Blog Archives | WSI Connect

WSI Connect Receives Gold Certification in SharpSpring Partner Certification Program

September 6, 2020 // by WSI Connect

Danville, California, August 28, 2020 — WSI Connect, a full service digital marketing agency, obtained Gold-Level Certification in SharpSpring’s partner certification program. Through this program, SharpSpring, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHSP), a global provider of cloud-based marketing and email software solutions, empowers its partners to become experts in marketing automation and rewards top performers with referrals, certification badges and additional resources.

WSI Connect met all of the requirements within the gold tier of the certification program, demonstrating an exceptional level of expertise in marketing automation and the SharpSpring platform. With this certification, WSI Connect is more equipped to help clients drive qualified leads, convert more of those leads to sales, and optimize the ROI of their marketing campaigns.

“Agencies that are leaders in marketing automation are also far more likely to become leaders in the digital marketing industry,” said Rick Carlson, CEO of SharpSpring. “When a partner goes the extra mile to obtain this level of certification, we know they truly understand the value of marketing automation and that they’re committed to driving the highest results for their clients.”

“Four months ago, we decided to add SharpSpring to our portfolio to enhance our marketing automation capabilities,” said Luke Middendorf, Managing Director at WSI Connect. “Our team at SharpSpring has been great to work with, and we’ve been able to use their marketing automation platform to drive significant growth for many of our clients. We are excited to be a Gold-Level partner and look forward to Platinum.”

About WSI Connect

WSI Connect is a growth agency. We help our clients acquire new clients through digital marketing. We collaborate with our clients to understand their goals, key differentiators, values, and target markets. From there we develop and implement highly effective digital marketing strategies. Learn more at www.wsiconnect.com.

About SharpSpring, Inc.

SharpSpring, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHSP) is a rapidly growing, highly-rated global provider of affordable marketing automation delivered via a cloud-based Software-as-a Service (SaaS) platform. Thousands of businesses around the world rely on SharpSpring to generate leads, improve conversions to sales, and drive higher returns on marketing investments. Known for its innovation, open architecture and free customer support, SharpSpring offers flexible monthly contracts at a fraction of the price of competitors making it an easy choice for growing businesses and digital marketing agencies. Learn more at www.sharpspring.com.

6 Powerful Steps for SEO Blog Writing

July 14, 2020 // by Luke Middendorf

SEO Blog Writing

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of SEO blog writing and how it fits into WSI Connect’s content creation process and SEO strategies. It illustrates how we tailor the content to deliver significant value to the reader while at the same time optimizing it to perform well in search engines.

Throughout this article we will use a blog post from one of our clients, Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC), and highlight changes that we would recommend based on our SEO blog writing best practices.

Example: https://www.hercjobs.org/what-is-imposter-syndrome-and-how-can-you-overcome-it/

Seo blog writing - screen shot of the blog example

Here are the most important steps for SEO blog writing

Step 1: Start with the concept

Establish your concept. Focus the content on this one key concept and think about how you are going to deliver value to the reader. This helps begin the formulation of the structure of the blog content.

Example Concept: Imposter Syndrome

In this example, we pulled the concept from the existing content. If we were creating new content, we would spend time brainstorming a concept, what our readers need to know about it, and how we could help.

The structure and formulation of the content will continue to change and be revised throughout the entire development process.

Step 2: Keyword Research

Once we identify the concept of the blog, we dive into keyword research. This helps to better understand the keywords that our potential audience uses to search for the content that we are going to create. This also helps us improve our SEO blog writing by focusing the content on the best search terms.

Our favorite tool is Google’s Keyword Planner, but that requires an active Google Ads account to access accurate data. A good alternative is a free tool, Ubersuggest.

In this step, we look for the keyword that aligns with our concept and has a significant amount of people searching for it. The column titled “VOL” shows the average number of monthly searches for each keyword.

blog SEO keyword research example ubersuggest

In our example we recommend the keyword, “overcoming imposter syndrome”.

This keyword aligns because it clearly defines the content of the blog post. Also, it averages 390 monthly searches so a well written blog post that ranks well in Google has the potential to be a valuable long term asset.

Step 3: Identify Related Topics

Identifying related topics is a useful way to build out content and add more depth. Answer the public (https://answerthepublic.com/) is our favorite tool for this process. Input the target keyword and it will produce a wide range of related topics.

At this point we pull out the topics that are important to the target audience and begin developing them as subtopics within the blog post.

Here are a few examples that we thought were interesting in relation to imposter syndrome.

Interesting topics to cover:

How to overcome imposter syndrome?
What is imposter syndrome?
What causes imposter syndrome?
Is imposter syndrome good?
Is imposter syndrome bad?

Step 4: Competitive Research

This is the most important, easiest, yet most often overlooked step. Take the target keyword, pop it into Google, and review the first 4-5 articles that appear. Take notes on the commonalities such as total word count, content structure, inclusion of images, and/or videos.

Example Google Search Result:

Interesting Note: In this specific search result there is only organic result appearing above the fold. This article, in particular, is currently capturing the majority of the traffic related to “overcoming imposter syndrome”.

Below are the top results that we reviewed. Keep in mind that your results will vary. Google uses information such as your browsing history when determining which content to show in your search results. If you’ve visited the blog post before, it will show up higher than it would for someone who hadn’t already viewed the content.

10 STEPS YOU CAN USE TO OVERCOME IMPOSTOR SYNDROME https://impostorsyndrome.com/10-steps-overcome-impostor/
Impostor Syndrome – Facing Fears of Inadequacy and Self-Doubt https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/overcoming-impostor-syndrome.htm
6 Strategies to Help You Beat Imposter Syndrome https://www.inc.com/john-discala/no-you-arent-a-fraud-here-are-6-ways-to-beat-imposter-syndrome.html
The Five Types Of Impostor Syndrome And How To Beat Them https://www.fastcompany.com/40421352/the-five-types-of-impostor-syndrome-and-how-to-beat-them

Commonalities in the search results:

Long form content
Bulleted and/or numbered lists
Use of videos and images
Multiple internal links
Multiple external links (open in a new window)
Referencing related articles
Titles start with a number (this typically improves click-through rates)

After reviewing the content that Google currently believes is the best content related to the search query, there is a very important question to ask:

How do we create a better resource than already exists?

We know that if we cannot create something that is better than what already exists, then the chance of developing a blog that will be a valuable long term resource is very low. The commonalities help us uncover useful ways to improve our content and create something that is overall a better resource.

In this example we would recommend that HERC develop more content (step 3 can help with this), break up the content with subtitles and bulleted/numbered lists, reference authoritative resources, link to related internal content, and adjust the title to include a number.

Google’s blog post, What webmasters should know about Google’s core updates, provides a good outline for evaluating content for quality.

Step 5: SEO blog writing best practices

There are key elements that have been measured to show strong SEO correlations with the content that captures significant traffic from search engines. In this step we review the content and make adjustments to ensure that as many of them as possible are included within the blog content.

Many of these elements are very helpful to the visitor as well. The majority of readers skim content rather than reading every detail, thus content needs to be adjusted so that the reader can quickly find the content that they are most interested in.

Key Elements of On-page SEO:

Keyword in URL
Keyword page title
Keyword in <h1>
Keyword in the first sentence of the blog
Include keyword within name of an image file
Keyword in the meta description
Keyword in the last sentence of the blog
Break up content with bullets, numbered lists, quotes, sub headers (h2,h3,h4,h5), images, bolded text, embedded videos
Include relevant internal links
Include relevant external links (open in a new window)
Text length should be comparable to the top results, although longer is generally better
The content of the post needs to tie back to your core mission.
Relevant categories and tags (try to avoid redundancy)
Referencing authoritative 3rd parties
Citing sources

Examples of how we recommend modifying this post for SEO:

Keyword: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Existing URL: https://www.hercjobs.org/what-is-imposter-syndrome-and-how-can-you-overcome-it/

Recommended URL: https://www.hercjobs.org/4-strategies-overcome-imposter-syndrome

Current title: What is Imposter Syndrome and how can you overcome it?

Recommended title: 4 Strategies to Overcome Imposter Syndrome

Step 6: Guide them to a next step. Use a call-to-action (CTA)

When someone visits our website and consumes our content, we need to do our best to drive that visitor to some type of action (conversion). This significantly increases the chance that the visitor will become a customer sometime in the future.

To drive them towards a conversion we use a call-to-action (CTA). The action needs to be consistent with the content of the page. If this was a product or service page, we would drive them to purchase or a consultation.

In the example, it is an informational page so we recommended using a newsletter signup for the CTA at the end of the blog post. This would allow HERC to capture the visitor’s email address and continue the communication. HERC offers ebooks in their right column, which is also a great way to drive conversions.

This step doesn’t improve your SEO blog writing, but it is essential in order to get the most value out of your content.

Conclusion to 6 Powerful Steps for SEO Blog Writing

Creating great blog content takes effort. It requires in-depth knowledge of the target audience and how they search for the concept that the blog is about. It has to provide the reader with value and it has to be better than the content that already exists.

If you need help with content creation, schedule a free consultation. We will discuss your goals in-depth, help you develop valuable content assets and reach your audience through powerful SEO blog writing.

Click for a FREE Consultation
(and discover why you should work with WSI Connect!)

Important WordPress Security Tips to Consider

July 14, 2020 // by Bernadette Docuyanan

Having a website and driving business online seems to be pretty simple but managing security of your WordPress website is important but tricky.

Securing WordPress site is not rocket science but a practical approach. Below are some tips on how to secure your website.

Switching to https

The most basic way to prevent this happening is to switch from insecure HTTP to secure HTTPs by using an SSL Certificate. Implementing an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate is one smart move to secure the admin panel. SSL ensures secure data transfer between user browsers and the server, making it difficult for hackers to breach the connection or spoof your info. SSL certificate also affects your website’s Google rankings. Google tends to rank sites with SSL higher than those without it.

You can purchase SSL certificate from a third-party company or check to see if your hosting company provides one for free.

Change the WordPress database table prefix

If you have ever installed WordPress then you are familiar with the wp- table prefix that is used by the WordPress database. I recommend you change it to something unique.

Using the default prefix makes your site database prone to SQL injection attacks. Such attacks can be prevented by changing wp- to some other term like clientWP-.

Remove your WordPress version number

Your current WordPress version number can be found very easily. It’s basically sitting right there in your site’s source view. Hackers would know which version of WordPress you use and make it easier for them to customize their perfect attack. Fortunately, it is easy to hide your version number with almost every WordPress security plugin.

Configure your file permissions

File permissions are represented by a three-digit number in WordPress, and each digit has a meaning. The first digit stands for an individual user (the site’s owner), the second digit for the group (for example, members of your site), and the third for everyone in the world. The number itself means that the user, group, or world:

0: Has no access to the file.
1: Can only execute the file.
2: Can edit the file.
3: Can edit and execute the file.
4: Can read the file.
5: Can read and execute the file.
6: Can read and edit the file.
7: Can read, edit, and execute the file.

So if a file is given a permissions level of 640, for example, it means the primary user can read and edit the file, the group can read the file but not edit it, and everyone else cannot access it. This may seem overly complicated, but it’s important for ensuring that each person only has the level of access to your site’s files and folders you want them to have.

WordPress recommends setting folders to a permissions level of 755 and files to 644. You’re pretty safe sticking to these guidelines, although you can set up any combination you’d like. Just remember that it’s best not to give anyone more access than they absolutely need, especially to core files.

You’ll also want to keep in mind that the ideal permissions settings will depend somewhat on your hosting service, so you may want to find out what your host recommends.

Note: you should be very careful when making changes to your permissions levels — choosing the wrong value can make your site inaccessible.

Set up a website lockdown feature and ban users

A lockdown feature for failed login attempts can solve the huge problem of continuous brute force attempts. Whenever there is a hacking attempt with repetitive wrong passwords, the site gets locked, and you get notified of this unauthorized activity. Three reliable plugins for that are iThemes, All in One WP Security & Firewall and Wordfence Security. You can check out which one suits your website best.

Use your email to login

By default, you have to input your username to log into WordPress. Using an email ID instead of a username is a more secure approach because it is hard to predict.

Several WordPress security plugins like iThemes allow you to set up login pages so that all users must use their email addresses to log in.

Use strong passwords

Play around with your passwords and change them regularly to secure your WordPress website. Improve their strength by adding uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. You can also use Secure Password Generator to help you generate strong password.

However, if you have multiple sites that you need to remember all your passwords, you can use LastPass or 1Password to store all your logins and just remember one master password.

Carefully choose plugins and theme and update regularly

You need to be very careful about the themes and plugins you choose to add to your site. Each one should be vetted to ensure it’s a solid option that won’t hurt your site or cause problems. There are many elements to keep in mind, but the following will help you select quality tools:

Check user ratings and reviews of the plugin
Take a look at how recently the plugin or theme has been updated.
Install new plugins and themes one at a time, so if anything goes wrong you’ll know what the cause was. Also, be sure to back up your site before adding anything to it.
Get your plugins and themes from trustworthy sources, such as the WordPress.org Theme and Plugin Directories, ThemeForest and CodeCanyon, and reliable developer websites.

Finally, keep them up to date to ensure they work well together and are secured against the latest threats.

Keep the number of users on your site low

If you’re running your WordPress site solo, you don’t need to worry about this step. Just don’t give anyone else an account on your site, and you’ll be the only person who can make changes.

But there will come a time when you eventually add more than one user to your website. You may want to let other authors contribute content, or you might need people to help edit that content and manage your site. It’s even possible to find yourself with an entire team of users, who are regularly accessing your WordPress site and making their own changes.

This can be beneficial in many ways and is sometimes even necessary. However, it’s also a potential security risk. One way of overcoming this is to use WP Security Audit Log to keep tabs on what they are doing on the site.

Tracking activity in your WordPress admin area will help you spot when other users are doing things they shouldn’t and can indicate whether unauthorized users have gained access. It provides a full list of activities, along with email notifications and reports.

Back up your site regularly

Backing up your site on a regular basis is the simplest and best way to safeguard it in the event of a disaster. If you have a recent backup handy, you can restore your site to the way it was before it was hacked or otherwise harmed. This will help you fix the issue and move on as quickly as possible.

Wrap up

There are loads of simple things that you can do to prevent your site getting hacked. Some of them are just basic procedures like using complex passwords, but there are also plenty of plugins that have been created specifically to ensure that your site is safe and secure. You just have to put some time and energy into it. Otherwise, you’re likely to lose valuable business and income while trying to repair the damage.

4 Things You Need to Fix On Your Google Ads Accounts Right Now

March 26, 2020 // by Luke Middendorf

Google ad campaigns are quite effective at attracting leads and nurturing them into loyal, repeat customers. You can even customize your Google Ads to target a specific audience, drive more traffic to your website, and get better returns on your ad spend.

However, it’s very common for companies to waste a lot of money when using Google Ads.

When a user clicks on your ad, they trust the ad to solve a problem or address an underlying need. But if you haven’t set up the post effectively with the right content, targeted keywords, titles, images, and description, more clicks will not translate into sales for your business.

Here are the four things to fix in your Google ads account right now.

1. Keyword strategies

Are you using the correct keyword strategy? Our approach is to segment keywords into two categories:

informational keywords vs. buying intent keywords.

When conducting an audit we often find companies spending the bulk of their budget on informational keywords. For example, a landscaping company wouldn’t want to use informational keywords such as “landscaping DIY” or “landscaping ideas”. They are much less likely to convert into a paying customer than someone that is searching using a buying intent keyword such as “landscaper near me”.

Prioritize keywords that imply buying intent for your Google ads. Target informational keywords in your blog content.

The match type of keywords matters immensely. Broad matching, for instance, makes your ad display regardless of the order of the keywords. This might have potential, but it also brings in irrelevant traffic to your website that may not convert as well as exact match keywords. Exact-match keywords display your ads when users search for the exact term you’re targeting.

4-Things-Fix-Google-Ads-Account-Now-Infographic-1

2. A/B test your ads

A/B testing is very easy to do with Google Ads. It is an important method to improve click-through rates and improve your ad quality score. Improving these areas allows you to get more value out of your ad spend.

For each ad group you should have at least 3 ad variations running at a time. This way, you’re essentially A/B testing your ad by using different headlines and descriptions that approach the user differently.

A/B testing your Google Ads is crucial if you want to see the sweet spot between ad spend and ROI. It takes a lot of testing and tweaking the ads to find the right combo. It’s uncommon for even seasoned marketers to create a top performing ad on their first try.

Keep experimenting to find out which one performs better. Track click-though rates and conversions to help measure the effectiveness of your ads.

3. Linking your ads to your home page

The only times you should link your ads to your home page is if:

you offer a single type of product or service, or
for very generic searches.

For the vast majority of your ad groups, it will be much more effective to link to a specific product or service page.

Example #1. If you are a car dealer that is bidding on the keyword “car dealership near me” it makes sense to send the visitor to the home page because we don’t have any additional context about what they are looking for.

Example #2. A car dealership that is targeting the key word “used Honda Accord for sale”, should link to a page that shows their current inventory of used Honda Accords. We know what the person is searching for, so we should make it as easy as possible to help them find the information that they want.

4. Not targeting ads locally

Google Ads offers a number of options for geographic targeting such as by city, zip code, and by radius. Targeting should be prioritized according to where you customers come from.

Example: Customers of self-storage businesses typically come from a 6 mile radius. The closer they are to the storage facility, the more likely they are to convert. In this example we would target a 6 mile radius and a 3 mile radius, increasing the bid amount for the 3 mile radius target.

Choosing the right targeting option requires in depth analysis of your customers and target markets.

Schedule a PPC Audit Consultation

How to Amp Up 2020 with Digital Marketing Goals

January 28, 2020 // by Luke Middendorf

The start of a new year is a great time to set goals for your business and create a solid plan for achieving them. As you gather your team and discuss what you want to do this year, don’t forget to make a few resolutions for your business’s digital marketing strategy. Choose whether you want to improve on 2019’s strategy or go in a new direction.

Here are 5 digital marketing goals that any business can do:

1. Audit your current strategy

Before you can make headway on any other resolutions, you should first take a step back and assess what is and isn’t working. A digital marketing audit should review these components of your strategy:

Spend – Did the amount of money that you spent in 2019 produce a positive ROI?
Campaigns – Which were your most valuable marketing campaigns and can those be increased in 2020?
Waste – Which marketing and sales activities did you lose money on in 2019 and can those be eliminated or improved in 2020?
Target Audience – Do you have clearly defined your buyer persona’s to ensure that you are targeting your potential buyers and influencers?
Channels – What were your most valuable marketing channels?
Reach – How effectively did you engage your target audience across your digital channels?
Content – Did your 2019 content development strategy help build your marketing assets?
Conversion – How well did your conversion perform and do they need more attention this year?
Integration – Are all your marketing channels, digital and offline, cross-linked and integrated?
Analytics – Are your marketing analytics telling you what you want to know? Are your current analytics even able to help you easily conduct this audit?

Each year your marketing strategy should continue to evolve and improve.

2. Update your SEO strategy

As Google’s ranking algorithms are always changing so it’s important to keep pace in your SEO strategy. If you’re wondering where to start, here a few SEO tactics to meet the shifting trends:

Instead of writing for your keywords, write for your customers.
Integrate buyer personas, customer feedback, and marketing analytics into your strategy.
Optimize your content for the way people search: voice searches and question-based queries.
Don’t forget the technical details: make your website is fast, mobile-friendly, and structured to reflect the buyer’s journey.
Strengthen your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Bring offline credentials, certifications, and customer resources online.
Develop content that is easy for users to read and Google to crawl, like FAQ’s and How To’s.

3. Dive into content marketing

If content marketing isn’t already a part of your digital marketing strategy, 2020 can be your year. Many businesses avoid content marketing because they believe it is too time consuming. Or they are not sure how to develop and execute a worthwhile strategy. Depending on the business and their marketing team, those can be fair concerns. But if you consider these benefits of content marketing, it may be time to reconsider:

Great content can attract and keep great customers when it’s developed with them in mind.
A variety of short- and long-form content can grease your conversion funnel.
Most digital content doesn’t cost a thing to publish. It can help you reach more potential customers across many channels.
High-quality content elevates your trustworthiness and establishes your authority in your industry. This is something your customers will value and Google rewards in their rankings.

For a few tips see: 6 Powerful Steps for SEO Blog Writing

All those things considered, if your marketing team doesn’t have the bandwidth or expertise to pursue a successful content marketing strategy it may still seem out of reach. Yet, that is where professionals like WSI Connect can help. Leverage the expertise of your marketing partners. Reap the benefits of content marketing without overwhelming your workload.

4. Secure your data

With all the data your digital marketing team has worked hard to gather, and the increasing popularity of cloud-based software to store and manage it, data security is of the utmost importance. A breach can damage your reputation and wreak havoc on your systems. Resources and protocols should be in place to combat WordPress hackers, malware, and/or bots. Better securing your data is a worthy – and necessary – resolution.

For WordPress users: Important WordPress Security Tips to Consider

5. Take advantage of automation

Marketing automation software can transform not only how your marketing team spends their day, but also how they think. When the repetitive, time-consuming tasks of digital marketing are automated, your team can devote their time and creativity to the bigger picture. For many businesses, the impact of this shift is hard to overstate.

Marketing automation software is designed to capture leads, develop relationships, and assist moving potential customers through your conversion funnel. This essential marketing tool can have a range of capabilities such as:

Email marketing with segmented campaigns, behavior trigger emails, and A/B testing
Lead nurturing with a lead database, drip campaigns, automated alerts, and lead scoring
Social media management with a single interface, post scheduling, and messaging
Analytics and reporting with multi-channel analytics, conversion rates, and ROI

And these are just a few of the tasks most software can take on. With a humming marketing automation system in place, when innovative marketing ideas come along, instead of asking “How will we find the bandwidth?” your team will ask, “When can we start?”