Category Archives: Online Tools

Add Features to Your Facebook Page with Apps

Facebook apps extend the functionality of your page. By installing apps onto your Facebook page, you can run contests, collect lead data, and even provide customer support. Facebook apps lend an entirely new level of engagement with your followers. Here are 8 Facebook apps that will enhance your follower’s experience on your page.

TabSite

Tabsite is a multi-functional promotional and engagement app for Facebook. Hold photo contests and run lead-capturing sweepstakes, review mobile stats, create promotions, and capture leads in multiple ways with mobile-friendly promotional tabs. Integrates with Mailchimp, Infusionsoft, GotoWebinar and more!

MailChimp

Are you an existing user? With MailChimp’s Facebook integration, your followers can subscribe to your newsletter without leaving Facebook.

Shopial

Shopial connects your followers to your online store. Creating a Facebook store with Shopial imports all your prices and listings from your website store to Facebook, allowing followers to see and buy products.

Polldaddy

Polls give you insight into your follower base as you gather their responses. Bring customized polls to Facebook with the Polldaddy app. Polldaddy provides 3 account tiers (free, pro, and corporate). All accounts can create unlimited polls, making this great for marketers.

YouTube Tab

Integrate your YouTube and Facebook pages with the YouTube Tab app. Install and setup your app and followers can see your YouTube content on your Facebook page.

Fan of the Week

Fan of the Week is an app that monitors follower activity on your page. Each week the most active follower on your page gets a special shout out to recognize them.

Boast

Testimonials help convince visitors to buy your product. Boast collects the praise from your page followers and displays them. Brands control which campaigns collect testimonials and where (and which) testimonials are displayed.

Zendesk

Zendesk lets your business connect your customer support team to your Facebook page. With a ticket system, questions, comments, and concerns made on Facebook can be addressed by the appropriate customer service agent. This app provides a management system for customer communications and interaction.

Facebook apps give your brand the power to do more. Add value to your page by adding Facebook apps. We built TabSite, so we’re a little biased! For a limited time get 30% off a monthly plan. User discount code: Facebookapps at checkout!

Keep Your Site Secure by Updating WordPress

If you’re relatively new to WordPress, chances are a notification of a new version that you should upgrade to has you break out in a cold sweat. Even if you’re a WordPress expert, you might wonder if your plugins and theme will work on the new version, and if or when you should upgrade.

The truth is, it’s a good idea to use the latest version of WordPress and here’s why:

Stay Ahead of Hackers

WordPress is the world’s most popular website platform. So it stands to reason it’s a major target for hackers. If they can hack into one WordPress site, they can potentially access thousands. Hacking a version of WordPress or a plugin is increasingly vulnerable the older the versions of WordPress and plugins you are using. If your security isn’t strong and up-to-date, you could lose your whole site.

WordPress is open source, which means the WordPress community at large contributes to the code. There are many people who know WP’s strengths and weaknesses. While the majority of the WordPress community is helpful and generous, there will always be a few that look to take advantage of any bugs and holes.

Wait too long to update your site, and you run the risk of having a loophole that could be exposed and thus the potential of losing control of your site. If you don’t keep your WP, theme, and plugins updated, and you process payments or store customer data you may be exposing your customer’s information to hackers.

What To Do Before You Update

You should backup your website before making any drastic changes. Just in case things don’t go according to plan. Tools like Updraftplus make this a fairly straightforward process.

In fact, it’s always a good idea to backup your site on a weekly or at least monthly basis. Because you never know what will happen.

Keep your plugins, theme, and framework up to date also. While minor WP updates may not affect the functionality of your plugins, a major update to WordPress may interfere with the functionality of your plugin.

How to Update WordPress

Updating WordPress is fairly easy. Chances are, you’ll receive an email notifying you of the update. Don’t worry about cost; the updates are free.

When you login, there will be a link on the home screen. After you’ve backed up your site, click the link and follow the prompts. Once the update is done, you’ll still need to update plugins. Then your site should be safe from malicious attacks until the next update rolls around.

Most updates go smoothly, with no downtime. But it’s always a good idea to schedule your updates for times when your site is not busy, just in case there’s a problem.

Need help and want this taken care of for you? Let us help! Digital Hill offers a security service where we can take care of updating your site and ensuring it has the latest versions and plugins needed. Contact us today!

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Keyword Research for Website SEO

Keyword research for SEO is where you research the terms people type into search engines when looking for resources similar to your site. Once you know what these keywords are, you can incorporate them into your website content. Do this consistently, and your site will rank for the keywords and keyword phrases on search engine result pages.

But if you’re using the wrong keywords, no matter how much you stuff your content you’ll still not reach your intended audience. This is why it’s necessary to do keyword research. All your subsequent efforts are useless if your keywords aren’t targeted enough.

Specific vs. General

General terms are more popular, which makes them more competitive and expensive. Let’s say you have a law firm in Newport, RI specializing in divorce, and you want its site rank better in the search engine results.

Type in divorce lawyer on Google and you’ll get almost 90 million hits. To get on the first page for that term will take considerable time, money, and effort. And even if you have the resources to get on the first page, how much good will it do? People looking for divorce lawyers in cities other than Newport will leave your site as soon as they realize it’s not what they need. And your site will have a higher bounce rate.

But type in divorce lawyers Newport RI free consultation and you’ll get less than 120,000 search results. With fewer competitors, you can focus on that specific term and get good results in shorter time on a smaller budget. Also, people who visit your site are part of your target market.

In SEO, these specific terms are called long tail keywords. These are targeted to people who are about to make a purchase, or who know more exactly what they want. When someone uses a very specific term, they’re no longer just looking around. There’s a huge chance they already know what they want and are ready to buy or are motivated to learn more.

Tools at Your Disposal

Luckily, you don’t have to guess which long tail keywords perform well. There are several tools I suggest, BuzzSumo, Übersuggest, Ahrefs, and Blog About by Impact.

On Buzzsumo, you can enter any topic, and the tool will analyze what content performs best for that. It displays links to content containing the keyword you supplied, then lists statistics on its Facebook engagement, and also LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ shares.

For Übersuggest, you can type in a term and choose categories (web, images, etc.) and country. It then gives you an extensive list of longtail keyword based on the term you supplied.

If you’re looking for articles ideas based on the keywords you gathered from the first two tools, there’s Blog About, a blog title generator. Input any keyword, and the tool will display some suggested titles and email you the rest.

Put yourself in your targeted audience’s shoes. If you were in their place, what keywords would you use to find what you’re looking for? That’s a very good place to start.

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New Website Checklist: Make Sure Your SEO is Done Before You Launch

You want to make sure your new website looks good and works well. That means no dead links, no blank pages, and no overlooked bugs. But beyond the form and function, there’s another element you need to look at, and that’s SEO.

And in light of Google’s move to prioritize mobile websites, it’s all the more reason for you to assess your website’s SEO-readiness against this checklist:

Domain and host

Does your host web host have a record of major downtimes? A web hosting server with a negative history will hurt your website’s future reputation.

An unreliable host will affect your website’s availability. It’s advisable to use a unique and never-used by someone else domain name, along with a dependable web host known for excellent uptime.
Keyword list

Good copy will make your site rank well on search engines, but it’ll perform much better if you incorporate the right keywords relevant to your industry or niche.

For a new website, it’s wise to go after long-tail keywords because they’re less competitive. In addition, these keywords will help you target specific audiences who are looking for exactly what you’re offering. A great source to look at keywords is www.buzzsumo.com.
Design Theme

Themes are not just about aesthetics. Some design themes are SEO-friendly, some aren’t. To ensure your design is SEO-friendly, it should have clean code on the developer’s side and a modern flow on the user’s side. It should also be responsive for mobile and tablet devices, and quick to load; otherwise, your bounce rate will go up.

Most importantly overall, it should work well on mobile devices. Many people prefer to use their tablets and smartphones as their primary computing tool. Make the browsing experience on smaller screens pleasant and easy. Google cares, so you need to as well!
SEO Tools and Plugins

SEO plugins are simple to add and use, so take advantage of their power in your site. Different SEO tools have different functions, such as LinkPatrol to track and clean up links, and Keyword Tool to find out what keywords your target audience is using to find you. If your site is WordPress add Yoast SEO because it handles both technical and content optimization.
Content

Content is still king, but only if it’s presented right. Gone are the days when you can post short, fluffy content and expect your website to rank. Now, long-form content is a better option because it leads to higher conversions and better page rank. Of course, you don’t have to fill every page with detailed content. Just focus on pages you want to rank and don’t exhaust all your efforts. Some pages aren’t designed to rank anyway, like landing pages.
Photos

You can help your photos appear in the image search results by filling in the metadata fields with relevant alt text. If you already have a focus keyword, add that as well as long as it ties in with the photos. Then set a suitable featured image for every page so that if someone shares it on social media, the thumbnail on the preview will look engaging enough to warrant a click.

These are just some of the things on your SEO checklist, but they’re enough to get you started on the right path. And remember, SEO is an ongoing process. You have to continue working on it long after your website has launched.

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Is Your Website Secure?

The only constant about the Internet is that it’s always changing. Web standards evolve over time, which demand new best practices businesses need to address. Older sites that fail to adapt to these changes find themselves extremely vulnerable to malware and security exploits.

You can never reach a 100% secure site, as zero-day exploits and sophisticated attacks can be difficult to predict and protect against. However, regularly reviewing and updating the measures you have in place will mitigate the risk from the most common vulnerabilities.

The IRS, Yahoo! and the Department of Justice are a few of the many organizations which had security breaches in 2016. Take a proactive approach in handling your website security to have the best chances of avoiding a costly intrusion.

Here are a few of the most common factors that create a vulnerable website:

The website’s age: Typically, a company doesn’t go back and completely revamp the website’s coding as it gets older. As web standards change, old code gains security holes that hackers can use to gain access to sensitive resources.

Security updates: Your website needs proactive checks and updates to keep it strong against the latest security problems. If you only look into security after you have a breach or run into another issue, it’s too late.

A common trap that website owners fall into is relying entirely on SSL technology to keep data safe. While it’s effective at encrypting the information that’s transmitted to and from the website, it doesn’t cover every vulnerability point.

A good rule of thumb is upgrading to a new website every 4 years. This brings your site up to current web protocols for programming and security standards, and it allows you to modernize your code to better serve your website visitors.

These security strategies aren’t fool-proof, as any size business runs the risk of getting hacked, but they help.

Digital Hill offers a security review that checks web standards, provides monitoring for website vulnerabilities and fixes security loopholes that hackers love. These services cover an hour of work as well as basic updates. Any additional services are available at a 25% discount. The age of your site determines the overall cost. The goal is to guarantee your site is using the latest security protocols as they develop.

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Online Calendar Booking Tools

Scheduling meetings or paid appointments can be one of the most tedious and frustrating tasks in your business life, particularly with a lot of emails back and forth sharing dates and times blindly. Thankfully, these days there are much better options available to simplify this task.

Let’s dive into a few key online calendar booking tools:

Calendly

Features include the ability to integrate your calendars with iCloud or Office 365. Calendly can be used anywhere – it’s cloud-based and can be used on any device including your phone, desktop PC, and tablet. It gives your whole team the ability to display their availability. Specific features include:

30 Day Calendar Integration
Simple, Modern Interface
Fully Optimized for all Devices
Notifications
Retain Privacy and Control
Team Scheduling
Group Events
Works the Way your Invitees Do
Speedy, Helpful Email Support

You can use Calendly free for 14 days, and it has a freemium option after the trial. Or upgrade to the premium option at $8 a month. For more options and features, you may need the Pro which is $12 a month. It includes everything but the kitchen sink, from calendar integration to personalized links as well as metrics based reporting.

YouCanBook.Me

YouCanBook.Me is one of the more popular websites to use for scheduling. Some of the most notable “brands” that use them include Uber, User testing, and Shopify. The two have very similar features and support. One features that differentiates YouCanBook.Me from Calendly is that it can be integrated with connecting tool Zapier to allow for more integrations with additional tools you might use. Specific features include:

Embed your booking page on your website
Share your booking page online
Confirmations
Take credit card payments for paid appointments
Upload logos and images
Control how your google calendar events look
Use iCloud with YouCanBook.me
Send your notification emails via your Gmail
Mail merge style text substitution
Fixed start and end dates
Integrate directly with Google or Apple calendars
Shorthand codes
Minimum / maximum advance notice to book
Get your own reminders for your bookings
Mobile friendly grids
Different length appointments
SMS / text messages
Set the schedule for the week
Configurable booking forms
Cancellations and rescheduling
Custom booking URL

YouCanBook.Me also has 3 payment plans, monthly for $10, yearly for $108 and 2 years for $192 per calendar, which is a 20% discount.

Acuity Scheduling

This scheduling tool sends out notifications when a new appointment is booked, canceled or even if someone is going to be late, but this one also integrates with many more apps and sites than the first two. Integrations include; Stripe, Square, PayPal, Zappier, API, Quickbooks, Xero, Aweber and even WordPress.

Client self-scheduling
Advertise unlimited services and appointments
Handy text message notifications
Worldwide text message notifications
Use your logo
Customize with your company colors
Edit all app text so it sounds just like you
Automatic time zone conversion
Automatic reminder emails

This is a really robust app, but the paid options are geared towards larger businesses and corporations, rather than home-based or small businesses. They do have a free option with limited features. A $10 a month option for just you in one location. The Growing Business Plan is $19 a month for 6 people in different locations and has an SMS feature. The largest plan is $34 a month, gives you the ability to include 36 people on the account.

Doodle

Doodle is a good option for any business, small or large. Like the other programs above, it has full integration, can send out automatic reminders and notifications when someone cancels or makes a new appointment.

Easy scheduling
Connect your calendar
Send automatic reminders
See who is missing
Request additional information
End-to-end SSL encryption
Ads-free
Custom design
Custom subdomain
User management

Doodle is a little more expensive than the other options, but they have a free option. Free for one user; this will be enough for people that want to keep track of their own personal appointments, meetings, etc. The Private option is $39 a year, it does have more features, but you can still only use it for 1 person. The Business option is $69 a year, for business, and you can add more people to the account. However, the cost also goes up significantly.

Booking calendars can practically eliminate the tedious back and forth of booking meetings and appointments. Reduce frustration for you and your customers and try one out.

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What Google’s New Pixel Phone will do for Mobile SEO

Google’s new voice search platform, Google assistant, is an integral part of the new Google Pixel. Learn how voice search is leading the evolution in mobile SEO.

Google made a big splash recently with their new smartphone announcement, the Google Pixel. It’s Google’s first foray into the smartphone market since the introduction of their Nexus mobile line, and it looks like things are going well for the search giant.

Apple’s smartphone market share is stagnating, and initial reviews of the Pixel are positive.

Journalists seem especially impressed with the introduction of Google’s new voice-assisted search platform, Google assistant. Google assistant is set to take over for Google Now on Google’s newly released Android 7.0, Nougat. It grabbed our attention, mainly because Google Now was no slouch.

Voice-Assisted Search Platform

Google looks to be going all in on voice search, and rightly so. Google’s own data shows 55 percent of teens and 41 percent of adults use voice search more than once a day.

With Apple pushing their Siri assistant, and Amazon always improving their Alexa, Google is capitalizing on a thriving market.

We for one, are looking forward to the move towards voice search, but we do have our reservations. Voice search is undoubtedly going to change the face of mobile SEO. How exactly, isn’t understood yet. Though, we can speculate. Let’s break down what we know so far about Google assistant’s effect on mobile SEO.

Voice Search ≠ Text Search

Voice assistants will change the way Internet searches are conducted. The nature of a voice search is often local and phrased differently than a text search. For example, the phrase, “I’m looking for some food” will return positive results in a voice search.

In a text search, however, location data isn’t included, and the same phrase returns general results that aren’t even related to restaurants.

Tailoring your keywords to speech phrasing and pinpointed location is likely to become an important part of mobile SEO in the near future.

Google has already revealed through their Possum update, that location data is going to become more and more important in search results. We expect Google used the update in part to give SEO marketers the nod towards location-based keywords to cater towards voice search.

Keeping it Simple

SEO comes down to identifying what users are searching for. If you can appear in those results, you can sell your product or service. Voice search users are searching local.

Bing data found that close to half of voice searches have local intent. While these results don’t include Google, it’s safe to assume consumer search intent doesn’t vary much across platforms.

The answer to targeting voice assistant users is obvious, stay local.

Google maintains a database called Google My Business that allows local businesses to provide Google with basic information. Google assistant pulls information from the database, combines it with GPS information, and uses the results to answer search queries.

Adding your information to Google My Business makes sure Google assistant has the information it needs to recommend your business.

What’s good for Google is good for your SEO.

Are Paid Search Results Finally Dying?

Everyone knows about the paid results that appear at the top of every Google search. But will this concept translate to voice? We hope not.

Google assistant aims to act like a human being. It wants to answer our questions in a conversational tone, giving us an answer, rather than a list. This means one answer per search query.

If paid search results appear in Google voice searches, we wonder, what’s to stop companies from buying their way into search results? Paid voice search results are something to keep a keen eye on. They hold the power to completely shift mobile SEO away from organic traffic.

Voice search is here to stay. The next few years are going to have a significant impact on mobile SEO, as marketers gain more first-hand experience with Google assistant. Mobile SEO never sleeps, and it’s up marketers and their clients to stay one step ahead of the competition.

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PDF Creator: Advanced Website Software Tool

Many industries use PDF’s for marketing and sales. Companies like Ikea use PDF’s for instruction on furniture construction. Businesses that work with statistics and measurements like financial advisors and end of year reports are frequently created in PDF form for easy reading and delivery. While this file format has many advantages, they’re not easy to customize. How much more information and education could you give your customers if your PDF’s were easy to create and customize on a larger scale?

What is PDF Creator

The PDF Creator is an easy to use PDF customization tool created in this case specifically for a client in the financial advisory industry that wanted to make customized materials available to thousands of advisors nationwide. In just a few simple steps you can load any existing PDF, add new content like a logo, advisor profile photo, and company data, and create an entirely new, customized PDF. If multiple locations want their own customized and branded copy of the PDF, select their name from the list and add them. Here’s how it works.

Using PDF Creator

The first thing you see when you log into PDF Creator is an intuitive dashboard with three sections:

Recent PDFs / Upload PDF’s
Jobs Queued
PDFs Created

You get a good overview of your activities in this panel. Add a location or salesperson/advisor and company data by filling out form fields like their name, profile picture, website, and email. Anything you want on a customized PDF is available. Add disclosure statements for FINRA compliance. Each advisor/salesperson can be uploaded into the system with their customized data and profile photo.

Next, load the existing PDF into the system. You can even categorize them. When you want to customize a PDF, you open it in the dashboard tool. Drag and drop data fields anywhere on the document to add info. Font styles, size, and colors are all customizable as well.

Saving, Customizing, and Distributing

Once you have everything positioned perfectly, save the PDF. When you want to use it, click on the PDF Library and add it to the job queue. Jobs can contain multiple PDF’s if you want to customize several documents for the same set of advisors. Choose the people you’re customizing for and save that list. Preview the customization and make any changes, such as repositioning your fields or adding new ones.

Each PDF in the job queue gets customized for your advisor list, with an individual PDF file for each person. Hence, this mass production cuts out all the repetitive work associated with editing a PDF. You can download these documents in a zip file or email a unique link to each person/advisor through this tool.

PDF Creator is great for any industry with material that needs to be customized for lots of people. Have needs for an advanced web software tool like this that can build efficiencies and effectiveness for your business? Contact us to discuss today!

Content Marketing Made Easy: 14 Content Marketing Tools

Content Marketing works. It drives traffic to your site and social media pages, creates a reputation for you and your company, engages potential clients, up-sells existing clients, and hence converts leads into sales.

According to BitQuirky, 72% of digital marketers feel that well written, branded content is more effective than print advertising. They also agree that it costs 62% less than outbound marketing, and generates 3 times as many quality leads.

Producing quality content, relevant to your target audience, is crucial. But it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Here’s a list of our favorite websites, apps, and tools to help you.

14 Content Marketing Tools

Before you begin to write anything, you need to know to whom you’re aiming your content. Make My Persona can help with this.
Once you know who your content is intended for you could use HubSpot’s Topic Generator to plan a list of content or blog posts.
Content Row offers another good Topic Generator.
Now you know who you’re talking to and what you’ll talk about, you need to research what questions are asked about these subjects. Faqfox has a research tool to help with this.
The headline is the first thing your reader sees. It can be the difference between them reading further and clicking off. CoShedule’s Headline Analyzer can help you create headlines that get the attention of the reader.
Before you publish your content, check it for spelling and grammar. Grammarly is an online proofreading tool. If you use Chrome for your browser, add it to your browser to check grammar directly on your website.
Once you have everything written and ready to post you can keep it organized and scheduled with Trello.
CoShedule has a useful marketing, social media calendar, and workflow management tool that integrates with WordPress.
To optimize your blog posts missinglett_r monitors your blog 24/7 and turns it into a drip marketing campaign.
Track your projects, share ideas with your team, schedule meetings, etc. with Asana.
Social Media requires a different approach. Looking for inspiration? Here are some helpful tools. Feedly gives you one place to read the news you’re interested in that gives you inspiration for your social media posts.
Found on Track helps you find user-generated content for Instagram.
Paper.li is an easy way to find content ideas.
Facebook has a little-known feature that allows you to ‘save’ content you find interesting so you can revisit it later.

Content writing is an art that can be learned and improved over time. Hopefully, these 14 content marketing tools will give you some ideas and help you produce quality copy to drive traffic to your site and convert leads into customers.

Migrating your Website from One Hosting Service to Another

New technologies make moving your site from one host to another much easier. However, regardless of how fast the transfer speed is, the typical customer may experience some degree of downtime during the transfer.

Depending on what is going on behind the scenes, the transfer process of DNS servers between the new and old web hosts can result in a domain “propagating” or going dark between 12 to 72 hours after the change request is submitted to the new host.

However, before you can plan your web hosting provider move, it’s essential to find the right service for the job. Look for a web host that gives you the service you want and need.

The Value of Quality Web Hosting

When you own a business, your number one priority is to make sure customers can find you when searching for what you have to offer. If your web hosting provider is sub-par, you won’t be found. This typically doesn’t have anything to do with your search engine rank, but because your site is down too often. Dirt cheap hosting is exactly the quality of the price. Be careful with the low price options!

When a site is down, it means it has fallen into the abyss of web server issues. Until your hosting service gets the server back online, no one can access the website – this is big trouble! Many times cheap providers host hundreds of sites on one server. If one of them is compromised it can take the whole server down and every site that is on that server!

The Cost of Excessive Downtime

When your site is down often, even if it’s only for short periods of time, you are losing money. You’re paying for web hosting services you aren’t receiving, and your customers are unable to find you and contact you online. If they’re looking for your services or products, they are instead going to find your competition. If they’re trying to make an online purchase now, they are going to visit a site that is up and functioning properly. As well, it will increase your customer service calls with frustrated clients rather than one’s ready to buy!

When searching for a web hosting provider, it’s essential to ask about their uptime track record. If they have 98-99% uptime, then you’ve found a good provider. However, if the web hosting company makes excuses for downtime issues, you need to look elsewhere.

Excellent Customer Service

While having a maximum amount of uptime for your website is a top priority, it’s simply not possible all of the time – regardless of claims made by a provider. While any downtime is a problem, you need to be able to contact a person when an issue arises. Regardless if the problem happens at 3 in the afternoon or 6 in the morning, having a real, live person to email and talk with to discuss solutions for the hosting issue is important. How will your host offer support?

Web hosting is not a new concept. However, you can’t choose just any provider. You have to put in time and effort to find the right web hosting service! Remember, not all hosting is created equal.

Stay Ahead of Hackers

What To Do Before You Update

How to Update WordPress

Specific vs. General

Tools at Your Disposal

Domain and host

Keyword list

Design Theme

SEO Tools and Plugins

Content

Photos

Here are a few of the most common factors that create a vulnerable website:

Voice-Assisted Search Platform

Voice Search ≠ Text Search

Keeping it Simple

Are Paid Search Results Finally Dying?

What is PDF Creator

Using PDF Creator

Saving, Customizing, and Distributing

14 Content Marketing Tools

The Value of Quality Web Hosting

The Cost of Excessive Downtime

Excellent Customer Service