On-Site SEO Checklist 2019

The most obviously accessible and controllable aspects of the overall Search Engine Optimization process is the content on your website. This includes the HTML and CSS coding that make up your pages including Heading Tags, Alt Tags, Page Titles, Keyword MetaTags such as the Page Description and Page Keywords. Finally, the density of your top keywords and keyword phrases within the visible page content itself is important to your Search Engine Optimization efforts. If you spend the time and do the work to optimize these on-page Search Engine Optimization attributes you will be off and running with your overall on site SEO efforts.

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Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Social media marketing can be a great way for small business owners to connect with prospects and customers.Social media is one of the best ways to connect with fans and potential customers. If you don’t have a presence on the main networks, you’re missing out on an audience that’s ready and willing to connect with your brand.
Using social media for small business doesn’t have to be scary or expensive. Using these 11 simple social media marketing tips, businesses of any size can reach new markets, build awareness, and drive sales. The small business world can be a grind working in and on the business to reach goals and milestones and grow.

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WordPress Website Design

A WordPress theme is designed to automatically adjust itself to the user’s screen size. This means that your WordPress theme will look equally great on mobile phones, tablets, and desktop devices. 380 Web Designs provides everything from the initial planning, basic search engine optimization, to final implementation, testing, launch, SEO and marketing.

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Local Search Marketing

Local search marketing is anything you do on the web to promote a physical business that makes face-to-face contact with its customers. Local search marketing is all about putting your business on the map in local searches when customers are searching for a business like yours. To build a local search presence, you'll need to optimize your online information so that search engines place your business in the right searches 

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Search Engine Optimization

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines. SEO is the process that organizations go through to help make sure that their site ranks high in the search engines for relevant keywords and phrases.

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Responsive WordPress Website Design

380 Web Designs is a Dallas Texas area WordPress website design and development company. We use WordPress as a platform to build dynamic, beautiful, high-performance websites.

WordPress is an open source content management system that has evolved into one of the most popular website publishing systems in the world.

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WooCommerce Website Design

WooCommerce website is just good website design. It looks the same, is just as good for WooCommerce SEO (search engine optimisation) and is easy to edit. We’re using a more template-based approach that lets us design professional websites much faster. WooCommerce is the a WordPress plugin and the world’s leading e-commerce website platform. According to the latest WooCommerce stats for 2019, it powers over 41% of ALL online shops globally and is growing in popularity.

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WordPress Website Design

380 Web Designs is a Dallas Texas area WordPress website design and development company. We use WordPress as a platform to build dynamic, beautiful, high-performance websites.

WordPress is an open source content management system that has evolved into one of the most popular website publishing systems in the world.

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How To Install WordPress

In this article we will tell you how to Install WordPress in 7 Easy Steps. If you are interested in building a WordPress website you will first need to know how to install WordPress and this is the definative Guide for Manual WordPress Installation.

About WordPress

WordPress (WordPress.org) is a  Free open source content management system originally built for blogging. WordPress was released in 2003 by founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress features a plugin and template based architecture and, over the years, has drawn thousands of developers to create custom plugins, and themes which can now be used to create rich and diverse array and types of websites for almost any application or business need.
WordPress is used on more than 60 million websites worldwide and, as of April 2019, and nearly 34% of the top 10 million global websites have been built using WordPress. Today, WordPress is the #1 website content management system in use globally.
Now that you know a little bit about WordPress, here is a step-by-step guide on how how to manually install and setup a WordPress site for your domain, if you have a desire to build a WordPress website of your own.

What You Need To Get Started

 

Domain Name

A domain name is your company’s online address. It is a repository for your company’s online business identity and the public face of your brand. Your domain name can be one of the most important decisions you will have to initially make when you are deciding to create an online identity for your business. There are tens of millions of domain names already in use out there, so finding the perfect domain name for your business is important and can require some creative thought. For example if your company name is “New Penny Plumbing” you might try to see if the domain newpennyplumbing.com, or newpennyplumbing.net or similar domain name is available.You can do searches for available domain names at a domain registrar such as GoDaddy.com.

WordPress Website Hosting

After you acquire a domain name, next you will need to find a Web Hosting Service where your website and all your site files will reside. There are dozens of WordPress Hosting Providers out there. Do a web search for WordPress Hosting and you will see many results. What are you are typically looking for is a WordPress Hosting company that offers what is called a CPanel where you can do things like setting up a SQL database for your WordPress site, set up personal emails for your domain, and which offers online caching, SSD Drives, plugins to help optimize images sizes and compression, SSL Certificates for online security, and other performance and backup capabilities. We recommend hosting services such as SiteGround.com and InMotion Hosting Services because of their High-Performance Hosting Service Capabilities.

Install WordPress in 7 Easy Steps

Now that you have acquired a Domain Name for your website, and a WordPress Hosting Account, and you are ready to now start installing WordPress, here are the 7 Steps for Installing WordPress.

 1. Point your Domain to your new Hosting Account

When you get your new WordPress Hosting Account you will be provided with the nameservers for your site. You will need to go to your web registrar where you purchased your domain, login to your account and set the name servers to point to the name servers of your hosting account. One you have set those it will typically take a few hours to propagate through the Internet so all browsers every where know where your domain name points to, which is your hosting account. If you use a registrar such as GoDaddy.com it will typically propagate fairly quickly, within a few hours.

2. Download WordPress Software

As mentioned above WordPress is Free to download and install. Just go to https://wordpress.org/download/ and click the download button to get the latest copy of WordPress. Once you have downloaded WordPress, create a local directory on your hard disk, copy the wordPress-5.x.x.zip file to that local directory and unzip it to the root of that directory. If you don’t already have a ZIP utility such as the paid WinZip Utility, you can use a free Zip utility such as 7-Zip to unzip your WordPress files.

 

3. Use FTP Client to Upload WordPress Files to your Hosting Server

In order to upload the WordPress files to your hosting site you will need an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Client and you will need FTP Information from you WordPress Hosting Provider so you can setup your FTP client to transfer the files.  If you don’t already have an FTP client software application you use, you can find several free FTP clients. One popular FREE FTP Client is FileZilla.  Click the following FileZilla Download link to get the FREE FileZilla FTP Client, and click the following link to view the FileZilla Documentation. We won’t go into how to use FileZilla in this article but you will need the following information in order to transfer your WordPress files to your server.

• Host FTP Server Address – Typically an IP address or a server name
• Username – Typically Username is same user name used to access your Cpanel.
• Password – Typically Password is same password used to access your Cpanel.
• Remote Directory – Typically the remote directory will be /public_html/
• Local Directory  – This is the directory where you have unzipped your WordPress files after you downloaded them (Example: C:/website/WordPress)
•  

4. Get FTP Information from your WordPress Cpanel

When you signup for a WordPress Hosting account you should receive a welcome email with information on how to access your administrative account as well as information on how to access your CPanel account including URL, Username, and Password. Find that information from your hosting provider and login to your CPanel. and login to your CPanel. Your CPanel should look something like this:

You can see in the top Files area there is an item called FTP accounts. In there you can setup an FTP account to use with FileZilla or another FTP client. If you are unsure how to setup an FTP account or configure your FTP client you can talk to your Web Hosting Tech Support group and they can step you through it. Once you have your FTP client Configured, upload your WordPress Files to your hosting site.

5. Setup Your WordPress Database

Next you will need to setup a Database and a Database User and Password using your CPanel. Go into your CPanel as discussed above in the FTP section and find the Databases section. Select the MySQL Databases link. Clicking this link typically will initiate the MySQL Database Wizard.
 

STEP 1: Create a Database

A MySQL database name will typically have two parts. The first part, in this case “vids380_” is assigned by the Database Wizard and is your CPanel Username followed by an underscore. The second part, in this case “wp1” is the part that you will input. This can be any alphanumeric string you want. So, in this instance the full database name that I created is “vids380_wp1”.

STEP 2: Create a Database User

A MySQL database username will again have two parts. The first part, in this case “vids380_” is again assigned by the Database Wizard and is your CPanel Username followed by an underscore. The second part, in this case “wp1” is the part that you will input. This can be any alphanumeric string you want. So, in this instance the full database name that I created is “vids380_wp1”. To keep things simple I typically name the database and the database user the same thing to keep things simple. Additionally, you will need to assign a password to the user. You can type in your own password or you can use the Password Generator Button to create your password.

STEP 3: Assign the Username you have created to the Database You have Created

This is pretty self-explanatory, but you will see a table to assign privileges to the database. Select the “All Privileges” checkbox to select all privileges which is what we want.

6. Edit the wp-config.php file and upload to server

Now that you have created your WordPress Database, the next step is to create a wp-config.php file, edit it, and upload it to your server. We do this by going to the local folders where you have unzipped your WordPress files and in the root directory of that folder you will see a file called “wp-config-sample.php”  We need to open this file and edit some entries in the top section where you will enter the Database Name, Username, and Password you created when you setup the Database above. You can use an application such as Adobe Dreamweaver or some other web development application, or if you don’t have any such application you can open the wp-config.sample.php file with a simple text editor such as Windows Notepad or whatever text editor you have on your computer. Open the file and enter the database name, username and password you created in the MySQL Settings area if the file. Then you must save this file in the same directory by the name of “wp-config.php”.  Make sure you enter these names between the single quotes or you will get a database connection error. After saving the file, upload this single file to your WordPress Server using the FTP application you used to upload the other WordPress files as described above.

7. Now you are ready to smoke test your work

If you have setup your DNS Nameservers to point to your hosting account’s nameservers you should be able to open a broswer and type in “YourDomainName.com” (insert your actual domain name) and, if successful, you should see the following initial WordPress screen.

If you see this screen, Congratulations you have Successfully Installed WordPress!

If not, please go back through all the steps above. If you have gotten through these steps successfully, select the language that you wish to use on your site from the list above and click Continue. The next screen you will see will let you set your master administrative Username and Password.  One important tip, select a username and password that only you could guess. DO NOT set your master Username as something simple like “Admin” or “YourSiteName”.  WordPress is the #1 website platform in the world, and it is the #1 website platform target for global hackers. Set your username and password as something you can remember but that no one else could ever guess. Hacker bots are scouring the internet every day looking for WordPress sites and will start trying to hack your site within days or weeks using Brute Force attacks, so do yourself a Big Big Favor and pick a username and password that no one can guess. I would highly recommend that you let the WordPress Password generator generate a complex password for your site that no one would ever guess. (See image below)

WordPress Auto Installers

In this blog post we have covered how to procure a domain; how to select a hosting provider and setup a hosting account, how to point your domain to your hosting account, how to download WordPress files, how to unzip and upload those file to your hosting server via FTP, how to create a Database using your hosting CPanel; how to edit the wp-config.php file and upload that to your hosting site, and how to initialize your WordPress site and setup a master Username and Password. This has all been a tutorial on how to Manually Setup WordPress.  This is how people have been installing and setting up WordPress since WordPress was introduces in 2003. But, WordPress Hosting providers have become more sophisticated in recent years, so if you are a novice to WordPress there are many hosting companies these day that do nothing but WordPress hosting that can help you install and setup WordPress for your, or in their CPanel they have a WordPress Auto-Installer that can do most of this work for you. You will still have to buy your domain and point your DNS nameservers to your hosting company’s nameservers, but outside of that they will do most of the work for you.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram have given businesses unprecedented opportunities to grow and thrive through the use of Social Media Marketing. This isn’t surprising since 42% of the current global population or 3.4 billion people use social media on a daily basis.

But getting started with social media marketing can be overwhelming – especially for small businesses who have yet to find their company’s brand voice.

Your don’t necessarily need millions of social media followers to build an effective social media presence. It’s not really just about the number of followers you can gather, but rather how you engage with the ones you already have, and provide useful content to draw more followers to your social media channels over time.

Social media is very powerful and effective way of connecting with potential customers, fans of your company’s brand and general followers. If you haven’t yet created a accounts on major social channels that can most effectively reach your company’s target audience, you are missing out on a potentially vast source of customer prospects that are willing and waiting to connect with you.

Consider this: about 63% of customers actually expect businesses to offer customer service through their social accounts and 90% of users use different social platforms to communicate with a brand.

The best part is that social media marketing doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. Here’s how you can easily reach new audiences, create awareness, and drive sales through your social media presence.

 

Shortlist Platforms According To Your Audience

All networks are not equal – it’s essential to compare the key demographics of top platforms and compare them to your ideal buyer profile and target audience.

To start with, find out where your prospects spend most of their time online; for example, B2B companies should head over to LinkedIn because that is where 80% of all their leads come from.
On the other hand, if Generation Z is the target audience for your brand, know that 71% of them use Snapchat at least six times every day.

It’s perfectly fine to have active profiles across multiple networks, but focus most of your time and efforts on one or two platforms where your target audience is most active.

 

Set Realistic, Specific Goals

Have a social media plan to back up your online presence and don’t post content without some strategy or reason. In other words, identify your marketing goals and then use social media to achieve them.

Consider this: eMarketer research that studied more than 300 B2B and B2C businesses found that 88% of US companies use their social media for brand awareness and brand building, 64% introduce new offerings via their SM pages, and another 60% acquire new clients online via social media.
Hence, with Social Media Marketing, your objectives could be to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Reach new fans/audiences/ followers
• Provide better customer service
• Grow your sales

 

Balance Your Posts

Every post does not need to be a sales pitch; as such blatant self-promotion can drive your audience away.

Instead, try to balance your posts with the 5:3:2 rule; five posts should be from other relevant sources, three should be content that you’ve created yourself, and two should have a ‘fun’ element to humanize your brand.

It may be a good idea to engage your employees, and other social media advocates of your brand to help your company’s social media reach, and retweeting or sharing your company’s social media posts. This approach is guaranteed to work because 50% of consumers in a survey expressed that seeing user-generated content would increase their chances of buying from an online brand.

 

Choose and Use Images Wisely

The right visuals can help your audience read and retain information better, form opinions, develop feelings and decide on the appropriate action to take in response to what they see.

When compared to other types of content, videos and images are 41 times more likely to get shared on social media. This is why nearly 80% of marketers deploy visual assets with their social media campaigns – and this has contributed to the growth of videos by 63%, surpassing blogs as an indispensable marketing asset.

 

Engage with your Audience

The key to Social Media Marketing success is fostering a two-way conversation with your audience, as people appreciate brands that are accessible and responsive to their followers and supporters. This is why it’s crucial to keep your followers engaged by interacting with them through replies, retweets and other forms of follower and customer outreach.

Remember, 57% of consumers reach out to brands via social media because they are looking for answers. Connect with them, answer their queries, have meaningful conversations and they’ll be naturally drawn to your products and services and feel more personally connected to your company.

 

Focus On Quality Over Quantity

People become followers and fans of a social media page or channel because they like and trust the content on your page.

This is why you have to make sure that your posts are both reliable and relevant to your audience – especially since 86% of all consumers say that they try to only support brands that exhibit authenticity.

So, reach out to your audience, understand them, and then provide quality content that they want to see, and which answer questions they may have, or provide a solution to their specific company needs.

 

Monitor the Conversations around Your Brand

About 80% of online companies believe that they are exceptionally good at social media customer service. However, you’ll be surprised to know that typically only 8% of their clients and followers agree.

If you want to do social media right, then monitor what people are saying about you on different social media platforms and use this information to respond to them in a respectful and authentic way. A social listening strategy lets you track and analyze online conversations about your brand and the industry at large.

 

Be Patient

Patience is a critical factor in social media marketing for small businesses; understand that you won’t get tons of followers, likes, comments, and shares overnight.

Building a trustworthy presence can take years, but it’s worth it in the end. Don’t stress or fret about the end-goal on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis; just trust the journey, engage your followers, take care of your clients and keep giving them the quality content and service that they love you for.

 

Schedule Your Content

Planning your social media activities through a scheduling tool allows you to post consistently, and it will help you manage your presence across multiple networks.

Not only do social media management and scheduling tools save you time, but you can plan your content well in advance and schedule posts for different networks at peak traffic times, and track the results so you can refine and modify your social media marketing strategy.

 

Track and Refine Your Performance

Keep track of what works and what doesn’t, so you can adjust your efforts and improve your results.
Once you have a baseline of how your strategy is working, use A/B testing to boost your chances of success. Use different hashtags, target unique audiences, and play around with the Call To Action links in your social media posts to get a feel for what your followers appreciate, and most importantly, what they respond to.

In short, the results can help you make minor – or major – tweaks to your Social Media Marketing strategy that can lead to increasingly more effective results over time.

 

Social Media Tools to Help You Manage Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Here is a list of tools that company’s can use to manage their social media posts.

1. HashtagsForLikes
2. Hootsuite
3. Buffer
4. Khoros
5. Sprout Social
6. Socialbakers
7. Tagboard
8. Agorapulse
9. Statusbrew
10. Post Planner
11. Tailwind
12. Sprinklr
13. Followerwonk
14. Sendible
15. Meet Edgar
16. SocialFlow
17. Oktopost
18. Falcon.io
19. Brand24
20. DrumUp
21. Quuu
22. Everypost
23. Tweepi
24. Cool Tabs
25. Unmetric
26. MavSocial
27. SocialOomph

 

Conclusion

With over 63% of small businesses gearing up to increase their spending on social media marketing, companies can no longer afford to ignore the impact of Social Media Marketing on company sales and brand management.

You need to create a focused Social Media Marketing Strategy that aligns with your company’s strategic goals and build your social media marketing channels one by one, over time.