5 Free SEO Tools I use to Improve Proximacy

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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

ranktracker

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

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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 2google suite apps

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

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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

new design 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.

Google marketing platform

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.account setup

data sharing settings

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.

Analytical plugins

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.

Google login integration

pick a profile

finalising authentication

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.

real-time visits

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

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Introduction to HTTP

difference between http and https

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

non-secure sites on google chrome

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

secure sites on google chrome

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 Websites Aren't Enough

Why Having Just a Website is not Enough

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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.

Google my Business

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

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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

 

horizontally placed menus

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

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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

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

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:

  1. Price
  2. Ease of use
  3. Future Developments
  4. Professionalism
  5. 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 on wordpress

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.

Why Font Type Matters

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The debate on whether font type matters in marketing and website design has been the debate of the 21st century. With so many different types of fonts available and variations, it can be difficult to choose the right font for your website or material. Here are a few reasons why font matters.

Differentiation of Content Type

Consistency in this manner is about making sure that the different portions of your website have the appropriate font size, type, and differentiation. It needs to be easy for visitors to spot and to understand the different segments of your website. Maintaining these differentiation helps to create a uniformity throughout your website and enhance the user experience.

Take for instance the picture below of an e-commerce site. The title is always the biggest at 20px while the description of the product is 14 px. This allows the user to automatically differentiate between the title tag and the description tags. Our brains have already been programmed this way right when you start using the internet. This is why developers never have to put the title as “Product Title” for you to know the name of the product.

Hierarchy of Importance

It is very common when marketers or content analyst use differently sized font types and sizes to emphasize a certain hierarchy. Ever seen a title that is bolded with all upper case letters? It denotes a sense of urgency and tags a level of importance to that text. Making such subtle changes can change the mood altogether and the importance of select text. A good example will be posters on ads that want to market a certain promotion such as a club like Molecue. They place an emphasis on the pricing of the beer in order to place certain importance to the text. Your eye is likely to be attracted to the price and not the product because of the placement and size.

 

Design Effect

If you are a company dealing with the younger generation, you might want to emphasize more on the design aspect of your website. The younger generation demands exquisiteness, a combination of elements to invoke certain emotions and the use of font to create a nice effect. There is nothing sweeter than a good balance of the perfect font and a well-placed title to invoke certain emotions. By using a mixture of fonts and colors, you can achieve that balance and soothing effect that can invoke individuals to make a purchase. Some great examples are Apple advertisements and their website. Their website is simple yet achieves the desired effect for all their products.

 

Our Recommendation

While it is important to understand the placement of text, type, colour and size of the font, you should always take into consideration the limitation of the performance of the font. Some fonts that are not widely available in the web might not have the performance you desire and could slow down your website loading speed. For a good selection of fonts, you can try Google Fonts. For websites, you should only ever use a maximum of 3 different fonts for the sections for your website. A font for the main content, another font for the Menu content and lastly another font for items such as your advertising materials. The last thing you want is for every page to have a different font which will ruin the uniformity of the website.

 

Integrating your Website with SEO

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If you are reading this article you are probably wondering what is Search Engine Optimisation(SEO). SEO is about optimising your website to make your website show up in the search engine search results. For example, typing “florist Singapore” and your website showing up on the first page. About 50% of businesses in Singapore owns a website to help market their services and products. However, did you know that having a website is as good as placing a storefront in a non-populated estate? People who do not know about your business just have no way to find your website on the internet unless they know your business by name. In this post, we will talk about how to differentiate a website that has done SEO and which hasn’t. And also why people choose not to have their website with SEO.

Differentiating between the websites with SEO and without

While it can be easy to determine if a website that looks modern and updated, it is impossible for the untrained eye to find out if the website has done conscientious work on their search engine optimisation. Check out some of these tips below if you are unsure or our post on what onsite SEO is.

Proper Title tags and Description

One of the easiest methods to find out if a website has proper onsite SEO is through their title tags and description. An optimised website tends to have the right amount of words and characters for the title tag and description tags, Good use of keywords for each page, unique title tags and description tags for every page while poorly optimised will have duplicated title tags and descriptions and usually descriptions that do not make any sense.

Onpage Linking

Conduct any search terms and you’ll probably find Wikipedia in the top few search results. One thing you will definitely notice is the amount of linked anchor keywords they have on just one page. Just one page can be linked to over 100 different pages and that is what Google usually likes in a website; Good interlinks to relevant information based on keywords

Loading Speed of a Website

Have you ever waited so long for a website or an image on a website for so long that you switched to another website? I know I have and it is extremely frustrating especially in this day and age to have a website load more than 5 seconds. Google feels that way too. It tends to penalise websites that take more than 4 seconds to load and they even estimate a loss of 10% of visitors for every second above 4. Pictures are one of the biggest cause for concern for websites and it needs to be optimised by compressing and reducing the resolution to make it web friendly. Don’t worry also if you want DSLR quality for your pictures. Compressing a picture takes very little detail from the picture and it is hardly noticeable to the untrained eye. Loading speed can also be optimised by using sites such as pingdom tools or thinkwithgoogle speed test

Website Content

Content is king and there is no doubt about this fact. Google takes content very seriously and often awards website with relevant and good content while penalise websites with poor content, duplicated content or short articles. Make sure that every page in your website is purposeful and contains the necessary information you need to keep the visitor reading. The key is contextual knowledge Most websites make the mistake of placing too little information on the website which makes it difficult for visitors to understand about your business. Make your website your sales associate and put the most information possible on it.

Why don’t Business Owners use SEO

Believe in the system

Business owners that haven’t been in tune with online marketing will always want to stick to something they are used to. Online marketing has existed for about 2 decades since the birth of the internet. Traditional marketing such as print media or Tv advertisements have always been the norm for such businesses and they have mostly relied on brick and mortar styled models to market their service.

This is why we created this blog to help educate website owners or businesses owners about the benefits of online marketing techniques such as Search Engine Optimisation, Seach Engine Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. There have been many success stories from owners just using Search Engine Optimisation and we hope that more people will integrate SEO into their business so that they can properly compete against website with SEO.

The Perception of High Cost

Ask any business that has dwelt with traditional marketing methods and they will tell you of the high cost it involves with little method of tracking. Print media or TV advertisements can promise the outreach number in the millions but are unable to tell you of the leads generated from the advertisement. From your website, there are many methods that you can track the leads coming from your website and the conversion rate per visitor. Whats more, SEO tends to target visitors from specific keyword request, which will result in relevant visitors every single time. SEO packages tend to cost upwards of $1000 per month and will depend on the competitiveness of the keyword. When you compared the different forms of marketing, you’ll see that SEO is actually affordable and probably will bring you better leads than other forms of advertisement.

Unknown to them

It is on us to inform businesses what is SEO and how it can benefit them. Therefore, it is essential to always educate them before selling any sort of package. Always make sure your digital agency understands your business and how the process of turning visitors into client works. We have created an article about how SEO agencies should conduct their approach with potential customers.

 

 

communication is key

Biggest lies from Web Marketing Agencies

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About 60% of businesses in Singapore have a static website to showcase their products and services. However, only about 10% of such businesses employs Search Engine Optimisation(SEO) or Search Engine Marketing(SEM) to boost their website’s efforts.

reputable SEO agency

The beautiful thing about developing your business through online means is it cost very little when you compare it to hiring a sales executive or advertising on traditional outlets such as TV or print media. Development of your online capabilities as a business can come in a form of developing a website, conducting search engine optimisation for a existing website or generating leads through search engine marketing. However, because of this demand, there are many unscrupulous businesses promising search engine success for a small fee and no work from you. We hope to uncover these lies and hopefully educate the public how to steer clear from such businesses.

Low Costs

While it may be tempting when you receive emails about individuals or companies promising you page 1 glory on Google, it is usually one of the triggers you should be aware of. Any reputable company dealing with web services will tell you that the man hours required to produce quality work will require a fairly substantial amount. Whether be it search engine optimisation, website design or search engine marketing. If the company can offer you a really low rate for their services, chances are you won’t be able to customise how you want your work to be done or the work was cloned from client to client. Giving you sub-standard work which eventually could be penalised by Google for duplicate content.

Understanding Your Business

Any company that just wants a quick buck will never want to meet up with you to understand your business. Understanding how your business work and the processes to secure a client is quintessential evidence that the web marketing agency wants to have a long lasting relationship with you. The agency should understand how your business works, processes that are in place and how you close a lead. This way, the web agency will be able to recommend you the best method for your business. Remember that all businesses are different and requires different methods in order to succeed. There is no 1-method that fits all.

Credibility

Credibility is one of the most important things to have as a web marketing agency. A company which can produce results will usually succeed in a long run due to the positive experience and results they bring to clients. Before you embark on any project, it is important to understand from the agency what are their past clients, what was done for them and the results as a result of the partnership. I will break down the deliverables you should be asking.

Search Engine optimisation

getting past results from clients who have done SEO is the most tangible result you can gather. You can always ask for their keywords that are ranking, the search quantity by Google and also the analytics. While the agency will have the right to mask their past client’s information due to confidentiality, you should still be able to see their work and what they did in order to achieve the search engine ranking.

Search Engine marketing

An agency that is in full knowledge of what they are doing will be able to bring you leads for a low cost. Look for metrics such as return in investment as well as overall leads generated based on the spending. Great agencies will also explain to you what is happening so that you aren’t left in the dark. Not knowing what you paid for.

Communication

communication is key

Communication is key in order for any partnership to be successful. There should be constant communication between the web agency and the client. You should always ensure that you know what the agency is doing for your website at all times and be able to substantiate it with analytics as well as reports on what was done. The agency should be proactive and have a representative that can answer to your emails or messages within 48hours.

Results that walk the talk

If you are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on your online campaign, you should be results driven. Always check to see if the agency is working towards the deliverables given to you during the quotation. Always request for certain objectives to be delivered in order for the full payment. Most agencies will require a 50% deposit for confirmation of the services needed and the other 50% once the objectives has been met. Make sure you discuss what you want to achieve before making any formal agreement.

Conclusion

Web solutions can be expensive and it is essential for you to set specific objectives that you want to achieve with your website. Don’t jump to the best deal you see straight away be also weigh all the above points to the agency. This will give you a clearer picture whether they can be trusted. After all, these projects usually take 6-12 months to complete so getting stuck with an web agency which you like will probably be beneficial to you.