For users who are used to PC, this may be daunting in the beginning when using Mac. PC users are used to using the shortcuts ctrl+c to copy, ctrl+x to cut, ctrl+v to paste, ctrl+a to select all.
Copy-pasting in Mac may seem be similar using command+c to copy and command+v to paste. But what about the cut-and-paste feature in PC that is ctrl+x to cut and ctrl+v to paste.
When using mac, this is how you do it, use command+c to copy and use command+option+v to tell Mac that you’d like to cut what you have just copied when pasting it to the new location.
Have you tried to test your website or blog only to find out that it did not pass the Google’s PageSpeed Insights?
Here is a suggestion to help you get a better result in Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This is not meant to be a step-by-step guide; yet I am hoping that this can serve your purpose and save you time.
I use the following plugins :
Speed Booster Pack
WP Smush
I am also lucky to use SiteGround as my web host/server, which has a caching plugin ready for my WordPress sites.
When necessary, I use the following online tools to minify my CSS and JavaScript files:
If a CSS or JavaScript file still needs to be minified even after using the Speed Booster Pack, I give time for the plugin to work. If same files are still recurring during the next tests, I will then look for that CSS or JavaScript file via CPanel or FTP.
After locating the file, I will copy that file and rename the copy. Ex. style.css is copied and renamed to style-raw.css.
After making and renaming the copy, I will then open the file and copy the entire content. Ex. Copy-paste content in style.css into the clipboard.
If it is a CSS file, I will copy-paste the file to the tool box in CSSMinifier.com; and for JavaScript I do the same in Javascript-Minifier.com. Use the left box.
After copy-pasting, you simply just have to click Minify and retrieve the results located at the right box.
Go back to the said file via CPanel or FTP and then paste the retrieved CSS or JavaScript back to where you got it in the first place. Ex. if you copy-pasted from the style.css in step 4, then paste the minified version of that file on same file — that is style.css in our example.
Once done, save the changes.
Go back to Google PageSpeed Insights and do the test again.
Let me know what you think of the steps. Do you find this helpful? If yes, please consider sharing this to others via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, blog, etc.
HTML elements are placed within a box, and browsers understood that these elements are in a container or a box.
When the background color of an element is changed, the background color of the container or box is also changed.
When text is aligned, the text is aligned relative to it’s box or container.
This is a very good foundation when trying to create a custom website.
This is an easy way to reveal or see the box model of a website you are working by placing the code below on your stylesheet (CSS).
* {
border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);
}
Though there are ways to view the box model; the above code is a good way for beginners to understand.
This is a post about your Adwords Ad not showing because of Low Ad Rank despite having high quality score and competitive bid. What seems to be the problem?
We do know that your bid and the quality score are both important for your ads to show in Google. Yet we also know that to get a good Ad Rank, extensions and ad formats are as much as important.
Google states that Ad Rank is calculated by using your bid amount, Quality Score, and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats. The components of your quality score are the following:
expected clickthrough rate,
ad relevance, and
landing page experience.
A Personal Note on Paid Search Vs. SEO
So the next time you encounter this problem, check if your extensions and ad formats are working on your advantage.
Before I end this post, here is a personal note, I strongly recommend that you use Adwords to evaluate the strength of your keywords and to shortlist your list of keywords to rank.
After doing your on-page SEO for a particular page and before spending a lot of resources on link building, consider creating an Adwords search campaign for a particular keyword to test if the conversion rate is worth the SEO campaign you have in mind.
I truly believe that paid search in Adwords is very essential in evaluating your SEO and/or Internet marketing efforts. Why spend your valuable resources like time and money on ranking for a keyword that won’t convert. For the money lost can be gained; but time lost is lost forever.
So before you jump into the link building campaign for a particular keyword, test it with a paid search campaign be it in Adwords or BingAds.
Thank you for reading and please send me your feedback. Your own experience is as valuable as mine — please feel free to comment below.
I have been a Globe user for sometime; and I would say that Globe Wifi Pocket is too expensive to maintain for a person or family who uses the Internet most of the time.
My plan is Plan1599 at 15MBPS max speed with a 150GB+HQ DSL at home. Note this is for home (personal/family use alone). You know kids, they love watching and playing games as much as they want. They love the Internet especially Netflix and YouTube more than the local television shows.
Let us say I have an LTE wifi pocket which can cater to 10 devices with a 42MBPS max speed. 1GB would cost you P50 via GoSurf50. Using GoSurf, 150GB of usage would actually cost you P7,500. Even if you use, GoSurf999 for a 8GB usage, it would still be very costly.
Let us say that you’d use GoWatch29 which will cost you P29 per 2GB. It will still cost you around P2,175. And with this, you are just limited with the GoWatch like Netflix, YouTube, HOOQ, etc. So you might need to pay for the other browsing activities you’d like.
If you love video streaming, DSL is the way to go. Your 15MBPS can already handle YouTube, Netflix, and other video streaming channels without any problem. Why go for a 42MBPS when you can use 15MPBS and pay less.
If you think you need a wifi pocket because you love to use your internet while you are out of the house, try to do some computations.
How much time do you spend on the Internet while outside the house? Cause if it is not that much, I would rather pay for a DSL and just use my mobile data when I needed via GoSurf50 for that day. I’m sure it won’t reach P7,500.
At the end of the day, know your usage and try to compute where you can really save and enjoy your Globe Internet connection.
For mothers who are trying to earn from a sideline selling online (like for example beauty products), I suggest to get at least a Plan999 DSL. Internet marketing can be demanding to your bandwidth.
Congratulations again and thank you for making this far. You are now in tip 4. By this time, you should be well aware that you are now taking a big step to host your domain and have it LIVE into a website. I hope tip 3 has answered some of the basic questions and would help you decide on how to choose a domain name for your business.
These are the past tips that we’ve shared. May they be applicable to your needs:
Every website needs a domain and a web host/server. Just as every bookstore needs a business name and a premises (physical space to sell books), your website needs a domain to serve as your business name and a web host/server to store the services, products, and information of your business.
Here are the basic things I’d personally look into when choosing a web host / server:
Uptime Reliability: Uptime is a measure of the time a server has been available or working. It is the opposite of downtime. A high uptime means more reliability or stability. Uptime reliability represents the time a server can be left unattended without crashing or needing to be rebooted that is for administrative or maintenance purposes.
Load time and Cloud Feature:Page load time indicates how long it takes for a page to fully load in the browser after a user clicks a link or makes a request. This is important as it directly impacts the user’s experience and engagement and ultimately your business’s bottom line. There are many factors affecting a page load time, one factor is your server. Though many times a poor load time is caused by how a website is built or designed, it is wise to make sure your server has a good load time. If your server has or can easily integrate with a cloud feature, this is a big plus. The cloud computing feature is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet and can therefore hasten your page load time.
Customer Support: 2 things I would like to look into when it comes to customer support: the expertise and the politeness. Who wants a knowledgeable, but rude client support; nor will someone want a very polite and courteous support with very poor knowledge on the issues.
Email Feature: Ability to add unlimited email addresses. Ease and convenience in adding emails in Gmail and third-party mail clients.
Backup Feature: Check how often they back up, how many back up folders are stored, and for how long are they keeping them. All these are important when you need to restore a backup especially on a very untimely manner.
HTTPs or SSL: Availability of a free HTTPs or SSL certificate, which will do for most websites.
Auto-script Installer: Easy to install scripts (like Softaculous) for WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and the like.
Pricing on both registration and renewal: Check if there are no hidden costs in registration or sign up. Check also if prices do change upon renewal.
Staging Environment/Feature: This is one feature why I love SiteGround. Your site visitors shouldn’t see the experiments you are making on your website. Worse, if they can see your website break when developing a new feature. The staging environment is a feature every server should have.
Have you experienced a WP site that breaks after updating theme or plugin? This is one good example why a staging environment is important. By a click of a button, you can copy your site into a staging environment and update the plugin/theme from there. Once everything is fine, you can simply PUSH it back LIVE.
A Staging environment is also good for experimenting new WP features before having them LIVE.
If you have an existing website and you plan to make new one, the staging environment can come very handy.
Note the ease of having a staging feature compared to doing them manually on a subdomain or local computer.
Caching Feature: Another reason why I love SiteGround. Its caching feature can increase the number of hits a website can handle; it also helps the loading speed of the website.
Dedicated for WordPress: And since we are to use WordPress for our websites in this series of Internet marketing tutorial, I highly recommend a server and a customer support who knows well about WordPress.
MediaServe (We are very new to this web host company. However, of all that we’ve tried, this is top-notch. It is supported by a biblically minded family company in business since 1999. Therefore, you are dealing with the business owner and support is great.)
SiteGround is one of those dedicated to WordPress.
GreenGeeks is another WordPress optimized hosting. This is a choice for those who opt to go eco-friendly.
Google will find and index pages on your site if you verify your domain on Google Search Console. This means your online store’s product reach will be enlarged, as well as its traffic potential.
You might have tried verifying your Shopify site using Google analytics in your Google Search Console. And you probably encountered this: The Google Analytics tracking code on your site looks malformed.
Don’t be alarmed. Somehow Google analytics verification can’t work with Shopify (at this point). The tracking code is malformed in the page source.
Instead of forcing your way, try the META tag verification.
In the Search Console, select the HTML tag in the verify ownership window. Then, copy the entire HTML tag to your clipboard, make sure everything is copied. Afterwhich, you’ll need to add the meta tag to the Shopify store theme code.
Note that even if you can’t use Google Analytics to verify your site, you still need to paste your tracking code on your Shopify site. It would be best if you still track your site’s metrics (analytics). Check your site’s Google analytics after a day or two to see if the tracking code is functioning properly.
When checking your Google Webmasters Tools, also rebranded as Google Search Console, you might see that your Index Status is 0 (zero).
This can be alarming for webmasters and for SEO specialists. Though we don’t exactly have a control on what and how many Google should index, it is a best practice to submit a sitemap via Google Search Console. If you already did, check if it is updated (sitemap).
Another thing you can do is to go to Google.com and type the following: site:[yourdomain or URL here].
As you can see, there are about 201 results (index URLs/pages). So while waiting for your Index Status in Google Search Console, you can check it from google.com and monitor your index count.
I have a similar issue when I changed my site from http to https that is from https://www.brodneil.com to https://www.brodneil.com.
Waiting (when to get a good index count back ) can be difficulty. That is why patience is said to be a virtue. 🙂
Not everyone has the patience to wait.
Yet while trying to be one, check the following:
sitemap (as mentioned earlier)
robot.txt (make sure your entries are correct and not blocking Google)
.htaccess (make sure your entries are correct and not blocking Google)
WordPress setting (make sure you allow search engines to index if you are using WordPress)
You can also use the Fetch as Google feature in your Search Console to quickly index a page. Though Google does a great job on indexing your webpages, using this feature can just speed up things.
Here is a test I just did to show you how quick Google can index your pages if pointed to the right direction. I did this test right after I published this post. Therefore this post was updated or republished after doing the test below.
So at 1:14PM on 2017 July 26, Wednesday, I went to www.google.com.ph and type the following:
You can see that it was not yet indexed. The search did not match any document.
I went to the Google Search Console and use the Fetch as Google feature at the same day 1:18PM. Note it did not take me 4 minutes to get there.
(My baby cried and I had to pause the test.)
After asking Google to fetch that specific URL, I then requested indexing for the said URL by clicking on Request Indexing. You can see the screenshot below.
At 1:25PM on the same day, Google has indeed quickly indexed the post or URL. That is quick isn’t it?
I repeated the test one more time for another URL; and from 201 results, I now got 203 results in Google.
I am not suggesting that you do this to all of your pages. Submitting your sitemap to Google serves the purpose.
Now, did the index status in Google Search Console improve? Obviously not. Yet, at least you know that Google can indeed index your website. You just have to wait.
If you see that your index count in google.com is decreasing overtime, this is something you need to investigate further.
As of date, there is no way to set a Target CPA at the keyword level. Target CPA and Enhanced CPC are bid strategy types that won’t allow you to set a budget per keyword — at least at this point.
However, there might be a workaround for now. If you have 3 keywords in an Ad Group, I suggest you separate each keyword into separate Ad Groups. This would mean 1 keyword per Ad Group instead of 3 keywords in 1 Ad Group. This way you can set the Target CPA per keyword at the Ad Group level.
This might be cumbersome for Ad Groups having a lot of keywords though.
Whenever you change your site from http to https, be it for security or for a ranking signal, it is always good to add a new site in your Google Webmasters Tools. Google is treating these URLS separately:
https://www.yoursite.com
https://www.yoursite.com
https://yoursite.com
https://yoursite.com
Make sure to set what you prefer for your site: non-www or www.
If you have a Facebook page and you are selling services or products, it is best to show the review section of your FB page. In principle, allowing your prospects and clients to see how people rate your business adds to your credibility.
Here are the steps in case you don’t know how to do it:
Go to Settings.
Click General. Look for Reviews and click on Edit.(Note: I have heard that you cannot see the Reviews feature if your Facebook page does not fall under Local Business category.)
Select Allow visitors to review this page and then click on Save Changes.
Click Edit Page and look for the Tabs section. You may arrange the tabs yourself; to start with, I prefer to turn on the Use default tabs.
Lastly, review the changes you made at the front-end of your Facebook page.
You must have heard about Shopify by now. I have been a WP user from the start. It is not that it is quite hard to change our old ways; using WP still gives me more control over Shopify as far as I can tell.
Yet, why is Shopify so attractive for many business owners and online sellers?
Here are some features why I think people, particularly those who do not want the hassle of building a website, are attracted to Shopify:
If you are contented with the templates, you just have to simply add your products;
You can add unlimited products;
You’ll get unlimited bandwidth and online storage without any worry on the server-side of things (Shopify will take care of that for you); and
It has loads of ecommerce features to make things convenient especially to non-techy entrepreneurs/businesspersons like:
Shopify POS,
online sales channels,
fraud analysis,
manual order creation,
discount codes,
staff accounts,
customer support, and
finances report.
You can build any online presence with Shopify: an online store for baby toys, an Asian grocery store, or an e-shop for fashion and accessories.
APE or the APE criteria is an Internet Marketing Criteria for Small Businesses and Startups. This is the criteria we are using for our Free DIY Internet Marketing Lessons. Most importantly, these lessons are geared and prepared for small business owners and managers, who are beginners in Internet marketing.
Why APE?
APE is coined to simply mean the following: Applicable, Practical, and Effective.
Applicable
The lesson is relevant or appropriate for small business owners and managers.
Practical
The lesson is actually doable for small business owners and managers (and not just a theory).
Its process is easy to follow and its application is simple to execute.
Taking into consideration the importance of time for business owners and managers — let us spend time to what matters most in Internet marketing.
Effective
The lessons can only be successful if they can produce the desired or intended result or outcome.
We apply the APE criteria in almost every marketing strategy that we do.
UGC, User-Generated Content, is also known as UCC or User-Created Content. Tintup.com defines well what UGC is. UGC is any type of content created and put out by unpaid contributors or fans. It can be pictures, videos, testimonials, tweets, blogposts, and everything in between. These contributors or fans are promoting a brand themselves rather than the brand itself.
Why is it important?
To cut the chase, user-generated content is important because it is coming from the consumers or users themselves. Therefore, it is more authentic and transparent. As consumers are becoming more accustomed to slimy marketing tricks employed by advertising and marketing companies — UGC can have a high trust rating to peers or other consumers.
Here are other reasons why a user-generated content or UGC is important:
UGC propagates a brand’s authenticity and transparency through fans and consumers. Therefore, it is more likely a voluntary action by fans because of their loyalty and trust on a brand.
In addition, user-generated content captivates the users interest as they feel more empowered and engaged. The more fans and users share a brand, the more likely for them to be loyal. This is perhaps what others may call as brand identification, which obviously would lead to brand loyalty.
Besides, marketing teams can save more time, energy, and resources. Users and fans are augmenting the marketing team by 1) answering basic questions and 2) promoting features they find useful about a product/service/brand.
Companies do not have to pay for user-generated content. Companies just have to deliver a great product/service/brand. What more can you ask?
Unfortunately, the world cannot run out of slimy sales tricks. That being the case, some marketing companies have also created fake user-generated content for a product or service they are selling or promoting.
User-generate content is supposed to create an authentic brand advocacy. It is also a good signal to search engines as it has a great likelihood of increasing social engagements and performances for a brand.
How to effectively implement a user-generated content?
As mentioned earlier, user-generated content can be pictures, videos, testimonials, tweets, blogposts, and everything in between.
Here are a few applicable, practical, and effective user-generated content to implement:
User-generated Pictures
In April 2014, Starbucks’ White Cup Contest launched. Customers across the country submitted pictures as entries. Nearly 4,000 customers submitted entries with in 3 weeks.
User-generated Videos
Watch this video of Super Mario with more than 10million views. Super Mario in Nintendo allows you to create and play Super Mario the way you want it.
User-generated Testimonials
You shouldn’t have to be a big brand to make use of user-generated content. Ultimate Visa Corporation, a visa and immigration consultant in Philippines, makes use of their own version of a user-generated testimonial. Above all, it does not have to be perfect as well, as long as it is coming from your fans’ or users’ hearts.
User-generated Tweets
This is by far the easiest to create and track. With Twitter, you can easily track mentions of your brand and easily re-share them. Here is a very unlikely user-generated tweet by a Japanese on a local barbecue restaurant specifically found only in Cebu Philippines.
More importantly, though it is in Japanese, it translates to: “Eat in Cebu with cheap, delicious BBQ shop [YakskiBarbecue]” (Translation using Bing’s translator)
Anyhow, there are lots of examples for user-generated contents like those from forums and other social media channels (such as Facebook and Pinterest). Perhaps in the future, I can add more examples for you.
Meanwhile, I think you got the idea. It does not have to be complicated. Just be creative. As usual, test the following:
Is it applicable to your business? If yes, proceed to the next question.
Is it practical to implement? If yes, proceed to the next question.
Is it effective? Ask this question after testing it. If yes, then proceed to do more user-generated campaigns by inviting users and fans to participate for example on a contest.
This post is intended for those who would like to reverse the post order of a specific category in Genesis in a very convenient way. After searching the web on how to hard code it correctly, I finally realize that I already have a plugin installed previously on my Genesis framework. Since I already have the plugin, why not just use it — instead of sweating it all out.
There are 2 approaches in achieving our goal:
hard coding – This approach is perhaps for advanced users which requires some alterations or additions in the source code. If you expect to approach it this way, this is not the post for you.
plugin for Genesis framework – Fortunately, Genesis has a plugin which can do the work for you conveniently. This plugin has a lot of features. For the purpose of this post, we will use it to reverse the post order of a specific category in WordPress, which is under the Genesis framework.
Genesis Club Lite Plugin
Install the Genesis Club Lite Plugin. You may either download it to upload it, or simply go directly to the Plugins section of your website (backend). You can easily search for it there.
Click Categories and click Edit to that specific category you want to work on.
Look for Genesis Club Archive Settings and click Sort Order.
Select Ascending under Order.
Check Override Sort Order.
Click Update for an existing category or Save for a newly made category.
Lastly, check if your category has sorted the way you want it on the front end.
Are you a content marketer? If yes, how do you find vlogging as a content marketer?
According to convinceandconvert.com, video is the new blogging. If you love writing and blogging, don’t get hurt. Perhaps it is time to go with the change instead of fighting the change. I am not saying that writing and blogging would be completely gone; all I am saying is that they may take a new face. One possibility is converting your texts (content) into video animation clips.
No matter how we love to write, content marketers are catching up with the trend. Why? Because consumers love ease and convenience. With video, consumers can simply listen to it without watching it, while doing something else. I am actually listening to an alternative news in YouTube now while writing this post. Got my point?
Multitasking has been the norm; and videos offer an excellent way to do that.
Stats on Vlog
According to vidyard.com, here are some findings why video is the new blogging:
Businesses create 18 new videos per month, on average. It is almost like blogging. 18 a month is the average publishing rate to many blogs when doing 1 blogpost per weekdays.
56% of business videos created in the past year were 2 minutes or shorter.
53% of videos that are 90 seconds or less are watched to completion.
The top 5% of videos get 77% of the views.
What do you think of vlogging? Are you ready for it? If you think you are, there are quite a number of video animation tools that may help you start your vlog. In addition, as a content marketer, at the back of our heads, we know that the only constant is change. Perhaps this is the time to change the way we blog.
Trying to know the people who liked your FB page is quite tricky for some others. This is because this section is not found under insights. Yet it is found under Settings. See the steps below:
Usually when you call Globe’s customer support for a slow or intermittent Internet connection, they usually will ask you to unplug your cable from the router/modem and restart the modem/router. They often won’t ask you to restart your computer.
Sometimes, they do work and sometimes they don’t.
When asked to this, I usually also restart my computer/devices and I get a higher percentage of getting back a good Internet connection rather than just restarting/refreshing the modem/router.
The short answer is YES. Links are still very important for many reasons, not just SEO; but we need to change our view on how links are gathered.
We should see it as link earning instead of link building.
Rand Fishkin explains it very well in one of his old articles, The Death of Link Building and the Rebirth of Link Earning. The article is somehow published on October 19th, 2012; yet I must say it is still a very effective way of gaining links.
Easiest sale in Facebook comes from people you already know or have a relationship with.
This can be implemented using the existing friends you have on Facebook and from the existing list you have on your spreadsheet, mailchimp, website, or mobile app.
As an AI language model, I don’t create links or engage in any web development activities. However, I can provide you with some general tips on preventing spiders from following unnatural links that you may have created:
Use the nofollow attribute
You can use the “nofollow” attribute to tell search engine crawlers not to follow a particular link. This attribute is added to the HTML code for the link, and it looks like this: rel=”nofollow”. This will prevent spiders from following the link, even if it’s unnatural.
Use the robots.txt file
You can use the robots.txt file to block search engine crawlers from accessing certain parts of your website. You can add a line like “Disallow: /unnatural-links/” to block crawlers from following links in that directory.
Remove the unnatural links
If you have created unnatural links, the best course of action is to remove them. This will not only prevent spiders from following the links, but it will also improve the overall quality of your website.
Use Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google that allows you to monitor your website’s performance and track how it is being crawled by Google. You can use this tool to identify any unnatural links and take action to prevent spiders from following them.
Monitor your website regularly
Regularly monitoring your website can help you identify any unnatural links that may have been created. You can use tools like Google Analytics to track the traffic to your website and identify any suspicious activity.
Overall, it’s important to create high-quality, natural links to your website to improve its ranking and prevent spiders from following unnatural links.
How to make Samsung Galaxy Tab display screen auto-rotate or flip?
Tap on Settings.
Scroll down to the bottom to look for Accessibility; tap it.
Check the box on Auto-rotate Screen.
Alternative way
To enable auto-rotate on your Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite, follow these steps:
Swipe down from the top of the screen to open the notification panel.
Look for the “Auto rotate” icon, which looks like a circular arrow. If it’s greyed out, tap on it to enable it.
If you can’t find the “Auto rotate” icon in the notification panel, go to “Settings” > “Display”.
Make sure the “Auto rotate screen” option is turned on.
Once you’ve enabled auto-rotate, your screen will rotate automatically when you turn your tablet sideways. If it’s still not working, try restarting your tablet or checking if there’s any physical damage to the accelerometer sensor that detects the tablet’s orientation.
After 3 years of experimenting with Google authorship – Google has finally decided to end the journey. Google announced that it will no longer be tracking data from content using rel=author markup and will no longer show authorship results in Google Search. This was announced by John Mueller of Google Webmaster Tools in a Google+ post.
Here are 2 of the major reasons why Google authorship has to end:
