Top Forms WordPress Plug-Ins One of our favorite WordPress Plug-ins is Gravity Forms. It not only allows simple form building, but it has great styling capabilities, and the ability to extend into many integrations with CRMs and Email Marketing Platforms. It is great for not only lead generation, but also submission routing based on conditional logic, and allows for multiple if / than scenarios. It also extends into WooCommerce and other plug-ins. One of the most simple things you can do in Gravity Forms that provides the most value is downloading form submissions into a CSV file for safe keeping and tracking. This video shows you how. Or read here: 1. Log into your WordPress Admin 2. Go to "Forms" on the left hand side of the page - hover 3. Select "Import/Export" 4. Select your form from the dropdown 5. Check the "Select All" checkbox 6. Click the blue "Export" button 7. BOOM! You're all set.

Have you ever searched for a website, hopefully not your website, and seen a "THIS SITE MAY BE HACKED" message on the Google Search Results page? If it's your site, it can be devastating, but it's actually pretty easy to fix. This podcast tells you how. Here's what you'll need: 1. FTP Access to your website. 2. A Google Search Console Account. 3. A web developer that can clean up malicious files and scripts. Here's what to do to Fix the SITE MAY BE HACKED message on Google Search Engine Results: 1. Register and verify your site in Google’s Search Console 2. Sign in to Search Console and check the "Security Issues" section to see details of sample URLs that might be hacked. Fix the security issue that allowed your website to be infected. Otherwise, your site is likely to be reinfected. 3. Read our resources for hacked sites for detailed information on how to fix your website. 4. Request a review in the Security Issues section in Search Console when your entire website is clean and secure. After we check that your site is fixed, we'll remove the "This site may be hacked" message. 5. For a comprehensive list of what you can do if your site was compromised, please refer to the Google Hacked! guide. 6. Use Fetch as Google after fixing your site, and verify that the page appears the same to Google as it does to a user. If it doesn't, that is considered cloaking, which is a violation of our guidelines. 7. When you're sure that your site is no longer compromised, select Request Review on the Manual Actions report. 8. After you’ve submitted a reconsideration request, be patient and watch for review status messages in your Search Console account — we’ll let you know when we’ve reviewed your site. If we determine your site no longer contains problematic content, Google will remove the compromised warning from our search results.

ECommerce Marketers and Small Business Owners, this one is for you.  Facebook Ads is a super-robust platform with the ability to do a lot of custom audience targeting to people who fit the exact audience profile likely to be interested in your product, as well as buy your product. And if you have a product or a suite of products that lends itself to repeat purchases, the Facebook Purchase Objective Ad is perfect for you.  This video teaches you how to run a Facebook Ad to the most likely people to buy from you - those who have already bought from you in the past. Here's how to follow along if you'd rather read instructions: Step 1: Log into business.facebook.com Step 2: Select your Ad Account Step 3: Click the green button with the plus mark that says "CREATE." Step 4: Select "Conversions" from the ad objective column. Step 5: Select "Purchase" from the Objective at the top of the ad. This will run your Facebook Ad to people that have already purchased items from you. Keep in mind you can also customize your Facebook Tracking Pixel to run ads to people who have purchased a specific product. Like socks that go with shoes, or jeans that go with a t-shirt, or a skin care product that goes with a supplement. Or, a refill of a supplement that you know they'll need more of after a certain time period. :)

One of the many things we love about WordPress is the extension of free functionality via useful plug-ins, for example, the Smart App Banner. Oh you! I said Smart App, not Smart Ass. :) What is a smart app banner? You know those things you see at the top of some website when you're "surfing the web" on your mobile phone? Come on! Yes do you! These things... It's a website's way of saying, "look dude, you're on your mobile device, so we want to let you know you can have a WAY BETTER EXPERIENCE on your phone if you download our mobile app instead of using the browser version of our website. Of course, you'll only see these Smart App Banners in the Safari (Apple-owned) Browser on iOS (Apple-owned) devices, because you know, Apple. So, while we don't really have much data on how Smart App Banners do, we can only assume that they really help increase app downloads. And there is a super easy way for Wordpress Designers and Wordpress Developers to implement a smart app banner to try and see how well it works. The Smart App Banner Plug-In is one we've used for a client recently that has a mobile app and their main business goal is to generate downloads. If you're NOT using a WordPress Website to promote your mobile application, Branch.io has a great article here about how to implement a Smart App Banner.

Hola mis amigos de negocios! Translation: Hello, my business friends. It's true I've talked and written a lot about the data showing that Facebook Ads have a better CPM and Cost Per Click than LinkedIn for B2B Advertising. However, it's important for your business to have a consistent LinkedIn presence, and even to take a look at advertising on LinkedIn, especially since the B2B targeting is so strong. So with LinkedIn having changed their Campaign Manager recently, now is as good a time as any to dive in and show you some of the basics. Let's get started. 1. How to find LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Open LinkedIn.com and log in. In a separate browser tab, open https://www.linkedin.com/ad-beta/account. This will take you to LinkedIn Campaign Manager. The first screen you see will generally look something like this... 2. Link Your Campaign Manager Account To Your LinkedIn Company Page This is not something that LinkedIn does automatically for you. Here's how to do it: Go to the top right hand corner of your campaign manager and click the gear icon, then "Edit Account Details." Click, Associate Company Page with your Account, then type in the company page's LinkedIn URL. 3. Can you Manage Multiple LinkedIn Company Page Ad Accounts? Absolutely. Here's what that looks like: 4. Here's how to add admin privileges to other users to your LinkedIn Ads Account. First, add them as an admin to your LinkedIn Page Do this by going to your LinkedIn Page, in my case - https://www.linkedin.com/company/data-driven-design-llc/, and clicking the white button with blue font that says "Manage Page" Then, go up to the top right of the next page, click "Admin Tools," then "Page Admins" from the dropdown. Then, type in the new admin's name in the box, click them, and click "Save Changes." 5. Now, you can finally add these admins to your Campaign Manager / Ad Account. Go back to your ad account - https://www.linkedin.com/ad-beta/accounts, and click the gear icon again, then "Manage Access," then, "Edit," then "+ User Permissions," then type in or PASTE in the URL of the person you want to add as an admin. Whew. 6. Now You Can Begin To Run A Campaign by clicking "Create Campaign," "Create Campaign Group," filling out your timeline and budget, then clicking on the "Ads" Tab, and assigning an Ad to a Campaign Group and running either a Text Ad (which is like the equivalent of a Google Adwords Ad except on LinkedIn), Sponsored Content (which is like the equivalent of a boosted Facebook Post / Ad), or Sponsored InMail (which we don't recommend). After following all of these steps, you and your entire team will be able to have the proper visibility into the performance of the ads, the ability to review the data, see what's working and make adjustments.

Smart businesspeople will use their WordPress website as a true sales tool, NOT JUST a lead generation tool. When most people think of "Return On Investment" related to their new website redesign project, they think of "how much net new web traffic is this site going to give me." That's fine, but the reality is that's probably only 10% of the value you could actually be getting out of your website redesign project if you're thinking of it in the right way. Case in point, advanced functionality in terms of a sales tool exists. And not the kind of sales tool that brings in new customers, but the kind that actually helps you close the deals with your current prospective customers - perhaps far more important than the former. :) I'd like to introduce you to two WordPress plug-ins that are essentially extensions to the Form plug-in that we use on all of our website projects, Gravity Forms. Recently a client asked if we could help them create "fillable PDFs" on their website that could be submitted via their website from the user. Enter Gravity PDF.

I got an email the other day from one of our clients asking me what the heck a Google Beacon is and if I knew anything about why they received one on the mail randomly. All I know is, we run Google Adwords Express Campaigns for them, also known as Smart Campaigns for Small Business under the new Google Ads Branding. So I did what any good digital marketer does, research, followed by practice. And here's what I learned: Google Beacons can be placed at your business location(s) to help get you more reliable data regarding "most popular times." They do this by communicating with your customer's mobile phones which have location services enabled. biziq.com says that some businesses have been running Google Ads campaigns have been receiving some randomly to set-up and test the functionality and use (Beta cases). So that explains our client getting one, or your business randomly getting one. Even though that's kind of weird, the more important question is "what the heck is a Google Beacon?" According to Google, If your customer has enabled location services on their phone and depending on the number of customers who visit your business, the Google Beacon can send an increasing variety of types of information to your customer’s device such as: Customer reviews and other content such as photos from people who’ve also visited your business. Prompts for them to review your business on Google. Your business’ location on Google Maps when they’re nearby. Other information features as Google ads them. Google Beacons improve the location insights Google provides your business. In addition to sending information to your customers right to their mobile device when they’re near your business, by using a Google Beacon at your business, Google can provide you with better insights and analytics information as part of their Locations Insights pilot program. The location insights that Google can provide you with include: Information on when people visit your business including when your busiest times are. Information about the length of time customers spend at your business. Information on the frequency of customer visits and one the percentages of multiple visits by your customers. I'm HUGE on getting a ton of this kind of data from Google My Business, and it seems like Google Beacons are basically a way of garnering additional data as well as ensuring it's the most accurate it can possibly be. For more on how to set up Google Beacons, I recommend visiting this link from Google's Developers Documentation. Additionally, Beacons provide a high quality context signal that allows you to mark a particular place in the world, improving place detection. Google can use that signal to improve your business' presence on Google Maps. Click here to learn more about Google Place Visits. With the Nearby Messages API, you can build apps that detect beacons and retrieve messages that have been associated with them. Examples include showing the bus schedule when your user is waiting at a bus stop or providing ticket availability at a theater kiosk. When using the Nearby API

Raise your hand if you know what a heatmap of your website is! It's okay if you have no clue, that's why I'm here, friends. :) A heatmap is a recording of a visualization of your EXACTLY where users have clicked and scrolled to most often over a certain period of time. This video shows you how to implement a heatmap on your website, and talks a bit about how to read the data. After all, getting the data is half the battle, but interpreting and making decisions on how to use it is the other half.

The world of Google Webmaster Tools has changed. It used to be super easy to find "Fetch As Google" or "Robots.TXT" tester in the old platform, but now that Google has changed their SEO Tool to Google Search Console, it is harder to find these tools. This video not only shows SEO Analytics and Web Developers how to find the tools you were used to seeing in the old platform, but it shows Small Business Owners and Marketing Directors what to do when they get a "Coverage Issue" email from Google. So if you have received emails that look like this...No pasa nada. Just click "View Issue Details" and follow along to the instructions in this audio. It's all part of the plan. Google Search Console is like that second grade teacher that you loved that told you how to fix the problem you got wrong on your homework, so ultimately, you pass the test and get better.

I’ve written at length about how tools like WordPress and GoDaddy Managed WordPress can help save time, money and help companies gain efficiencies. Especially WordPress Design and Development companies.