extensions and ad formats, we consider such factors as the relevance, clickthrough rates, and the prominence of the extensions or formats on the search results page. So even if your competition has higher bids than yours, you can still win a higher position at a lower price by using highly relevant keywords and ads.

Your Ad Rank is recalculated each time your ad is eligible to appear and competes in an auction, so your ad position can fluctuate each time depending on your competition, the context of the person's search, and your quality at that moment.

8. Ad extensions: A feature that shows extra business information with your ad, like an address, phone number, store rating, or more webpage links.

9. Click: When someone clicks your ad, like on the blue headline of a text ad, Google Ads counts that as a click. A click is counted even if the person doesn't reach your website, maybe because it's temporarily unavailable. As a result, you might see a difference between the number of clicks on your ad and the number of visits to your website.

Clicks can help you understand how well your ad is appealing to people who see it. Relevant, highly-targeted ads are more likely to receive clicks.

10. Click Through Rate (CTR): Clickthrough rate (CTR), which tells you how many people who’ve seen your ad end up clicking on it. This metric can help you gauge how enticing your ad is and how closely it matches your keywords and other targeting settings.

Note that a good CTR is relative to what you're advertising and on which networks. To help increase your clicks and CTR, start by creating great ad text and strong keywords to make ads that are highly relevant and very compelling to your customers.

11. Landing Page: The webpage where people end up after they click your ad. The URL of this page is usually the same as your ad's final URL. For each ad, you specify a final URL to determine the landing page where people are taken when they click your ad.

Google's policy is that your landing page and display URL (the webpage shown in your ad) must share the same domain. Your landing page experience is one of several factors that helps determine a keyword's Quality Score. The experience of a landing page is represented by such things as the usefulness and relevance of information provided on the page, ease of navigation for the user, and how many links are on the page.

12. Keyword Planner: Keyword Planner is a tool that provides keyword ideas and traffic estimates to help you build a Search Network campaign.

Search for keyword and ad groups ideas based on terms that describe your product or service, your website, or a product category related to what you're advertising. You can also enter or upload a list of keywords. And you can multiply two or more lists of keywords to create a new list that combines your keywords.

Get historical statistics, like the number of times people have searched for a keyword or how competitive that keyword is. You can also get traffic estimates, like how many clicks and impressions your keywords might get for given bid and budget amounts.

13. Daily budget: An amount that you set for each ad campaign to specify how much, on average, you'd like to spend each day. You set an average daily budget for each Google Ads campaign, and then the system will aim to show your ads as much as possible until your budget is met.

When your budget is reached, your ads will typically stop showing for that day. How quickly your ads are shown during a given day is determined by your ad delivery option.

It's possible that you'll be charged less or sometimes slightly more than your average daily budget amount on a given day. To help make sure that your ad can run a little more on days when it's very popular, your daily budget is used like an average: on any single day, you can spend up to 2 times your daily budget, but on other days your spend will be capped at a lower amount to make up for it. This is called over-delivery. For campaigns where you pay for conversions, your daily spend may exceed your average daily budget by more than 2 times.

However, in a given billing period, you're never charged more than the average number of days in a month (roughly 30.4) times your daily budget. For campaigns that are paused in the middle of the month or that otherwise don't run for the full month, you may see discrepancies between your average daily budgets and your total charges.

14. CPC: Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding means that you pay for each click on your ads. For CPC bidding campaigns, you set a maximum cost-per-click bid - or simply "max. CPC" - that's the highest amount that you're willing to pay for a click on your ad (unless you're setting bid adjustments, or using Enhanced CPC).

Your max. CPC is the most you'll typically be charged for a click, but you'll often be charged less -- sometimes much less. That final amount you're charged for a click is called your actual CPC. If you enter a max. CPC bid and someone clicks your ad, that click won't cost you more than the maximum CPC bid amount that you set.

You'll choose between manual bidding (you choose your bid amounts) and automatic bidding (let Google set bids to try to get the most clicks within your budget). CPC pricing is sometimes known as pay-per-click (PPC).

15. CPM: A way to bid where you pay per one thousand views (impressions) on the Google Display Network.

Viewable CPM bidding ensures that you only pay when your ads can be seen. Existing CPM bids will be converted to vCPM automatically, but it's best to update your bids since viewable impressions are potentially more valuable. 

16. Relevance: How closely the elements of your ad campaign match what a person seems to be looking for. Your ads and keywords should directly relate to the content on your website, especially the ad's landing page. When people see your ad, they should be able to understand what kind of product, service, or other content they'll find on your site.

To encourage you to create relevant ad campaigns that accurately represent your products or services, the Google Ads pricing system is partly based on relevance. A highly relevant ad, keyword list, and landing page is generally rewarded with a higher position on the page for potentially less money. Relevance is part of your Quality Score, a formula that Google uses to measure how useful your ad, keyword, and website are to a customer. Relevant ads tend to get higher Quality Scores.

17. Destination URL: The URL address of the page in your website that people reach when they click your ad. The domain of the destination URL needs to match the domain of your display URL. The destination URL isn’t displayed on your ads (the URL shown is your display URL).

18. Display URL: The webpage address that appears with your ad, typically shown in green text. Display URLs give people an idea of where they'll arrive after they click an ad. The landing page that you define with a final URL tends to be more specific. For example, if your display URL is www.example.com, your final URL might be example.com/sweaters.

For expanded text ads, your display URL consists of the domain of your final URL (and the subdomain, if you have one) and your two optional “Path” fields of up to 15 characters each.

o In rare scenarios, your subdomain may not be added to your display URL. For example, if your subdomain uses a trademarked term, your display URL may not include your subdomain. Learn more about Google Ads trademark policy

o Google constantly makes changes to Google Ads. As a result, Google may update the domain component of your display URL.

Your display URL may appear in your ad with a "www." prefix in lowercase letters (even if you enter it with capitalized letters). If your URL begins with a subdomain, your display URL may include it (for example, the support in support.google.com).

SEO Terms & Definitions You Need to Know [Beginner's Guide to SEO]

If you are new to SEO and found yourself confused by some of the terms you've seen, no worries! We know learning all the ins and outs of SEO vocabulary and jargon can feel like learning another language. To help you get a handle on all the new terms, we've compiled some great SEO glossary with definitions and helpful links. You might want to bookmark this page for future reference

1. 301 redirect

- A way to make one web page redirect the visitor to another page. Whenever you change the web address of a page, apply a 301 redirect to make the old address point to the new one. This ensures that people who have linked to or bookmarked the old address will automatically get to the new one, and search engines can update their index.

2. Alt tag

- A description of an image in your site's HTML. Unlike humans, search engines read only the ALT text of images, not the images themselves. Add ALT text to images whenever possible.

3. Anchor Text

- The actual text of a link to a web page. On most websites, this text is usually dark blue and underlined, or purple if you’ve visited the link in the past. Anchor text helps search engines understand what the destination page is about; it describes what you will see if you click through.

4. Backlinks

- (inlink, incoming link) Any link into a page or site from any other page or site.

5. Black hat SEO

- Search engine optimization tactics that are counter to best practices such as the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

6. Bounce Rate

- The percentage of users who enter a site and then leave it without viewing any other pages.

7. Bread Crumbs

- Web site navigation in a horizontal bar above the main content which helps the user to understand where they are on the site and how to get back to the root areas.

8. Conversion

- (goal) Achievement of a quantifiable goal on a website. Add clicks, sign ups, and sales are examples of conversions.

9. Conversion Form

- A form through which you collect information about your site visitor. Conversion forms convert traffic into leads. Collecting contact information helps you follow up with these leads.

10. CSS

- (Cascading Style Sheets) The part of your code that defines how different elements of your site look (examples: headers, links)

11. Duplicate content

- Obviously content which is similar or identical to that found on another website or page. A site may not be penalized for serving duplicate content but it will receive little if any Trust from the search engines compared to the content that the SE considers being the original.

12. HTML

- The code part of your website that search engines read. Keep your HTML as clean as possible so that search engines read your site easily and often. Put as much layout-related code as possible in your CSS instead of your HTML.

13. Impression

- (page view) The event where a user views a webpage one time.

14. Indexed Link

- The pages of your website that are stored by search engines.

15. Javascript

- A scripting language that allows website administrators to apply various effects or changes to the content of their website as users browse it. Search engines often have difficulty reading content that is inside of Javascript, but they are getting better at it over time.

16. Keyword

- A word that a user enters in search. Each web page should be optimized with the goal of drawing in visitors who have searched specific keywords.

17. Keyword Density

- The percentage of words on a web page which are a particular keyword. If this value is unnaturally high the page may be penalized.

18. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

- (LSI) This mouthful just means that the search engines index commonly associated groups of words in a document. SEOs refer to these same groups of words as “Long Tail Searches”. The majority of searches consist of three or more words strung together. See also “long tail”. The significance is that it might be almost impossible to rank well for “mortgage”, but fairly easy to rank for “second mortgage to finance monster truck team”. Go figure.

19. Link building

- The activity and process of getting more inbound links to your website for improved search engine rankings.

20. Long Tail Keyword

- An uncommon or infrequently searched keyword, typically with two or more words in the phrase. Small businesses should consider targeting long tail keywords, as they are lower difficulty and often have more qualified searchers. Common keywords such as 'software' are more competitive, and very hard to rank high for them in search.

21. Meta description

- Meta description is a HTML tag snippet that provides a page summary for search results.

22. mozRank

- A logarithmic ranking provided by SEOmoz from 0-10.0 of the number and quality of inbound links pointing to a certain website or page on that website. A 10.0 is the best linked-to page on the internet, and a 0 has no recognized inbound links.

23. Nofollow

- A no follow link is a link that does not count as a point in the page’s favor, does not boost PageRank, and doesn’t help a page’s placement in the SERPs. The nofollow tag is basically a notice sign for search engines saying don’t count this.

24. PageRank

- A number from 0-10, assigned by Google, indicating how good your overall SEO is. It is technically known as 'Toolbar PageRank.' Note:PageRank relevancy is changing.

25. RSS Feed

- RSS stands for 'really simple syndication.' It is a subscription-based way to get updates on new content from a web source. Set up an RSS feed for your website or blog to help your followers stay updated when you release new content.

26. Robots.txt

- A file in the root directory of a website use to restrict and control the behavior of search engine spiders.

27. SEM

- SEM (Search Engine Marketing) involves the marketing of websites through paid advertising in order to increase their visibility on search engines.

28. SEO

- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process of ranking first on a web search engine organically.

29. SERP

- (Search Engine Ranking Page) The page that you are sent to after you run a query in a search engine. It typically has 10 results on it, but this may vary depending on the query and search engine in question.

30. Spider

- A computer program that browses the internet and collects information about websites.

31. Title

- The title of a page on your website, which is enclosed in a <title> HTML tag, inside of the head section of the page. It appears in search engine results and at the top of a user’s web browser when they are on that page.

32. White hat SEO

- SEO techniques, which conform to best practice guidelines, and do not attempt to unscrupulously “game” or manipulate SERPs.

33. XML sitemap

- A page or structured group of pages which link to every user accessible page on a website, and hopefully improves site usability by clarifying the data structure of the site for the users. An XML sitemap is often kept in the root directory of a site just to help search engine spiders to find all of the site pages.

8 Best Free Email Marketing Tools to Improved Performance in 2022

Email marketing is a reliable way to spread your message to your prospects. If you are a blogger, you would probably want to share regular updates with your subscribers. Or if you are a business owner, you would need to create more leads. Well, email marketing is a low-cost way to send your messages to the inbox of others and convert your prospects into customers. It helps you build a connection with the visitors after they have left your website. That is why 89% of the marketers use email as the key channel for producing leads for the company, and 93% of the B2B marketers use emails to distribute the content.

Looking for a way to run your email marketing efforts without breaking the bank? The free email marketing services on this list all let you send thousands of emails per month without spending a single penny.

A good email marketing tool should allow you to create appealing emails using a drag and drop interface. Also, it should empower you to send voluminous personalised emails without putting too much effort. Contact management, segmentation of user groups and performance tracking should be some of the other ideal features you need to look for. Putting in simple words, your emails must be promising enough to stay in the inbox of the people.

Keep reading for a detailed look at each free email marketing service’s sending limits and pros and cons. Then, we’ll share our recommendations at the end. These are much better than Gmail for professional users!

1. Sendlane - Sendlane helps B2C and B2B businesses track, personalize, and automate their email marketing using a data-driven and behavior-based approach.

2. ActiveCampaign - Integrated email marketing, marketing automation, and small business CRM. ActiveCampaign is a one-stop solution for all kinds of email marketing needs. It allows you to send lesser emails, but achieve desirable results.

ActiveCampaign is the best choice if you are planning to create logic-based funnels. It uses the if/then logic with respect to the subscriber behaviour to automate your emails. ActiveCampaign offers you four different plans — Lite Plan, Plus Plan, Professional Plan, and Enterprise Plan. You can choose any plan that suits your needs and budget.

3. Constant Contact - If you are a small business owner and you want to make the most out of your email marketing, Constant Contact is the best email marketing service. It features a simple and user-friendly interface. Email Marketing platform that has: A/B Testing, email editing tools, marketing calendar, email tracking, social media marketing, client management, multi-user experience, list management, and many more. All the important email statistics are displayed on the dashboard.

4. Ontraport - Ontraport is business automation software for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Some tools that Ontraport has is marketing automation, CRM, Ecommerce and reporting.

5. Drip - Drip is the first ECRM–an Ecommerce CRM designed for building personal and profitable relationships with your customers at scale. Drip is a recently developed email marketing service designed for eCommerce business owners and bloggers. Its unique marketing automation features make it a preferred marketing service.

6. Hubspot - HubSpot is a reputed email marketing tool for business owners who are looking for free email marketing tools. The drag and drop email builder helps you customise emails easily. Create, personalize, and optimize your marketing emails without waiting on designers or IT.

HubSpot can be easily connected with HubSpot CRM. You can use HubSpot CRM to create personalised touchpoints for your prospects. For example- You can add details such as first name and company name to make your prospects feel like they are being referred to in person. To do this, you need relevant data such as website activity and form submissions.

7. Benchmark - Benchmark Email offers an integrated, automated and robust feature set built to help the enterprise of any size. A powerfully simple and simply powerful email marketing solution designed to help you create and send compelling campaigns with ease.

8. SendinBlue - SendInBlue is the best email marketing tool for marketers who have limited funds. The tool comes with a free plan (though with limited capacity). This service was initially designed to send transaction-based emails, however now it offers both SMS and email campaigns.

SendinBlue empowers businesses to build and grow relationships through marketing campaigns, transactional messaging and marketing automation. The platform combines a robust suite of email and SMS messaging services within a single, user-friendly solution.

Conclusion

Take into account your marketing needs and budget for choosing the right email marketing tool. If you’re a beginner, who just wants to reap the benefits of email marketing, you can go for tools with a free trial. Experiment with the tool and deploy all its features to grow your email list. If you are happy with the results, you can go for the premium versions. Create effective marketing campaigns that will increase your engagement with these tools.