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Web Tools and Services that will Help Any Online Entrepreneur

Finding the most efficient web tools and services for online entrepreneurs require us to invest serious hours of researching. This means less time to invest in our projects and for our customers.

Any web tool or service you are looking for, there are hundreds or even thousands of similar solutions. How do you know which one to choose? In 2019 all companies have great looking websites and know how to sell you their web tools and services. It’s very hard to differentiate these solutions, all seem to do the same but there are lots of important differences between them. Testing them can cost you money if free trials are not available and for sure you have to spend good hours playing with each solution.

[Read more…] about Web Tools and Services that will Help Any Online Entrepreneur

How Betterment Design Took Over Robo-Advising

If you’re unfamiliar, Betterment is an automated investment service that takes users’ funds and puts them into uber-diversified ETFs and mutual funds, representing equities all over the globe. The user decides what percentage of the portfolio will be allocated to stocks and to bonds, and also identifies a risk-tolerance level – the highest risk tolerance chosen for the chance at largest growth in the shortest amount of time. Everything else is up to Betterment’s algorithms – buying, selling, tax-loss harvesting, allocation rebalancing, etc. It has been called the “set it and forget it” model of investing. [Read more…] about How Betterment Design Took Over Robo-Advising

5 Things Your Business Blog Needs to Thrive

It’s easy to create a blog, publish a few posts, and think you’ve got a great business blog. But guess what? A successful business blog requires a lot more work than that. The social web does not operate like the Field of Dreams, and if you build it, they will not necessarily come.

Building a successful business blog takes commitment, persistence and patience. Most importantly, there are a few fundamentals that you need to make sure you address if you want your business blog to thrive in the long term.

Five of the most important fundamentals are described below to help you take your business blog to the next level of success: [Read more…] about 5 Things Your Business Blog Needs to Thrive

WordPress Plugins for Business Blogs – Related Posts

I’m starting a new series here on BusinessLogs where I’ll write about WordPress plugins that are useful to business blogs.  The first WordPress plugin in the WordPress Plugins for Business Blogs series is the Related Posts plugin.

The Related Posts plugin can help boost the amount of time a visitor spends on your business blog and increase page views on your business blog.  It works very simply by adding a list of posts that are deemed to be related to all of the blog posts that you publish on your blog.  The list of related posts is created automatically and is based primarily on keywords, so the list isn’t always perfect.  However, it definitely works to increase page views. [Read more…] about WordPress Plugins for Business Blogs – Related Posts

5 Web Analytics Tools to Track Your Business Blog Performance

It’s essential that you take the time to track the performance of your business blog to ensure your audience is growing and your content is actually being seen.  Fortunately, there are a number of free and paid Web analytics tools that can help you track traffic, referrers, top performing content, keywords, underperforming content, user paths, and more.

Stay tuned to BusinessLogs for a post later this week that will help you learn what to track!  In the meantime, take a look at the five Web analytics tools listed below to begin researching in order to find the best tool to help you meet your business blogging goals and budget.

1. Google Analytics

I use Google Analytics for my blogs for a couple of reasons.  First, the statistics provided are fairly comprehensive and second, it’s free.  That’s a combination that’s hard to beat. [Read more…] about 5 Web Analytics Tools to Track Your Business Blog Performance

5 Tips to Pick a Business Blog Domain Name

"domain name url"When you choose a domain name for your business blog, there are two primary factors you need to consider: search engine optimization and online brand identity.  In other words, you should try to choose a domain name that can help you attract organic search traffic and you should choose a domain name that represents your business’ brand promise.

Following are five easy tips to help you pick the best domain name for your business blog:

1. Understand extensions.

There are many Web address extensions available these days with .com, .net and .biz being the most popular options for business sites.  While .com is still the most popular, it’s perfectly acceptable to use a .net or .biz domain name, and doing so won’t detrimentally affect your site’s traffic.

2. Remember search engine optimization.

Do some keyword research using a keyword analysis tool like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery or the free Google AdWords Keyword Tool.  Including keywords in your domain name that your target audience is likely to use in searches when they’re looking for sites and information like you provide on your business blog can provide a significant boost in search engine traffic. [Read more…] about 5 Tips to Pick a Business Blog Domain Name

Four Tools for Image Posting on Your Blog

A picture, they say, speaks a thousand words- and although I do want to stress the importance of written content on your blog (especially for search engine optimization purposes), adding images to your blog posts is always a good idea. Here are some tools to help you do that, and do it well:

Freebie Images by Crestock

From one of the best stock photography sites out there comes this WordPress plug-in aptly named “Freebie Images”. Basically, what it does is allow you to use any of the free stock photos in their library. Once you’ve installed the plug-in, simply search their library from within WordPress, and if you see something you like, simply drag and drop it into your blog post. You can also search according to image orientation (portrait or landscape)and filetype. Because Crestock has such professional, high-quality images, this one’s my favorite.

Photodropper Plug-In

Photo Dropper works almost the same way, but it searches Creative Commons-licensed photos in Flickr. You also have the option to only search for photos that can be used commercially, which is important when you’re running a commercial or business blog. [Read more…] about Four Tools for Image Posting on Your Blog

Blog Tool in Focus: bit.ly

Because long URLs can be unsightly and can “break” in emails, producing errors and “not found” messages, there will always be a need for URL shorteners. For a long time, the only URL shortener I ever used was TinyURL, which was simple to use and did the job. Then, of course, I discovered bit.ly– and haven’t looked back.

A big reason bit.ly has risen in popularity is, of course, because it’s Twitter‘s default shortener- but it’s also an awesome service. For example, bit.ly will not only shorten a link for me, it will keep a history of all the links I’ve shortened (provided I’m logged in to my bit.ly account), and give me statistics on those links as well- how many people clicked through, when they clicked, and from where. And to see all that, I need only add a plus sign (+) to my bit.ly shortened URL, for example, this link points to a previous post on BusinessLogs: [Read more…] about Blog Tool in Focus: bit.ly