Why Website Maintenance is Key to a Successful Website

Why Website Maintenance is Key to a Successful Website

Marketing

Just like any software, websites require maintenance to keep the site working properly. Avoiding website maintenance is like not having regular oil changes on your vehicle. You wouldn’t drive your car very long if you didn’t look after its maintenance, would you? Well, the same process is true for your website. Your website should always be live, ready for customers, and presenting your business at its finest.

Websites Are Not “Set and Forget”

If you don’t have website maintenance carried out monthly, you may actually be throwing money out the window. When visitors go to a website and find things wrong with it, they often don’t stick around. Many website owners never check their website to see how it’s functioning. Missed website issues or downtime can lose you, and potential customers.

The Benefits of Maintenance

Many people don’t realize the benefits of site maintenance:

The website performance, load time, downtime, and uptime are all dependent on the WordPress software and plugin functioning as they should ( and on the recent version).

The website's growth, fresh content, analytics monitoring, and design changes are all dependent on you having someone make sure all updates to the website are done in a smooth and error-free fashion.

Maintenance Workflow

At Virtual Partner, we take great care to first back up the website and check the website after the updates for any issues. Our software keeps a record of the plugins we update so if there is ever an issue we see what plugin version was changed and revert back. Also included in our monthly maintenance report are the performance and security scans. If in the event we ever catch a plugin issue, it becomes a support ticket and we address it before you ever know there’s a problem.

Dangers of Do It Yourself Maintenance

Maintaining your site yourself could cost you more than you may think. If you just update from your WordPress admin, you wouldn’t have a record of what was done. If an update to a plugin created an issue a couple of weeks later, it would be difficult to know what changed and how you should revert back without restoring a very old backup (and possibly losing content changes, sales orders, contact entries, you name it).

It Costs More to Fix Than to Maintain

Inexperience and neglect can damage the look and functionality of your website. When that happens, you have a choice to make. One, you try and fix it yourself, in which case you may do further damage. Or two, you can then pay the (sometimes hefty) price for someone experienced to fix it. Just like your car, it costs more to fix it than it does to maintain it properly. Regular oil changes help keep your car running properly, regular site maintenance helps keeps your website running properly.

Call in a Professional

  • Why not deal with what you know best and let us deal with what we know best?
  • Would you try to fight that court battle without a lawyer?
  • Then why try to maintain your own website if you’re not a web professional?
  • By securing an experienced web professional to update and maintain your site correctly you are actually saving potential lost sales and visitors.

If you’re interested in securing a maintenance contract for your website, contact us to learn how we can keep your site in proper working order. Click Here to learn more about Virtual Partner Website Care & Maintenance!

How to Write Email Subject Lines

How to Write Email Subject Lines

CRM, Marketing, Online Trends

How to Write Email Subject Lines that
Make People Stop, Click, and Read

Email subject lines…

…are our first (and sometimes only) chance to make a good impression on our subscribers, so making them interesting and compelling is essential to your email marketing success.

If you miss your chance to capture and hold their attention, your subscribers are less likely to open your emails, read your content, and click on your call-to-action links.

Today we’re going to cover the elements of captivating subject lines and how to discover which types of subject lines work best for your specific audience.

Let’s get started.

General guidelines for effective email subject lines

Writing subject lines that inspire people to open and read your emails is both an art and a science.

To get your subscribers to open, read, and click on the links in your email messages, thoughtfully craft the subject line of every message you send.

Your subject line is like that of a piece of online content — you get one shot to encourage your recipient to keep reading.

If you’re just getting started (or you’re not sure where to begin), here are some guiding principles for crafting compelling subject lines.

Your email subject lines should:

  • Provide a succinct summary. Forty characters or five-to-ten words is standard.
  • Create a sense of urgency. Why should your reader open your email now?
  • Match your content. Don’t misrepresent the content of your email — it annoys your subscribers and could increase your unsubscribe rate.
  • Arouse curiosity in your readers. What will inspire them to open your email and check out your message?
  • Convey a strong and clear benefit to your readers. What will they get out of reading your message? Will they get a new piece of educational content? Or can they take advantage of a limited-time 50 percent discount?

Adding personalization to your emails — should you or shouldn’t you?

Should you customize your subject lines with your recipients’ names? The jury is still out on this topic.

To see if personalization works with your community members, test out personalized subject lines by inserting dynamic tags. Most email service providers offer a fairly straightforward way to do this.

Of course, you can only personalize subject lines if you’ve collected people’s names through your opt-in form when they signed up for your email list. If you don’t have this information, personalization isn’t an option.

If you collect names through your email list opt-in form and decide to use personalized subject lines, review the names on your list regularly to ensure a valid name corresponds to each email address. You never want recipients to see, “Sign up today, [NAME ERROR]” in the subject line of an email in their inboxes.

After your tests, you’ll be able to determine if personalized subject lines perform better than other types of subjects.

A process for generating winning ideas

To create effective subject lines, get into the habit of brainstorming ideas for every email you send.

Grab a piece of paper (or open a document on your computer) and set a timer for 10 minutes. Brainstorm the subject lines for your latest email, and don’t stop until the timer goes off.

Then set the timer for another 10 minutes, and try to brainstorm the same amount of headlines again. For example, if you wrote 25 headlines in your first 10 minutes, try to write 25 more in the second brainstorming session.

Then choose the one headline you’ll use for your email — or pick two or three if you’ll be split-testing your subject lines. (More on this below.)

How to find out what subscribers really want

(or A/B testing) can be a powerful tool for improving your email subject lines.

When you split-test emails, you send one subject line to one part of your subscriber list and a different subject line to another part of your list. Then you track both emails and monitor which one performs the best.

You decide which performance metrics to track, but open rates, links clicked, sales generated, or a combination of these actions are typically measured.

Most email service providers equip you with a way to split-test your subject lines. Check with your email service provider’s knowledge base or tech support team if you have questions about implementing a split-testing campaign.

When testing your email subject lines, consider:

  • Including your recipient’s name in the subject line (personalization) vs. no personalization
  • Trying short vs. long subject lines
  • Experimenting with specific vs. general language
  • Communicating the same topic in different ways (For example, test “Are you dreaming big enough?” against “Why you must dream bigger”)
  • Capitalizing the first letter of each word (title case) or only capitalizing the first letter of the first word (sentence case)

As you split-test your subject lines, track your results so you can continually learn about what your audience likes and what causes them to take action.

Captivating subject lines move the needle

Optimizing your subject lines to increase opens and clicks is one of the best ways to improve the results of your email marketing campaigns.

Dedicate time to writing benefit-rich, curiosity-provoking subject lines and testing them with your audience to learn more about what they want and need.

When you implement this practice, you’ll see a noticeable increase in the number of people who respond to the calls-to-action in your messages!

by  BETH HAYDEN

About the Author: Beth Hayden is a content marketing expert, author, and speaker who specializes in working with women business owners. Want Beth’s best blogging tip? Download her free case study, How This Smart Writer Got 600 New Subscribers by Taking One Brave Step.

Organizing Your Life

Organizing Your Life

Personal Growth

Plan Your Day – Be Productive – Get Out of the Overwhelm

  Here's a great tool that I use…   Asana helps you tackle your work day and make it productive. Here are our tips to plan your day so you can start strong and finish your day ready for what’s next.   Follow along with the steps outlined in the video:   1. Visualize your day’s work in My Tasks Create new tasks for any other work that you need to get done. Use Today, Upcoming, and Later to prioritize.   2. Forward emails to Asana to start actioning them Send emails to [email protected] and they’ll be sent to your My Tasks list. CC any teammates you want as followers on the task. Change the email subject line to whatever you want the task to be named in Asana.   3. Focus on Today’s tasks by using full screen mode Add comments, attach files, or update the custom fields as needed. And when you’re done, complete the task!   4. Use Inbox to get caught up on the work you’re following Without leaving Inbox, you can respond to comments and status updates so everyone can keep work moving forward.   5. If you have meetings, create an agenda project for each one You can create your own or use a template. That way, you can have a clear agenda, link to relevant work, take notes, and quickly create tasks to capture action items. If it’s a recurring meeting, use the same project and update it.   6. Star projects you use often If you have projects you own or work on a lot, click the star next to the project name to favorite it. Favorites are quickly accessible in your sidebar and on your mobile device.   7. Use our mobile app If your commute home or to the office permits…you can use our mobile apps to stay up to date on any notifications so you don’t miss anything.  
Business Grammar

Business Grammar

CRM, Marketing

Your Quick Guide to Business Grammar 101

As a small business owner, sometimes all you have is your word.

But if your words have a ton of grammatical errors, you haven’t got much. If you’re using “it’s” when you should be using “its,” your old English teacher isn’t the only one who’ll be cringing. Avoid making embarrassing mistakes with this quick guide:

 

When to use a Semicolon

Semicolons are generally used to separate two clauses that could act as individual sentences and are closely related to each other.

Example: They moved the deadline to today; I have a lot of work to do.

Another common reason to use a semicolon is when separating items in lists that already have commas.

Example: New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; Austin, TX; Chicago, IL

“It's vs. “Its”

This one’s easy to get wrong, since an apostrophe is generally used to indicate possession. However, when it comes to “it’s” and “its,” that isn’t the case. To show possession, you use “its.”

Example: The fruit is in its own container.

An apostrophe is only used when it can be replaced by “it is”

Example: It’s really cold out.

Professional Titles

To avoid accidentally offending clients, it’s important to know how to properly capitalize job titles. The general rule of thumb is when it comes before the name, it’s (it is) considered a job title and is capitalized. If it comes after the name, it’s considered an identifier and is lowercase.

Example:  Vice President of Sales John Smith & John Smith, vice president of sales

SEO Checklist

SEO Checklist

Websites

  • Install Google Analytics. 
  • Install Google Search Console. 
  • Focusing on the US? Might want to install Bing Webmaster Tools. 
  • Using WordPress? Get a WordPress Google Analytics plugin. Here’s one. Here’s another one. 
  • Using WordPress? Install the free version of Yoast SEO. 
  • Check Google’s Search Console for crawl errors, duplicate content errors, missing titles and other technical errors. 
  • Use Browseo.net to spot-check redirect problems (specifically, 302 errors that should be 301s). 
  • Use Screaming Frog to find broken links, errors, and crawl problems. 
  • Use Google Adwords Keyword Planner for keyword research, along with KWFinder, KeywordTool.io and SEMRush. Be sure to consider searcher intent and difficulty, pick 1 keyword per page, and you’ll generally want to start with lower-volume keywords first. 
  • Have you looked at competitor link profiles? This is the easiest way to get started with link building. This way, you can see what kind of anchor text they’re using, as well as how and where they’ve been getting their links. Something like the Ahrefs, Link Diagnosis, Open Site Explorer, or Majestic. 
  • Try to get your primary keyword into your page URL (but there are very serious consequences to changing a URL that already has authority – don’t do this if your page already has links!). 
  • Add your keyword to your title tag. Is your title tag compelling? 
  • Add your keyword to your meta description. Is your meta description compelling? 
  • Add your keyword to your H1 tag. Make sure to only use one H1 tag, and make sure it shows up in the document before H2, H3 etc. 
  • Add crawl-able text to your page. Make sure to have at least 100 words on each URL (minimum – the more the better). You can still rank with less, and you don’t ever want to put unnecessary text on your site, but I recommend not creating a new page unless you have roughly ~100 words worth of content. 
  • Use synonyms in your copy. Remember: synonyms are great, and using natural language that’s influenced by keyword research (rather than just pure keywords) is highly encouraged.
  • Use words discovered through latent semantic indexing in your copy – you can determine what keywords to add at LSIGraph.com. 
  • Add descriptive ALT tags and filenames to your pages. Search engines “see” images by reading the ALT tag and looking at file names, among other factors. Try to be descriptive when you name your images. 
  • Link to other pages on your site with SEO-friendly text (use the primary keyword in anchor text). We recommend not using anchor text in your global navigation because it can look like over-optimization. Stick to in-content links instead. 
  • Make sure you don’t have duplicate content – use 301 redirects, canonical tags or use Google Webmaster Tools to fix any duplicate content that might be indexing and penalizing your site. 
  • Use PageSpeed tools,  Gift of Speed, GTMetrix and Pingdom to determine page speed – keep your site fast! 
  • Make sure your site is mobile friendly – use Google’s mobile friendly testing tool. 
  • Create an XML sitemap and submitted it to Google Search Console. Use XML-Sitemaps.com or Google XML Sitemaps WordPress Plugin – the Yoast SEO plugin also comes with this functionality by default. 
  • Create a robots.txt file and submit it to Google Search Console. 
  • Claim your brand name on as many social networking sites as possible for reputation management reasons. Namechk is a great resource to see if your name is taken on most major networks.