Tag Archives: countries

Are HTML Email Coding Issues Killing Your Conversions?

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Hosting

The post Are HTML Email Coding Issues Killing Your Conversions? appeared first on HostGator Blog . What’s the Key to More Email Conversions? It Might Be Your HTML How’s email marketing going for your small business? If hardly anyone on your list is opening your emails and even fewer are clicking through, you’re probably wondering if your subject lines, copy, and images need work . They might. But there’s another possibility: You may need to improve the code that makes your emails work. Without the right code, your emails can show up in your subscribers’ inboxes as a jumbled, hard-to-read mess or a blank page, even if you’re using an email template. Of course, most small businesses don’t have an email code expert in-house to fix their issues. So I reached out to one to learn more. Anne Tomlin is the founder of Austin, TX-based  Emails Y’all and a self-described email geek whose enthusiasm for her work is contagious. She shared her knowledge about what happens when code goes wrong, why off-the-shelf templates work until they don’t, and how small businesses can diagnose, fix, and avoid some common email coding issues.   Look Good or Get Deleted The first thing to know is that email marketing is challenging because not everyone receives your emails in the same way. Different people use different devices to read their mail, and they may be using a variety of email clients that all have different rules about things like downloading email images. Most businesses know they need to use responsive templates for proper display on mobile devices, but the range of email client rules can trip them up. “A lot of email clients don’t download images automatically,” Tomlin said, giving Outlook as one example. “You can work around that, but a lot of businesses send emails that feature one big image. When those emails are opened with those clients, they’re just blank.” Consumers won’t tolerate that. Tomlin said she recently heard a conference presenter say that about 30% of Millennials immediately delete emails that don’t render properly. Those recipients won’t follow a link to “view this email in a browser,” wait to see if images load, or try to figure out how to read it on their screen. They just delete your carefully crafted message or decide they don’t want to hear from your business again. This is high-stakes stuff in terms of conversions and subscriber retention, but Tomlin says “even major retailers make this mistake.” One clothing retailer sends her emails that are blank, because “the email content is one big image with no live or alternative text” and Outlook doesn’t show it. Another apparel chain sent an email with lots of images that didn’t display, “and the alt text for every image was ‘turn on your images.’” What’s the workaround when you’re sending image-heavy emails? “A good coder can style alternative text to match your brand. Stitch Fix uses alternative text really well, and it’s stylized to fill the image space if the images don’t load. With proper coding, using live text or well-designed alternative text… maybe the recipients will download the images.”   Pros and Cons of Off-the-Shelf Email Templates If major retailers are tripped up by email coding, you can bet smaller businesses are, too. I asked Tomlin whether pre-made HTML templates from email marketing services can help SMBs avoid these email rendering pitfalls. “Most off-the-shelf templates work just fine” for businesses that are starting out with an email program, “but they might not work for every audience.” Tomlin mentions accessibility for customers with disabilities as an example. “Most templates were developed a while back” before accessibility for people with low vision, hearing loss, and other issues was given a lot of attention, and many “aren’t up to date yet with accessible code.” Another potential issue with pre-fab templates is simply the pace of change in the email industry. “Things change weekly, sometimes without any notice. Say Gmail decides to change something on their end, and that may totally screw up the rendering of your emails on, say, a certain type of phone,” but senders don’t realize that’s now a problem. “ Any good developer will keep tabs on the latest changes, notify clients, and update the code” as quickly as possible.   Best Practices to Avoid Email Coding Issues I asked Tomlin what steps small businesses can take to avoid code-related email issues. The first is to format your emails to look good with or without images. “Using one big image with text” in your marketing emails “is not good practice. A properly coded email will have live text that shows up whether the image loads or not.” Other best practices include: Test your emails before you hit send. Most email marketing service providers will show you how your emails will look on a variety of devices. Know your audience’s email habits and clients. “Use those analytics that your email marketing service provider collects. For example, if people aren’t opening your emails in Outlook, you can code some crazy awesome stuff to reach them” or hire someone to do that for you. Know when it’s time for professional coding services. Tomlin cites three scenarios. “When your conversions plateau or drop” or if your email program just isn’t hitting the targets you set, it’s time to look under the hood to see if rendering issues are part of the problem. “When you gain a larger, more diverse audience, say, new customers from other countries,” an email code expert can ensure your new audience sticks around and opens your emails, regardless of the many devices and clients they use. “When your emails don’t look right” even when you’re using a template. For example, Tomlin sometimes sees text-heavy emails with badly aligned columns or copy that gets truncated because it’s too long for the template. When you decide to hire a professional, Tomlin suggests careful vetting. Look for developers who ask lots of questions about your audience and who share information to help you reach your goals. Email coding isn’t just using off-the-shelf templates. “A good coder will build your emails from the ground up and tailor them to your needs.” Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are HTML Email Coding Issues Killing Your Conversions?

10 Things You Can Do With Google Search Console

Posted on June 7, 2018 by Hosting

The post 10 Things You Can Do With Google Search Console appeared first on HostGator Blog . 10 Things You Can Do With Google Search Console If you have a website, Google’s free webmaster tools are invaluable resources that you should be taking advantage of. Chances are, you already know about and regularly use Google Analytics , but if you haven’t yet, you should add Google Search Console to your list of go-to Google resources to help you get more from your business website as well. How to Set Up Google Search Console To start, go to the Google Search Console . To access it, you’ll be required to log in with your Google account – make sure you use the same one here you use for any other Google Webmaster tools you use. Once you’re logged in, look for the red button that says Add a Property. Enter the html for your website and click the button. From there, Google may ask you to verify you’re the owner of the website. There are a few different ways you can do this . If you’re already using Google Analytics, then the easiest option will be to choose Google Analytics Tracking Code as your preferred method of verification. As long as your Google Analytics tracking code is in the section of your homepage, you’ll be in with no problem. When you’re on the homepage of the Google Search Console, notice a link on the top left that says “Try the new Search Console”. You currently have two options for using the tool: the old, traditional one which keeps more of the functionality; and the newer version Google’s rolling out that has a more intuitive visual design, but fewer of the features and functionality of the older version. Over time, Google plans to move all the Search Console’s features into the newer version, but for now, a lot of the benefits of the tool remain in the traditional version. In the images below, the old version is on the left and the new version is on the right: 10 Ways to Use Google Search Console With access to the Google Search Console, you can now get to work accomplishing a number of different tasks. Here are some of the most important ways to use it.   1. Submit a sitemap. While Google’s web crawlers can learn a lot about a website and its individual web pages on their own, you can give them a little extra help in learning the information they need by submitting a sitemap to Google. A number of websites will automatically generate a sitemap for you. Once you have it, loading it to the Google Search Console is extremely easy. In the traditional version, while on the main page of the dashboard, look on the right side of the screen to see the Sitemaps section. Click on the gray bar that says Sitemaps. Then find the red Add/Test Sitemaps button in the top right corner of the screen. Click on it and fill in the URL for your website’s sitemap. In the new dashboard, click on Sitemaps in the menu on the left side of the page, then fill in the sitemap URL where instructed. 2. Learn common keywords people use to find you. Anyone that finds your website through search used a specific search term to get there. Google Search Console shows you the most common keywords bringing people to your website. In the traditional Google Search Console view, you’ll find this information by clicking on the Search Analytics bar in the middle of the page in the main dashboard. A little bit down the page, you’ll see the list of all the keywords people found you with and the number of times someone has clicked on your link after searching each keyword. By clicking on a particular keyword in the list and using the filter options in the top menu, you can go a little deeper to learn which pages show up for the specific keyword, what countries people are coming from when they search the keyword, and what devices they’re using. And you can see how different keywords fare in terms of clicks, impressions, and click-through rate. In the new Google Search Console, you’ll find the same information by clicking on Performance either in the left-side menu or in the top box in the main dashboard. In this version, Google shows you both the number of clicks each keyword earns you and the number of total times your website shows up in search for that keyword (impressions) on the main page, and you can view the other categories (CTR, position) by clicking on the upside-down triangle above the list. This information shows you if you’re successfully attracting people based on the keywords targeted in your SEO strategy. And it will reveal any keywords people find you with that you weren’t meaning to target at all.   3. Identify your most popular pages. Every website will have pages that perform better in the search engines than others. Google Search Console will help you determine which of your web pages is bringing the most people to your website. You can find your most popular pages in the same section you found the keywords, and filtering and viewing different subsets of data works pretty much the same. In both versions of the site, in the same Search Analytics section you viewed the keywords in, select Pages in the menu. You’ll see a list of all the pages people have seen and clicked in descending order of popularity, with your best-performing pages right at the top. The default view in the old version shows you the most popular pages in terms of clicks; in the new version, clicks and impressions. You can also see which perform best in terms of click-through rate and position as well.   4. See where your visitors are coming from. If your business serves a particular part of the world, then it’s more important to get traffic from visitors that live in a set geographic area than anywhere else. Google Search Console will also provide you data on where your visitors are located, so you can make sure you’re reaching the right people. This is in the same section as the keywords and pages data. In both versions, select Countries in the menu. You’ll see the number of clicks your website receives from each country, with the highest numbers at the top of the list. As with the other categories, you can also switch to view the results based on impressions, click-through rate, and search ranking position.   5. Learn which devices they use. By now, every business should have a mobile-friendly website . But even if you’ve already taken steps to make sure your website looks good on mobile devices, it’s still good to know what portion of your visitors are interacting with your website on each different type of device. The Google Search Console has you covered there. This is the last piece of data we’ll find in the same section as the last three. In both versions, select Devices in the menu. You can see here the distribution of how many clicks you get on each type of device and you can switch over to see the number of impressions, click-through rate, and average position as desired (you know this song and dance by now). Note that this is the last item on our list that you’ll find in both versions of the product. For the rest, at least at the time of this writing, you’ll be sticking with the traditional version of the Google Search Console.   6. Check that your website works well on mobile. While it’s a good idea to do mobile testing on your website on your own, you can also use the Google Search Console to confirm that your website passes their mobile usability standards. In the Search Traffic section on the left-side menu, select Mobile Usability. If everything about your site looks good to Google based on their standards for mobile usability, you’ll see a green checkmark telling you that no errors are detected. If it identifies something about your website that doesn’t work well on mobile, such as the use of flash or a small font size, you’ll get a message in this section letting you know what the problem is so you can work on fixing it.   7. See which sites link to you. For anyone focused on SEO, this is important information to have access to. Backlinks are one of the biggest ranking factors, so every time another authoritative website links to you it increases your website’s authority in the eyes of Google’s algorithm. Under Search Traffic in the left-side menu, select Links to Your Site. You’ll see a list of websites that include a link on their website back to yours, as well as a list of the pages on your website that other sites link to the most.  Under the section labeled “How your data is linked,” you can also see the anchor text other sites use most often when linking back to yours. You can find more information on each backlink by clicking on the website, and then clicking on the link listed. From there, you can see specific pages that include the link and visit them yourself to see how it’s used. 8. Check for broken links. Broken links provide a bad experience for your users and lead people away from the functioning pages you want them to be on. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they also make you look bad to Google and can have a negative effect on your rankings. In the Crawl section of the Google Search Console, you can find details on any errors Google found when crawling your website, including all URLs that returned a 404 error . If you click on each entry, you can find information on what the problem with the link is and where the link is located both on your website and others. This is valuable information you can use to improve your website experience and cut out any frustrating errors your visitors may be dealing with now.   9. Identify website security issues. Big website hacks are in the news every day lately it seems. Even if your business isn’t big enough to make the news if you get hacked, it can still cause you serious problems. And that goes double if you have an ecommerce site that collects sensitive customer data like credit card information. The Google Search Console provides a quick and easy head’s up if your website has a security flaw you should be aware of. Click on the Security Issues option on the left-side menu. If you don’t have anything to worry about, the Console will let you know. If Google does spot an issue, you’ll learn the details you need to figure out how to fix it here.   10. Confirm your schema markup or structured data is working. Finally, if you use schema markup or other structured data on your website, Google can confirm for you whether it’s set up right to work in the SERPs. Under Search Appearance, you’ll find categories for Structured Data, Rich Cards, and Data Highlighter, all of which are methods you can use to communicate more information to Google’s crawlers about how to display your web pages in the search results. The Console provides details on whether or not you have all your coding set up right for these categories, or if you need to make changes.   Conclusion The Google Search Console is entirely free and, as you can see, thoroughly packed with useful information for any business website. If you care about where and how you show up in the search engines, this is your best resource for digging into the data available and making an action plan for how to improve your SEO moving forward. Discover how HostGator’s expert SEO services can help your search rankings. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 10 Things You Can Do With Google Search Console