Sezzle provides interest-free installment plans for selected online stores. Merchants can sign up and offer Sezzle as an alternative method of payment for their customers purchases. Since 2019, Sezzle has grown to over 400,000 active users and over 5,000 participating merchants.
Sezzle's "Buy Now, Pay Later" approach has proven to be successful for all type of eCommerce businesses. Customers are able to purchase entire orders which are broken down into 4 interest free installments.
Beginning in 2021, several changes will be made in regards to how search engines like Google, rank your website. The importance of SEO is evident in the fact that 70% to 80% of users focus exclusively on organic results and ignore paid listings. Greg Corrado, the senior scientist who helped develop RankBrain, Google's Artificial Intellignece (AI) algorithm, has highlighted their AI's ability to learn and improve upon search engine results based on the insights from information retrieval.
Google hasn't come out in specific detail about how their algorithm works, however experts believe the user experience signals are the main factor. These would include how long you are able to keep your visitors engaged with well-organized and valuable content, as well as, the readability, backlink and sources present within your content.
Speed and Image Optimization
Use high-quality images that contain relevant information within the file name and alt tags. If your image is tied to a specific location, make sure to include your geotags. High-quality images are important, but make sure you compress the images to increase load time.
If your website takes longer than just a few seconds to load on any device, then you are missing out on traffic and the potential to keep your visitors engaged. According to Google, "more than half of visits are abandoned if a mobile page takes over 3 seconds to load." The importance of page speed has increased since 2018, when Google had announced that speed has become a ranking factor for Google search, ads and mobile searches. Using online tools such as Google Page speed or GTMetrix to analyze your website is important in discovering the components that may be hindering your overall score.
Voice Search Query
Voice search has became extremely popular thanks to the innovations like Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon's Alexa. The technology has gotten a lot better over the years and is predicted to become another asset in 55% of people's homes by 2022.
It is important that you are using longer keyword strings for your on-site SEO and voice search optimization. Try using words and phrases that would fit naturally within a conversation versus the much-outdated keyword jamming of the late 90s to the early 2000s.
Mobile First Indexing
In 2019, Google rolled out their mobile-first indexing which takes a primary look at the mobile version of a website, considering the popularity of web browsing on mobile devices. A majority of internet users currently use their mobile devices to access the internet and by 2025 it is predicted that nearly 73% of all internet traffic will come from mobile phones.
Google's EAT principle
Google has continued to stress the importance of content quality and the ranking success that follows. The EAT principle stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
This is how we break it down:
Expertise
Create content your audience will love
Do your keyword research and answer questions
Discover what is the intent behind the search query
Keep it comprehensive yet simple
Consider the follow-up query
Authority
Link to high-ranking authority websites
Being mentioned by authoratative websites
Trust
Having an easy way to be contacted
Creating a rich author box for your articles
Associating the website with a physical location
Having a Terms and Service placed at the footer
HTTPS / SSL certificate
Privacy Policy on Footer
Positive reviews
If you're accepting transactions, having a clear refund and return policy
Products should contain comprehensive specifications and include safety advice, if relevant
Long-Form Content
Based on Semrush's State of Content Marketing Report, long reads of 3,000-plus words gets three and four times more shares when compared to articles with 901 to 1,200 words. Break up your content in H2 and H3 subheadings to make it easier for visitors and algorithms to scan your content and find important information.
Video Content
With more than 1 billion registered users on YouTube, the future of content creation is online video. According to Cisco, video content is set to surpass all other forms of content in terms of consumption. In the age of information, it is the fastest way to learn. Video optimization consists of optimizing your channel name, description, video title and video description. Keywords are crucial, however avoid keyword-jamming. Explain what your channel and video is about. Remember to structure your content as if you're speaking to a friend.
Stay on top of the Latest SEO Trends and Techniques
SEO is becoming more complex as the importance of accurate information becomes even more necessary. Simply optimizing keywords and meta titles are no longer all it takes to reach ranking success. An all encompassing approach is the ideal strategy. From content optimization to voice and video SEO. Stay on top of your place in the rankings. Stay in control of your success. The right strategy can help you get the results you need.
Ever wonder why doesn't my Google or Facebook Ads work?
Google and Facebook are both such powerful tech companies with a combined total of over 7 billion daily users. These platforms are an integral part of our professional and personal lives.
As a result, agencies and business are quick to choose Facebook and Google for their marketing strategies. Many of which are spending anywhere from $50 to $10,000 or more each month.
So, if marketing with these companies are so popular, why don’t Facebook and Google Ads always work?
1. Lots of Competition
Because Google is extraordinarily popular, most marketing agencies and business advertise with Google Adwords. Sometimes, that is all they choose for their advertising dumping 100% of their marketing budget into Google’s PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising.
This highly competitive form of marketing has you competing with nearly every other business within your industry. This is true whether it be local or online.
Say another business in your area is advertising locally using Google Adwords. If they have a larger budget, then their ads are more likely to appear on the top of Google. Some clicks can be as high as $300 or more depending on the industry and how competitive it is.
Keep in mind, it isn’t clicks that result in sales. You want to generate tons of clicks and phone calls in order to increase your chances on earning a sale.
It isn’t worth spending hundreds of dollars a month on a few clicks. If you received a sale from your campaign you need to factor in your ROI (return on investment).
2. Facebook Ads & Clickbait
Facebook has a serious issue with their sponsored posts. Lots of scammers and spammers promote posts and Facebook hasn’t really done anything about it.
After the 2016 election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, found himself testifying before Congress. This was not only due to privacy concerns, but also the influence Facebook Ads had during the US presidential election.
Facebook advertisements notoriously lead to phishing scams, fake products sales, fake services and huge privacy issues.
During the height of the Cornavirus outbreak, many people fell victim to scams on Facebook and Instagram. (Facebook’s photo and video sharing platform)
N95 face masks, face shields, hand sanitizer and other protective gear was sold out in stores for months. Large amounts of advertising was spent on Facebook for these products.
Consumers had spent hundreds of dollars each on these fake product advertisements. Either they had received something completely different from what they expected or no products had arrived at all.
After gaining so much attention, Facebook and Google had claimed to issue a temporary ban on these types of advertisements. Unfortunately, the advertisements for these scams were still appearing everywhere throughout the course of the pandemic.
It’s because of these types of ads that many people are frustrated find sponsored posts on Facebook untrustworthy. As a result, it takes a lot more to create a successful campaign strategy on Facebook and Instagram.
3. PPC Advertising Isn’t Right For Your Business
Businesses, artists, brands and influencers all benefit from some type of marketing. However, this doesn’t mean that your type of business is going to benefit from PPC advertising. Certain industries are highly competitive. You need to think more creatively on how you are going to market your business. Unless of course, you have a corporate-sized budget ready dominate search results.
Google, Facebook and Instagram target demographics, interests and use search history to display advertisements to the right audience. If your campaign isn’t getting results, these platforms will expand your audience. Usually to an audience that is less likely to relate to your promotion, but more likely to engage. This is often times certain types of accounts which are more likely outside of your ideal target audience.
If you’re having issues with Google & Facebook advertising then it is likely that these may be the reason why. Of course, there are several issues that can also be a factor.
Be sure to analyze your campaign results to help determine where the issue may be. Check to see how many clicks your campaign received and what it costs for each click. Did you receive any sales? What is your conversion rate?
Sometimes a marketing campaign that didn’t turn out to be successful, may help answer some questions as to why.
Do not underestimate the power of organic marketing and SEO. Marketing is all about trust and brand recognition. It is a lot easier to sell something, by not selling anything at all.
How to Speed up WordPress Site
How to Make Your Website Load Faster
We are currently living in the information age. Our news, events, entertainment and even our shopping experiences all happen quicker than ever before. Everything you can find online must be instant.
Google knows this and their analytics reflect this as well. Websites with load times just over 3 seconds increase their bounce rate by 10%.
The slower your website loads, the more money you lose. A slow website, means a higher bounce rate, the amount of people leaving your website right away. This lowers your ranking and decreases your traffic. Less traffic means less CTR (click through rate). Less CTR equals lower conversion rate.
Things need to be fast. You want your website, your information, your products to be right there ready for your visitors. Faster than any of your competitors.
What Causes a Website to Load Slowly?
There are a lot of different ways you can fix a slow loading website. It depends on how your site is built. If you can accomplish tackling all of these methods then your website should be loading within 1 second.
A slow website starts with the server. If you’re not on a dedicated server that is optimized properly, then your website is not going to stand a chance loading in just under a second.
Avoid EIG hosting. This company owns BlueHost, HostGator and over 60 different companies. They are none to have unreliable services, sacrificing performance for costs, and have terrible reviews.
GoDaddy is also a major hosting company with several issues when it comes to speed optimization and web performance.
SiteGround is recommended by WordPress and is a very reliable hosting company. They consistently rank top 3 among Facebook polls due to their load time, pricing and support.
DigitalOcean is also one of the absolute best hosting companies when it comes to performance. They boast an impressive 99.99% up-time, and I have personally experienced a 100% up-time across all of my hosted sites. DigitalOcean requires more technical skill and they do not offer instant customer support. So, if you are looking to host your own website, but lack the advance technical knowledge when it comes to deploying and managing a server, then use CloudWays.
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that uses DigitalOcean, AWS & Google Cloud, among others, as their managed hosting plans. Pricing is highly competitive plus they offer absolutely amazing support. You can feel comfortable knowing that if anything goes wrong, their support team will fix it.
2. Lightweight or Custom Built Themes
One of the major issues when encountering a slow website is the theme itself. There are hundreds of thousands of pre-built themes on the market. Most of these are built to cater to several different industries. Because of this, these templates are built with extra coding and features that you may never use. All of the extra coding integrated in the theme files can be compressed.
When using a pre-built theme, you would want to stick with one of the more popular ones known for speed optimization. Flatsome & Astra are the best templates for either an eCommerce site or a regular website.
Ideally, you would want to code the theme yourself. If you are not an expert at coding, you can use a web builder. A web builder is a plugin that overrides your website’s template files and allows you to customize the templates yourself using a drag and drop interface.
The #1 site builder, which I would highly recommend, is Oxygen. They offer great support and by using their builder you eliminate on a tremendous amount of unneeded bloat on your website. I have personally used Oxygen to optimize my websites and have noticed a huge difference in load time. From 9 seconds to just 1 second. Just from using Oxygen.
Oxygen requires a bit more coding knowledge, specifically CSS and HTML, with a little bit of PHP. It is easy to use once you get the hang of it, but there is a slight learning curve. If you are looking for a web builder that requires less of a learning curve and utilizes the drag and drop function of a web builder then Elementor is the site builder for you.
Avoid plugins such as WPBakery and BeaverBuilder. These site builders contain extra bloat and you will not be able to load your website as fast as you should be.
3. Less Bells and Whistles
When building your website, it is easy to get caught up in all of the different plugins and features you can add to make your website stand out. You must be careful when adding too many of these “bells & whistles” as they can drastically slow down your website.
There are several plugins that are notoriously bloated. Contact Form 7 for example is the #1 contact form plugin for WordPress, and it is also one of the worst plugins you can download in terms of site optimization. Do your research to determine which plugins are slowing your website down and replace those with much better, more lightweight ones.
4. Optimize Images
One of the easiest ways you can reduce your page load time is by optimizing your images, especially if you are running an eCommerce site. Depending on the purpose of the image, you would want to determine what is too large and too small for the image. It shouldn’t go over a certain size and you must compress your images. You can use TinyPNG.com to compress your images after they have been resized. This reduces the file size of your image without degrading the quality.
What I like to do with product images is stick with a certain dimension. For example, 1000 x 1000 or 900 x 900. Any larger and you are just slowing down your website. Any smaller and you will not get the right quality image for your product. You can go slightly higher or lower, but I wouldn’t recommend it by much.
SmushPRO or EWWW Image Optimizer are one of the best plugin that will compress your images, after they have been uploaded. You should, however, optimize your images prior to uploading.
3. Hire a Professional
When optimizing a website it is important to analyze the components that are slowing down your website. This may include additional coding, hidden images, API, fonts, and much more.
To further optimize your website, you should reach out to someone with the knowledge and experience to handle these optimization tasks.
It is possible to break your website when making these changes. Minifying coding such as Javascript and CSS must be done carefully and if you are not familiar with these steps, make sure you at least have a backup of your website. Just in case.
You want your website to load between 1-3 seconds, or less. It is possible, even for an eCommerce website with thousands of products to load in just 2.5 seconds, or a directory site with over 300,000 listings to load in 3-5 seconds.
Just follow these steps to speed up web page loading time and you will notice your website begin to make major improvements.
How Much Does DigitalOcean cost?
What is DigitalOcean Hosting?
DigitalOcean is an American virtual server provider based in New York City. As of 2018, they became the third-largest hosting company in the world. DigitalOcean is a more complex hosting provider and is designed for developers. This allows you to have more control over the features and resources DigitalOcean has to offer. However, Cloudways provides a managed cloud hosting platform using DigitalOcean servers as on of their deployments. Cloudways is designed for a better user experience while utilizing the performance and reliability of DigitalOcean vs. AWS servers.
DigitalOcean WordPress
DigitalOcean offers one-click deployments for WordPress websites. They also offer competitive pricing at just $5/month for 1GB CPU 25GB SSD droplets. There is no 24/7 live chat support, which is where Cloudways happens to be more convenient. However, they do have a very extensive support forum with developers providing solutions to virtually any issue you will come across. Also, they offer ticket systems and a very extensive knowledge base of articles which I have personally found useful in deploying Ubuntu based linux servers.
With competitive pricing starting at $5/month and high-performance, DigitalOcean is the only hosting we use for all of our websites. If you are looking for a less-complex hosting provider or can benefit from 24/7 live chat support, then I would highly recommend Cloudways. This way you get the same performance and reliability in a clean, easy-to-use, managed hosting platform.
DigitalOcean virtual servers provide high-performance SSD Hard Drives and flexible API. Users gain access to high level security with KVM Virtualization, an infrastructure for the Linux kernel that turns it into a hypervisor. Deploying a server takes literally seconds. With one-click droplets you can have a WordPress website up and running in no time. If you are a developer looking for a high-speed, high-performing cloud based server, then DigitalOcean is what I would recommend.
How Much Does Square Charge?
Square Payment Processing
Square, Inc. is a merchant service and mobile payment company founded in 2009 by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Square uses the Square Reader, a credit card reader that plugs into your phone jack, to instantly accept payments anywhere. With Square, you can accept credit and debit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. The Square card reader uses strong encryption techniques making offline payments possible and more secure.
The Cash app is available to download for free from the App Store. When you use our link to download the Cash App we both receive $5! cash.me/app/JDLNFCJ
From there you will see a link that will bring you to the App Store or Android App store depending on which device you are using.
Open the App Store.
Tap the Search tab.
Type "Cash" in the bar.
Tap GET next to the Cash app.
2. Open the Cash App
After the Cash App is downloaded, click open or tap the app icon on your home screen.
3. Enter in Your Phone Number
To create a new account, enter in your phone number and information when prompted. You will receive a 6-digit confirmation code sent to the phone number you provide. Enter in the confirmation code on the Cash app. Tap Next when you are finished.
Tap the notification icon in the upper right corner.
Tap a Payment.
Tap Received.
Tap Refund.
Tap OK to confirm.
Buy Bitcoin Using the Cash App
Open the Cash app.
Tap the [Cash & BTC] button at the top of the main page.
Tap BTC in the upper right corner.
Tap Got It to confirm you understand the risks.
Tap Buy below the graph on the BTC page.
Select a dollar amount.
Tap Buy.
Tap Confirm.
Sell Bitcoin Using the Cash App
Open the Cash app.
Tap the [Cash & BTC] button at the top of the main page.
Tap BTC in the upper right corner.
Tap Sell below the graph on the BTC page.
Select a dollar amount.
Tap Sell.
Tap Confirm.
That's it! The Cash app makes sending and receiving fast and easy. Please note, that buying and selling Bitcoin may be restricted in certain states within the US including New York.
