Evan Hoeflich, Author at

Bloggers: Improve Your Productivity by Improving Your Work Environment

October 24, 2018 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

Being a blogger is super-exciting – you get to write about numerous cool topics that you are interested in and often have a chance to choose whether you want to do your job from the comfort of your own home or an office. However, since creativity is your main tool, you need to put a lot of effort into nurturing it and your work environment can have a strong impact on it. Therefore, we are now discussing different tips and tricks for improving your productivity by upgrading your work environment.

Let’s take a look.

Don’t let technology distract you

First things first, in business and life, technology can be your best friend and worst enemy. So, it’s crucial to learn how to make good use of all those fun gadgets and apps without letting them distract you and have a negative impact on your productivity. For instance, try to keep your phone on silent and flip it upside down. This way, you won’t check it every five minutes when the screen lights up and this will help you to stay focused much longer. Additionally, you may like playing video games when taking a break, but you can’t have your PlayStation in the office since it will pose a huge temptation and encourage you to slack off.

Let the light in

There is nothing worse than working in a poorly-lit room since your brain naturally shuts off due to the lack of light and you can easily end up suffering from serious headaches. Therefore, you should immediately open up your curtains and let the sunshine in. Just make sure to turn your computer screen in the opposite direction so that you aren’t annoyed by the reflections. Furthermore, you need to invest in a quality table lamp since a ceiling light is often not enough and if it’s behind your back, it will just cast shadows all over your work surface. Lastly, remember that apart from making your office comfy, it will be helpful to create daily and monthly plans and to start every day by completing the most challenging tasks first. This will be extremely stimulating and help you finish all your work successfully.

Improve the air quality

Having to deal with pesky allergens while writing can be extremely hard and significantly hinder your performance. Therefore, it’s crucial to start working on improving the air quality immediately. You can begin by airing out your office regularly and bringing in some greenery as well. All those different potted flowers and exotic dwarf trees will serve as great decoration and enrich your air with oxygen. Additionally, opting for a quality HEPA air purifier will definitely make your life much easier. Owing to it, you won’t have to worry about dust, pollen, mildew and odours ever again.

Bring in comfy furniture

No matter whether you work from home or an office, you need to pamper yourself with a cozy chair which will provide enough support for your back and allow you to sit longer in one position. This is also very stimulating for those bloggers who work from home since having a real office chair can help them get in the right work mood instead of just spending time in a laidback environment that will spoil their creativity and readiness to give their 100%. On top of that, investing in a height-adjustable desk would be a super-smart solution, especially if you are a tall person who usually has to sit hunched over their laptop all the time. You can even try out a standing desk for a change, especially if you like brainstorming while moving around your office.

Add a personal touch

In order to be able to be fully productive, a person must feel relaxed and at peace. One of the best ways to achieve this is by adjusting your work environment and adding a personal touch to it. For instance, you can place a photo of your family on your desk, or hang some posters with your favorite natural scenery or a city skyline. This way, every time when you feel blue, you’ll have something to give you a boost of energy and help you continue your work.

Choose the right colors

Last but not least, colors can have a huge influence on our brain and help us stay focused and energized. Of course, these rules may differ from person to person, so it’s important to experiment with different tones until you discover what works best for you. In general, earthy shades are considered to have a calming effect on people, so if you function better in a peaceful atmosphere, think about painting your office in a nice light beige or mint green nuance. On the other hand, adding a few fiery elements can help you regain your energy and boost your imagination. In case you feel that you lack those, feel free to paint an orange accent wall or spice up your office look by introducing a few red accessories as well. Just try not to overdo it since too many bold shades can be extremely distracting and make it hard for you to stay concentrated and immersed in your work.

As you can see, improving your work environment can be fun and absolutely beneficial to your productivity. You just need to discover what suits you personally and not be afraid to go for it. After all, it’s better to invest in your office space now, then to let your work constantly suffer due to the lack of creativity and innovative ideas.

If you haven’t started your blog yet, what are you waiting for? You should take a look at this!

Blogging

Business Growth: Tools Every Company Can Use to Increase Business Opportunities

October 21, 2018 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

As a business owner, one of your missions is to look out for new opportunities to grow your company. However, most of us look outside the organization rather than inside. But what if you could actually start that growth from tools that you might already be using?

In this article, we’ll explore several tools that will not only improve your team’s productivity but also widen the window of opportunities for your business.

1. Pocket

It’s hard to resist the allure of Related Articles. One minute, you’re reading a piece about business strategy, and the next thing you know, you’re in a rabbit hole of articles which aren’t so related anymore.

We live in the age of distraction. Keep your eyes on the prize and learn how to block out distractions. Thankfully, there’s tools like Pocket which lets you save articles and pages that you can view later. Share this with your whole team, not because you want them to procrastinate, but because you understand that everyone has the capacity to get distracted. Pocket can be that friend that will help them keep those useful articles and documents for later.

2. Salesforce

Increase your sales team’s productivity with Salesforce. Using this tool, you give each team member the power to close deals like never before. Not just that, but Salesforce also allows you to manage your existing customers, partners, distributors, suppliers, and more. It also helps you keep track of your marketing efforts from a wide variety of platforms including web, social media, mobile, and email. Use it alongside an inventory software so you can keep track of every team member’s sale and item that you sell. Whatever size your business may be, you can definitely benefit from Salesforce.

3.SurveyMonkey

Surveys are not dead yet. In fact, they are much easier to conduct now with the help of technology. Send surveys to your customers and prospects and find out how your business is doing. Using SurveyMonkey, formulate questions that get to the heart of the issue and find out the best ways to improve your business. You will be amazed by the insights you gain straight from your customer’s mouth.

4. Sprout Social

Manage your social media with ease and find new prospects for your business using Sprout Social. It goes beyond collecting data as it helps you create real connections with people who already love your brand. Being a social marketer becomes easy when you can effortlessly view the progress of your efforts in one clean dashboard.

5. Crazy Egg

Google Analytics only gives you so much information about your site. Take it a step further by finding out how your website visitors are interacting with each page. Using Crazy Egg, you can get a heatmap that shows where your visitor’s mouse are hovering and clicking when they visit your website. This gives you a good idea of what elements in your website attracts your customer the most, and which ones don’t. You can then optimize your pages accordingly making sure each part serves a purpose to the user.

6. MailChimp

Take advantage of your list with the help of an email marketing tool like ConvertKit. It goes beyond emails and lets you create elaborate drip campaigns tailored to each customer. Segment persons based on factors of your choosing, send them targeted messages, and increase your opportunities for sales.

7. Unitrends

Before any kind of unexpected disaster happens, your business should already have a data recovery plan. This is when you plan for the worst and ensure that all your information is stored somewhere that you can access later should anything happen.

Unitrends is a backup and recovery service that allows you to secure your company’s most important data. In this day and age where almost everything runs on big data, it’s essential that your business is able to retrieve its assets even after a disaster or accident has occurred..

8. Office 365

A product of Microsoft, Office 365 lets you perform your company’s most important tasks in one platform, whether it’s email, file sharing, or online conferences. No need to switch back and forth between different office tools when you can access it all in one interface.

Which of these tools are you already using? Do you have others that you can recommend? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Author Bio:

Damien Clarke…Born and raised in an urban lifestyle of Johannesburg. I traveled around a bit, exploring South East Asia, Canada, Mauritius, and a few other wondrous places. My passion for writing is only overridden by my wanderlust. Finally, settling down in Cape Town, South Africa and making a living doing something I truly am in love with. I specialize in travel, technology, B2B, and fitness articles with a bit of leisure on the side.

Business

Blogging Report (September 2018) – Nice Bounce Back After Google’s August Algorithm Update

October 15, 2018 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

Blogging Report (September 2018)

So if you read my August blogging report by any chance, you know that Google rolled out a core algorithm update which actually caused some shake up for many webmasters.

I also saw a slight dip in organic traffic myself (month-over-month)…Nothing dramatic, but enough to make me take some strategic action in September.

Just to re-iterate, Google does multiple core updates throughout the year, but this one seemed to be a bit more impactful than normal.

I combated some of these organic traffic fluctuations by publishing 7 quality blog posts in September.

A few of these were my own and a few were guest posts written for my website by other bloggers/content specialists.

Being consistent with your content generation efforts despite what is going on in the SEO landscape never hurts.

That was my big push for September to rebound from the month-over-month decreases I saw in organic traffic.

There was other SEO work I put in place as well which we will discuss briefly below.

For now, let’s get into some of the traffic data for September 2018.

Organic Traffic (September 2018)- 155 Visits

I was happy with my organic traffic in September considering I saw a rebound when comparing it to the month prior.

You’ll also see below that it’s up 761.11% when comparing year-over-year!

Organic traffic came in at 155 search visits in September.

Let’s look at a few more metrics:

Month-Over-Month Increases

Organic traffic is up 14.81% when comparing month-over-month (155 vs. 135).

Year-Over-Year Increases

Organic traffic is up 761.11% when comparing year-over-year (155 vs. 18).

The blue line in the chart above highlights this year’s data and the orange line highlights last year’s data.

These year-over-year increases are really solid and to think that I’ve grown my organic traffic by 761% in just 12 months is fantastic.

Now we are still dealing with small numbers and I’m aware of that, but regardless this is still substantial growth.

Income (September 2018) – Just under $3K

I don’t generally report on income on my blog, but it may be worthwhile to do so moving forward.

And also, September was a profitable month for me, especially considering I only had 155 organic visits to my website.

Total income came in at just under $3,000.

The bulk of this was from a high-ticket affiliate sale and the rest was a combination of sales for my email advertising business and lower priced affiliate products.

The best part about this is that, these were organic sales…meaning these people found my website through Google search.

This goes to show you just how important SEO and generating laser targeted traffic is.

It also demonstrates the power behind blogging and passive income. I put in the work up front, and now my website works for me 24/7 while I’m free to do other things.

Work Completed In September 2018

To help produce this kind of traffic growth, I pushed both the content generation and link building work hard in September.

I also did some routine SEO maintenance to clean up any technical errors.

Below is a quick list of what I accomplished.

I published 7 blog posts to my website in September.
I wrote 2-3 guest posts for other authoritative websites in my niche…These all contained a link back to my website.
I cleaned up a handful of 404 errors (broken links) by them to the closest relevant page.
I also fixed a few unnecessary redirect chains.
I networked with another popular blogger in my niche and was featured on his website and also obtained a backlink from that relationship.

In order to build upon this momentum, in October I’ll be publishing more quality content, building additional quality backlinks and continue to network with other authoritative bloggers.

I am also working on a new funnel for my website, which will be part of the workload in October.

To sum everything up, once you get to a certain point with your website, the on-going focus should really be new content in combination with link building.

This one-two punch is incredibly effective when it comes to generating more traffic and gaining more exposure within the search engines.

It’s not always super exciting but it works.

You can see the video version of this blog post here.

Please also make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can follow my progress.

How have your results for your blog been?

Are you seeing success with any specific strategies?

Blogging Reports

5 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Know

October 14, 2018 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

A lot of people tend to oversimplify the idea of owning your own business in order to make it more appealing as if it weren’t already. Provided that they already work in the field in which they want to start an independent business, they assume that they’ll automatically know what to do on their own. This, nonetheless, isn’t necessarily true. You see, there are several entrepreneurial secrets that you might not have heard so far. Here are five of them.

Income and cash flow are not one and the same

The first thing we need to clarify is the fact that while your business may be doing great on paper, you might still experience some cash problems for a prolonged period of time. This is due to the fact that most of your clients may be using the credit payments method and these account receivables just aren’t coming fast enough. To avoid this from becoming a problem, you should dedicate yourself to the issue of cash flow. Incentivizing cash payments is one way to do so, whereas selling some of these invoices might be a great temporary solution.

Doing what you love is not enough

Don’t get us wrong, having a passion for something that you do is great, however, it’s not necessarily enough. Unless you pick a niche that’s profitable enough, you risk entering into a business world under unfavorable conditions. Think about it, how long are you likely to love doing something that’s losing you money? On the other hand, if you’re too passionate about something, it might become quite hard to look at the thing objectively.

Keep things in writing

You wouldn’t believe just how hard it is to keep track of all things that take place around you once you become an entrepreneur. In the early stages of your business, the workload might not be that great, which is why it might seem easy to keep all the promises that you’ve given to your clients and employees.

The problem is that this creates a habit of trying to memorize things you don’t have to. To make the matters worse, this will make you stick to this technique long after it’s no longer possible for you to keep track of everything on your own. Instead, try typing everything that goes around or even take a more traditional approach by getting a planner and/or journal.

A mentor can be indispensable

There’s only so much you can learn from guides, manuals and courses – the rest comes down to experience. Now, due to the fact that 8 out of 10 small businesses fail, it becomes more than clear that the trial and error methodology might not be the safest route for you to take. This is where a mentor can come in handy. By advising you on what to do in any given situation, you can get a more efficient way of reacting to the new set of circumstances.

Never stop learning

They say that it takes doing something for about 10,000 hours in order to master it. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the business world is incredibly volatile, which means that in just a couple of years, you might end up sitting on a ton of outdated data, skills and business practices. For this reason, you can never afford to put a halt to your learning process. Courses, seminars and various online learning resources are a great source of knowledge. Still, the bulk of it needs to come from experience.

Apart from these general tips, there are also some industry-related secrets that you may have to figure out on your own or learn from your mentor. Either way, the very knowledge of these five secrets may substantially improve your chances of making it where most others fail. As the last, unofficial, piece of advice, you need to arm yourself with patience. So many entrepreneurs stray from the right path simply because they aren’t seeing results fast enough. Perseverance is the name of the game.

Author Bio:

Diana Smith is a full time mom of two beautiful girls interested in topics related to finances and latest business technologies. In her free time she enjoys exercising and preparing healthy meals for her family.

Were these hints helpful?

Entrepreneur

How to Manage a Remote Team for a Fast-Growing Digital Business

October 11, 2018 Evan Hoeflich 2 comments

With the dawn of the digital age, more and more aspiring entrepreneurs are abandoning the old brick-and-mortar business models in search of online business success, and for a good number of reasons at that. Not only does leading a digital business eliminate overhead costs associated with running a company, but most importantly, it opens up a world of networking opportunities – it allows you to tap into the global talent pool and hire the best of the best in the industry.

However, managing a remote team is not an easy task, especially for a fast-growing company. There are numerous risks and common pitfalls of remote team management you should be wary of, so let’s take a look at the five effective ways to lead a digital workforce that will propel your brand forward.

The importance of honesty and transparency

The millennial workforce is not easy to please, and if there is anything modern employees won’t tolerate in their work environment, it’s dishonesty. A surefire way for your team members to leave you high and dry in the most crucial of times is to keep them in the dark, demanding that they do their job without asking too many questions.

This is a red flag for the modern employee, and they will not hesitate to leave you in search of a company where they will feel appreciated. In order to avoid this, while building a strong, co-depended team, you want to set a foundation of honesty, transparency, and freedom of communication. This will also portray a trustworthy image of your brand, which is extremely important in the digital realm.

Make regular meetings a priority

Many online entrepreneurs and business leaders fall prey to one common pitfall when leading a remote team: unstructured face-time with their employees. While regular email communication is important, you should make regular face-to-face meetings with your team members a priority if you want to create a trustworthy bond, boost productivity, and resolve any issues promptly.

Meticulous team management through scheduled meetings should be one of the pillars of your growth strategy, and nowadays it’s easy to gather your employees in a single spot using a digital office space. With numerous video call apps at your disposal that can support numerous interlocutors at a time, you should have no problem leading productive weekly meetings with your team.

Emphasize workplace diversity

In the modern business world, workplace diversity is not just an option, it’s an imperative. Not only for the creation of a trustworthy brand image that the public will respect, but also for the creation of a crack team of professionals hailing from every corner of the world.

Remember, the best talent in the industry could be hiding anywhere, and you can find it through professional disability employment services, who are providers of skill training for people with disabilities. Companies like this help these people find a job and can get you in contact with some of the most skilled workers in your niche. By employing people from a variety of backgrounds and skill sets, you will be able to build a diversified team of professionals and uphold a reputation of a modern, trustworthy brand with a winning company culture.

Build a positive company culture

Having a strong company culture with clearly-defined values the employees and global audiences can relate to is extremely important in the modern digital world. Fortunately, you can easily build yours by defining your company’s values, putting them into context and communicating them with your employees, and just having fun in the workplace. Remember to avoid micromanaging your employees and to give them adequate autonomy over their work in order to build a company people actually enjoy being a part of – in turn, this will boost cohesion in the team.

Boost productivity with the right software

Last but not least, there can be no long-term productivity in a remote team without proper team-management software in place. A digital entrepreneur understands the importance of having workflow software on deck in order to monitor their team’s performance at all times, have a single platform where everyone can upload their work and communicate, and just act as a team working in a real office space. Couple such software with a strict work schedule and deadlines and you will have no problem keeping your team members in check.

Leading a remote team is definitely not an easy task in the modern business world, especially for a fast-growing company that needs the support of all its employees. By implementing these tactics, you should have no problem boosting productivity across the board and setting the stage for long-term success in the industry.

Author Bio:

Lauren Wiseman is an entrepreneur, currently based in Melbourne and a regular contributor to bizzmarkblog.com. She assists clients in growing their personal and professional brands in a fast-changing and demanding market environment. Covering finance and investment topics, Lauren strongly believes in holistic approach to business.

Do you lead a remote team?

If so, which strategies do you use to manage them?

Entrepreneur

4 Financial Tips All Business Owners Should Follow

September 28, 2018 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

How well does your business manage its finances?

If you’re like most business owners, you are always looking for areas where you can improve, and trying to find new ways of generating profit. But to achieve financial bliss for your company, there are some things you can’t overlook. Here are 4 essential business finance tips you should follow to manage, evaluate and improve the financial state of your business.

1. Crunch Your Numbers Regularly

When business owners don’t have a clear insight into the financial state of the company, they are unable to stay on top of how much cash is going in and out of the business. So, it’s important to keep your accounts and books in order from day one.

If you feel particularly financially inept, automate the process with bookkeeping software solutions like Quickbooks. The program is very simple and easy to use to manage overhead business expenses, record all transactions, send invoices and calculate returns.

If you have the capacity, you can also hire a bookkeeper, or put an outside bookkeeping firm on retainer. But, whether you do it yourself or you use someone else, make sure to regularly set aside enough time to complete these tasks and keep your business finances manageable.

2. Keep Track of Cash Flow

What business owners fail to realize is that their cash flow can change every quarter. When it comes to revenue streams, a business can experience major spikes and significant losses in just two quarters depending on their industry.

For example, if your company manufactures swimwear, you can expect a surge in business during Q2 and Q3 (from April to October). For accounting businesses, they generally see a significant increase during tax season.

In order to manage finances effectively, you will also need to understand how sales cycles affect your business. If you do most of your work B2B, your sales cycle can last a few months. It’s necessary then, to secure extra capital in your business accounts, so your business can operate at normal capacity during these periods.

3. Invest Your Earnings

A business has to reinvest its earnings to be able to achieve growth and become successful. Having a zero balance on your accounts isn’t a bad thing, because you are investing profit in key areas of your business process to scale it and expand your operations. It’s a much better option than piling up cash because at one point it will become unsustainable since you won’t be able to keep up with demand.

However, business owners have to make smart financial investments to keep their business afloat. This means monitoring the financial market, keeping track of gold price and its effect on currency, and realizing what areas of the business process can bring the most significant financial gains.

For example, if you want to increase sales, investing in market research is a great way to discover an untapped market which can be exploited. Or, you can increase the marketing budget of your company and attract more customers by improving brand awareness.

It’s never to early to start investing. Invest in just one or two areas, check the performance and progress, and if one investment doesn’t start bringing in returns after six months scrap it and start over.

4. Pay Taxes on Time

Paying taxes on time is an important aspect of maintaining a good financial balance for your business. It can help you secure business loans and stay on good terms with the IRS, not to mention the possibility of claiming a tax deduction.

Hiring a tax professional to take care of all your federal and state taxes ahead of time is a great way to ensure your business doesn’t get fined and comes with a lot of benefits. Among other things, your business will improve its credit rating, get a smaller tax bill, and become more eligible for various government subsidies.

Use these financial tips to help your business achieve a positive balance. Stay on top of cash flow, pay taxes on time, and invest your profits in various key areas that can help your business grow. That’s all your business needs for financial health and future success.

Author Bio:

Are you currently using any of these tips?

Business

Six Most Dangerous SEO Techniques to Avoid

September 26, 2018 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

The practice of SEO is quite common among business owners today, even though very few frequently re-evaluate their SEO strategies.

Tactics that might have worked in the past may not yield any positive results today. Several practices of SEO might attract you unmerited penalties from search engines, and compromise your ranking in the SERPs. The following are six of the most dangerous SEO techniques that you should avoid in 2018:

Unnatural links

Most webmasters understand the importance of link building when it comes to attaining higher search engine rankings and increasing organic traffic. However, the links you build to your website must be of the highest quality, and from legitimate sources.

Unnatural links generally involve stuffing backlinks bought from illegal websites. These are incredibly spammy and low quality links that can really negatively impact your SEO. Some webmasters take the extra initiative of hiding the links so that the audiences do not see them. Whichever way, Google and other search engines have become stricter in observation of these types of practices, and are known to heavily penalize websites that engage in this behavior.

Keyword stuffing

It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of using identified keywords with the aim of reaching as many people as possible by ranking at the top of the search engines. However, like unnatural links, keyword stuffing is distasteful to search engines, not to mention, audiences.

Overusing key terms in your copy not only looks like you are trying too hard to make your article relevant but it also makes your content look poorly-researched and untrustworthy. Instead, you can determine various positions to use your keywords, like titles, metadata, image captions and descriptions, and strategically within the copy.

Further, you want to opt for long-term keywords, not only for the fact that they are more descriptive but also in the way they help in minimizing cases of keyword stuffing.

Unpleasant interstitial ads

Truthfully, pop-up ads can be very annoying, especially to mobile site users who have a small screen surface to work with. Even though ads are an income strategy for websites, it is wise to cut down on unpleasant interstitial ads.

Most people using the internet fret from sites heavily mounted with ads in the fear of catching a virus or attracting hackers to their devices and accounts. Therefore, the wrong use of unpleasant adds increase your bounce-rate, which equates to the rate at which people exit your website after a visit.

If you must use ads, assign them to a small portion of your website, in such a way that the user has enough room to keep scrolling on content that interests them. Remember you should also be keen to ensure a smooth and pleasant user experience, including optimizing page load speed.

Duplicate content

Since there is a high value for content in terms of SEO, it tends to get overwhelming for website owners to constantly develop high-quality and exciting content. As the pressure mounts, it is common for webmasters to generate duplicate content, sometimes similar to previous information on their websites, and other times similar to other content owners.

Either way, Google finds this as a way to manipulate search rankings, and this will directly impact your organic results. In fact, if you check the keyword rank tracker at serpbook.com, Google displays the original content as the source of information, which means the duplicate material may not make it to the SERP.

Furthermore, you risk landing into copyright issues for the reasons of plagiarism and stand the chance of tainting your reputation online. Aim to increase the quantity of content your share by working to remain consistent with your posting frequency, and also, ensure you stick close to originality, with a flair for your brand’s identity.

Article spinning

In a bid to run away from duplicate content, webmasters indulge in article spinning, which is a black hat SEO practice. The idea here is to manipulate a piece of work to come up with a rewritten piece of content that seems to be different from the original one, to impress search engines.

The truth of the matter is, search engines love fresh content, and article spinning is stale and can get your websites flagged as spam, or otherwise penalized on SERP. Also, the use of article spinning software produces low-quality content that is an unreadable version of the original content.

Remember, whether you change the terms and phrases used in a copy to generate a different article or duplicate it as it is, it passes out the same idea, and this does not add any value to your target audience.

Comment spamming on blogs

Commenting on other people’s websites is a great way to remain relevant online, increase your brand’s visibility, form relationships with other webmasters, as well as increase audience engagement. However, comment spamming is a technique that webmasters use to build up a comment section with feedback and links pointing back to their websites, which is a means to manipulate their search rankings.

Today, Google has changed its algorithm to punish such acts. The translation here is that the comments you post on blogs should be informative and value-adding, instead of generic messages. If correctly done, it can be an ideal source of backlinks (although no-follow), therefore, avoid unevaluable comments like ‘great post.’

The practice of SEO is one that is engaging and demanding of commitment to put up with the continuity of bettering your website. However, you must tread carefully when operating online, because your reputation is always at stake, and the internet never forgets.

Author Bio

Maycon Diniz Lopes is the content manager of Serpbook. Serpbook is an online platform that gives you information about everything you need to monitor, automate and report on your keyword rankings. It also provides you with local and global SEO rank tracking in real time for Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Are you engaging in any of these harmful SEO strategies?

5 Actionable Tips to Increase Your Conversion Rates

September 22, 2018 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

A business runs on sales. It’s one thing to have a website that generates high volumes of traffic and leads, but unless those visits convert into sales, all your efforts are useless.

The conversion rate is also important because it allows your business to grow. Without a steady revenue stream, you can’t invest and scale the company. You won’t be able to support your day-to-day operations, as the business starts spending more money than it brings in.

Luckily, there are ways you can avoid that scenario, and it all starts with improving conversions. And to help you do just that, here are five tips you can use to boost your conversion rates right away.

1. Determine Current Conversion

First off, you will need to calculate the current conversion rate of your business venture. Use analytics tools to find out how much traffic flow passes through your channels, and compare them to overall sales and marketing spending.

Once you have calculated the conversion rate of each channel, you can evaluate them and see what works and where there is room to improve your efforts. It is a good starting point to have, which allows you to monitor the performance of all future strategies.

2. Focus on the Customer

Next, it’s time to check the approval ratings, or what customers think about your brand, products, and services. This an important step to attract leads and convert them into sales, because you also find out where you can improve and give customers what they really want.

Despite the popularity of the inbound marketing methodology, companies still remarkably fail at making their customers the center of their businesses and continue doing the opposite. Listen to your customers, send out evaluation forms and surveys, interview customers and let them review your business.

Once you hear what they have to say, you can make changes to any aspect of the business process most of your customers see as a major deal breaker. However, this doesn’t mean you should neglect your achievements.

3. Promote Success

People want to associate themselves with success. Consumers are wired to buy from exclusive brands, because they are attracted to their success, and believe that by simply owning a product or using a service some of that success will rub off on them.

In fact, a business coach suggests that amplifying business results leads to an increase in sales, but also allows you to scale your operations. So, if you want to increase conversion, a good strategy is to make your leads aware of achievements and success stories from inside the company.

4. Create Customer Incentives

Incentivize, incentivize, incentivize. Time and time again, companies fail to motivate their customers to buy from them. You can have the best products or services in the world, but if you don’t present it as a good deal that adds value (and money in the pocket) your competitors will close more sales.

Strategic incentive programs, like seasonal and holiday sales, two-for-one and bundle offers, discounts and other deals can all help you generate more profit and increase conversion rates. Additionally, think about giveaways, coupons, or include free gifts with every purchase. In all likelihood, it will spark a wildfire of word-of-mouth, which will spread and encourage people to buy.

5. Fine Tune Design and Copy

Design and sales copy are the lethal weapons of marketing. Each one operates on psychology to triggers that target the desires and ambitions of the consumer. You will need to polish, test, and improve both if you are to boost conversion.

Hire an in-house designer and copywriter, or use the services of an experienced creative agency to engineer a clean, concise and appealing brand image across all channels of communication. Then, test your purchase. Use A/B testing to determine what works, disregard what doesn’t, and start over.

In time, you will have the winning design and copy on everything from your website and social media networks, to newsletters and ads.

Take Action

At the end of the day, how the company manages conversion is all up to you. Use these simple, but highly effective tips to improve the process and increase the rate of conversion. As time goes by, you will notice one sale, then a spike in the quarter, until finally, your business becomes the next big success story.

Author Bio:

What strategies are you currently using to increase your conversion rates?

Internet Marketing

Solo Ad Coaching – How To Turn Yourself Into a Traffic Selling Machine

September 16, 2018 Evan Hoeflich 2 comments

(Important: If you are looking to start a sustainable and profitable solo ad business and need the proper guidance, coaching and training, please email me ASAP with the subject line “How To Sell Solo Ads” to evan.hoeflich@evanhoeflichmarketing.com…I am going to connect you with my personal mentor/coach who helped me build my solo ad business into a full-time income. This is one of the best guys in this industry to team up with).

Let me be transparent and state that this private solo ad coaching program is not free and will require an investment, however there are various payment options available so that anyone can join (including monthly payment plans)…This the very same coaching program that has allowed me to build a predictable income month-in and month-out and has opened up many doors for me as well. For anyone interested, it is definitely worth emailing me for more information so we can get you up and running).

The solo ad industry can be incredibly lucrative and enjoyable, however it’s important that you’re on the right side of things.

What I mean by this is that 90% of people buy solo ads, when approximately only 10% sell solo ads.

The 10% of people who are selling solo ads, are making way more than the 90% of people that are buying them.

The reason being is because solo ad sellers are much rarer compared to solo ad buyers.

There are thousands and thousands of solo ad buyers out there, yet probably only a couple hundred quality solo ad sellers (if that).

Therefore, most of the money ends up in the hands of the solo ad seller and not the buyer.

Now let me say that you can absolutely make really good money buying solo ads as well, I’m just saying that the big money is in selling the traffic.

If this is something that peaks your interest, then keep reading.

Solo Ad Coaching Program

I started my solo ad business almost 3 years ago at the time of writing this.

I linked up with a mentor (see first two paragraphs of this post), and the rest was history.

From the get-go, I was seeing impressive results once I had my funnel set up and fairly

early on I hit a $778 morning thanks to selling solo ads.

This isn’t to boast or brag but more to reveal to you that being a solo ad provider, rather than a buyer is a crucial concept to understand.

There are very few solo ad coaching programs/coaches out there who are willing to hold you by hand until you see the results you desire and that’s a big reason why I wanted to write this post.

The solo ad coaching program that I followed was incredibly in-depth, organized, motivating and most importantly generated results.

Being a solo ad seller has provided me with so many benefits in my life including:

More financial freedom
Increased savings
Business experience
Time & schedule flexibility
New entrepreneurial connections
Additional business ventures

And a whole lot more…

However, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this without the proper solo ad coaching.

So if you’re reading this post, there’s a good chance you’re interested in selling solo ads yourself.

If this is the case, please re-read my first two paragraphs of this article and email me as soon as possible.

I’d like to give you the same opportunity that I had to be able to connect with an excellent coach and mentor in the solo ad space.

Now the reason I do not offer a solo ad coaching program myself is because I already run a blog coaching and SEO coaching business (on top of running my own solo ad business and doing SEO for multiple companies).

This would just be too much for me to juggle…However, I can assure you that you won’t be disappointed with the solo ad coaching program I am recommending to you here.

In fact, you’ll most likely be blown away.

And as always if you need any help along the way, you have my 100% support.

Are you interested in this solo ad coaching/mentorship program?

Let me know!

Solo Ads

Best Practices For Internal Linking On Your Blog

September 12, 2018 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

No matter what your website is about, you need internal links. Why? Internal links are a great way to spread traffic, driving people to more pages of your site, for a start. Links also help readers find what they need, keep them engaged and, by extension, lower your bounce rate. Even better, internal links can boost your overall SEO — as they show search engines how your pages relate to one another and distribute page authority across your site.

So, whether your ultimate goal is more page views for more advertising dollars or better leads to convert into customers, internal links are key. How should you go about increasing them? What are the best practices for internal linking on your blog? Here is a look at what you need to know.

Build a lot of content. Step one to building good internal links is creating a lot of quality content. More pages mean more opportunities to link — leading to a better internal linking strategy for your site.
Use descriptive anchor text in links. Make sure that all your internal links use anchor text instead of images (or images of text) or generic text, for that matter. Rather than using a phrase such as “learn more here,” try telling visitors the context of the link, using relevant keywords. At the same time, the words you use as anchor text should feel natural; don’t try to force anything.
Prioritize the reader experience. Many website best practices go back to a foundational concept: Help the reader. So, in terms of link strategy, ask yourself: What links will be legitimately useful to readers? How can you point them to related resources that will match the context of a page? This helps you know how and where to link.
Link less to the homepage and more to other pages. If you’re like most bloggers, you’re already linking to your homepage throughout your site. This means you don’t need more link juice going to that page; it’s got the strongest authority already. Rather, spread the page authority among your site by pointing to other, lesser-found pages. If you already have an SEO campaign underway, you’ll want to link most often to the site pages that are SEO targets. This helps increase their authority, which is one factor in higher search rankings.
Find related pages through Google search. Sometimes you’ll remember old posts that are relevant to a new one you’re writing, and it’ll be easy to incorporate them into your content. Other times, you’ll need to search. Here’s an easy way to do it: Go to Google and search “site:yourURL.com” followed by your topic. The results will show you related posts you’ve written, which may be a natural fit for internal links.
Aim for about 3-5 internal links per post (per 500-600 words). Filling your posts with dozens of internal links is not a faster path to high SEO rankings. Remember, you’re trying to add value to your readers’ lives. Depending on the type of post (interview, roundup, how-to, etc.), it may make sense to add more or fewer links. In general, though, it’s a good idea to shoot for two to three internal links at minimum. This does not include the homepage or other high-ranking pages such as your “About” page or “Contact” page. Instead, try to link deeper into your archives, to posts that see less traffic day to day.
Use the smallest number of links possible between your homepage and any other page. Think of links like degrees of separation. To make content more findable, you want to minimize the degrees of separation between your homepage and other pages on your site. This is where categories and tags can be so useful. Ideally, you arrange your content like a pyramid — the homepage is on top, linking to a handful of pages (i.e., your categories), which link to pages (such as posts).
Regularly check for broken internal links. Internal links are useful only if they’re working. When one of your blog posts links, for example, to a page you’ve deleted, all that does is damage SEO. Regularly check for broken internal links with free tools such as BrokenLinkCheck.com or DeadLinkChecker.com. Then, either change the link or 301 redirect the broken link to the closest relevant page.

When it comes to blogging, internal links are vital. Build a better site by strategically incorporating relevant links throughout your posts! To make the most of the links you use throughout your site, follow the best practices above.

Author bio:

Shanna Mallon is a contributing writer for Straight North, a professional SEO consultant agency in Chicago. Shanna has been writing professionally online since 2007.

What does your internal link strategy look like?

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