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10+ Best Free Gutenberg Ready WordPress Themes

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Hosting

The post 10+ Best Free Gutenberg Ready WordPress Themes appeared first on HostGator Blog . There are hundreds of thousands of WordPress themes on the market. A lot of them are free while some cost more than a few hundred bucks. Finding a theme that suits your WordPress site’s style and is compatible with all the plugins you use is very difficult. If you want to use WordPress’ new Gutenberg editor , then you need a theme that is compatible with it. With thousands of themes to choose from, most of which aren’t compatible with Gutenberg, I wanted to make it easier for you to find the perfect theme. So, here’s my collection of the best free Gutenberg-ready WordPress themes right now. What is Gutenberg? Gutenberg is the latest page/post editor that comes with WordPress. If you are a fan of the original, the classic WordPress editor, then it might take you a few minutes to get comfortable with the new editor. Gutenberg is WordPress’ attempt at creating a drag and drop page builder that can make it easier for beginners and novices to create beautiful looking pages. If you want your website to stand out, you need your content to stand out in your niche. The easiest way to do this is by improving the design of your blog’s content. Now, if you hire a programmer to do it, it will cost you well over $500. But with a tool like Gutenberg , you can do it all by yourself within minutes… for free. Why you need a Gutenberg compatible theme? If you want to use the new Gutenberg editor and take advantage of all the wonderful tools and widgets it has to offer, then you need a WordPress theme that is compatible with Gutenberg . Most themes on the market, even the premium ones, aren’t compatible with Gutenberg. If you use a theme that isn’t compatible, most of your pages will break in unexpected places. If you don’t want your blog to break right when you catch your big break, then you should only use a theme that is compatible with Gutenberg. To make it easier for you to find the perfect theme, we have made the following list of the best free WordPress themes that are Gutenberg-ready. Best Free Gutenberg Themes 1. GeneratePress Best suited for: All types of websites, is a Multipurpose theme. Sites having this theme activated: 200,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/generatepress/ GeneratePress is one of the most popular WordPress themes out there. Unlike some other themes on this list, this is a multipurpose theme. That means, you can use it to build almost any type of website you want. Whether you want to use it on a travel site or cooking blog, you can easily customize this theme to suit your niche. You can customize almost all elements of this theme without writing a single line of code. This theme is made to be a lightweight kickstarter for any kind of a project based on WordPress.  They offer a big library of importable templates for all types of websites including travel, cooking, and personal blogs. You can also use this theme to build an eCommerce site and sell your products online. Features: Clean minimal design that is suitable for all types of websites. A huge library of hundreds of design templates available to choose from. Easily customize almost all aspects of the theme’s design. Compatible with all page builder plugins on the market including Gutenberg and Beaver Builder. Translation ready and supports over 20 languages. A lightweight theme that won’t slow down your website. 2. Gucherry Blog Best suited for: Personal Blogs, Travel Blogs, and blogs that display large images. Sites having this theme activated: 700+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/gucherry-blog/ GuCherry Blog is a beautiful free WordPress template designed for blogs. It offers a very clean, minimal design that focuses the user’s attention on the content. If you are looking for a theme for your personal blog, then this is one of the best options. You can easily customize this theme to suit your personal style by changing the colors and typography of the design. It comes with full support for page builders like Gutenberg. It is optimized for speed and is translation-ready. This theme is perfect for bloggers who want to start a blog , build an audience online and stand out in their niche. It offers a simple design and comes with everything you will need including social media share buttons and a lot of built-in widgets to choose from. It is also SEO optimized so that you can focus on creating content without worrying too much about the search engine bots. GuCherry blog is designed to be fast and offers lots of space placing advertisements on your blog. You place ads on your blog with just a few clicks in many different places without editing any code. Features: A minimal design that will help you stand out in your blogging niche. Lots of places to place ads on your blog to earn a side income. Optimized for SEO and fast load times. Easily customize everything from the colors to typography. Built-in support for page builders like Gutenberg. Translation-ready and supports RTL languages. A theme best suited for bloggers. 3. Getwid Base Best suited for: Startups, Digital Agencies, and Portfolio websites. Sites having this theme activated: 700+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/getwid-base/ Getwid Base is a free WordPress theme that is designed specifically to work with Gutenberg. Getwid Base theme is a part of Getwid, a bundle of multipurpose blocks designed for Gutenberg. To get the most out of this theme, we recommend that you install the Getwid plugin but even without the bundle, this theme has all the features you will need. It offers a beautiful, minimal design that is compatible with Gutenberg. It is best suited for digital agencies, startups, and portfolios. Although it is designed for digital agencies and startups, you can customize it to suit whatever niche you are in and change the design to suit your brand style. Features: A theme that is built specifically for Gutenberg page builder. Customize the theme easily with just a few clicks without touching code. You can add more blocks and widgets compatible with this theme by installing the free Getwid Gutenberg bundle. It comes with a simple design that looks great on all devices. 4. Page Builder Framework Best suited for: Agency Sites, Portfolios, and Service Businesses. Sites having this theme activated: 10,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/page-builder-framework/ Page Builder Framework is a free WordPress theme that is designed to be super fast. It is a lightweight theme that weighs less than 50 kb and doesn’t slow down your website. If you need a clutter-free, minimal design that you can customize yourself without editing code, this theme is a great option. This theme is designed for page builders like Gutenberg and Beaver Builder. You can easily customize all aspects of this theme’s design to suit your personal style. This theme scores 99% on all speed test tools like YSlow, Pingdom, and GTmetrix. It loads in less than 100ms. Features: This theme is built for speed and will never slow down your website. Customize all aspects of this theme’s design with just a few clicks. Designed to be compatible with all page builders including Elementor and Gutenberg. Responsive design that works on all screen sizes. WooCommerce support, if you want to build an eCommerce store. 5. Mission News Best suited for: News and Magazine sites, and sites with lots of content. Sites having this theme activated: 3,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/mission-news/ Mission News is a free WordPress theme designed for news and magazine websites. The design is clean and makes your website look like a classic news site. It’s fully responsive and looks great on all devices no matter the screen size. The layout of this theme is minimal, clean and focuses attention to the content. It is fully compatible with Gutenberg, Elementor, and some other page builder plugins. It also offers WooCommerce compatibility so that you can build an online store within a few minutes. This theme is optimized for speed and loads really fast. Features: WooCommerce support allows you to build an eCommerce site without writing any code Easily customize all aspects of your website’s design using the customization options. 100% responsive and looks great on all devices. Compatible with Gutenberg and Elementor. 6. Storytime Best suited for: Personal Blogs, Story Blogs, and Author Blogs. Sites having this theme activated: 1,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/storytime/ Storytime is a theme designed for authors and creatives. If you are a writer or really want to showcase your work, this is the theme for you. This theme comes with hundreds of customization options. You can choose from 2 blog layout options and 10 sidebar options. It is fully compatible with Gutenberg and is designed with the tool in mind. It also comes with its own built-in Gutenberg blocks you can use to improve your content. The theme offers a fully responsive minimal design. It offers a beautiful layout design that focuses attention on the content of your blog. If you are starting a personal blog and want to stand out in your niche, this theme is one of the best options. Features: Fully compatible with page builders like Gutenberg. Comes with additional built-in Gutenberg. Easily customize the theme using WordPress Theme Customizer interface. Hundreds of customization options so you can customize the design to suit your brand. 2 Blog layouts and 10 sidebar positions to choose from. 7. Music Lite Best suited for: Music artists, Bands and Musicians. Sites having this theme activated: 2,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/music-lite/ Music Lite is the free version of Music Pro. The free version of the theme comes with dozens and dozens of customization options. If you want more customization, then you can always upgrade to the pro version. It is built on a responsive framework to make sure it always looks good across different devices. It is also retina-optimized to look good on a large screen and high resolution displays like Apple’s products It comes with a tour dates page that you can easily customize and change dates on for your fans and followers. The theme comes with custom page templates that you can use to build your whole website in only a few minutes. It also comes with multiple column layouts. This theme allows you to easily customize the logo, the header, and even the background without writing any code. Features: The design is built on a mobile responsive framework and works on all screen sizes. Tour dates pages where you can list your tour dates with just a few clicks. Easily customize the theme using WordPress’ Theme Customizer tool. Custom page templates. The theme comes with multiple column layouts to choose from. 8. Portfolio Lite Best suited for: Photography Portfolio, Creative Portfolios, Freelancer Portfolios. Sites having this theme activated: 2,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/portfolio-lite/ Portfolio Lite is a portfolio theme for creatives. It offers a very unique design to help you stand out of the crowd. The design is very minimal to focus the attention on the portfolio items. If you are a freelancer and need a site to show off your work, this is the best theme for you. It comes with a sidebar menu on the left to allow for easy and minimal navigation. This theme will allow you to build your portfolio online in only a few minutes. This theme is best for portfolios with lots of images. It is best suited for people who wish to show off their designs or photography. It comes with a few different page templates to choose from for your portfolio items. You can easily create a slideshow for your portfolio within seconds. Features: A clean minimal layout to show off your creative portfolio. Showcase large images in a beautiful layout. Different page templates for portfolio items to choose from. Get more features by purchasing the premium version of this theme. Dozens of customization options and support for WordPress Theme Customizer. Support for Gutenberg and other Page Builders. 9. Davis Best suited for: Personal Blogs and sites that are more focused on the content. Sites having this theme activated: 3,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/davis/ Davis is a minimalistic WordPress theme that you can either use as a framework to build your own theme or you can use to build a superfast website that scores high on all page speed test tools like Google PageSpeed. It is super lightweight and weighs only 61 kb. This theme offers a super minimal design that focuses the attention on the content. It is fully responsive, looks great on devices, and comes with a dark mode option. It also supports featured images, and aside post format. This theme is built to be fast and minimal and to be used as a framework to build upon and as such doesn’t offer many options or customization features. It is pretty minimal. Features: Fully responsive design. Super minimal, clean design. Super lightweight theme that weighs only 61kb and loads really fast. Comes with full support for Gutenberg and other page builders. 10. Block Lite Best suited for: Creative portfolio sites and photography portfolios. Sites having this theme activated: 1,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/block-lite/ Block Lite is a theme that is built for the Gutenberg editor. It comes with dozens of customization options that you can use to customize all aspects of the theme. It offers a responsive design that is minimal and looks great across all screen sizes. This theme is best for showcasing your creative portfolio. If you are a designer or a photographer, this theme will allow you to focus the visitor’s attention on your portfolio items. It is retina optimized to make sure the design looks great on even large-resolution displays. Block Lite’s premium version offers dozens of more customization options and features. Features: Easily customize the design of this theme using WordPress Theme Customizer. Customize the Typography and use any of the free Google Fonts you like on your website. A clean, minimal design best suited for showcasing creative portfolio items like pictures and designs. 11. Atomic Blocks Best suited for: Blogs and websites that need a minimal design. Sites having this theme activated: 2,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/atomic-blocks/ Atomic Blocks is a free WordPress theme that offers a simple design. It is fully compatible for Gutenberg page builder. This theme is a part of the Atomic Blocks plugin. The plugin adds more blocks to the Gutenberg builder. With this theme, you don’t need to download a hundred different plugins. It comes with blocks for everything including pricing table, newsletter sign up forms, post grid blocks, call to action blocks, testimonial block, sharing block and much more. Although this theme offers a minimal design and is best suited for blogs, it can be easily customized and used to build any type of a website. Features: Add dozens of new blocks to Gutenberg page builder by installing the accompanying Atomic Blocks plugin for free. Simple, responsive design. Dozens of theme options to help you customize the design without touching a single line of code. Fully compatible with Gutenberg and other page builder plugins. 12. Richone Best Suited For Minimal, basic portfolio sites. Sites having this theme activated: 600+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/richone/ Richone is a clean, beautiful portfolio theme that is compatible with Gutenberg editor. It offers a super minimal design that looks clean and focuses attention on the portfolio items. This theme offers full support WooCommerce so you can create an online store on our own. This theme comes with dozens of customization options so you can customize everything from the typography to the color scheme of the design. It offers a widget sidebar at the bottom. Features: WooCommerce ready so you can build an online store in minutes. Fully compatible with Gutenberg. Comes with custom page templates so you can build your website in minutes without any code. This theme is optimized for SEO, so you can focus on creating content. Fully responsive minimal design that focuses attention on the content Wrap Up All of the themes in this list support Gutenberg and will help you create content that stands out of the crowd. Most of these themes not only support Gutenberg, they also support other page builder plugins like Divi and Elementor , and others. If you are still having trouble deciding which theme to go with, let me make it super easy for you: If you need a theme that loads up really fast, then go with GeneratePress . It’s mostly a theme framework to help you build super fast websites. It comes with dozens of customization options and is really lightweight. If you produce a lot of content on your website, then go with Mission News . Although it’s a theme built for news sites, it is fully customizable, so you can easily customize it to suit your needs. If you want more Gutenberg blocks than the defaults, then go with the Getwid theme and download the accompanying Getwid plugin to add more blocks to the Gutenberg editor for free. Are you using a free Gutenberg compatible theme that has been left off this list, and you think is worth mentioning? If so, we would love to hear all about it in the comments! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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How to find out which theme a WordPress site is using?

Posted on January 24, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to find out which theme a WordPress site is using? appeared first on HostGator Blog . Have you ever come across a website that you simply loved in terms of design and functionality? Better yet, have you ever found a website that you were so impressed with, you felt you just had to have it for yourself ( with your own branding elements, unique style and content of course! )? If you find yourself wanting to give your WordPress website a makeover, without starting over from scratch and re-doing everything from blog posts to pages, media uploads to comments, you’re in luck. All you have to do is change your site’s WordPress theme. In fact, WordPress is popular in part because its design is so flexible and can be changed at any moment, without affecting too much of your site’s foundation. Finding a fellow WordPress website that you want to draw inspiration from is great – until you realize you have no idea what WordPress theme it’s using . That’s why today I am going to walk you through how to manually find which theme any WordPress website is using , as well as share some helpful online tools that may speed up the process for you, so you can start your site redesign right away. So, let’s get started. How to Find the Theme of Any WordPress Website There are many online tools dedicated to helping you determine what theme WordPress websites are using ( more on those later ). But the problem is, sometimes website owners change the name of their WordPress themes, preventing these tools from recognizing the theme they’re using and spilling the beans to you. That’s why knowing how to manually find the theme of a WordPress website is so helpful. And the best part is, it’s not that hard to do! Each WordPress theme has what’s called a style.css file. This file contains information about the theme in use such as the name of the theme, the theme author, the stylesheet URL, the theme version, and more. It also has the CSS styles used by the theme. This file is what you need to find if you want to learn what theme a WordPress site is using. Step 1: Find the Style.CSS File The first thing you’ll want to do is go to the WordPress website you love. For this example, I’ll use my very own website https://www.websitehostingrating.com. Next, right click anywhere on the screen of the website you’re investigating. From the options available, choose the one labeled “ Inspect .” Note – You can click on the “View Page Source” option as well, though I find that Inspect Element makes searching for the specific theme file a whole lot easier. That said, if you do choose to use the View Page Source option, you can always use Ctrl + F ( on Windows ) or Cmd + F ( on Mac ) to open a search bar near the bottom to find the style.css file. Step 2: Inspect the CSS File When you click on Inspect Element, you’ll see a bunch of crazy looking code appear at the bottom of the screen. Don’t panic, you don’t need to understand all of this. All you need to do is find a line of code that looks something like this: This is the theme’s stylesheet – the css file. The easiest way to find this line is to enter the word “theme”, “style.css” or something similar into the search bar and click enter. This should bring up the line of code you’re looking for. In the above image, the line of code we’re looking for is highlighted in blue. Now, this bit of code may be enough for you to find the information you want, which is the name of the theme being used on the website. For instance, you can see that I use the theme Academy Pro , which happens to be a StudioPress theme built on the Genesis Framework . Notice the places the name Academy Pro appears. If you didn’t know that Academy Pro was a WordPress theme offhand, a simple Google search will bring it right up for you. If you’re looking for more information about the theme, you might be able to click on the URL in the style.css file and see data such as the theme’s URL or author. When you do this, it should look something like this: Theme Name: Academy Pro Theme URI: https://my.studiopress.com/themes/academy/ Description: The theme for online course creators, membership site owners, and educational content marketers. Author: StudioPress Author URI: https://www.studiopress.com/   Unfortunately, because WordPress themes are all different, and the code that comes with each theme file differs too, you may end up seeing a screen like this: I don’t know about you, but I have the theme name and that’s enough for me! I should also mention that this method won’t work for custom made themes or where the site owner has renamed, or deleted, the name of the WordPress theme he or she is using. Using an Online Tool to Determine a WordPress Theme Now that you know how to manually find the theme of any WordPress website out there, it’s time to make things easier by using an online theme detector tool. There are plenty of online WordPress detection tools to choose from, but in my opinion these two are the most accurate: WP Theme Detector WP Sniffer (Google Chrome extension) They both work really well, however some of them will also report the plugins that are being used on a website, which can be really helpful for that added functionality you might be after in your site’s redesign. For our example, I’ll use WP Theme Detector and see what pops up when I enter the URL: https://www.websitehostingrating.com . As you can see, this online tool determined that I am using the Academy Pro WordPress theme, which is a child theme of the Framework Genesis, which is authored by StudioPress, all of which I already determined manually. And there you have it! You now know how to manually find the theme any WordPress website is using should you want to look into using the same theme for your own website. And if you’re lucky, and the code is correct, you can find this information even faster using a free online tool such as WP Theme Detector and begin your site redesign right away! Have you ever had to manually determine the theme being used on a WordPress website? I would love to hear all about it in the comments below! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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10 White-Hat Link-Building Strategies for Local Business

Posted on July 26, 2018 by Hosting

The post 10 White-Hat Link-Building Strategies for Local Business appeared first on HostGator Blog . 10 White-Hat Link-Building Strategies for Local Business When you own a small local business, you have to find the most affordable options for promoting and marketing your brand. Unfortunately, when it comes to SEO, that need can put you at risk. Many of the cheapest SEO companies employ black-hat techniques based around trying to game the system – for example, building hundreds of low-quality links on spammy sites or publishing keyword-stuffed pages that don’t make much sense to humans. While some of those techniques worked in the early days of the internet, search engines have continually updated their algorithms over time to ensure that black-hat techniques not only aren’t rewarded with high rankings, but are now punished with search engine penalties . This is one area of business where cutting corners can have big consequences . You’re a lot better off employing a few white-hat link-building strategies on your own or hiring a legitimate SEO company than taking on the risks that come with black-hat SEO.   10 Link-Building Ideas for Local Businesses Here are ten legitimate link-building strategies that local businesses can benefit from.   1. Partner With Other Local Businesses. A lot of link building is ultimately about relationships. People are much more likely to add a link to your website on theirs if they have a genuine connection to your business. Research other local businesses in your area that do something related to what you do. For instance, if you sell dog treats, that could include pet groomers, dog walkers, veterinarians, and dog trainers. Reach out to the business owners to discuss ways you can help each other out. You could offer referral discounts for customers you recommend to each other or plan events together. Working together with other businesses will lead to natural linking opportunities, along with any other benefits you get from the relationship.   2. Sponsor Local Events or Organizations. In addition to local businesses, start looking into relevant local events and nonprofits that seek out business sponsorships . For event sponsorships, look up conferences, festivals, or professional events in your area and consider which of them are likely to attract people who are potential customers. Any event with a relevant audience of attendees is one that could be a good fit for sponsorship and, in most cases, your sponsorship will come with a link on the event’s website. For nonprofit sponsorships, consider the values your typical customers have and look for nonprofits that are a good match with the message you want to send to them. If you own a health food restaurant, then organizations that focus on improving healthy food access or sustainable food practices would be a natural fit.   3. Join Local Professional Organization with Directories. Most cities have a chamber of commerce and some have a number of different chambers focused on certain business owner demographics (e.g. an LGBTQ chamber of commerce, a Hispanic chamber of commerce, etc.). In addition, you can often find a number of professional organizations specific to certain industries. Identify any relevant professional organizations in your area and see if membership comes with inclusion in a directory. If so, it’s another good way to earn a local link.   4. Host a Charity Drive or Fundraiser. This tip doubles as both a way to do good and a way to earn links. When you work to help a cause other people care about, they have every reason to help spread the word to get more people involved. The nonprofit that you support will help promote it on their own site. Local journalists and bloggers are likely to cover the story as something newsworthy. And any followers of the nonprofit or publications that cover the story may be inspired to share news about it to their own followers as well.   5. Write and Promote Local Content. Content marketing is a big part of white-hat link building because when you create really great content, it gives other websites something worth linking to. A lot of businesses are doing content marketing , which means this tactic can be pretty competitive. But you don’t have to compete with every business in your industry in the search rankings, just those that serve the same local audience you do. Local businesses can therefore often gain some real traction by creating useful content that focuses on local issues. Try to find topics that are relevant both to your business and to the local community. If you own a bike shop, you could write blog posts about the best biking trails in town and provide coverage of local legislation that adds new bike lanes. 6. Connect with Local Bloggers. Many communities have local bloggers that write about things to do around town or issues relevant to residents. These blogs are often a good opportunity for earning local links. Reach out to see if the blogger is open to a relationship. Maybe they’ll provide a review in exchange for a free visit to your business, or you can set up an affiliate-style arrangement where they make a little money every time one of their readers comes to your business because of hearing about it through the blog. If you can work out an arrangement that you both consider beneficial, they’ll have a good reason to mention you on their blog and you’ll earn a new link.   7. Look for Relevant Round-up Pages. A lot of websites that have a local focus will write round-up posts highlighting the best businesses of different types – think titles like “The Best Brunch Spots in Chicago” or “The Best Coworking Spaces in Austin.” Think of different categories your business could fall into and see if there are any local round-up blog posts you could be a fit for.  For any you find, reach out to the author to see if they’re aware of your business and willing to consider an addition to the list. Don’t expect this strategy to have a huge success rate. The blogger would have to choose to do extra work in order to include your business, and also may not honestly see you as belonging on the “best” list by their standards. But if they are willing to give your business a try and see if you belong, it could earn you both a link and be the start of a relationship with a new local blogger.   8. Write Guest Posts. Guest posting is one of the most common white-hat link building tactics because it provides value both for you and the other website. Instead of asking another stranger with no investment in your business to do the work of adding a link to their website, you’re offering to do something for them that benefits them and their audience. Research the blogs in your industry and in your city to identify ones that are relevant to your business and accept guest posts. Brainstorm topic ideas that are relevant to the blog’s audience while also providing a natural opportunity for you to include a link back your website. Then start pitching. For every blog that accepts your pitch, make sure you write a really good piece and include a link or two to pages on your website where it fits naturally (don’t awkwardly force it in).   9. Do Broken Link Building. Broken link building is another common tactic that combines doing something useful for the website owner at the same time that you ask for a link. The goal here is to find examples of broken links on relevant websites that point to something similar to a page on your website. Then contact the website owner to let them know there’s a broken link on their site and recommend yours as a good replacement.  It’s alerting them to a problem with their website they may not have been aware of while offering an easy solution (that just happens to benefit you). Spotting broken links on the web may sound like an unrealistic undertaking, but a number of subscription SEO tools have features that make that part of the process easier. Once you’ve identified the broken links, it’s just a matter of crafting a solid email that explains why your webpage is a good replacement.   10. Create and Give Out Awards. People love getting awards and are quick to share about it whenever they’re recognized. If you start giving out local awards to individuals or businesses in relevant categories, it’s a good way to get the positive attention of the people you honor who are then likely to share about the award to their own audiences. If you own a local gym, you could create awards for business types your customers are likely to value such as healthy restaurants, natural food stores, or vitamin brands and open up voting to your members. It provides your customers a way to engage and provides you an entry into connecting with the businesses that win (see also, tactic #1). The winning businesses are likely to link back to your awards page and the people who love those businesses may share news of the award as well.   White-Hat Link Building for Your Business A lot of these tactics won’t just earn you links; they’ll help you become a more valuable and appreciated part of your local community. That’s one of the nice things about white-hat tactics – they’re not about being sneaky or taking advantage of weaknesses in the system, they’re all about doing things that are genuinely beneficial for the websites you reach out to, their audience, and your own business all at the same time. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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How To Use Guest Posting To Increase Your Traffic And Rankings

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Hosting

The post How To Use Guest Posting To Increase Your Traffic And Rankings appeared first on HostGator Blog . Guest posting is an incredibly powerful tool to generate traffic and subscribers. In fact, guest blogging is one of the most effective free traffic strategies. However, a lot of people approach the guest blogging process in the wrong way. In order to get the most out of guest blogging you need to be posting on websites that have overlap with your ideal audience. Below you’ll find an exact strategy you can utilize time and time again to send new traffic and leads to your website.   What Is Guest Blogging? Guest blogging is the process of writing for high profile blogs and websites in your niche. Most often you guest blog for free. But, in return you can associate yourself with a high authority website to borrow authority, and can illustrate your value to your market. Guest blogging is an incredible way to build your authority and send qualified traffic your way through dropping backlinks throughout your post, or within your author byline.   What Are Your Guest Blogging Goals Before you start actively guest posting it’s important to define your goals. The last thing you want is to start guest posting on a regular basis only to see no result for your business. Are you looking to generate more traffic for your website? Are you trying to build authority and a name for yourself in your niche? Or, are you trying to build high-quality backlinks to grow your search engine rankings? Define what results you want to achieve for your business, and track every post you write, so you can refine your strategy over time.   Developing A Guest Blogging Strategy Your guest blogging efforts won’t succeed unless you have an actionable and trackable plan to follow. Below you’ll find a five–step process you can implement time and time again. 1. Build Up Your Online Persona or Platform Before you start guest blogging it’s important you take the time to build a solid online presence. You’ll need a solid foundation in the online space that you’re going to be sending qualified traffic to. 2. Identify Guest Blogging Opportunities When you’re identifying blogs to contribute to make sure they have a sizable audience and have at least some overlap with your niche. Obviously, the blogs you end up choosing will depend your niche and goals. The two processes below will help you build a targeted list of blogs to contribute to. Search Google for “[your niche] + guest blogging”, or “[your niche] write for us” Visit Alltop and select your niche for a list of high-quality blogs. These will help you build a solid list you can pitch over time. 3. Start The Outreach Process Every blog you contribute to will have different writing guidelines. Some blogs will require you to submit a full post, while others will prefer you pitching a group of ideas. Your pitches will be rejected every time if you don’t adhere to the writer’s guidelines. When finding the right person to email always try to email the editor or the content manager if it’s a larger website, as they’re in charge of the content for the site. If it’s a single author blog then reach out to the blogger directly. When pitching the blog make sure to build rapport with the author or editor first, as this will increase your chances of your post being accepted. 4. Create Epic Blog Posts When writing in front of another audience you want to bring your best writing to the table. Don’t hold back, and don’t send off your secondary content. You want to make a good impression on these websites, and build a connection with their audiences. By providing extreme value you’ll have readers flocking to your website to learn more about what you have to offer. 5. Continue The Process Luckily, there are so many blogs and websites looking for high-quality content that you can replicate this process time and time again. Over time, after you’ve exhausted all of the blogs in your niche you can move on to related blogs and websites. Guest blogging is an incredible strategy that doesn’t require any upfront investment besides your time. The steps above will help you build a strategy that works for you and your business for the long-term. web hosting Continue reading →

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Performance Testing: Latency, Load, Stress, or Soak?

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Hosting

The post Performance Testing: Latency, Load, Stress, or Soak? appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . How well does your web hosting perform? Are you sending web pages in a timely way to visitors to your site? Is your application correctly handling simultaneous requests? Do you actually know what can be measured – and which measures are relevant to your situation? Web hosting performance testing can give you valuable information that can let you keep visitors longer on your site, make sure you can accept the right number of simultaneous visitors, handle overload situations and detect possible design or programming deficiencies.   Latency or How Long It Takes to Get Back to a Visitor Let’s start with the case of just one visitor (naturally, you’ll probably be aiming for rather more, but we’ll discuss this below.) Normally, you want the response time for that visitor to be as fast as possible. In other words, between the moment when the visitor clicks to send you a request and the moment the visitor sees your response, the least time possible should elapse. This ‘latency’ can however be determined by several different things, including the power of your web hosting platform, the size of your network connection and the power and network speed of your visitor’s computer. You can improve the first two, but the last two are out of your control (although keeping your web pages simple may help.)   Performance Under Load Ideally, you should have an idea of how many visitors are likely to access your web hosting platform at the same time. If this is not feasible, then you should at least know how many average or typical users can actively work with your site simultaneously, and plan ahead for options to increase capacity if you need to. Different solutions, either free or paying, online or in-server, are available for conducting load tests with up to a few million simulated users or more. Whichever solution you choose, make sure your test is representative of both user numbers and types of activity, including number of pages called per hour, number of requests for database information, ‘think time’ and so on.   When It’s All Just Too Much If your web site is significantly more popular than you imagined, your web hosting facility may not be able to cope with all the traffic. Then what happens? Does your site send out a polite apology about lower performance while stopping any new connections, or does it just crash without warning? Stress tests are designed to find out what (really) happens under conditions of excessively high loads. How much this affects you will depend on what kind of website you operate. A web site for a bird spotting association that simply crashes may just be an irritation. A web site selling hot new fashion articles that simply crashes could lose you important revenue and customer loyalty.   A More Technical Test The soak test is done by starting your web site or application and leaving it to run (normally) for an extended period of time to see whether this produces any abnormal conditions either in the application or in the web hosting platform it runs on. One example would be memory leaks, a common enough problem when an application uses some main memory, but fails to return it for general use when it’s finished with it. Testing for these kinds of conditions typically requires technical expertise, for example by the person or team designing the application in the first place.   Finally, Who is the Judge of ‘Good Performance’? Performance, ultimately, is all about making sure customers or end-users are satisfied with what they experience. Your web hosting platform may be supercharged in processor power and memory, yet they may still complain. Or it may be far more modest and still reply adequately to user expectations. Falling traffic and user comments on your blog (or similar) may indicate a problem, but prevention is always better than cure. There’s only one way to find out what users really want, and that’s to ask them. Armed with this information, you can then do the right performance tests and confirm or tweak afterwards, as appropriate.   ***** Author Bio: Natalie Lehrer is a senior contributor for CloudWedge . In her spare time, Natalie enjoys exploring all things cloud and is a music enthusiast. Follow Natalie’s daily posts on Google Plus , Twitter @Cloudwedge , or on Facebook . Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/video4net/4102797678/in/photolist-7fxUP1-csmoYf-7C3yps-9RCj9C-ahC6R9-zhLTR-65ho4J-65hog3-65d6Gc-65d7Ex-65d7ug-65d7i6-9ME8p3-aWJPyZ-65jBWR-7C3ypb-7C3yoN-7BYKHv-7C3yoY-4Whues-9oXHMe-4So2a5-wEq41-6F8avn-xvcic-dzZjrH-4So2pQ-9kzTZu-ayfSbd-zhMYn-ahCo27-8KtMnD-5NFE6D-9ME8pd-8kQ3b-4So2Zo-4SiPLi-8p1sAC-hYuBDZ-9ME8p9-9ME8ph-deYPPh-ahzkA6-zhMYj-xvcia-enp8Um-ahC7HY-ahCnjS-ahzA8t-ahCns5 web hosting Continue reading →

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