Wiser Sites

07/25/2024

Ever thought to yourself, "If I met my favorite celebrity / hero what would I ask them?"
Today I had coffee with someone that I have deep respect for and who has been truly influential in my life because of the books they've written, the podcasts that they have produced, and the content and training they provide. Not only is he "famous", but he is, in my opinion the best there is my industry niche.
I cannot say how excited I am to have had coffee this morning with Jay Baer and Alyson Murphy Baer . Thanks for taking time from your vacation. This fan boy is on cloud nine.

10/23/2019

[Sales copy / customer support]
I was writing a response to a client today and at first I wrote, "...Let's meet and we can make sure we understand the problem that needs to be fixed..." but then I though for a minute and tried again. The final copy read, "...Lets meet so we can find the best solution to improve your website..."

Change "problem" into "solution"

07/13/2017

[Hosting / Performance tip - basic]
Always check the fine print of your hosting company to see if you have full control.

We have had several clients ask us for help with Speed and performance only to find out they are hosted on GoDaddy managed hosting which does not allow you granular control of caching.

You cannot install W3TC as a caching tool. Their reason is, "Managed WordPress already has an optimized cache, so there's no need to have another caching tool."

I am not a fan of any hosting service that limits your ability to customize your installation.

Some will say, "Well W3TC is a nightmare and very complicated to set up." True, if you are a DIY and don't want to wrestle with W3TC, I can see why GoDaddy Managed Hosting and others might appeal to you.

This is one of the many reasons that we switched all of our clients to Wiser Sites hosting which gives you a lot of mobility for server customization. And this is very important for site owners that understand that speed is necessary for SEO and user experience.

And in case you were wondering, here is a look at our speed and performance service.

https://wisersites.com/services/speed-and-performance/

You have 5 seconds to capture your audience, after that you never know. Let our techs keep your site up to speed and ensure optimal performance.

07/13/2017

[SEO Tip - advanced]
Make sure you're properly using rel=canonical for your search archive pages in WordPress

"When you look at the source to see the canonical for this [page] it's generating a unique search URL as a canonical version. So, if these pages over time end up getting linked to, the index could basically start having these search pages.

So from that perspective we just want to make sure that the canonical's for any kind of search actually default to the core page and they are not actually pulling the search query in with that."

Great tip here from Selena Vidya

Thanks to the fine folks at SEMrush and my friend Anton Shulke

https://youtu.be/oVFL96A-EWA?t=28m52s

07/11/2017

[Project Management Tip - basic]
If you manage a large team, you need to try Teamwork.com
I literally can't live without it.

Easily manage a large team, track time, integrate with many invoicing programs like Harvest and Quickbooks.

Task list, tasks progress, due dates, priorities, easily upload asets, comments.

This blows Basecamp out of the water.

Have you tried Teamwork, basecamp, Asana, Zoho? Which is your favorite?



https://www.teamwork.com/

A suite of online collaboration tools designed to maximize your team’s productivity, communication and overall customer happiness. Project Management, Help Desk & Team Messaging software done right.

07/11/2017

[Paid Traffic Tip - Advanced]
"Social proof doesn’t exist in Search."

I had to listen to this a few times before I really understood what Dennis Yu was saying here.

This interview does a fantastic job of discussing the difference between Google and Facebook paid traffic.

"Google is trying to maximize how much money they’re making on their base traffic, so we talk about a CPM, that’s a cost per thousand. But Facebook has gone a step further than that. Rather than trying to make the most money per thousand impressions, Facebook wants to try to make the best user experience."

"In Google land, let’s say Keith and I are bidding against each other as advertisers on a certain keyword. We’re both bidding a dollar per click, but Keith has twice the click through rate. Then your cost per click will effectively be half because your quality score will be double mine. Google’s looking at this and saying look, “I’m still trying to make the most I can per thousand impressions.” If Keith has ads that get clicks twice as often, then Google is going to make twice as much money. All those people paying a dollar per click."

"On Google, you’re going to pay the same base price for the traffic, so when you are able to 10x your CTR, your cost per click is one tenth. Everyone understands the arithmetic math there, but on Facebook you have an exponent because the cost of the underlying traffic is better too, and you get that performance increase because your engagement rate’s higher. So you have this doubling up factor that occurs. That’s why if you have a really good piece of content, which we call a unicorn, that’s why you want to be boosting posts to identify unicorns that you’re going to continue to put money against because you’re going to go all in on things that are working."

http://www.digitalmarketer.com/facebook-boosted-posts/

Dennis Yu joins the Perpetual Traffic experts to discuss Facebook boosted posts and why keeping it simple on Facebook can go a long way for your business.

07/10/2017

[Plugin tip]
Best plugins for Analytics (Facebook and Google)

Here are our "go to plugins" for WordPress integration and analytics.

- Tracking Code Manager (easily install your FB Pixel)
- Facebook for WooCommerce (use instead of Tracking manager)
- WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration

What are your favorite analytics plugins?

07/08/2017

[Analytics / Advertising Tip - intermediate]
How to improve the communication between FB ads and Google Analytics.

Add a Custom Channel for "Paid Social"
Go to your GA dashboard -> Admin -> View -> Custom Channel Groupings -> New Channel Grouping -> Define New Channel -> Medium exactly matches "cpc" AND source contains facebook AND twitter - done

Now when you create your UTM, make sure your medium is "cpc"

This awesome tip is straight out of David Kutcher's playbook. Thanks for sharing man.

When you're ready to leverage analytics to improve your website conversions, drop me a note and let's talk.

https://wisersites.com/services/conversion-metrics-goal-tracking/

06/16/2017

[SSL tip - intermediate]
You shouldn't be paying for annual fees for DV SSL certificates, ever!

If you are hosted on WHM / cPanel they have an extension called AutoSSL and for Plesk users there is "Let's Encrypt", and both are free.

Of course you will likely need help from your host provider to turn these on and make sure your site is properly encrypted.

But the most important thing to take away here is you should never need to pay expensive annual SSL fees ever again!
Read this article to get more information about why you need an SSL installed on your website.

https://wisersites.com/green-padlock-address-bar/

Have you ever noticed that green padlock in the address bar of your website? Do you know why it's there? It means your SSL certificate is properly installed

05/16/2017

[Tool Tip] - Gravityscan
The team at Wordfence just launched this excellent tool for testing your site for malware.

I strongly suggest that you head over to https://www.gravityscan.com and test your site today.

It's free