5 Free SEO Tools I use to Improve Proximacy

15th August 2018/0 Comments/in Post, Search Engine Optimisation, Website/by Site Default

If you are an in-house marketer and have the arduous task of managing your company’s online properties such as websites, or online marketing materials, you probably know how essential SEO or tools are. In this list today, I will be sharing a few of my most used SEO tools to help me manage my clients and Proximacy’s website. These 5 free SEO tools range from SEO tools to track my rankings to tools to help me post simultaneously to different platforms. Most of these tools I use is completely free and can be utilised by all.

IFTTT

One of the most invaluable free tools I use is IFTTT, also known as “If This, Then That”. It’s an ingenious way to link different applications and devices together. This means if you have multiple platforms or applications you use to market your products, posts or services, you can get IFTTT to automatically link them together and post them for you in a single post. There are hundreds of different methods of using this website but I’ll just share those that I feel is useful for my method of working. These instructions are also known as Applets and they direct IFTTT on what to do when an event is triggered.

Facebook Auto Posting

Proximacy is a website that provides online marketing services to businesses and individuals and we also post regular tips and tricks to the public. As such, we are constantly posting articles and blog posts onto our website. As much as possible, we also want to engage with our audience on Facebook so Building an Applet to automatically post our blog posts onto our Facebook page is essential.

Start by creating a new Applet. From the “choose a service” page, you have over 100 types of services you can choose from and to help make your life and processes more streamlined. But for a start, we will choose WordPress. You can choose between “any new post” or “new post with tag or category”. Because I want my facebook to be automatically updated when I publish a post, I will choose “any new post”

Next, you want to fill in “that”, this completes the equation of “when a new post is created on WordPress, then create a link post on Facebook”

If you are worried you are unable to customise the message on facebook, you can actually add ingredients and custom texts so it looks more personal. Once you create the action, every time you post something new on your website, it will automatically post the same entry on Facebook.

There are a ton of customisation you can use with IFTTT and its really up to you to determine how your business processes work.

Image Compression

If you have been following our posts, you will know that conversions on a website are heavily dependant on the speed of your website. If you want to learn more, check out our post about how to speed up your website. To summarise the post, image compression is essential for all fast websites. Contrary to belief, compression takes away very little to no quality loss at all. If you place a full sized image on your website, your visitors will spend a lot of time and data waiting for the images on the site to render. In addition, It will drain your server’s bandwidth resources quickly.

Optimizilla

I personally use Optimizilla as my first choice. Not only is it available online, it also completes the job quickly and you can upload up to 20 images at a time. There is also an easy gauge you can use to determine the quality of the image. Do note that the website already optimises the images automatically.

To start this process, just drag or upload your pictures on the website. Once it has automatically compressed your images, you may choose to download the optimised images or even adjust the quality yourself.

Search Engine Optimisation

If you have been tasked with SEO or Search Engine Optimisation for your company’s site, you’ll know how expensive it is to purchase tools to help you track your progress or to help you to find places to post links on. One free tool I can recommend for personal businesses besides the Google tools such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics is SEO Powersuite.

SEO Powersuite

SEO Powersuite is a free software that within its ecosystem contains a few software you can download for both Mac or Windows users: Rank Tracker, Link Assistant, WebSite Auditor, and, SEO SpyGlass. In brief, this four software help you with different aspects of your website. There is a free version which can help you track one website at a time and with limited functionality and a business and enterprise version which will unlock different features. For a single business user, the free version is sufficient for simple tracking and use and should prove useful for your personal use.

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker helps you to conduct keyword research and track the Search Engine Ranking Position on the various search engines such as Google, Yahoo and bing. While Google’s keyword planner can help you to do keyword research, Rank Tracker provides more avenues to research on. You can also track your competitor’s ranking and see the difficulty of the keyword to rank it.

WebSite Auditor

This tool helps you find onsite errors in your website, It also gives you the backbone structure of your website and also provides you with important metrics such as title tag, description tag, click depth and URL to name a few. This tool truly helps you with your onsite optimisation in a long run and keep track of what is missing on your website.

SEO SpyGlass

More for advanced users, SEO Spyglass helps you find your links that are pointing towards your website. This allows you to monitor them and also determine whether spam is building up on your website. From there you can use Google search console and disavow any bad links that could penalise your website in a long run.

Link Assistant

5 Free SEO Tools I use to Improve Proximacy

Similar to SEO SpyGlass, Link Assistant is a link management tool that helps you to find different types of links from various platforms such as Guest posting, directories, blogs and many others. Link Assistant can also help you to email the website administrator to get a link.

Website Speed

Optimising your images, working on Onsite Optimisation is part and parcel of improving your user experience and website speed. Website speed is also becoming an important factor in Google’s ranking algorithm so it is important to take note of these. I usually use two different types of platforms for this to test my website. GTmetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights.

GTmetrix

One of the best tools in checking your website speed, GTmetric analyses your website and uses different tools to check the bottleneck issues in your website. It also includes important recommendations that you can pass to your web developer to help optimise your website.

Simply input your website and it will start to analyse your website in its entirety. It even breaks down for you into different sections so you understand what to focus on.

Google PageSpeed

One of Google’s tool, it is the “holy bible” where you probably have to scrutinise your website over when it recommends you something. Since the tool comes from Google, its likely that those metrics that they advise you will be used to either reward you with better ranking or penalise your website for not following its guidelines. Either way, Google is taking a hard stance on website loading speed and you should too. Especially if you want to retain your visitor count or improve it.

Google Suite for Business: Why you Should Use It

27th July 2018/0 Comments/in Post, Website/by Site Default

Google Suite for Business

Google Gmail has one of the highest active users in the world with over 1 billion users every day. To put that into perspective, that’s over 20% of the world’s population. Did you also know that Google is available as Google Suite for business? This is not Google My Business listings as found on Google Maps but rather a suite of applications available for businesses. Formerly named as Google Apps for Work, G Suite gives you the same extensive tools that can help you scale your business. That’s all the familiar tools that can help you collaborate, share and increase productivity; essential to your daily work. Whether it is Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Gmail, Google Drive and Docs, and Google Hangouts. You can use all this within a controlled environment with administrative settings. For a complete list of apps provided within Google Suite, Check out Google’s official site to find out more. In this post, we will share the different benefits that you might find useful for your business and how you can scale accordingly.

google suite

World Class Security and Encryption

In today’s day and age where security lapses are common, it can be expensive to employ good cybersecurity protocols to protect your data. Your data in Google suite is kept securely in Google’s data centres and there is always redundancy for your data. if you have an issue, Google also has a 24/7 hotline for your convenience to speak with one of their officers. Find out more about Google Suite security protocols through the link.

Because all of your data is in Google’s Cloud system, you don’t have to bloat your computer with tons of company data but keep it all in the cloud. Wherever you are, you have access to the documents… provided that your administrative settings allow that. As the administrator, you have the control over how your employees get access to company information.

Save Money

As mentioned earlier, you get access to Google’s whole suite of useful apps such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Calendar. It might seem counter-intuitive since they are all available for free but you get many more features as a paid user. If you calculate the number of tools and cloud storage you get for the nominal fee of $5 per month, you stand to save much more than the individual tools that you might need to get.

google suite apps 2

Standard Users

As a standard user, basic plans is free for teams of 10 and will only cost $5 for each additional users. Accounts also get 30GB of storage and the capability to set Alias Addresses.

What is an alias address?

Alias Addresses are email addresses that you can use to forward emails to your inbox. For example, If employee A: Stacy manages the help inbox, she can receive both stacy@company.com and help@company.com into the same inbox. She will also be able to send as both help@company.com and her name to clients. This is extremely useful for employees with double roles.

Business Plan

Though there is not a lot of changes, you get unlimited storage and archiving and the ability for low-code app development environment for power users for a low cost of $10/user. You also get a lot of controls available through this plan. There is also an enterprise version but you’ll definitely want to reconsider as each user is $25/user.

Dynamic Team Collaboration

If you work in a traditional office, you’ll probably have to keep renaming your documents so that everyone knows who has the latest copy. With Google’s suite of tools such as Google documents, everyone can work on the same document simultaneously. You can even check who input a certain mistake and also chat and brainstorm while on the document even if you are not in the same location. This allows for remote working which is extremely relevant in today’s interconnected society. With these features, you can complete projects quicker, accurately and save time.

Simplified Organisation

Whether you have a meeting over a video call or set up meetings on Google calendar, you can easily organise such meetings through the suite of apps. In addition, you can synchronise your work calendar and personal calendar so that you see everything you have whether it is work-related or personal meetings.

Administrator

administrative control

As an administrator of your business, you can manage users directly through your settings. You have the ability to restrict access to certain files or individuals if they are not involved in the project. You can even see the individual log for each user and see what files are being uploaded and downloaded. In a world where information and data is king, it is important to safeguard your company’s interest.

Communication

Google Hangouts

Every country has a preferred application for communication, Singapore uses WhatsApp primarily, Korea uses Kakao Talk, USA uses IOS’s Messages extensively and WhatsApp. For users within your organisation, Google has Hangouts. With Hangouts, you can easily communicate through your mobile device with video audio and text messages. Google Hangout supports up to 25 users and you can easily access it through Gmail.

Google Gmail

I don’t think Gmail needs any introduction. Gmail is one of the most comprehensive emailing platforms there is and receiving emails and sending them is a breeze with Google. Receive almost instantaneous emails without second-guessing whether there is any delay or if it has gone to the client’s spam server in the mail server.

Conclusion

Google Suite combines what most users know into a comprehensive suite with a ton of features. With the features that Google offers small-medium businesses and a starting storage of 30gb, Google Suite is suitable for most businesses for a low cost looking for the most value.

If you are interested in using Google business but don’t know how to implement this into your existing business and email, you can contact us at our email or our hotline at 9111 3322.

Google Analytics: Find out if your Website is Bringing you Visitors

25th July 2018/0 Comments/in Google Analytics, Post, Website/by Site Default

Have you ever been approached by a tech company to make a website? You went ahead and made the commitment to your business but don’t know whether your website is effective in bringing you leads? Chances are the tech company did not install analytics for you to track your website’s performance. In our early post about why traditional ads are dead compared to online advertisements, we spoke about how it is impossible to track how a TV ad is doing. Sure they can promise you millions of viewers, however, it is impossible to tell how many of those viewers are interested in your product and service. This is what differentiates online marketing from offline marketing. In this post, we will explain how you can use and setup Google Analytics to understand your target audience.

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a free web analytics service offered by Google to give you important information on how your website is doing. It was launched in November 2005 and is one of the most widely used analytical software in the world today. Google analytics can provide you with a ton of information from the device being used to surf your website, the duration spent on each page and even which country and gender the visitor is. This helps you to segment your website and customise your products and services based on the demographics of your visitors. Of course, analytics is useless if you are not ranking in the search engine. For this, you will need to use Search Engine Optimisation.

How to install Google Analytics on your website

Google Analytics is free for anyone but requires some time and experience to set up. In this post, we will teach you how to install it on your website if you are using WordPress. Using Google analytics will have to be another series of posts due to the platform’s in-depth applications.

Signing up for Google Analytics

Google analytics just did a slight update to their website so you might need a little time to get used to the following steps. Basically, they are integrating many of their tools into this Google Marketing Platform so that more people have the opportunity to learn more and utilise them into their website to understand the data they have. Your Google account can access all the different tools Google has to offer so just sign in.

Click “Set up” under “Analytics” and you will reach the analytics platform where you can input your property(website).

Tracking your Website

On the next page, you will be greeted with the setup process. Click Website and input the account name you would like. Normally, I will put the account name as my name for easy reference. This is in case you are managing other client’s websites and you need to differentiate these accounts. Next, add in the website name and the Website URL. It is important to note that if your website protocol is https. You select the correct protocol. We highly recommend all websites to start using https which is a secure protocol which ensures that none of your visitors’ information gets stolen while browsing your site. This is due to Google’s recent changes in making HTTP non-secure. Find out more about the benefits of switching to https. Select your industry category and Google will try to tailor fit your dashboard to show you what data you need. For the Data Sharing Settings, I highly recommend you to tick all the boxes, especially the Technical Support and Account Specialists. If analytics is facing any issue and you decide to contact Google. Their specialist will have the right to your account and help you to fix your analytics issues.

Next, you’ll have to accept the terms of service agreement from Google. Select your country and tick all the boxes and click accept.

Adding the Global Site Tag

If you are using WordPress, this step is extremely easy. Log onto your WordPress site and download this plugin: “Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights”. While there are many other plugins that can do the same, I prefer this because it is simple and it integrates Google Analytics into my site without me needing to copy and paste any codes.

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, head to your plugin list and click on settings for the Google Analytics by MonsterInsights plugin.

From here, you can authenticate the following respective UA code or manually enter the UA code.

Once you are done, You’ve successfully linked your website with Google Analytics and can start receiving information from Google Analytics automatically. Switch back to Google Analytics and you can test it by viewing real-time visitors and testing the tracking with a visit by yourself.

Click on Home, “REAL-TIME” and open a new tab and visit the website to see whether your website is being tracked correctly. It will take usually about 20-30 seconds for the counter to bounce so be patient. If you’ve confirmed that Google Analytics is tracking, then you are set to go. Just note that Your dashboard will only start to populate after one day so be patient about viewing the data available.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can use Google Analytics to understand your visitors. Check back on the website for more tips and tricks. We post 2/3 times a week with important information to put you ahead of your competitors. We also provide an all-in-one solution for our clients whether they need website design, search engine marketing, search engine optimisation or social media marketing. If you would like to find out more, do contact us for more information.

Why your Website needs HTTPS

6th July 2018/0 Comments/in Post, Search Engine Optimisation, Website/by Site Default

Introduction to HTTP

Ever wondered what the http or https stands for whenever a website loads? “http” stands for the HyperText Transfer protocol(HTTP). HTTP is basically the foundation of all communication for the world wide web. While this information is not very important for webmasters. Having HTTPS instead of HTTP makes a huge difference for your visitors and the way people perceive your website.

Introduction to HTTPS

HTTPS refers to the secured version of the hypertext transfer protocol, the “S” being secure. In today’s digital world, security and personal information are of the outmost importance. the term “secure” is this added layer of protection. It acts as an authentication of the website and communication between your data and the server. This means that it encrypts your information and protects you against eavesdropping and stealing of information. While it was originally intended for e-commerce, email and user portal sites, https is becoming widely used to protect their end users and to increase user and visitor confidence

Why is HTTPS Useful For Any Website

Google is clamping down on non-HTTPS websites

the Google Chrome Blog recently posted about Google Chrome’s security indicators. websites that are not https will be marked as not secure and https websites will have a green lock. If you do not have a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), chances are you are losing visitors who are worried about getting their information stolen just by visiting your site.

Increase in Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs)

Back in 2014, the search engine giant announced its plan in 2014 during Google I/O about its plans for http and https. The event highlights its future plans and also the impact https had on Google searches. Google basically said that if two sites were equal, they would rank the https higher than the non-secured site. Make a simple check on Google and you’ll notice that more than 50% of websites are already secured.

Cheap to Implement

Depending on your hosting plan, converting to https is fairly affordable for anyone. With the number of benefits it brings to the table, its no brainer to implement this. If your website currently non-secured, there is no disadvantage or penalty in changing it.

Protect your Clients and your Business

How much is your business worth to you? If it’s your livelihood, you’ll definitely want the change. Even if you aren’t, spare a thought for your clients and visitors. The data transmitted through online forms, surveys or purchase could be intercepted by someone with ill intent. whether is it to sell your information or use your credit card information. Would you really want to expose your users and your business to such vulnerabilities?

Hackers and exploiters are constantly looking for loopholes in websites and chances are if you aren’t secured yet, your website is on the target board.

Secure your Website today!

If you need assistance to secure your website, or would like to find out more about the https protocol, please feel free to contact us for a non-obligatory assessment.

Why Having Just a Website is not Enough

2nd July 2018/0 Comments/in Post, Social Media Marketing, Website/by Site Default

Websites have long been regarded as an essential tool for business owners to broadcast their service or products on the world wide web. However, as we progress into the 21st century. Some might feel that just having a website is just not enough to get more online leads or conversions. Follow us as we uncover why this is getting more apparent in 2018 and beyond.

The Inception of Websites

The first website was launched in 1991 and was just made up of text informing everyone what the World Wide Web(www) was. Since then, the website has evolved to even form content management systems, e-commerce stores and even engines to hold and display data and information. We have truly come a long way. Early adopters of these technologies reaped the most benefit especially when they developed their business model and website right. Take for instance Yahoo which had the search engine dominance before Google can into inception and Amazon which used to solely sell books and now in 2018, sell almost anything from toiletries, games and even makeup products.

How many Businesses own Websites in Singapore?

Singapore boasts one of the largest percentages of internet users across the entire population with nearly 2 of 3 Singaporeans having access to the internet. From a research from Asia Pacific Digital Marketing Yearbook 2009, It validates that 80% of Singaporeans have shopped online and are one of the highest spenders in Asia. Imagine the number in 2018. However, it is quite sad to say that less than 60% of businesses in the ACRA database even has a website. There is still a large chunk of businesses that still rely on brick and mortar methods to market their products and services. Websites are essential because they elevate the status of your business and improves the overall image that your business might bring.

Why Websites are not Enough

Just having a website used to be sufficient to generate more leads in the early 2010s. However, with Instagram and Facebook added to the foray, businesses must now adapt and add that into their repertoire. Social media platforms bring a great avenue of social discussion about your product and service which can greatly elevate the reputation of your service or products. Many businesses solely rely on Facebook and Instagram through their social media marketing advertising arm to bring news firsthand to their loyal customers and building your Facebook page and Instagram will reap benefits in a long run with constant engagement. Using other products such as Google my Business is also a great way to list and find businesses on Google Maps.

Spreading your Eggs Across Different Baskets

life 101 tells you never to place all your eggs in a single basket, whether it is dealing with stocks, having additional income streams. Websites are the same. You should never just use websites but rather a 360-degree approach in your online marketing methods. This is why Proximacy addresses all our clients in the same manner. We take the time to look at your business, see where you are lacking in terms of online presence and then recommend you a total approach to address these loopholes. If you are looking to increase your web prescene to exponentially, do contact us and we will be more than willing to have a chat first to find out what your business really needs.

Keep up to Times with your Website Design

28th June 2018/0 Comments/in Post, Website/by Site Default

Being in the online marketing niche, I go through a lot of websites every day. Whether be it multinational companies or small medium enterprises or even storefronts businesses, you get to see the evolution of their online presence and the different goals that each company have. Websites are like your storefront online and it really affects your conversion rates in the long run. From our years in the business, there are many businesses that have websites that date all the way back to 2000. The design is outdated, it is often not compatible with the current standards and it is slow and unresponsive when viewing on mobile devices.

HTML 5

HTML 5 is the type of markup language that is used by many up to date websites for structuring and presenting content on the web. It was introduced in October 2014 and is the current standard used for the majority of websites today. It is extremely flexible and will support the latest forms of multimedia without the need for other plugins, unlike Flash. There are many web design software that uses HTML 5 and includes WordPress, Adobe Dreamweaver and many other platforms.

Websites that are Graphically Pleasing

Gone are the days where you could get away with websites that are just text and low-quality images. In today’s standard, it is important to get contextual images that are high in quality and fit with the purpose, goal and organisation theme. The pictures should support the content of your website without being overly distracting. Be careful that graphics can have the same effect of pulling visitors away from the actual content and might even cause visitors to exit the page to search for another product as a result. As such, it is important to evaluate at times whether you want to allow advertisements on your website as it might distract the user from making the final sale.

Compress your images

In order to make your website load as quickly as possible, it is important to compress all your images. By doing so, you reduce the size of all your media, making it much faster to render and thus make your website speedier. for more tips on how to make your website faster. Do check out a post we did on speeding up your website.

Hosting your content with a third party

Youtube Marketing

Though it might be tempting at times to host everything from your website directly, there are many platforms out there which allows you to use their service while marketing your product or service. if you are placing a video on your website, make it an effort to use youtube or Vimeo as a service to upload and embed your video to the site. These prevent you from using too much bandwidth which can, in turn, slow down your website.

Responsive with any device

responsive website

A great website is one that is responsive no matter which device you are using. With over 50% of users visiting sites on their mobile devices. It is paramount to ensure your website runs smoothly and is adaptable to these users. Mobile views intentionally have larger buttons which make things easier to click. The text is also adaptive and will fit according to the screen size, making text easier to read and manage on relatively smaller screens. If you are using WordPress like us, most themes already have inbuilt features that make the website responsive for all users. However, it is always important to customise this so that you have a unified user experience across all devices.

Industry standards

If you notice, a lot of good websites tend to look very similar to one another and it isn’t without reason. These websites follow an unspoken industry standard. Whether is it the colour of the backlinks links in blue with a highlight of the way websites are formatted. These are in place so that a user does not have to “figure out” how to navigate through the website. Simple things such as a menu which is usually horizontally placed as well as a footer menu with the different pages is subtle things that have been set in stone by millions of websites. In other words, don’t try to be revolutionary when millions of websites follow such standards. It won’t do your website any good to stand out in a bad way and it has the effect of confusing potential visitors on how to navigate across your website.

Change Your Website Design Periodically

If you feel your website design is stagnant and the design is not up to par with your competitors, it might be high time for you to get a new refresh. Customers usually judge the outlook of your website and form an impression on your business image. If you do not bother to make your website presentable, chances are that your competitor that does will snatch the business. In today’s times of online media, there is no better time to employ all you can to gain an edge in the online web.

Wix or WordPress, Which is Superior

9th January 2018/0 Comments/in Post, Website/by Site Default

If you intend to create a corporate or a personal website, you might be thinking about using either these two platforms: Wix or WordPress. However which is the better option for you? In this post, we hope to break down the pros and cons of using the two and hopefully, help you make a better-informed decision which to go by.

Wix

Wix.com is a developmental platform that allows one to create their own website using HTML 5. It supports both mobile, e-commerce and normal websites through the use of drag and drop tools. Its a growing platform that started in 2006 and has several price points which start for free to over 25 USD per month for users with different needs. Its rise to popularity stems from easy to use and edit tools which do not require any HTML or coding knowledge. That said, Its use is fairly limited due to the closed platform that it has. Limiting you to functionalities that Wix has.

WordPress

WordPress similarly is an open-sourced and free developmental platform that is based on PHP and MySql. It is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) to date and over 75 million websites use it. Even reputable companies such as Sony Music, The Walt Disney Company, Xerox, BBC America, Bloomberg Professional and even Sweden’s official website are using WordPress. This is a testament to the viability and adaptability of the platform. Websites on WordPress can be built absolutely for free and does require some IT knowledge to operate. Simple things such as getting a host, purchasing a domain name and linking your domain name to your host by means of nameserver and additionally, installing WordPress to your host. There are also many hosting platforms that can help you install WordPress if you do not know how to. Because WordPress is open-sourced, there is over 44,000 plugins that you can use that can achieve your goals. Whether be it an e-commerce site, a corporate site or even different management systems.

What Are the Differences?

With the short introduction out of the way, we can now get down to the things that set the two platforms apart. We will be comparing 5 aspects which include the following:

Price
Ease of use
Future Developments
Professionalism
Support

Price

Price is probably the biggest factor for anyone and thus should be addressed first. For someone diving into the online world. Price is definitely sensitive and will be your first concern. For a traditional website, you will have to look into the monthly hosting cost as well as the domain name registration. Let’s see how the two stack up against one another.

Wix

While Wix offers a free tier. it is not without its disadvantages. For one, you are stuck with a subdomain which will not look professional. Subdomains, as the name implies, are a subsidiary of the main domain. It can look something like this: yourdomain.wix.com. You can, however, move up a tier to the Combo Plan which costs $8.50USD. This allows you to get a free domain for 1 year and remove any Wix ads on your site. However, you are still limited because different functions such as contact us forms are still locked and you require to go up another tier to get the full freedom.

As a guide, I would recommend the unlimited plan for the majority of sites and the eCommerce plan if you want to build an eCommerce site.

If you break down the cost, it will look something like this: (Table does not include domain name registration)

Item	Cost	Yearly Cost
Combo Plan	8.50	102
eCommerce Plan	12.50	150

As you can tell, it isn’t that expensive to get a website up and running and is fairly incomparable to WordPress which you can find below. One thing to note is that Wix charges per site. If you intend to have more than 1 website, your costs will definitely increase significantly.

WordPress

WordPress as a standalone product is completely free. However, you do need some knowledge on purchasing a host to place your files on them. As a solution Bluehost offers great priced hosting plans for a low $3.95 USD. If you want to create more than 1 site, you will have to bump it up a plan to their “Plus” Plan for $5.95.

Item	Cost	Yearly Cost
Basic Plan	3.95	47.40
Plus Plan	5.95	71.40

If course, if you have a lot of websites, there are also more premium plans available for higher costs. From this, you can tell that WordPress is clearly a cheaper option. For the higher tier plan costing less than half of the eCommerce Plan.

Verdict for Price

WordPress is a clear winner here with their higher end plan just costing $71.40 compared to Wix’s eCommerce plan for a yearly cost of $150. In addition, hosting providers usually have a lot of customisation available which allows you to tailor your hosting plan to your needs. This can’t be said for Wix’s plans which are very inflexible and does not allow for a lot of customisation.

Ease of Use

For someone that has no prior knowledge of HTML or coding, ease of use might be an important factor. Especially if you are doing the website on your own.

Wix

Wix utilises drag and drop tools that on a difficulty scale is almost childlike. Editing your content as well as functions are extremely straightforward and you also get to see what happens to your site in real time. There are also 500+ templates available so you should be able to find a template to fit your business needs. Of course, some of the tools require you to be in a different price tier so watch out for what you need. One disadvantage though is once you have chosen a template, you cannot change it. You can only modify it with different text and the different tools available.

WordPress

WordPress also comes with over 15,000 themes as of July 2017. The vast amount ensures that you can choose what you want. In addition, if you feel that the theme doesn’t suit your needs, you can easily change another theme with the majority of your function still working. Editing your content and adding functions still require some knowledge and skill. However, once you get the hang of it, you’ll notice that WordPress is much better in terms of adaptability and working around.

Verdict for Ease Of Use

Wix is still one of the easiest to use especially for beginners who have no knowledge of how to create a website. That said, WordPress still has the largest selection of themes and plugins available which Wix might not have. It is important to figure out what your business needs and check if the platform has the functionality.

Future Development

Wix

Because Wix is a closed platform, any future developments or update is dependent on Wix as a company. That said because the built-in tools and themes are also made by Wix, you are guaranteed a good working system no matter what updates may come your way. Support is also great from the company. You can either call them, email them or do a live chat with them to get any form of support.

WordPress

WordPress is an open-sourced platform which means a majority of its plugins and themes are made from third-party developers. While WordPress consistently pushes out updates and developments to make WordPress better, You still need to rely on your theme and plugin’s developer to make it compatible with the latest update. This is why it is important to use high rated themes and plugins where there are good support and constant developments to make it better.

Verdict for Future development

It is without a doubt that Wix has this in the bag. Because they have limited tools and themes available, it is easy for Wix to upkeep with their resources and ensure that everything is within their control. WordPress still has more to go in this aspect and you are dependent on the respective theme and plugin owners for updates.

Professionalism

In this aspect, we are talking about how your website can look, how people perceive your website and viability for long time use.

Wix

While Wix websites tend to look professional by nature due to the drag and drop feature, people tend to perceive Wix websites as amateurish. Conduct a search on notable companies using Wix and you’ll probably come up with no results. Companies and businesses tend to have a budget when it comes to such intellectual property and Wix just does not stand out to be something that is professionally done or maintained. If you are looking for a short-term use, Wix might be a good choice. However, if you are planning to create a company and extend in the future, Wix might not be the best route for you.

WordPress

While WordPress might seem amateurish because you are not hard coding to create the site, the fact of the matter is that many notable companies do use WordPress. Not only is WordPress flexible in providing what your business needs, it can also expand to fit future goals and still look professional throughout. In fact, it is quite difficult to tell if the website is a WordPress site unless you are an experienced developer.

Sony Music’s website is on WordPress!

Verdict on Professionalism

WordPress wins hands down on this aspect, In a nutshell, Wix websites, in my opinion, should be made for short-term projects or a test on the viability while WordPress tends to be a better all-rounded solution for websites.

Summary

While both platforms have an end goal of creating easy and adaptable websites, WordPress still has the upper hand due to its open-sourced and free nature. Everyone can collaborate and share plugins and themes that works compared to the profit-driven Wix. However, it is important to first identify your business needs and choose the one that is right for you. For many people, they are likely to go by the wordpress route because it is more future proof and can be easily upgraded according to growing needs. Many companies and businesses also choose WordPress because there are many Website Designers in Singapore that offer affordable rates. If you are looking for one, we also have a whole suite of services available whether be it website design, search engine marketing, social media marketing or even email marketing. Do contact us for more assistance.

Facebook Advertising and Should You Try It

2nd January 2018/0 Comments/in Post, Social Media Marketing/by Site Default

If you have been using social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, You probably should have noticed that more advertisements are flowing into the platform. Backtrack 5 years ago and things would have been different. While it does draw some frustration on users’ end, it actually helps users find new products and information that they would not have gotten through these platforms.

Facebook marketing or Social Media Marketing as we know it is advertising solely on these platforms through sidebar ads, news feed ads or even video advertisements. While they can be intrusive to a user’s experience on the platform. Research and analytics have proven that it is a very effective means of engagement with potential customers. More than 2.5 million Singaporeans are currently on Facebook. Research has also shown that the most active point of the platform is usually during the commute to work or even before bed. With users spending on an average of 1 hour per day on Facebook. You can see why so many companies are jumping on the bandwagon.

How does their advertising work?

Facebook is one of the biggest data collection platforms to date. With over a billion users, Facebook has information on where users stay, their interests, their likes, hobbies, what they share and even the type of video you watch. With this information, advertisers have the ability to literally pinpoint the customers that might be interested in their products. Facebook then displays your ads to the requirements in your demographic so that it reaches the right people.

Facebook Ad Auction

Just like Google’s Paid Search: Google Adwords, Facebook uses an auction system to allow advertisers to bid for their advertisements. Through that system and other metrics, Facebook then decides which ads are shown to users. Of course, other metrics such as the volume of clicks, the number of likes, shares and even the relevance of the ads do matter.

Tracking your Performance

Just like Google Analytics or Google Adwords, You can also track the performance on how your ads are doing. Ads Manager is Facebook’s “software” that tells you everything. From how your ads are doing by the amount of share and likes to even the traffic and engagement with other users. You can also set up goals alongside Google Analytics for a deeper understanding of how your ads are organic searches compare.

Effectiveness

So with all that was said, is Facebook advertising really that effective? The short and simple answer is a resounding Yes! With about 40% of the population on Facebook and a large and constant userbase, it is one of the best bang for your buck methods to achieve your marketing Goals. Many of our clients have experienced better Return on Investments than Search Engine Marketing methods such as Pay-per-click. With that said, Facebook marketing still has its limitations. While a substantial percentage of our population is on Facebook, the majority of that population are within the age of 13-30. A large percent still rely on tradition online marketing methods such as Google’s search network or Youtube. If you are planning to solely use Facebook as a means of advertising, it is important to determine the demographic you are after and research on its viability. A well-balanced approach would to always use A-B testing for a couple of months to see which platform brings about the best lead generation.

Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) starter Guide

13th December 2017/0 Comments/in Post, Search Engine Optimisation/by Site Default

In case you aren’t aware, Google recently updated their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter guide. This guide was not updated since 2008 which is over a decade ago and it updates its content with it’s latest algorithms. You can view the guide here. If you are just getting started or have no clue to what SEO is all about, it’s a good place to start, It teaches you everything from onsite SEO to even promoting your website through various means such as social media, newsletters and through its other sites such as Google my business and Google maps.

Here are some of the key pointers from the guide that most people know of but do not use more of.

Organising your website to 3 or fewer clicks

This is also known as organizing your site hierarchy. Navigation through your website is important so that visitors can find what they want quickly. As a guide, plan your website such that they can reach what they want in 4 or fewer clicks. As a start, creating categories for your product and services is a great way to future plan your website.

Breadcrumb lists

showing breadcrumb lists are also a great way for your visitors to understand which part of the website they are in and helps them to understand the flow of your website.

Optimising your images and content

Content is king and Google has always been advocating this. Make sure that your content is readable by proofreading before publishing. Always create fresh content and write your articles or posts that visitors want to read. Not for the search engines. Most people get carried away with always writing it for the search engines that they forget who their true visitors are. When you are dealing with images, it is always wise to compress your photos. compressing your images not only reduces the size which in turns reduces the waiting time for loading, it also retains the image quality from the original size. There are many free websites out there that help you to compress your images but the one I really love is optimizilla. You can upload up to 20 photos at a time and you can even choose what quality you would like. Allowing you to tailor what size you want your image to be.

Mobile Friendly Site

Ask any website owner who has integrated analytics into their website and they will tell you that about 50% of their visitors come from mobile devices. While it is easy to tailor your website for desktop/laptop users, it can look totally different on mobile view. Make sure that your images, buttons as well as navigation are properly laid out for mobile users. It can be really frustrating as a mobile user to click on a small text accurately.

These are just some of the many tips from Google. The next time you are trying to implement something new, check back to the guide and see if your methods align with the guide.

How to Optimise your adwords Campaign

11th November 2017/0 Comments/in Post/by Site Default

Most businesses that have a website on Google know nothing about search engine optimisation nor Google AdWords Pay per click. Most are afraid to go into these marketing methods due to the fear of cost involved. Thinking about paying for every click does sound expensive. However, unbeknownst to many, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the most effective, cheapest and tracking form of marketing in the world. When you compare to other forms of marketing such as traditional methods like TV and print. You might be able to reach more audience but the audience you reach is not targeted and also untrackable.

The difference between these traditional methods and SEM is that you only get clicks from people searching for the particular term you specify and you can track how the visitor navigates through your website.

Further below are some steps to optimise your campaign to achieve better leads.

Making Sure you have the Correct Keywords

Keywords are basically phrases that you put into Google Adwords that will trigger your ad copy when a visitor types that phrase. As such, it is important to add suitable keywords that have some sort of relation to your product and service. Adding negative keywords is also essential so that your ad does not appear when the visitor is not searching for your product. Adding negative keywords such as “free” “trial” or “guide” is a good way to prevent your ad from triggering from visitors looking for a free product or service.

Choosing a geographic location you want to target

targeting the country you want to advertise is essential to target the right audience. You can adjust settings such as the country to target, timing for the ad to appear as well as the demographics of your potential visitors. For example, if you are a real-estate agent, you probably only want to target individuals who are of age as well as the parental status. This will allow you to get more relevant clicks for less of your money

Targeting Long-Tailed Keywords

Long-tailed keywords are keywords that are more precise by nature. Such keywords tend to perform much better because they tend to be buying keywords that visitors will use to purchase their products and service. For example, a visitor is looking for general information about cleaning services will probably search with the following terms: “cleaning services available” while a visitor who already knows the specific service they want will likely search for “bathroom disinfection cleaning”. With this method, you are likely to spend less money yet get a high engagement and conversation.

Setting a Daily Budget you can Afford

Before you set your campaign, it is important to set a monthly budget you want to set aside for the campaign. This amount should be based on the estimated cost per click and a number of clicks you want to achieve on a daily basis. Further customisation includes spreading out the timing which the ad will appear or choosing certain time periods can better help you achieve better targeting.

These are some of the basic settings you can use to optimise your Adwords campaign. If you would like to find out more about other services we provide, you can take a look at our Adwords services or even other methods such as social media marketing or search engine optimisation services.