Tag Archives: search-engine

SEO vs. PPC

Posted on July 1, 2019 by Hosting

The post SEO vs. PPC appeared first on HostGator Blog . After all the hard work you put into designing and launching your website, now you get to the even harder part: getting people to visit.  A website can be a powerful tool for driving more awareness of your business and convincing people to buy, but it can’t do any of that unless people find it. And in an overcrowded online marketplace, getting noticed by the people you want to reach is a serious challenge. Once you start looking into online marketing tactics to promote your website, you’ll notice two marketing options get a lot of attention: search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) .  Often, new website owners with a limited budget try to figure out: “In the argument of SEO vs PPC, which should take dominance?” Before you can determine which tactic makes the most sense for your business, you need to understand what they are.  SEO and PPC are the two sides of search engine marketing (SEM). They have one main thing in common: they help you get found by people searching for what you do on the search engines, especially Google.  But they also have some notable differences. What is the Difference Between SEO and PPC? The difference between SEO and PPC is all about where on the search engine results page (SERP) you show up and how you get there.  What is PPC Marketing? With PPC, you buy spots on the SERP that show up at the top of page (if you pay enough), at the bottom, or to the side. PPC results often have the word “Ad” next to them, or show up in an image carousel with shopping details at the top of the page.   Brands get those spots by paying for them. Search engine ad platforms use a pay-per-click bidding model to sell ad results. The businesses willing to spend the most, get the best placements for the keywords they bid on, but they only pay when someone actually clicks on the ad, hence the name “pay per click.”  An SEO strategy operates differently. What is SEO Marketing? With SEO, you work to earn spots in the organic results—that’s the term for all the results on the page that haven’t been paid for. For many search terms, that means they show up below PPC results, but not always. Sometimes organic results can claim a rich snippet , like the answer box that shows up at the top of some SERPs. SEO results can’t be bought, they have to be earned. You claim organic spots by practicing a number of SEO tactics , including: Working to optimize your website for relevant keywords you want to target. Making sure your website provides a good user experience, especially when it comes to things like site speed and mobile friendliness.  Working to build authority for your website by earning backlinks from other sites.  Those are the basic differences between SEO and PPC to be aware of, but what does that mean for website owners? SEO vs PPC in 7 Categories Small business owners don’t have a lot of money to spend on an online marketing strategy, so what you really want to know about SEO vs PPC is how they shake out in comparison to each other in terms of things like cost and performance.  Here’s how the two SEM tactics compare in seven main categories.  1. Cost This is a tricky category for comparison. While it may seem like there’s an obvious answer, since PPC is paid advertising and SEO must be earned with work, you may assume PPC is more expensive. In reality, measuring SEO vs PPC in cost is complicated, as which costs more will really depend on how you approach each. To truly see results with SEO, most website owners will need to hire an SEO expert to help. A recent survey found that SEO consultants charge an average of around $500-$1,000 a month . While technically, you can spend nothing on SEO but time, more realistically, you should expect to spend around this amount.  One benefit of PPC is that costs are within your control. You can set a maximum daily spend within Google Ads , and the network will stop running your ads once you’ve gotten enough clicks to reach that amount. That means you can name your budget and never go over it. But if your budget is too low, you’ll run through your maximum spend too early in the day to get the results you want, and it will take longer to accumulate the data you need to build better campaigns.  According to one survey , small businesses that do PPC spend an average of $9,000-$10,000 a month. That doesn’t mean you’d have to spend that much, but it probably means that’s the amount others have found gets the best results. Winner: SEO, usually 2. Control SEO is all about doing your best to signal to Google the keywords you think you should rank for, and proving you’re authoritative enough to gain those rankings. While you can target specific keywords, you ultimately have very little control over what terms you’ll show up for, where you’ll show up in the rankings, and how your website will show up on the SERP.  For that last point, you can provide your own meta descriptions and use schema markup in the hopes that Google will display the information you’ve provided on the SERP. But it’s still up to the search engine how your website shows up—if it shows up at all.  With PPC, on the other hand, you have much more control. Paying for ads means you can decide: Which relevant keywords your ads show up for   Who sees your ads , in terms of categories like demographics, geography, and consumer behavior What your ads look like , since you decide on what the ads says, and can include elements that increase clicks like images, or ad extensions that provide useful information such as special deals and delivery information. Winner: PPC 3. Speed of results SEO is a long game. Expect to spend months, or even years, practicing SEO tactics before you start to see results. And even then, your first results won’t be for high-competition keywords.  For example, a small business that sells hot sauce will see results for long-tail keywords—the SEO term for keywords that are less competitive—like “hot sauce shop san antonio” or “ghost pepper hot sauce” long before it has the chance to claim a broad term like “hot sauce.” That doesn’t mean SEO isn’t worth doing. It absolutely is! There are plenty of benefits to SEO . It just requires patience.  With PPC, by contrast, you can start showing up on page one and getting new traffic the first day you launch a campaign. PPC is often a smart choice for businesses who are doing SEO, but want to start driving traffic faster while they’re waiting for SEO results to pay off. Winner: PPC 4. Amount of work Both SEO and PPC require ongoing work. With PPC, you need to complete keyword and audience research to figure out the best targeting for your campaigns. Then you need to set up your campaigns, monitor them to learn what’s working, and make updates to improve your results and make sure your budget goes further.  As with PPC, SEO should start with keyword and audience research, then you have a list of tactics to stay on top of: Optimize each page of the website for your chosen keyword by including it naturally in the title, headings, page copy and meta tags of the page. Consistently create high-quality content to keep your website fresh and target more of the keywords on your list. Undertake link building strategies to get other websites to link back to yours.  Maintain a SEO-friendly web design On the whole, doing SEO well usually requires more work than PPC. Winner: PPC 5. Trust As you’d expect, people generally trust the results that have earned top spots more than those that paid for them. 46% of people said they consider organic results more trustworthy than PPC ones, and 65% said they were more likely to click on an organic result for product-related searches. SEO is therefore a better way to earn the trust of people searching for the kind of products you sell. That said, a sizeable portion of the population— around 57% — don’t even register the difference between the paid and organic results on the SERP.  Google’s always changing how the SERP looks, so that number is subject to change, but there’s a certain type of consumer that won’t think any less of your PPC ad than if you earned that top organic spot. Winner: SEO 6. Click-through rate Recent data shows a clear winner in this category, but also shows that a lot depends on the type of device people are using. The click-through rate (CTR) for organic results on desktop computers is at over 65%, as compared to a little under 4% for PPC ads. On mobile devices, organic results get around a 40% CTR, with mobile earning a little over 3% (many searches on mobile don’t result in a click at all).  Either way, organic results get more clicks, making SEO rankings more valuable for traffic once you get them.  Winner: SEO 7. Analytics Analytics give you the power to consistently learn from everything you try, improve your campaigns based on that knowledge, and get better results over time. With both SEO and PPC, you can tap into valuable analytics.  Google Analytics , which is entirely free, provides a lot of data on how much of your traffic comes from organic search, where you rank for target keywords, and which pages people are finding through SEO.  And you can supplement all that free information with the additional data included in paid SEO tools that helps you clearly identify how your website compares to your competitors in rankings and what they’re doing differently to achieve the rankings they have, such as their backlink profile and the keywords they’re targeting. While SEO tools can provide a lot of useful information, ultimately there’s still a lot of guesswork behind why certain pages rank higher than others.  By contrast, the analytics provided in PPC campaigns can tell you exactly which ads perform well. And because you control every part of the ad, you can do A/B testing to gain insights into what your audience responds to—providing information you can apply not only to your future PPC ads, but also to every other part of your online marketing campaigns.  Winner: PPC SEO vs PPC Frequently Asked Questions Even with that extensive rundown, you may still have some questions. Here are answers to some of the common questions website owners have about the difference between SEO and PPC. Which Is Better: SEO or PPC? It depends on your priorities.  PPC drives faster results. You can start getting visibility and traffic on day one, but you have to continually pay for every person it sends to your website.  SEO is slower, but once you gain relevant rankings, the results last longer. A good ranking will continue driving traffic for as long as you stay near the top, and you can count on getting more traffic from a good SEO ranking than a PPC one. And while there’s a cost to the work involved in getting on page one, once there all the traffic it sends your way is free.  Does PPC Traffic Help SEO? Not directly, but some of the metrics SEO experts commonly believe to be ranking factors require getting more relevant traffic, which PPC sends your way.  For example, when people click on your ad and like what they see long enough to stick around, it results in a lower bounce rate and longer time spent on site—both metrics that signal to Google that people are happy with the page they land on.  You can’t buy SEO results with PPC ads, but getting traffic from relevant visitors is one of the first steps to doing a lot of things that do pay off in SEO. How do PPC and SEO Work Together? Good question! While the framing of this piece has pitted SEO and PPC against each other, for most businesses the goal should be SEO and PPC working together.  PPC helps you get the initial boost you need in visibility and traffic when your website’s new, or when it’s underperforming based on your goals. It’s a good strategy for short-term wins while you’re waiting for your SEO work to start coming through. SEO is the long-term strategy that delivers bigger and more reliable results once it starts working. But it’s hard when you’re starting from scratch, and PPC can bring some of the initial traffic and attention you need to get your SEO efforts off the ground.  For the Win: SEO and PPC Integration A good online marketing strategy combines the two tactics. If that sounds like a lot of work, well, it is. But you don’t have to learn both SEO and PPC from scratch to start getting more traffic for your website.  You’ll get better results, faster if you outsource the job to someone who already knows what they’re doing. HostGator offers both SEO and PPC services. Our team includes skilled professionals with years of experience in both types of SEM. If you’re ready for your website to start delivering bigger results, let us help . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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What Is SEO?

Posted on July 1, 2019 by Hosting

The post What Is SEO? appeared first on HostGator Blog . You finally started that website and now you’re trying to figure out what’s next. Chances are, you’ve encountered friends, articles, and ads all alike telling you that what’s next is organic SEO. If you’re fairly new to the web though, you might be wondering what SEO is and how it works. What Is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization. It describes the actions you can take to increase the chances of your website showing up in major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo when people search for what you do.  SEO is a complex industry. The big search engines keep a lid on most of the details of how their search engine algorithms work. That leaves SEO experts using a mix of long-term observation, trial and error, and research studies to figure out how best to optimize a website to land better search results.  While organic SEO is complicated and some of the details of how it all works are hazy, nonetheless a number of best practices for improving your website’s search results are well known. This post will dive into much of the most important information that we do know about what SEO is and how it works. The 2 Types of SEO One of the most important things every website owner needs to know about SEO techniques is that while doing it well can be a boon for  your business, doing it badly will hurt you more than not doing it at all.  Of the many companies providing SEO services , there have always been a category of practitioners that try to find shortcuts to getting search engine results. The major of search engines prioritize delivering the best, most useful results to people. When low-quality websites make their way into the results because of people trying to game the system, they take note and make changes to the algorithm. And those changes don’t only serve to correct the problem, in many cases, they also actively work to punish the websites that gained rankings through sketchy SEO techniques and practices. As a result, any business that decides to invest in SEO must learn the basic differences between white-hat SEO (the good, legitimate tactics) and black-hat SEO (the spammy tactics the search engines hate).  White Hat SEO White-hat SEO is any approach to search engine optimization that falls within Google’s guidelines and aims to gain rankings through legitimate means. The best way to figure out if an SEO tactic is white hat is to ask yourself: how will this affect the experience for everyday visitors to the website? If it will provide a positive or neutral effect for human visitors, then there’s a good chance it’s a legitimate tactic worth pursuing. If it will make the visitor’s experience worse or more confusing, then it’s definitely a black-hat tactic.  All the tactics explored in the How SEO Works section below count as white-hat tactics, so if you want to get started on the right foot, stick with those or seek out another form that only uses  legitimate SEO practices.  Black Hat SEO Black-hat SEO describes all the scammy tactics that people have used to try to game the system. Many of them are now well known to have negative effects on a website’s SEO. But because they worked—even if briefly—at some point in the past, some SEO providers still use them.  Many well intentioned small businesses have inadvertently hired an SEO consultant that used black-hat tactics and suffered the consequences. Don’t fall into this trap! Here are some common SEO mistakes to steer clear of. Keyword stuffing  Using keywords in your content is an important and legitimate part of doing SEO effectively. But if you overdo it, it goes from being a smart part of your SEO strategy to a spammy tactic that can get you penalized.  Don’t awkwardly fill your content with keywords, whether they make sense or not. Only use keywords in a way that makes sense naturally in the text. Always ask, would this sound good to a human reader, or is it sloppily shoehorned in?   Link buying Link building is arguably the hardest part of SEO, so it’s tempting to look for easy shortcuts for getting links. Many companies offer to sell lots of backlinks for your website, sometimes for cheap. But Google explicitly frowns on this practice and the algorithm has ways to recognize low-quality links that have been paid for.  If you buy a lot of low-quality links for cheap, your website will be penalized in search and you’ll have to go through the work of disavowing them later.  Duplicate content You need a lot of content for SEO that utilizes the specific keywords you want to rank for. When you have many keywords that are similar, it can be tempting to reuse the content you’ve already created with slight variations.  For example, a divorce lawyer that serves a number of different neighborhoods might create five copies of the same page with the term “neighborhood A divorce lawyer” subbed with “neighborhood B divorce lawyer,” “neighborhood C divorce lawyer,” etc.  That may seem like a clever way to cover your bases and target more keywords with less work, but the search engines don’t like duplicate content and it’s another way to get your website penalized. For each keyword you target, you need to create entirely unique content.    Spam comments Many blog comment sections allow commenters to include a link with their comment. As such, some black hat SEO practitioners try to use blog comment sections as a way to build new links to their website. This may have been a worthwhile tactic at some point, but now it’s mostly a waste of time.  Most websites have anti-spam filters on their comments section, which means most spammy link building comments won’t make it through to begin with. And on top of that, on most sites that accept comments, the links included are nofollow (meaning they don’t deliver any SEO authority).  For the rare times that you can get a link in a blog comment that’s dofollow, Google’s algorithm doesn’t count it for much anyways.  Cloaking Cloaking is a shady practice that involves designing your website so it appears to be about one thing to Google’s algorithm, while visitors will encounter something entirely different. Any website trying this tactic risks being blacklisted.  And it’s ultimately shortsighted anyways. Why would you want to rank for keywords unrelated to what visitors will find on the page? You’ll get irrelevant organic traffic that’s looking for something else.  Invisible or tiny text A similar tactic to cloaking, and equally shady, is including text that’s in the same color as the background or tiny enough to be overlooked by humans. The thinking behind this one is that you can cram a few more keywords in that the algorithm will see, without it negatively influencing the user experience. This is yet another sleazy tactic the search engines have caught onto and will penalize when they catch it. Cheap, low-quality content For a long time, the content and SEO industries were dominated by cheap content mills that paid writers a few bucks a piece to churn out high quantities of low-quality content. Because having lots of fresh content was a key part of getting higher search engine results, it made sense (or at least seemed to) to publish as much content containing your keywords as possible—whether or not it was providing useful information to readers.  Many of those content mills went out of business as Google’s algorithm changed to increasingly penalize low-quality content and reward the sites that were providing more substantial, useful content. But some SEO companies still promote quantity over quality, to the detriment of their clients.  How SEO Works Now you know what not to do, these are the white-hat tactics that are worth spending your time and money on. Keyword Research One of the main benefits of SEO is that it delivers relevant traffic specifically. If you sell chocolates, you don’t need visitors that are looking for flights to Hawaii. And if you sell flights, you don’t need visitors looking for caramel truffles. With SEO marketing, you can help the people who are actively looking for what you offer find you more easily.  That makes keyword research an important component in any SEO strategy. It shows you what terms your target audience is using when they’re looking for information about your products and industry, so you know what language and topics to craft your strategy around. Keyword research involves a few main things: Keyword tools – To identify the best keywords to target, you need data on what people are searching for. There are a mix of free keyword research tools, like Google’s Keyword Planner , and paid SEO tools, like Moz , you can use for this. Website analytics – While Google has limited the amount of keyword data it provides in Google Analytics , it’s still useful to stay on top of which terms people are using to find your website now. Pay attention to the keyword data that is provided, and the data on which landing pages visitors are coming from, which can often lead you back to the keywords you’re ranking for.  Long-tail keywords – A smart keyword strategy includes looking beyond the general, high-level keywords that tend to be especially competitive, like “chocolates,” and also targeting long-tail keywords that are more specific and less competitive, like “milk chocolate with pecans” or “best healthy chocolates for mother’s day.”   SERP research – Another important role keywords play is that, once you know what term you’re targeting, you can do some research to find out what’s currently ranking for it. Figure out if there are any rich results on page one and what the top-ranking results look like, so you can design the content you create to beat them.  On-Page Optimization The next important component in SEO is on-page optimization. This is everything you do on your own website that makes it easier for search engine algorithms to understand what the pages on your site are about, and that ensures visitors have a good user experience (UX). This includes four main things: Site speed – Both Google and your visitors care about how fast your site loads. Take the steps needed to make sure it loads fast.  Meta tags – On each page of your website, you should customize meta tags such as the title tag , heading tags, image alt tags, and meta descriptions to include your target keywords.  Site architecture – The way you organize your site and, relatedly, structure your URLs is also important for SEO.  Mobile friendliness – Google has been clear about the algorithm prioritizing websites that are mobile friendly , so make sure you build a responsive site that works as well on small screens as on desktops. Content Creation Regularly publishing fresh content provides two big SEO benefits: It signals to the search engines that your website is up to date and consistently adding new, valuable information. It gives you the opportunity to create new pages targeting a range of relevant keywords.  Content creation is therefore a huge part of any good SEO strategy. Make sure you create a strategy for your content based on what your keyword research shows your target audience cares about, and what your website analytics show you they respond to.  And as we discussed earlier in the post, prioritize providing valuable information to your readers over publishing a high quantity of content. While more content can add up to better SEO results, that’s only the case if the pieces you’re publishing are also good.  Link Building Our final difficult, but crucial, component of SEO is link building . One of the main factors Google considers when determining the authority of a website is the number of links on respected, relevant websites pointing back to it. Every time another site chooses to include a link to a page on your website, they’re telling Google that they consider what’s on the page to be valuable. As long as that website is considered reputable by the search engine algorithm, it gives you a boost in SEO authority. Link building is hard to do well, but there are a number of legitimate link building strategies you can employ, whether you’re a blog , local business , or online store . A few common examples include: Guest posting – When you write a guest post for a relevant website, you can usually include a link back to your own website, as long as you do so naturally.  Broken link building – SEO tools can help you find places around the web where links using your preferred anchor text (the words that are hyperlinked) no longer work. These are opportunities to contact the website to suggest replacing the broken link with a working one to your content.  Brand mention link building – Any mentions of your brand around the web are an opportunity for a link. SEO tools will help you find them, then you can contact the webmaster to ask them to add a link where your brand is mentioned.  SEO Is Complicated, But Important SEO isn’t easy and it can take a while to start seeing results, but it’s important for any website that cares about organic traffic and visibility.  But you don’t have to learn everything about SEO from scratch entirely on your own. Now that you know the main things to look for and, just as importantly, the main things to avoid, you can find a good SEO provider to do the work for you.HostGator’s skilled SEO experts help clients with all the components of white-hat SEO marketing described here. And you don’t have to make a commitment until we’ve proven to you that we know what we’re doing with a free SEO review. Contact us now to learn how we can help your business rank better in the search results. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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What Is phpBB Hosting?

Posted on May 21, 2019 by Hosting

The post What Is phpBB Hosting? appeared first on HostGator Blog . The idea of community used to be much more tied to geography. For a group of people to come together to have discussions, share information, and learn from each other, they had to live close enough to do so in person. The internet has changed all that. The idea of connecting with people in online communities is now second nature to us. And one of the common options for creating and maintaining communities online is the forum software phpBB. Below we dive into everything there is to know about phpBB hosting , from how it works to why you might choose it to power your own forum. What Is phpBB? phpBB , which stands for PHP bulletin board, is an open source forum software that enables users to create a space online where communities can gather and share information in an organized format. Forums created with phpBB let creators define the main categories and topics the community forum will cover. Users can create accounts, load their own questions and contents in the appropriate categories, and respond to the posts of other community members. All participants in the discussion board can track the number of conversations and posts in all of the categories, and click to view each category and conversation they’re interested in. The forum model is basic and intuitive, making it easy for just about anyone to use. And for individuals or businesses interested in starting a forum, phpBB makes setting one up relatively simple as well. 6 Reasons to Start a Forum phpBB is best used for the specific function of building and running an online forum. Before you decide if it’s the best application for your purposes, you should figure out if creating a forum is right for your particular needs. It’s possible to create a discussion board for its own sake, in order to create a gathering place for people with common interests. It’s also common to create one as part of a business or brand that already exists, to give your customers or followers a place to connect with each other. If you already have a website and are wondering if a forum makes sense, there are a few main benefits it can offer. 1. Forums create community. Humans are social animals who have always sought out community and connection. An online forum gives people a chance to get to know other users, help each other out, and feel like a part of something. In some cases, that will take on a straightforward and professional tone, and in others it will have a more fun or emotional one. In either case, when you can provide people with a sense of community, you’re adding real value to their lives. And if you become a regular participant in it as well, you may find it brings value to yours also. 2. You can get to know your site visitors better. For brands, this is a big benefit. For both businesses and media sites, understanding your audience is a big priority. In order to deliver information and products that are relevant and useful to the people you want to reach, you need to know who they are and what they care about. When your audience comes together to interact with each other in a forum, they’ll voice the common questions and opinions they have. All that information you’re always trying to learn about them when crafting buyer personas or creating a content strategy? With a forum, they’ll bring it straight to you. 3. Your visitors can learn from each other. For many tech and software products, this is one of the big roles online forums play. When you’re struggling to figure out how to take a particular action in your software and head to Google to find the answer, often what you’ll find is a forum page where one user of the software asked the same question, and a fellow one provided an answer. This is a major reason why we have forums here at HostGator : That use case extends beyond tech products to any type of issue your forum users might be able to help each other with. A forum for teachers could include advice about lesson plans or how to handle particular student issues. A forum for fans of a TV show could include conversations about the show’s influences or themes that introduce ideas some fans hadn’t considered before. In every case, both the people learning something new, and the people providing the information (and in many forums, members will take turns in each role) are getting something valuable out of the interaction. 4. Forums can increase traffic to your site. If you add a forum to your website, you give all the members that participate reasons to keep coming back again and again. And when users have questions that relate to content you already have on your website, you have the perfect opportunity to share the link and drive more traffic to those pages on your site. All that adds up to more visits to your website. And even better, much of it will be return visitors who are actively engaging with your brand during their visits. For website owners, that’s a big win. 5. Forums can improve search engine optimization (SEO). The search engine algorithms like fresh content. When they see that a website is updated often, it shows that the website is current, which suggests it has more value than one that’s potentially outdated. Forums generate tons of fresh content—every time someone posts a new message or response, they’re creating new content on your site. And if your forum is available to the public, it creates a lot of new pages that can be indexed by the algorithms and show up in search themselves. If one of the conversations in your forum answers a question searchers have better than other websites do, it could get onto the first page of the search results, driving more traffic and increasing the authority of your website. 6. Forums help you generate new content ideas. One of the best ways to improve your website’s authority is to consistently create content your visitors care about. But creating large amounts of high-value, relevant content is challenging. In order to keep it up, you need a way to brainstorm topics your audience are most interested in. A forum gives you a window into the topics your audience is thinking and talking about. You can learn the common questions they have, and then create content that answers them. And by spending time following the conversations they have and the language they use, you’ll get better at creating content in a style that they can relate to. Why Use phpBB? If a forum sounds like the right choice for your website, you do have a few different options to choose from in selecting your software. But there’s a reason that phpBB is one of the most popular options—a good number of reasons in fact. In particular: It’s free. Setting up a forum with phpBB costs nothing. You can save your money for hosting and marketing. It’s open source. The code for phpBB is freely available to use and change as you need. And because it’s open source, other users can also develop features and extensions you can benefit from. It’s secure. The team behind phpBB runs security audits and work to quickly release updates to the software anytime they spot a vulnerability in the code. As long as you keep your software up to date and take basic website security measures , like choosing a trusted web hosting provider and using strong passwords, you’ll be able to keep your website safe from hackers . It enables user preferences. For your forum to attract the community you want and get them to stick around, you want it to be user friendly. phpBB allows individual users some control over their experience of the forum. For example, they can load unique avatars and signatures to personalize their accounts, and customize the order they view categories in.   It gives you the power of moderation. In our era of spam bots and trolls, a good community is a well moderated one. To keep your forum valuable, positive, and on topic, you need the power to review and approve the posts that go live. phpBB allows both the forum owner and any users you assign moderator status to the ability to remove or approve specific posts. It offers public and private messaging options. Much of the value of a forum is the visibility of the conversations to all members, but sometimes individual members may want the ability to take part of the conversation private. phpBB allows the option of private messaging between members as well as public discussions. It allows posters to include rich features. These days, online conversations are rarely just text. phpBB lets users complement their written messages with popular gifs, images, and emojis, as well as adding rich media like video or interactive features like polls. It has anti-spam features. It’s hard to go anywhere online without encountering spam, but phpBB can help you avoid dealing with too much of it in your forum with features like captcha confirmation and the ability to ban users as needed. You can customize your forum’s look. You can use your own coding skills to change up the design of your forum, if you’re able. Or you can choose from the hundreds of styles other phpBB users have developed and made available, mostly for free.   You can control permissions. Ther forum owner, administrators, and moderators will need different types of access and abilities in the forum than everyday users. phpBB makes it easy for you to determine which users are able to access which features. There are lots of extensions available. The functionality available in the core phpBB software is rich enough, but many users have created extensions that add additional features and functions to phpBB, many of them for free. You can expand what you and your members are able to do, based on your priorities. What Is phpBB Hosting? phpBB hosting is a type of web hosting that’s compatible with the phpBB software. phpBB provides a lot of the important functionality you need to build a forum, but it doesn’t come with web hosting. For your forum to become available online and accessible to your members, you’ll need to invest in application web hosting . If you already have a website, you may be able to get started by adding your phpBB forum to the hosting plan you already have, but if you didn’t choose an application web hosting plan specifically designed to work with phpBB, there’s a chance you’ll face compatibility issues. A good phpBB web hosting plan will promise easy one-click installation, so you can spend your time focusing on getting your forum started, not on messing with complicated technical processes to get everything working. Here’s a look at how easy it is to install phpBB with HostGator: A phpBB web hosting plan will be 100% compatible with your phpBB forum—so there’s no chance of surprise issues down the line. Plus, a strong phpBB hosting choice will provide adequate security through strong firewalls and security software options, so that you can trust your forum will remain active without the threat of malicious hackers or viruses. Finally, you’ll also want to be sure you choose a web hosting option that provides enough bandwidth for the website to handle regular visits from all your users, especially if the community starts to grow in the months and years to come—which is exactly what you want! While a number of web hosting plans may work for hosting your phpBB forum, your life will be a little easier if you go with a reputable web hosting company that offers a phpBB-specific plan. Get Started with phpBB Hosting Services With the right phpBB hosting plan, you can get your forum up and running fast, and keep it running functionally without issues for as long as you want. When considering your options for phpBB hosting, make sure you go with a web host that has a strong reputation for providing quality service. HostGator can promise 24/7 customer support, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and a great reputation in the industry . Many of the benefits of having a community forum fall by the wayside if your visitors can’t access it at the moment they need it. With the right phpBB web hosting plan, you can be confident that your forum will deliver on the speed and accessibility that your users want and expect. Get started today with HostGator application hosting . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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Benefits of Magento Hosting

Posted on May 17, 2019 by Hosting

The post Benefits of Magento Hosting appeared first on HostGator Blog . Your eCommerce business is starting to come together. You have your business plan and an idea  of what the design of your eCommerce website will look like. But you still need to figure out the right eCommerce software and web hosting plan to get your eCommerce website working and ready for business. When considering your web hosting options, you may come across an option that addresses both needs in its focus: Magento hosting . What Is Magento? Before you can know if Magento hosting is right for you, you need to decide whether you’ll use Magento for your website. Magento is the third most popular eCommerce platform on the market (falling only behind WooCommerce and Shopify). It supplies the main functionality you need to run an eCommerce site, namely: A shopping cart Check out functionality Account creation and guest check out options Integration with payment processing apps to accept payment Ability to list your products and track availability Those are the basics you need, but Magento has a vast array of features that go beyond the basics. Between the core functionality of the platform itself and the extensions you can add to it , the software packs a lot of power into the framework it provides for your eCommerce store.   Why You Need eCommerce Software You know now that Magento is a type of eCommerce software, but maybe you’re wondering if you can get by without an eCommerce platform to begin with. eCommerce websites have unique needs that won’t be served by a web hosting plan or content management system alone. If you want to make sales through your website, then you need a way to list your products, track inventory, provide a secure checkout, and accept payments. If you think about the online stores you buy from the most often, they probably have additional eCommerce features like the ability to set up a wishlist, mark your favorites, set up subscriptions, or take advantage of coupons. For all of that, you need the right software. If you’re building an online store, consider eCommerce software a necessary part of the process. 12 Reasons to Use Magento for Your eCommerce Website Magento isn’t your only option, but it’s one of the most popular CMSes for eCommerce websites for a number of reasons. 1. Magento is free. Few things in life are free, and it’s even rarer for something with as much usefulness as Magento to be free. But the Magento core is freely available for anyone to use. You may incur some costs for extensions you add on, or for developers you hire to help you use Magento. But the platform itself won’t cost you a thing. 2. It’s open source. Magento is open source software which means that anyone with the skills to develop a new module or extension can do so. Magento boasts a community of over 300,000 developers. They have an active forum with thousands of contributors, all working to make Magento do as much as business owners need and want it to. One of the nice things about using an open source solution is that you can count on it to improve in quality and functionality over time as people work to make it better for the benefit of all users. 3. Magento’s advanced security is ideal for eCommerce. Website security is important for all website owners, but when you run an online store that regularly takes sensitive financial and personal information from customers, security takes on an extra level of necessity. In the eCommerce community, Magento is widely considered a strong choice for security. And while the core software provides security against hackers, you can make your Magento website more secure with any of the hundreds of security extensions available. In addition, Magento lets you control how much access you allow each person who updates your website to have. Security permissions help you limit the risk of an angry employee making malicious updates to your website, or someone accidentally breaking something on the site due to ignorance. 4. Magento supports huge eCommerce product catalogs and order volume It’s understandable to wonder just how much a free product can actually do, especially if you have big goals and expect to see significant traffic numbers or list a high number of products. Magento really can handle a lot. You can add up to 500,000 products to your store on one Magento site. And the platform can handle over 80,000 orders every hour (as long as your web hosting plan is also up to the task). Plus, Magento’s reporting dashboard shows you at-a-glance how those sales are translating to your bottom line: That means it should work for you in the early stages of building your business, and allow you tons of room to grow as your sales and customer numbers increase. 5. Magento’s flexible extensions make it easy to customize your online store. Magento is extremely customizable, especially when it comes to the changes you can make using the large library of extensions. You have a lot of power to make the backend of your website look the way you want it, as well as making the website itself intuitive for your visitors. And Magento has a lot of different features you can choose to incorporate if you so desire, such as using categories to better group your different products, allowing different payment options, and letting you manage orders through the platform. With Magento, you can configure your website to have the features you want it to, both on your end and the user end. 6. Magento’s shopping cart functionality is responsive. With over half of all web use now happening on mobile devices, it’s integral that all online stores make their website mobile friendly . Magento’s shopping cart functionality is fully responsive, which means it works just as well on tablets and smartphones as it does on desktop computers. The last thing you want is for half of your visitors to bounce because they find your website difficult to use on their particular device—or worse, bounce right before a sale because the checkout process is a pain on the small screen. Magento will help you avoid that fate. 7. Magento’s powerful product search helps customers quickly find what they need. Nothing else about your eCommerce site will matter if customers find using it more difficult than it’s worth. Your website has to provide an experience that’s intuitive and pleasant from the moment they first land on the site, to when they complete their purchase. Magento helps you realize that by letting you organize your products in user-friendly ways, so visitors can browse and filter results based on their particular preferences. You can enable features like auto-suggestion for search terms or display popular search term clouds that can further help customers find what they need. And you can load multiple high-resolution images for each product to help customers make a better decision. 8. Built-in features are designed to boost your conversion rate. Magento also has a number of options you can use to increase conversions and upsells. You can offer free shipping and discounts to incentivize sales. You can also add in areas for customers to add their own promo codes at checkout: You can enable one-click purchases (just like Amazon!) with their Instant Purchase feature: You can set up your website to display recently viewed products, so customers are more likely to go back and buy items they’d considered. You can have your website show related products , or items commonly bought together, to encourage customers to buy more products at once. Finally, you can make it easy for customers to share items they like on social or with friends. 9. Magento follows SEO best practices. The minds behind Magento knew the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) for a website and built a platform that made optimizing your pages for search simple. You can easily customize your URLs, fill in the relevant meta information on each page, and create an auto-generated sitemap to submit to the search engines. 10. Magento enables personalization. Personalization is an eCommerce tactic gaining steam and showing significant results. Magento’s core platform provides some personalization options, but you can go even further with tailoring the way customers experience your website with extensions that offer additional personalization features. With the Magento core, customers can create unique accounts so you can better track their behavior over time and show them products and ads based on past purchases or views. You can automate the process of serving up personalized recommendations for each visitor. With extensions, you can generate automated recommendation and reminder emails based on their past behavior and deliver personalized ads across other sites to help get past visitors back on your site. 11. Magento works with third-party applications. Magento helps power a lot of useful features and functionality on your own website, but what happens on your own website is only part of running an online store. You also need to think about marketing your store in various channels around the web to get customers to your website to begin with. Not to mention all the work you have to do to keep up with your business’s finances. Magento is compatible with a wide range of third-party applications that help with those parts, including email marketing software, Google analytics, accounting software products, and payment processing apps. Easy integration with the various apps you need to run your business make all the extra business tasks you have to take care of easier. 12. Magento tutorials abound online. Nothing is perfect, and one of the downsides of using Magento is that it has a learning curve. If you’re not a professional developer, or you don’t have the budget to hire one, learning the ropes of using Magento can take some time and work. But you can find a lot of useful information to help you get started online. Free tutorials are available on sites like TutorialsPoint . Or for a more thorough introduction, you can take one of the courses offered at Magento U for a fee. What is Magento Hosting? Magento hosting is a web hosting plan that provides compatibility with the eCommerce software Magento. While Magento is free and provides a lot of useful features for running an online store, one thing it notably doesn’t provide is web hosting. Magento hosting plans will often provide the additional important business features an eCommerce website needs such as an SSL certificate and compatibility with third-party solutions commonly used by businesses, such as email marketing and Google Analytics. While many web hosting plans that aren’t specifically Magento hosting may make it possible to use Magento, an application web hosting plan that provides specific functionality related to using Magento can often better meet the needs of eCommerce stores that depend on the shopping cart software. 5 Benefits of Magento Hosting When choosing the best web hosting option for your eCommerce store, you’ll benefit from prioritizing Magento compatibility upfront. There are five main reasons to specifically seek out an application hosting plan that works with Magento specifically. 1. Easy installation With a Magento hosting plan, you can trust that adding Magento to your web hosting account will be quick and easy. With HostGator’s Magento hosting, you can add the application in one click once you’re signed into your web hosting account. You can focus your time on building your website, rather than figuring out how to get your eCommerce software and web hosting service to work together. 2. Assured compatibility If you’ve already made the choice to power your eCommerce options with Magento—and especially if you’ve already put the work into using it in designing your website—you really don’t want to realize after you sign up for a web hosting plan that there are compatibility issues in getting Magento to work right with your plan. Save yourself the trouble of having to work to get the two programs to support each other, or worse, having to switch over to a new web hosting provider after you’re already eager to launch. Start with a plan you know will work seamlessly with Magento from the get go. 3. No performance issues One of the complaints you’ll occasionally see about Magento is that some sites face performance issues, such as slow loading times. In fact, the issue isn’t usually Magento when that occurs, it’s that the website owner went with a web hosting plan that wasn’t up to the task of running the Magento site. To avoid performance issues, find a Magento web hosting plan that provides the degree of power and bandwidth you need. 4. No hidden fees Some web hosting plans will advertise an upfront price, then hit you with unexpected fees when it comes time to add the apps you need to your account.  With Magento hosting, you not only know that your web hosting plan will be compatible with your Magento site, you can also trust that you won’t have to pay anything extra to use Magento with the plan you buy. 5. Proper security As we’ve already established, security is paramount when you’re running an online store. Choosing a secure web hosting provider like Magento is one step to making your eCommerce site secure. Finding a web hosting plan that also promises top-notch security is another. A good Magento hosting plan will have strong firewalls in place to protect your website from hackers and offer additional security features, like an SSL certificate and security software you can add to your website. Get Started with Magento Hosting Starting an eCommerce website is a big deal. If you make the right choices, it can put you on the path to big profits. Early on, two of the most important choices you can make are which eCommerce software to go with and which web hosting plan to choose. If you go with Magento, picking a Magento hosting plan to go along with your choice just makes sense.Get started with HostGator’s application hosting . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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12 Online Copywriting Tips to Improve Your Website

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Hosting

The post 12 Online Copywriting Tips to Improve Your Website appeared first on HostGator Blog . An impressive online presence matters. It’s the difference between visitors learning more about you or losing interest in your brand. To grab your target audience’s attention, upgrade your copywriting skills to engage with visitors. Effective copy helps your business sell more products, boost brand awareness, and dominate the competition. But, several factors influence how you write online. From the specific audience to your existing content, you must weigh what will work best for each piece. It also doesn’t hurt to add your unique personality to the work. Ready to level up your writing skills? Try these online copywriting tips to create a memorable visitor experience. 1. Research Your Audience According to CoSchedule, “successful marketers are 242% more likely to report conducting audience research at least once per quarter. And 56% of the most elite marketers conduct research once or more per month.” Bloggers can break the mold in their writing by becoming better researchers. Knowing about your audience gives you the intel to cater to their interests and maintain their attention. Research comes in many different forms. You can survey your existing audience and ask them particular questions on what topics they would enjoy reading. You could review your Google Analytics reports to assess the type of blog posts people visit the most. Tools like Social Mention also can help you discover new insights. This social media search and analysis platform tracks and measures what people are saying about any topic across social channels. While researching, your goal is to identify themes and patterns. You want to pinpoint ideas that will debunk myths and offer inspiration. Take the time to learn about your audience. Understanding their wants, needs, and behaviors helps your write better content. 2. Write in an Easy-to-Read Format The reading habits of an online visitor varies from a person offline. Research shows that site visitors read 20% of the text on the average web page. Your readers’ intentions are only to scan your content. Some individuals are too busy to read every word. Others just want to get the high-level concepts and move to the next topic. No matter the reasoning, be prepared to adjust your content. Best-selling author Jeff Goins offers his thoughts: “Sure, people can read. They just choose not to. You need to learn how to communicate to people who are functionally illiterate. Or perhaps, more appropriately, aliterate—that is, they’re able to read, but just choose not to do so.” You can make your writing easy to scan by using shorter paragraphs—limiting them to no more than four sentences. You can create scannable chunks by adding multiple subheadings throughout your blog posts. Draw the reader’s attention to important information with numbered lists and bullet points. It’s also wise to use bold and italic formatting to give your words more emphasis. There’s no doubt that your readers will scan your content. It’s up to you to assemble it in an easy-to-read format. 3. Insert Specific Keywords Organic search is the lifeblood of generating traffic to sites. If people can’t find your blog on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, it’s difficult to get new visitors. Keywords make it possible for potential readers to land on your site. When a person types phrases in a search engine, they get directed to content related to those keywords. Consumers are searching for specific terms with a particular intent. Impact reports that “50% of search queries are four words or longer.” Bloggers must match the searchers’ intent with remarkable content that solves their problems or answers their questions. As a result, readers will locate your blog and discover relevant information. Google Trends analyzes the popularity of top search queries in its search engine. That way, you can observe what people want to learn and write content that fits their needs. It’s not necessary to overload your blog posts with keywords. Stick to the basic search engine optimization guidelines, like adding keywords to your headers and meta descriptions. Writing for the web means getting your content seen. It all begins with including specific keywords in your work. 4. Highlight Notable Experts We’re often taught that writing is a standalone activity. When you’re ready to write, you should go in your perfect writing space and begin jotting down as many of your own words as possible. However, writing doesn’t have to be a lonely process. Writing for the web is also about collaboration. Your audience wants to hear new perspectives from other industry experts. The good news is that you can introduce them to notable people through your blog posts. John O’Nolan , founder and CEO at Ghost, agrees: “Is your brain tired? Borrow someone else’s! Who do you look up to in your industry who your readers might be interested in? Drop them an email and ask if you can do an interview. Your only challenge is to come up with some interesting questions which will get your subject talking.” Choose experts that your audience respects. When formulating interview questions, it’s important that you touch on different topics not present on other blogs. Exceptional questions will provide a fresh perspective to your post. Don’t limit your writing to just your ideas. When you feature thought leaders, it’s a special treat for your readers. 5. Provide Actionable Steps Web writing shouldn’t conclude like a suspense novel with a cliffhanger ending. Your audience wants actionable steps on how to move forward. Whether it’s leading them to a YouTube video or the checkout cart, it’s your responsibility to guide them to that goal. As an expert blogger, it’s easy to forget that your reader lacks the knowledge you possess. So, you may slip up and write with jargon or skip important details. That’s perfectly fine for your first draft. But, in the editing stage, you’ll want to scan for specific words or complex procedures that may hinder your readers from taking action. i am a food blog is a powerful example of how to showcase actionable steps in online writing. The instructions to prepare the dish are straightforward. Any reader can easily scroll to this section of the website and immediately begin cooking. Website design also is essential when writing for the web. You can include your steps in a colorful graphic to gain more attention from readers. What next steps can you offer your audience? Give them a reason to turn your words into productive action. 6. Write Targeted Copy Your website is an opportunity to establish your brand in the market. When people arrive to your site, they want to know what you do and what you stand for. Use your site copy to reflect a clear vision of your business. Rather than offering unnecessary details, select a primary goal that your copy will accomplish. “It’s important to give every piece of copy you write a single objective…Focusing on one objective at a time minimizes confusion and prevents you from including extraneous text,” writes  Sujan Patel , co-founder of Web Profits. Targeted copy will pinpoint the solution you offer visitors. You’re not just a food blogger or a website designer. People want to know how you can help them with their problems. In the image below,  The Art of Sculpting  tells you exactly how they serve their potential customers—taking their fitness to a new level. 7. Make the Visitor the Hero Let’s set the record straight: your copy isn’t about you, your business’s achievements, or even your latest TV appearance. If your desire is to transform visitors into leads (or customers), your copy must focus on your audience and their needs. All the copy should center around helping the visitor. It starts with telling a great story and creating a journey that involves the visitor. Much like the movies, the copy will discuss the challenges and the triumphs of the hero. Copy isn’t always about getting someone to take action. It’s also about etching a unique memory into their minds. That emotion will stay with them after they leave your site. 8. Express Your Value Visitors are interested in knowing how you can change their lives. What value will you provide to customers to improve their outcomes? This value will separate you  from the competition . In-home care startup  Honor  establishes value quickly on its homepage. Their team offers services to help seniors live better, while offering families peace of mind. Be descriptive in your language and avoid the over-the-top tone. It’s perfectly fine to boast about the benefits of your product. However, you don’t want to over-exaggerate. “People don’t want to be sold to. Tone down the hype and write your web copy like you’re talking with your ideal customer face-to-face. Your audience can tell the difference, and will be more likely to participate,” says  Christina Walker , a professional freelance web copywriter. To show your value, highlight the results of your services. Get people engaged in doing things differently with your business. 9. Craft a Compelling Call to Action Effective copy leads visitors to your desired next step, and that’s where your  call to action comes in. Your website consists of several pages with different purposes. If you’ve worked with marketers, they may have suggested creating pages consistent with your sales funnel. For instance, with new visitors, your goal may be to turn them into qualified leads. The call to action might convince your audience to sign up for a free ebook or checklist. While for your returning visitors who already possess interest in your products, the call to action would be a 10% coupon or a bonus gift after an initial purchase. No matter the call to action, it should speak to the audience’s needs and desires. They should be eager to receive your offering and ready to move down the sales funnel. 10. Add Social Proof Your brand centers around perception. It’s about credibility in the eyes of your future customers. They want to know that your products and services are worth their hard-earned money. Moreover, visitors are curious about whether or not they should associate themselves with your brand. With so much competition in the marketplace, sometimes the only differentiator is the prestige and external validation of your brand. People want to be affiliated with success. We buy cars to transport us from one place to another. So why would anyone want to purchase a Lamborghini or a Tesla? Because customers also seek vehicles to represent their status in society. Leverage social proof, like  customer testimonials , to influence your audience. “ Check out this example from  Backlinko . Brian Dean backs up his expertise with quotes from industry influencers. 11. Avoid Jargon Have you ever sat in a meeting where you didn’t understand anything? Everyone was talking in your native language, but every word seemed foreign. You probably felt confused or as if you didn’t belong. It’s an overwhelming feeling that just makes you want to stand up and exit the room. That’s a similar feeling your visitors experience when landing on a site stuffed with jargon. They don’t understand the content, so in a split second, they decide that this brand isn’t for them. To keep your target audience interested, you must speak their language. Instead of using unfamiliar terms, stick to words your audience knows. Pay attention to the words your current customers use to describe your business. Use social media to learn how your audience talks about your brand. With this insight, you can create copy that invites them into your website experience. 12. Experiment With Different Versions Your first draft of copy isn’t your last. Just like other aspects of business, the best way to learn if something works is to test it. So try not to fall in love with your copy. Remember that every word on the page is to help visitors understand you better. It’s important to keep that principle in mind when  A/B testing your copy . Experts suggest changing only one variable in your experiments. You might test the headline, then the call to action. If you test everything at once, you’ll lose sight of what your visitors actually like about your copy. Below is an example of an A/B test on the call-to-action-button text. The new variation focused on what the company’s offer provided the visitor. Be willing to experiment with your copy. It’s the best way to learn what connects with your visitors. Smart Copywriting that Conveys Your Brand Message Online When visitors land on your site, your goal is to gain their interest and establish trust quickly. Copywriting is a critical component to telling your story to your audience. Write compelling copy that makes every visitor the hero, and use social proof to add to your credibility. Improve your website with better copywriting. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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