11 Outdated SEO Tactics You Need to Retire

Just like most aspects of marketing and technology, search engine optimization has evolved over time.

Marketing strategies that were effective for your company five or ten years ago may not be as effective today. The same applies to SEO.

Search engines have changed the way they rank websites.

If your company hasn’t been staying up to date with the latest trends, your SEO strategy is outdated.

I see this problem all too often in my consulting work. Many companies still employ old strategies that no longer work.

That’s what inspired me to write this guide.

The outdated tactics on this list vary in terms of how they will affect your business.

Some of these are ineffective but harmless, while others could potentially hurt your SEO ranking.

Every business with a website needs to read this guide. Use it as a reference to see if you’re still using outdated SEO tactics and possibly hurting your SEO game.

1. Exact match domain names

Exact match domains were popular for a while.

With this strategy, websites were able to move up their search rankings very quickly. In some instances, rankings climbed in just weeks or even a few days.

As the name implies, the whole idea behind an exact match domain is that your website matches the keywords you’re targeting. For example:

• detroitplumber
• garagedoorpartsmiami
• bestpizzanewyork

But Google adjusted its algorithm to make exact match domains obsolete. When it made this update back in 2012, the influence of exact match domains dropped nearly immediately:

Now, an exact match domain has the same chances of ranking as high or as low as any other domain name.

In fact, some of these exact match domains have a greater chance of being flagged by algorithms or manual reviews. Low-quality sites won’t be ranked high just because their domains are exact matches to the targeted keywords.

Furthermore, it’s difficult to brand a company with an exact match domain.

For example, think about Amazon. Imagine if it started with a domain like

“buyandsellbooksonline.”

That’s just not brandable. This strategy is less trustworthy, and it will make it increasingly difficult for you to build links.

Instead, you want to make it as easy as possible to increase your brand exposure by having a domain that’s brandable.

Don’t use exact match domains.

2. Link directories

For the most part, link directories are useless. There are some exceptions for niche-specific high quality directories.

This strategy worked before search engines become powerful.

People could find what they were looking for by using sites with directories.

These were easy for site owners to install and manage, and they increased in popularity. However, a link directory doesn’t provide actual value to website visitors.

That’s when search algorithms got adjusted to ignore link directories.

Now, having a link directory on your site can get you penalized if you have low-quality links. The same goes for article directories.

Marketers started to use software to submit articles to thousands of directories. But this low-quality content didn’t provide any value to people. It was a quick and simple way to build links.

Today, link and article directories are usually perceived as poor content, and they won’t help increase your search ranking.

3. Flat URL architecture

By default, WordPress will set up your pages with URLs like this:

https://ift.tt/2Q63kN4

It may look simple and clean for your visitors, but it’s not helping your SEO.

If you don’t change these defaults, it will be challenging for search engines to understand the hierarchy of your website. SEO crawlers and bots will rate all your pages with the same level of importance, but that’s not what you want.

You need search engines to recognize the importance of each page compared to its relationship within other pages.

You can manually change your defaults to something like this instead:

https://ift.tt/2RpW8YK

Then, the hierarchy of your site architecture will make more sense.

Removing the flat URL structure will make it easier for crawlers to index your site, which ultimately will improve your SEO ranking.

Search engines will be able to learn the value of each page within your site.

I recommend making these adjustments sooner rather than later. If you change your architecture, you’ll also have to change all of the redirects which can potentially hurt your ranking.

4. Automated link building

Links clearly play an important role in SEO.

Once this was discovered, many marketers tried to take advantage of link-building software to maximize their domain exposure on as many other sites as possible. They did this so their sites would be recognized by search engine algorithms.

As a result, their links got randomly posted on forums, blog comments, link directories, and guestbooks.

While I’m an advocate of using automation to improve your operational efficiency, this isn’t where you should be using that strategy.

Link building is only effective if it’s high quality. You can’t automate this process.

You have to build strong relationships and create valuable content.

For alternative methods that work, check out my post on the process of consistently building backlinks every week.

5. Keyword stuffing

When search engines weren’t as complex as they are today, keyword stuffing worked.

Sites would just put dozens and dozens of keywords throughout new content. The problem with such keywording is it’s unnatural because it was only being done to improve the search relevance of the page.

This doesn’t work anymore.

As algorithms became more advanced, keyword stuffing lost its power. Now it just looks like you have low-quality content.

You can potentially be penalized for keyword stuffing as well.

A recent study from SEMrush showed the most important ranking factors:

While keywords make the list, they’re not nearly as important as the other aspects of SEO are.

In fact, 18% of domains that ranked for high-volume keywords didn’t have any keywords in the body. Only 3% of backlinks had anchor text with keywords.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t include keywords in your content. But you need to make sure that you’re using them sparingly and that your content is written to read naturally.

You’re much better off publishing valuable content without lots of keywords than low-quality content with too many keywords.

6. Keyword variation pages

Do not create a separate page for each variation of a keyword you’re trying to rank for. This strategy won’t work.

Search engine crawlers are smarter, so you don’t have to do this in order to target these variations.

Google’s AI system, RankBrain, can even detect and rank sites for keywords not displayed within the content.

For example, let’s say you create a landing page dedicated to your B2B audiences about boiler services. RankBrain will understand that this page will also be relevant to users who search for things like:

• boiler cleaning
• boiler maintenance
• boiler inspection
• boiler repair

You don’t need to have a separate page for each one of these keyword phrases. Having too many pages on your site will make your site navigation more difficult than it needs to be.

For this example, you’d just need to have one page. Then, you’d include a subheader for each one of these variations.

This strategy will make your content more relevant and improve your site navigation.

7. Paid links

The last thing you want to do is violate Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Buying links can improve your ranking, but not if you get caught. For this reason alone, I don’t think paid links are worth it.

Some of you may have bought a few links without getting penalized in the past, but don’t think that means you’re invincible.

Sure, you might be careful with the way you’re conducting your operation, but what about the seller?

According to Google, both the buyers and sellers are guilty. It describes such practice as a link scheme:

If someone is selling to you, they’re probably selling to other sites as well.

All Google needs to do is catch one person, then follow the trail of links.

If an unnatural pattern of inbound links is identified and leads to another buyer, it can get traced back to the same seller you’re using. It’s very easy for you to get caught.

Build quality links the right way, and don’t try to take any shortcuts.

8. Building several interlinked sites

Some of you may own multiple businesses and websites. This seems like a good way to build links among them, right?

Not necessarily.

Interlinking sites need to be relevant to each other.

If you have a website selling camping equipment, it wouldn’t make sense to link to your other business offering credit loans.

You’re not rewarded for the total number of links you build. Relevant links hold more weight.

You might not be penalized for this, but it limits your opportunity and resources you can use for promoting your primary site.

However, there are certain times when this can be done properly.

For example, let’s say you have a commercial contracting company and a plumbing company. These are relevant to each other, so interlinking them would be fine.

I’ve seen some instances when people create multiple websites just for their link building strategy. This won’t work.

It’ll be difficult for you to manage this many sites for this purpose alone, so each one won’t have a high authority ranking.

Google will recognize this pattern, and your SEO ranking will suffer.

9. Prioritizing quantity over quality

Publishing ten pieces of new content a day is useless if they are all low-quality.

You’re much better off sticking to a publishing frequency you can handle without letting the quality suffer.

Write for people, not for bots. Writing for bots is unnatural.

As I said before, these new algorithms and site crawlers are becoming so advanced that they can distinguish between poor quality and high quality content.

Look at your blog for example. How long are your posts?

These are the average lengths of blog posts published over the last four years:

As you can see, the majority of these posts have 500-1,000 words.

But that doesn’t mean that’s your sweet spot. Longer blog posts are slowly trending upward each year.

For the most part, I would recommend going longer over shorter.

But don’t force a long blog post for the sake of increasing your word length. By nature, some topics will be longer or shorter than others.

But it’s definitely better to publish five 1,000-word posts a week as opposed to 50 100-word posts a week.

Those 100-word posts won’t be high quality. You can’t possibly address a topic properly in that length.

10. Irrelevant guest posts

Guest-blogging is another great way to build links, but you need to make sure you’re doing it properly.

Irrelevant posts won’t help you.

Instead, you should only be guest-blogging on sites that will increase exposure for your brand. You want to reach a new audience that falls within your target market.

The only way to do this is by publishing relevant content.

For example, I’m a content marketing expert. I have no business submitting my posts to cooking magazines.

It’s irrelevant to my personal brand, website, and target audience.

As I discussed earlier, Google will identify irrelevant links and potentially punish both parties.

Take this into consideration when managing guest posts on your site as well. You won’t want to publish irrelevant guest submissions for the same reasons.

11. Ignoring local SEO

It’s a misconception that you always need to focus on the big picture.

Many companies are just trying to get traffic and ranking by targeting mass audiences as opposed to their actual target market.

This is especially important to local business owners. If you have a local business, you should be prioritizing traffic from people in the area.

Don’t put too much emphasis on generating traffic from people out of your market.

Sure, traffic can improve your site ranking, but local SEO will be much more beneficial to your overall strategy.

Here’s a recent study from Search Engine Land looking at the factors of local SEO:

Use this graph as a reference.

Are you making the right effort to improve your local SEO strategy?

If you’re ignoring these areas, it’s a big mistake.

Conclusion

SEO has changed. It’ll continue changing in the future.

If you are still using the outdated tactics on this list, it’s time for you to put those behind you.

You need to start implementing new tactics.

I’m referring to things such as voice search and mobile-first indexing. I’ll be coming up with more in-depth guides on those topics in the near future.

But for now, just worry about retiring the strategies on this list. They’re a waste of your time and could potentially be hurting your ranking.

What are some new SEO strategies your website has had success with?

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The Best Website Builder

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The best thing about using a website builder is knowing that, in a world where an online presence is absolutely mandatory, the technical proficiency to build and publish that presence isn’t.

Sure, you can sign up for web hosting, implement a template, and launch your own WordPress website. But there is an easier way. We should know: We’ve built some of our own business sites with website builders. It’s easy, fast, and unobtrusive to use an all-in-one tool.

Every one of our picks for the best website builders will help you get your site up beautifully and simply:

• Wix
  Best for: Automating the tough choices
• Squarespace
  Best for: Beautifully designed templates
• Ucraft
  Best for: Building a one-page site for free
• Onepager
  Best for: Quick set-up

What we look for in a website builder

• Ease of use: everything’s all in one place, and it lets you get on with your real business. No technical proficiency required. No need for a designer or other outside help.
• A beautiful final product: a professional, well-designed website that reflects your business.
• Customer support: It’s there if you need it, but everything is intuitive enough that you don’t feel like you do.

We also ask questions in 5 key areas

1. Style and templates
   What do the templates look like?
   How customizable are those templates?
2. Usability
   How easy it is to get started?
   Or, how long does it take to build a nice looking site?
3. Ecommerce and business needs
   Can I sell things on my site?
   Can I add a menu?
   A form?
   A map?
   Reservations?
4. Pricing
   How much does it cost?
   Which tier should I start on and when will I need to upgrade?
   If it’s free, what’s the trade-off?
5. Domains, emails, and other bonuses
   Does it come with a free domain?
   Does it come with email addresses?
   Any other extras I should be looking for?

Our top picks for the best website builder

Wix

• Quicksprout Pick
• Best for: Automating the tough choices
• Paid plans start at $11 / month (billed annually)
• Free trial period: 14 days
• Sign up

It’s easy to choose Wix as a website builder. It truly takes on the name. Wix’s artificial intelligence asks you a few questions and literally builds your website before your eyes — unique color palette, features, and design all in one. It’s the best tool we’ve seen to get a site that matches your vision, even if you don’t know yet how you’d articulate that vision. Honestly, building a site with Wix’s AI felt a little like getting our minds read.

Wix has been at the forefront of this revolution, and is looking to closely combine AI and website building.

—Why AI is the best tool to help build your next website, TechRadar

To start, click create site. You’ll be asked a question: What kind of website do you want to create? From there, the AI will help you build your website. (You can opt-out and go it alone at this point, too, but we appreciated the AI’s help.)

One of the first screens you’ll see when you build a website with Wix.

We loved how easy it was for us to find a template that matched our vision. The AI stayed with us as we edited the page, a little pink square in the bottom (it looks like a chat pop-up) helping us pick the next thing to edit and showing us how to do it. The Wix AI matched our business to its online presence, used our logo to create a color palette for our site, and gave us a template pre-populated with our logo and address. Connecting images from existing social media accounts made it easy to pull in all the assets we already owned.

As AI progresses, it will be harder and harder to know which site was built via AI and which was built via a designer. You can think of it like passing a “design turing test”, i.e. in the future humans will not be able to differential between the two. Then, it’ll have to get innovative. Instead of mimicking what it is learning from what’s created, it will get better and more experimental. It’s easy to see how soon most websites that are created use AI in some way.
—Wix VP & GM of Consumer Experience Nitzan Achsaf told TechRadar

There’s a lot of variety between the Wix themes, and the personality of each theme matches its name well. The Business Advisor had a spot-on graphic of an analytics dashboard, while Astrologer features an astral hero image.

Some of Wix’s business-centric themes.

Editing your desktop site with Wix requires some patience. To change the text on a text box, you’ll need to hover precisely in the right spot. We did some deep breathing and were able to find enough inner zen to make all the changes we needed. The mobile editor has the serene helpful feel we wish the rest of the editor maintained. It’s super easy to click through the options for how your menu, quick actions, and scroll options work on your mobile page. What you change in the mobile editor doesn’t affect anything that happens on the desktop.

Wix’s editor requires patience — and some clicking around.

We prefer its easier-to-use mobile editor.

Wix does have a free tier, but we don’t recommend it. It has some of the most in-your-face “this was not paid for” company branding we’ve seen — an instant trust breaker. Wix free sites also have one of the most cumbersome domain structures: yourusername.wix.com/sitename so we’d be QuicksproutEditorial.wix.com/Quicksprout. Connecting your actual domain also allows you to attach a Google Analytics profile and add email accounts if you’d like ($5 / account / month, or about half that with an annual plan). Unfortunately, none of this pricing is very upfront. Wix wants you to connect your domain before you see the email pricing, for example. We found answers to pricing questions in the support center, not the user flow.

Take note: all of Wix’s plans are automatically set to auto-renew. Sticker shock is real, especially if you signed up with an introductory promo pricing (at the time of publish, premium plans were a full 50% off, for example). There are many frustrated customers on TrustPilot who’re unhappy with this. It is possible to turn off your auto-renew, but you’ll need to do it more than 14 days before your plan’s anniversary — and if you do it during your 14-day free trial, your trial will be cancelled immediately.

As for which paid plan to pick, you have 7 options: 4 “regular” and 3 “ecommerce.” The difference really boils down to whether you’ll be accepting payments on your site or not. If you’re not sure about how much bandwidth you need, you can always start with a smaller subscription: if you go over the limit, you’ll get a notice from Wix (with no penalty) and use that as your signal to upgrade.

Squarespace

• Quicksprout Pick
• Best for: Beautifully designed templates
• Plans start at $12 / month (billed annually)
• Free trial period: 14 days (plus an additional 7-day extension)
• Sign up

“Build something beautiful” is right. There’s no doubt that Squarespace wins the design and beauty contest here. The user interface has a bit of a learning curve and there’s not much of a Squarespace community to help you out, but the page you’ll end up publishing will be phenomenally good-looking.

Squarespace’s templates are all modern and beautiful.

But, building a website with Squarespace can feel a little like building IKEA furniture: in the showroom it’s all so beautiful and simple, but somehow it feels a little more complicated to put together than it promised. It can be hard to understand where exactly you are in the editor. We kept getting notifications that we were editing demo content, or that we would see the social logos once we connected our social media, or that we could unlock this or that feature with a paid subscription, but Squarespace didn’t go the extra step to make it easy to make that required move. It was a lot of fumbling through a beautiful interface, not exactly sure what changes were real, or where to head next. We also had some issues saving changes — an error message popped up and we had to move on, without our changes.

Editing a site in Squarespace has a bit of a learning curve.

Unlike IKEA, Squarespace is pricier than other website builders. That all being said, we love the way sites built with Squarespace look, and think it’s one of the simplest ways to create a beautiful, contemporary site.

Ucraft

• Quicksprout Pick
• Best for: Building a one-page site for free
• Paid plans start at $6 / month (billed annually)
• Free trial period: 14 days
• Sign up

We love the free Landing Page option from Ucraft: create a single, mobile-ready page and connect your domain for free. The free version doesn’t get rid of the Ucraft branding but it’s minimal and not invasive. The template has all the features we’ve identified in our anatomy of a high-converting landing page. You can drop the branding by upgrading to a $6 / month Basic Website plan, and sell up to 50 items on the $14 / month Pro Website plan. If you have more items to sell, upgrade again, but note that once you upgrade, you can’t drop back down to a less expensive plan.

Ucraft’s themes are elegant and streamlined. It’s one-page free sites are designed to be a long scroll with anchored sections.


Build a Ucraft site using drag-and-drop blocks and elements.

We’re also impressed with the $229 Lifetime plan. If the subscription set up (and realization that if you love the site you build, you’ll be paying that monthly fee for… forever) isn’t your favorite, then this is a nice compromise. You still get the easy-to-use editor and tools of a website builder, and the one-and-done payment.

Onepager

• Quicksprout Pick
• Best for: Quick set-up
• Paid plans start at $8 / month (billed annually)
• Free trial period: Unlimited free editing; simply pay when you publish
• Sign up

We were so surprised to name Onepager a top pick. The templates look dated and the product tour video hasn’t been updated in six years. But Onepager is so dead simple and easy to set up that we were able to publish a workable website for a local pizza shop in minutes. Yes, every webpage builder claims you can get started that fast, but with so many options, templates, and features, we’ve found that we’re distracted and deep in the weeds of perfecting our site, not publishing it. That wasn’t the case with Onepager.

Onepager is a simple website builder with a simple interface.

The Onepager templates aren’t very modern, but they’re straight-forward and the user interface is helpful, and we were pleased with the overall look of our super-quick site. (And, as we written about before, websites with simple homepages convert better.) For a small business that just wants to stake out its territory online — as opposed to, say, building an online empire — we think Onepager fits the bill.

We’d also recommend it to anyone who gets asked all the time to build a website for a friend, a family member, so-and-so’s neighbor who has a family business. For $15 a month, you can build up to 5 sites. With the $199 per month agency plan, you can build up to 150 sites with a white-labeled version of Onepager’s editor platform.

The 26 other website builder platforms we considered

• Adobe Muse

  As of March 2018, Adobe has stopped releasing updates to its website builder software, acknowledging that simpler site builders like Wix and Squarespace have taken over: “For simpler websites, we’ve seen the emergence of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) website creators that use customizable templates to quickly create responsive websites that can be easily modified by the designer or a client.” — End of service for Adobe Muse

• Cargo Collective

  Honorable Mention Amazing templates and designs perfect for artists and art galleries, but definitely not for everyone. If you’re after templates designed for displaying images and image galleries, definitely take a look.

• Cindr

  True to its slogan, Cindr is very fast to use: add in new “blocs” and move them, but want to do much customization (say, if your team doesn’t have exactly 2, 3, 4 or 6 people on it…) and you’ll quickly get frustrated. We certainly were.

• Duda

  There were too many deal-breaker annoyances on Duda’s own website (broken links, unclear organization, scroll bars on pages that don’t scroll, and typos) for us to recommend building your site with theme. And it’s just as well, as its primary focus is on white-labeling and reselling web designs, not on creating and building your own site.

• GoDaddy GoCentral

  We’ve never loved the customer support from GoDaddy and GoCentral is no exception. There are only 8 templates, and you can only make extremely limited font and color changes on them. No moving or resizing. The GoDaddy forums are full of frustration and confusion. Case in point: GoDaddy updated live templates so their headers no longer looked the same. Support recommended changing themes if you didn’t like the new header. What a nightmare.  

• Homestead

  The Homestead website itself looks like its from a different era. And the 27 featured templates from its collection of hundreds! have that same late-90s look.

• Jimdo

  We really like using an AI questionnaire to launch our website, and we adore the ease of pre-populating the images from our Google Places, Facebook, and Instagram feeds. But, Jimdo’s editor was glitchy (images would appear as blank boxes, then reappear) and the design customizations were super limited. (Is it impossible to have a full width image header without a color filter? Seems so.) Wix makes all the same promises, and delivers.

• Moonfruit

  We really wanted to love this Moonfruit. It’s clean, it’s modern, it’s easy to flip into mobile view as you edit, it has a helpful dashboard that lets you know how much of your 500 free MB storage you’ve used. And maybe it’s worth considering. But we found that the template-free starting point left us feeling more confused than empowered. The result: a lot of haphazard clicking and website that looked more amateur than any other we’d built.
  

• Simvoly

  Not recommended. We were intrigued by the marketing lingo Simvoly opens with: funnels, analytics, A/B testing. Oh my! But, this platform shows lots of sloppiness that keeps it out of any competition for the best: typos in the animations on the Simvoly homepage are just the beginning. The builder doesn’t have an undo/redo function, or any way to save a draft page without publishing it. Simvoly knows the right buzzwords but doesn’t back it up with its product.

• Site123

  We wanted to like the AI assistance for building our theme, but didn’t. We answered one question about our site (we’re a DJ, or a Diner) and got sent to a pre-built page for us to customize. There’s no sense of adding your own personal style or browsing through templates to pick the site structure you’d like. Want to change templates? You’ll need to go back and answer that one question differently. To get a design we liked, we felt like we had to cheat the quiz.

• SiteBuilder

  You have to sign up before you can even browse the templates. That’s a dealbreaker for us, but they also have no free plan and once the promotional pricing wears off, your cost will double.

• SiteZulu

  Not much to love here. Only 31 themes, the mobile version of our test site was buggy, and its the ecommerce “upgrade” is the free PayPal embed button.

• SnapPages

  SnapPages is one of the most expensive website builders on the market. For the price, it doesn’t offer anything you can’t get elsewhere. Recently acquired by Subsplash, we expect SnapPages to focus on selling its services as part of the Subsplash service packages aimed at churches and nonprofits.

• Strikingly

  This Y-Combinator-backed one-page web builder shouldn’t be compared to a full-fledged website builder like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace. It’s in the simplicity of getting something launched where single-page builders work best. But, Strikingly just isn’t as good as uCraft, which lets you connect your own domain for free and has a more beautiful and user-friendly interface, or Onepager, which is so dead simple you can literally publish a complete (albeit super simple) site in minutes.

• uCoz uKit

  uCoz has a clean and modern interface, that is intuitive and easy to use (though noticeably slow to load). We didn’t love that we needed to sign up to see the templates, that most of the templates are very similar, and you’re extremely limited in editing the templates. Once you’re in a template you can’t change things like text styling and can only choose from one of three colors. This keeps you from making bad design choices, but also makes picking a template a much more important choice.

• Virb

  We don’t recommend Virb, the MySpace competitor that pivoted to become a website builder in 2010 — while the one $10 plan is simple, but there’s no way to preview the editing tool, and honestly we couldn’t even figure out how to sign up. We clicked log in (but were told we didn’t already have an account…). Let us know if you can figure it out. By watching the Virb tutorial videos on its Vimeo account, which were uploaded six years ago, we got a sense that the tool hasn’t been updated recently, and here’s the deal breaker of deal breakers: it’s not WYSIWYG. To add social buttons, you’ll need to go to a menu, click add widget, and who know where they’ll show up on the page. We live in a world with the ease of drag-and-drop editors and can’t go back.

• Vistaprint

  Vistaprint does offer some limited templates you can build yourself under its “Digital Marketing” offerings, but it’s still a business-card first business. In fact, one of the major selling points it offers is just that: your website can match your business card.

• Voog

  Voog advertises that it’s the simplest multi-lingual site builder, that is you can build your site in one language and then add all of the copy in up to 10 other languages. Your user will choose the appropriate language with the little flag logo in the corner (you can also pre-select language based on user location). But, this is a feature Wix, Squarespace, and others also offer. We think it’s better to go with one of those bigger names for a few reasons: Voog’s site itself loads very slowly with noticeable lag on pages with more than one image, and its own pricing page doesn’t automatically notice the country you’re in. When your big claim is matching content to the user country, this is a big miss.

• Web.com

  A hard no from us here. Before you even get to browse the template, you’re signing up for introductory pricing that’s $1.95 for the first four weeks, then bumps up to the “current rate” which is $22.95 a month right now, with no promise that it won’t be more later. And the fine print asserts there are 4 weeks in a month, so there are 13 “monthly” billing cycles in a year. No thanks.

• Webnode

  A simple (almost too simple) designer with a super high price point. For no ads, you’ll pay $11.95 a month on the required annual plan. At that price, you can do far better.

• Webs

  Built by three brothers and then acquired by VistaPrint in 2011 for $117.5M in cash and stock, Webs looks like it hasn’t been touched since. The editor is slow, and the templates are dated — the default “line” has the scrollwork of a fancy wrought-iron fence, for example — and the templates, which are arranged in an awkward horizontal scroll, don’t respond to the system’s filter so premium and free templates are intermingled. Can’t recommend.  

• Websitebuilder.com

  A strong no. Uninspiring templates, buggy interface, a support chat portal that doesn’t work (and legitimately suggests unplugging your router to solve the problem), and terrible customer reviews that call out inaccurate billing and incorrect charges. We don’t doubt it: the terms of service say in order to unsubscribe from auto-renewals, you’ll need to turn to phone or chat, not simply update your account settings.

• Webstarts

  There’s so much freedom with Webstarts: you can literally move anything you want anywhere on the page. The problem with this is that it’s easy to move something on the desktop editor in such a way that it won’t show up on mobile. For a website builder, it’s freedom to a fault. We like to see when the software stops us from making bad decisions we don’t even know we’re making, without any fuss. Mobile-optimization doesn’t click in until the Pro Plus level, which is $14.32 a month, billed annually (~$172).

• Weebly

  In Q2 2018 Weebly was acquired by Square and has been increasingly geared towards entrepreneurs and online store owners (really gunning for online shops like Shopify). At least in its marketing, that is. When we checked out the one-star reviews on TrustPilot, we knew we couldn’t recommend Weebly. Another dealbreaker? There’s no undo button. Once you exit a module in the editor all of the changes you made are permanent. Delete a module, and want to undo it? Sorry, you’re simply out of luck.

• WordPress.com

  We love WordPress and run our site on WordPress, but an easy-to-use website builder it’s not. Dive into WordPress.com and you’ll be quickly launched into a world that feels like you need technical expertise. (You don’t really need much, but the menu layout and wiki-style simplicity feels much more demanding than others. And it most certainly is not drag-and-drop intuitive.) If you’re up to using WordPress, we recommend picking a great web host, registering a domain name, and going through WordPress.org’s “famous 5-minute installation.” You won’t pay the monthly subscription you’d pay with WordPress.com and you get all the same features — you’ll just need to do some of the hands-on work. Read more about the difference between self-hosted WordPress.org and fully hosted WordPress.com on the WordPress.com blog.

• Yola

  Yola is expensive and wants to upsell left and right. You’ll need Silver ($119 annually or $14.99 monthly) to ditch the Yola branding, and they’d like you to get Mobile Plus (an extra charge to make your business phone number and address show up on the bottom of mobile pages — this is free with Wix) and the $10/month ecommerce upgrade is simply a free Ecwid plugin Yola would love to charge for. The editor is a bit buggy, you can’t add a blog (Yola suggests embedding a Tumblr page…) and we don’t think the high price point and upselling are worth it for the mediocre product.

Recap: The best website builders

• Wix Best for automating the tough choices
• Squarespace Best for beautifully designed templates
• Ucraft Best for building a one-page site for free
• Onepager Best for quick set-up

 

 

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How Blockchain Is Changing the Digital Marketing Industry

Cryptocurrencies have been a hot topic lately to say the least.

You probably heard about Bitcoin years ago—the most popular cryptocurrency with the most media coverage. In the early days, it was primarily used for transactions on the dark web.

But today, cryptocurrencies have evolved and are starting to gain traction.

Everyone knows someone with a cryptocurrency story. Either a friend, family member, or a friend of a friend invested in Bitcoin years ago and made a fortune off it.

Or maybe you’ve talked to someone who regrets selling too early before some of the most recent surges took place.

That said, I didn’t create this guide to spark a cryptocurrency debate. Everyone has an opinion on this method of payment, and I don’t want to get into all the pros and cons.

Instead, I want to focus on one specific area that makes this technology work.

Blockchain.

On the surface level, people associate blockchain with buying and selling cryptocurrencies, but it’s much more than that.

As a marketer, you need to recognize the latest trends and understand how blockchain technology works.

It will potentially impact your business today and in the future. It’s in your best interest to start educating yourself now.

Even if you’re not planning to implement cryptocurrency as a payment method just yet, knowing the concepts of blockchain is still important because it’s changing the digital marketing industry.

Here’s what you need to know.

What is blockchain?

Let’s start with the basics.

Blockchain technology can be compared to a shared ledger or an open record system.

These records are used to keep track of different transactions. There are multiple uses for the records on file.

As I said before, cryptocurrency is what comes to mind first. But blockchain can also be used to keep track of data such as home records, voting records, and medical information.

Each transaction is segmented by blocks, hence the name.

These blocks get verified by other users within the system. Blocks cannot be changed once they are verified.

The permanent blocks become added to a chain of other blocks that have already been validated as well.

It may sound a bit confusing, but here’s a great visual representation of the way blockchain works:

Right now, people are constantly buying and selling goods on the web. You might be one of those people.

But let’s look at third-party marketplace websites such as eBay.

Marketplaces turn a profit by charging buyers and sellers fees to use their platforms. If you buy something on eBay, the platform will use your bank and the seller’s bank to verify the transaction.

They will also confirm that the buyer and product actually exist.

Blockchain technology allows buyers and sellers to cut out these middlemen. This makes it possible to process transactions without the need of a third-party marketplace.

There won’t be any banks involved or transaction fees associated with the purchase either. Neither party will have to worry about exchange rates, even for international purchases.

It’s supposed to be a safe and fast way to make transactions. Blockchain is the backbone behind peer-to-peer electronic payments.

The first blockchain was created when the first cryptocurrency was created.

The software is open-source, allowing anyone to see the coding and make modifications to it. Next, different people and companies came out with different versions of blockchain without using the original coding.

Any user can see transactions made with blockchain.

They are visible to everyone, even when completed between two people. While the blockchains are visible to anyone, the identities of the users can remain anonymous:

Instead of having a name, each user in the system has a public address.

Algorithms can be written to automate the transactions. This is similar to the way you pay a Spotify subscription each month with your credit card.

Now that you understand the basics of how blockchain works, I’ll show you how this technology is being used to revolutionize the digital marketing industry.

Middlemen in digital marketing can be eliminated

Blockchain technology makes it possible for advertisers to avoid middlemen.

Right now, marketers go through third parties to handle their advertisements.

Let’s go through an example.

Let’s say a company wants to offer banner advertisements on its website. But it doesn’t want to sell its ad space to just anyone.

Ads linking to low authority or sketchy businesses won’t add credibility to your website.

How does this company proceed? It goes through a platform such as Google. In this case, Google will act as the middleman.

By participating in Google Adsense, the company is assured that it will be connected only with credible businesses that want to buy advertising space.

This process makes both parties feel secure about the ads.

The site selling the space knows it won’t have any malicious content from unreputable brands being displayed on its pages. Furthermore, the company buying the advertisement knows that its ads will be run on legitimate sites.

Google processes the transaction and charges a fee for its part in the deal.

That’s the current system that marketers are using without blockchain technology:

Now, let’s apply the blockchain concepts to this example.

Companies won’t have the need to go through a third-party platform such as Google with the blockchain structure.

That’s because blockchain users can be verified through its networks. People would know they’re getting what they’re paying for as opposed to potentially paying for clicks that aren’t genuine.

It’s still a safe and secure way to process each transaction.

Blockchain, ultimately, eliminates the need for intermediaries in the procedure:

Don’t get me wrong.

Google and its advertising platform aren’t going anywhere just yet. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s still arguably the biggest powerhouse in the marketing industry.

I’m not telling you to ditch your Google AdSense strategy either.

All I’m saying is the concepts behind blockchain technology will make it possible for companies to avoid these types of third-party platforms.

Ditching the middleman will make advertisements more profitable since marketers won’t have to pay additional fees for the transactions.

Consumers can control content

As a marketer, you don’t want to hear this, but consumers don’t want to see ads all the time.

That’s why ad blocking penetration continues to rise each year in the United States:

People have different reasons for using ad blockers.

According to a recent study, 51% of people justify their use of ad blockers because it’s their Internet experience and they want to be in complete control of it.

Other top results from the survey include convenience and wanting on-demand content without waiting for an ad to load.

In some instances, it seems ads have grown out of control. But that’s the nature of the modern digital world.

Ad targeting has become much better with new technology. The ability, for example, to use lifetime value to create Facebook audiences that convert makes it much easier for businesses to reach their target markets.

Sometimes when a customer makes a transaction or gives out their information to one party, they receive advertisements even when they never opted in to it.

Blockchain technology can give consumers the right to charge companies for their contact information.

If a company wants a consumer to subscribe to their newsletter, the customer can reply with their price to receive that content.

For example, each consumer who reads an email could cost brands fractions of a cent. Transactions would be processed through cryptocurrencies automatically.

This concept gives consumers complete control over who has their information.

It will also make it more challenging for marketers to showcase their relevance and level of importance to the consumer. Brands will need to learn how to create a highly effective value proposition in these instances.

Transparency and accountability will build trust

It’s not always easy for brands to gain the trust of their consumers. This is especially true for smaller, less-known businesses.

With so much information out there, people have become skeptical about what they’re being told and which brands are telling the truth.

People want answers.

They want to know where their food is coming from.

They want to make sure their clothes are coming from factories with appropriate working conditions for the employees.

Trust has a major impact on purchasing decisions:

Blockchain will force businesses to become more transparent about their operations.

That’s because every step and record can be verified and documented for everyone to see on these open source networks.

Consumers can have complete access to the supply chain of a retailer or distributor.

This type of information will show everyone exactly how and where their products are being manufactured. Each step of the process is tracked with blockchain.

Since this information will become public record, companies will be held more accountable for their actions.

They can’t claim their goods were manufactured in a factory with good health conditions if that’s not true. Otherwise, it won’t be verified in the blockchain.

Do you think this sounds crazy? Too good to be true?

Think again. Companies have already started doing this.

I recently read a case study on this subject conducted with IBM and Walmart. It covers the supply chain process with blockchain technology:

Technology was used to track where the products were coming from.

In this case, it was tracking food. The idea was to trace the source and supply chain of pork products through each step of the supply chain.

It started all the way back in China—the world’s largest pork producer.

Blockchain holds companies accountable and builds trust between the brand and their customers. This is a brand’s way of showing everyone it has nothing to hide.

With blockchain technology, the public can see digital contracts between two parties.

This forces everyone involved to keep up their end of the deal.

Security must be a priority

With this technology becoming part of our lives fast, businesses need to prioritize security more than ever.

Don’t get me wrong, businesses always needed to emphasize website security and protecting customer information.

However, since blockchain can be used to process transactions, malicious advertisements could potentially become an issue.

People are already concerned about malicious malware and viruses when it comes to their privacy and ads:

As a result of these concerns, we should see a growth in the fraud verification industry.

They will implement blockchain technology.

The verifications required to add blocks in this system can prevent criminals and bots from stealing precious information.

Businesses will accept more alternative payment methods

Right now, you probably can’t walk into your local coffee shop and buy something with Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.

But we may not be too far from those days.

Some companies are already preparing to adapt to alternative payment types:

Only about 9% of businesses plan to accept Bitcoin within the next three years.

We’re still not at the point where it has penetrated the mass consumer market. But this could be approaching us faster than you might think.

Blockchain technology is making this possible.

As a business owner, you need to recognize this and at least prepare yourself to adapt when these types of payments gain more traction at the mass consumer level.

Conclusion

Blockchain is almost always associated with processing cryptocurrency payments.

However, this technology can be used for much more than that. Its applications have the ability to change the digital marketing world as we know it.

Blockchain gives marketers the ability to cut out middlemen when buying or selling advertisements, such as a PPC campaign.

Consumers will have more control over which companies can send them information.

Since blockchain transactions are an open ledger for anyone to see, businesses will be held accountable for their actions and forced to be more transparent.

Your business might not be ready to accept cryptocurrency just yet, and I’m not saying it should be. But it should keep an eye on this emerging trend in the coming years.

How is your company preparing for digital marketing changes associated with blockchain technology?

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How to Increase Your Sales ?ith Instagram Stories

No social media marketing strategy is complete without Instagram. But there is much more to Instagram than just uploading pictures and videos to your profile.

With a standard post, you’re somewhat limited to how much content you can upload in a given day or a week.

Let me clarify. Technically, you can post as much as you want. But that strategy won’t work.

On average, most brands post about 10 times per week. Uploading content more than once or twice per day to your Instagram profile will have a negative impact.

According to a recent study from Sprout Social, 58% of consumers say it’s annoying when brands post too much on social media. And 46% of users will unfollow a brand for doing this.

But you want to share your content with your audience. Sometimes, posting once or twice per day isn’t enough to get your point across.

That’s when you should be leveraging your Instagram story.

Unlike a traditional post, your Instagram story won’t flood the timelines of your followers. You can upload more than ten pictures or videos to your story, and it won’t hinder anyone’s experience. This isn’t the case with posts posted directly to your profile.

Instagram has more than 400 million daily active users. One-third of the stories with the most views are uploaded by businesses.

Taking advantage of this feature is a great opportunity for your brand to generate sales on Instagram.

It’s worth mentioning that the longer your Instagram story is, the less of a chance it has of being watched in its entirety:

That said, nearly 60% of people will watch your entire story that has 20 frames.

That’s more content than you would upload with traditional posts to your profile in an entire week.

You can create a new Instagram story every day since the old stories disappear after 24 hours. This means you get to start off each day with a clean slate.

There are many different approaches to Instagram stories that drive sales. That was my inspiration for writing this guide.

I’ve identified some of the best examples of Instagram stories from a wide range of brands. Using these approaches in your Instagram posting strategy will help you avoid stale content for upcoming posts.

This is the approach you need to take if you want to generate more sales on Instagram.

Set up a shoppable story

For years, in order for businesses to directly drive sales on Instagram, they had to rely on adding links to their bios to drive followers to  product landing pages.

That was ineffective since the user had to take too many additional steps.

But Instagram recently rolled out an update allowing brands to increase product sales with shoppable posts.

With a shoppable post, you can tag products in an image, the same way you would a person. When a user clicks on the tag, they are directed to a landing page that gives them the opportunity to buy what you’re selling.

Clicking on a shoppable tag has far less friction than having to navigate to your bio.

While many brands are taking advantage of shoppable posts, many don’t realize they can also use shoppable stories.

The same concept applies here.

On your story, just tag an item from your product catalog. Users who view the story will have an option to click on the tag and be directed to a page where they can complete the purchase.

If you want to directly drive sales, this is one of your best options.

You can add dozens of different products to your Instagram shoppable story. Or maybe you’ll take another approach and use your entire story to promote one product.

Whichever option you choose, you’ll be able to generate more sales with these strategies.

Run a poll

Polls on Instagram stories are a great way to drive engagement.

Unlike with a shoppable post, participating in a survey won’t directly drive sales, but it will still pique your followers’ interest.

Polls can triple your engagement metrics on a story.

That’s because they are easy. All a user has to do is click on one of the two options to participate. Plus, that’s the only way they’ll be able to see how other people have voted.

Here’s an example of how Microsoft Surface used this strategy in a sponsored story:

It’s a very simple question.

They’re asking what’s more important to users, power or portability?

Here’s the catch. When users swipe up, following the “learn more” CTA, they’ll discover this product has both power and portability.

You’ll see more of this swipe up style CTAs throughout this guide.

Take advantage of the swipe up feature.

According to a case study from Marketing Land, 15-25% of users who see these links on Instagram stories are swiping up.

MeUndies participated in this study.

On average, 20% of users who saw its story swiped up to learn more. And 90% of those people have never visited the website before.

Adding a poll to your story increases your chances of getting higher engagement rates and, hence, makes it more likely that users will click your CTA. You’ll be able to generate more sales as a result.

Showcase testimonials to increase brand credibility

Testimonials are one of the best ways to increase credibility of your brand, products, and services.

In fact, 92% of consumers refer to testimonials when making a purchase decision.

Further, 88% of consumers trust a testimonial as much as a recommendation from someone they know. And 72% of buyers say they trust a business more after reading a positive testimonial about it.

Adding a testimonial to your story will definitely increase your chances of driving sales.

Here’s a great example from Mack Weldon:

It used a testimonial from Men’s Health to add credibility to its product.

If a reputable magazine such as Men’s Health says this is the best underwear for the gym, then they must be, right? That’s the idea behind this testimonial.

As you can see, Mack Weldon is also taking advantage of the swipe up feature.

By clicking this CTA, users will have a chance to buy products directly from the landing page. This process limits friction, which improves conversion rates.

It’s much more effective than asking your followers to navigate to your website by opening a separate web browser. Conversion rates for that method would be much lower.

Partner with a social influencer

You can also use influencers to increase your product’s credibility.

This strategy works for the same reasons as testimonials do. Followers will see a promotion from someone whom they trust and follow their recommendation as a result.

With influencer marketing, you don’t even need to post any content on your story.

Instead, you can have the influencers with whom you’re working promote your brand with their own stories.

Take a look at how CALIA by Carrie uses this strategy:

CALIA by Carrie partnered with professional surfer and model Anastasia Ashley.

Anastasia shares this content on her own story, so it’s viewed by her followers. Now people who may have never heard of this brand are exposed to the promotion.

This strategy is a great opportunity for you to increase your reach.

With this widened exposure, you’ll have a better chance of getting more followers and increased website traffic. Both of these metrics can help you drive sales.

Encourage interactivity

This strategy is similar to that of the story polls, which I talked about earlier.

The whole idea behind encouraging interaction with your followers is they engage with your content. Keeping people engaged will help your brand, products, and services stay fresh in their minds.

Check out this example from Tropicfeel:

Tropicfeel is a startup company that makes the ultimate travel shoe. All of their promotions target people who like to travel.

Everyone travels for different reasons.

Adding this content to its story gave users a chance to share their answers about their travel preferences.

The level of engagement it takes to complete this survey is much higher than just clicking on a poll.

A user has to take a screenshot, then add the same image to their own story with their answers circled.

Then, Tropicfeel shared those responses back on its original story:

It’s a clever strategy.

If you plan on doing something like this, you can’t expect the participation rates to be extremely high. That’s because it takes extra effort.

But it’s still effective. Even if some followers aren’t participating, they’re watching the story to view responses from other people.

All of this makes the company’s target audience think about traveling and potentially planning their next trip.

Maybe its followers need new shoes before their next excursions, which would entice them to make a purchase from this brand.

Repurpose user-generated content (UGC)

In the last example, you also saw repurposed user-generated content.

The only difference is it was produced as part of a campaign. But that doesn’t have to be the case.

There will be instances when your customers tag you in their stories without any encouragement from you.

Maybe they put on a new pair of sunglasses they just ordered from your ecommerce shop and want to show them off to their followers. So they upload an image to their story and tag your brand.

You’ll be notified any time your brand is tagged in a story. From here, you’ll have the option to share that same content to your own story as well.

Look at how Patara Shoes uses this tactic:

Repurposing UGC accomplishes several things.

First, this type of content will have the same effect as a customer testimonial, which I previously discussed.

Sharing a story like this also shows your followers you’re willing to repost content your brand is tagged in. This gives them some encouragement to do the same for a chance to be featured.

With more of your followers posting about your brand on their personal profiles, you end up getting social influencers free.

These people may not have thousands of followers as the influencers whom you’re paying, but their content is still valuable and can lead to additional sales from anyone who sees their stories.

Follow a progression

Earlier I talked about how you can upload lots of frames to your story each day, which isn’t recommended for a traditional post.

But the frames shouldn’t be random.

If you refer to some of the examples you looked at so far today, you wouldn’t want to combine all of them into one story.

I see brands make this mistake all the time. They forget that their Instagram story should actually tell a story. This means it needs to follow a logical progression.

Here’s an example from Thule:

The story starts with a date.

This will grab the attention of anyone watching and make them curious as to what’s happening on this date.

As a result, they’ll continue watching to learn more information:

As the story continues, they’ll learn there will be some type of celebration.

Users will continue on:

Now things start to get more specific.

Thule shares the time of the celebration and hints at a product launch.

This story had seven frames. We looked at just three.

Imagine if all three of these frames were combined into one. That would be way too much text on the screen.

Now imagine if seven frames of text were crammed into just one.

It would be overwhelming and difficult for people to read. The message would be lost.

A progression like this makes it easier for people to consume it and more likely that they will do that.

If you’re trying to introduce a new product or event to drive sales, you can do it over several images or videos as opposed to just one.

I’ll show you another example of this type of progression below.

Introduce your team

I love the idea of showing your employees on your Instagram story.

This concept adds a human element to your brand, which goes a long way. It allows your followers to see you’re more than just a company. Real people they can relate to are the driving force behind your operation.

Let’s look at how Allbirds did this on its Instagram story:

As you can see, this story follows a progression as well.

Instead of showing its employees out of context, the company starts the story by saying it wants to share images of where the team has gone with the product.

Here’s one example from the dozen or so posted:

Maria, an employee from the supply chain team, wore the company’s product to the Great Wall of China.

This story shows that its employees stand behind their products. They own them and actually use them.

But if you don’t have this type of content to share on your story, it doesn’t mean you can’t introduce your team.

Another way to do this is by showing behind-the-scenes looks at your operation.

Any time an employee achieves something, you could share that accomplishment on your story.

Again, this strategy will humanize your brand and make you more relatable to your followers. These types of posts are perfect for your story.

Promote a new product launch

As I said earlier, you don’t want to flood the timelines of your followers with promotions all the time.

This is annoying and will eventually cause people to unfollow you.

But if you have a new product coming out soon, it’s a big deal. You want to start promoting it as soon as possible. That way, your customers are ready for it by the time it’s released.

Use your story to accomplish this.

Here’s a simple example from Vuori Clothing:

It’s a great way to use the 2018 holiday season to drive sales.

You can go into greater detail about your products in your story, depending on what you’re promoting.

For example, you could upload a video tutorial to your story showing how to use the new product.

Combine this strategy with some of the other tactics on this list and have a social influencer do the same thing for you.

Building hype for your products before they launch increases your chances of generating sales when they finally become available for purchase.

Conclusion

Instagram has become a powerful tool for brands. But that’s only the case if you’re taking advantage of all the features available.

Simply posting content to your profile isn’t enough. Plus, you should be uploading only one or two images or videos each day.

You have much more flexibility with the amount of content you post to your Instagram story.

Promote your products directly by using a shoppable story.

Run a poll and encourage interaction to drive engagement.

By showcasing testimonials, partnering with social influencers, reposting user-generated content, and introducing your employees, you’ll be able to add more credibility to your brand and products.

All of your stories should follow a logical progression.

If you follow the tips and examples I’ve outlined above, your Instagram story will help you generate additional profits.

How is your brand using Instagram stories to drive sales?

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