This may be of interest to you.

You might have missed this.

But Google brought us an interesting surprise recently.

They decided to revamp their official SEO Starter Guide for the first time in over seven years.

The new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide is full of useful and interesting information we can all benefit from.

Unfortunately, some of the content in there isn’t clear or specific enough.

It’s not that Google is hiding something from you, it’s that they don’t want to tell you exactly what you need to know to rank higher in their search engines.

They prefer if you discover that on your own.

But fear not, in this article you will learn everything you need to know from the new SEO Starter Guide and how you can implement that information on your site.

What You Will Learn

• What Google expects to see from your website
• How to really make your site show up on Google
• Google’s guidelines on hiring SEO experts
• How to optimise your site the right way
• And so much more!

Making Your Site Show Up on Google

The first step to rank on Google is having your site in their index. To do so you need to make your site crawlable and indexable.

To help you achieve that, Google suggests you ask yourself a few questions which will help you find out whether your site is being crawled and indexed-

• Is my website showing up on Google?
• Do I serve high quality content to users?
• Is my local business showing up on Google?
• Is my content fast and easy to access on all devices?
• Is my website secure?

Let me help you answer each of these questions.

Is Your Website Showing Up On Google?

This question is easy to answer. Simply search for your company or website’s name on Google and see if it shows up.

If I ran a pizza place in London called “Pizza Union” (a company that exists), and I searched for it on Google, I’d see it’s ranking in there in the first position-

If you don’t find your site, make sure you check outside page 1.

Also, if your name is similar to a large company or if it represents a broad term (for example, if my pizza place was called “London Pizza,” it’d be hard to rank for that term for obvious reasons), don’t despair.

It’s not an SEO problem so much as a naming one.

Are You Serving High Quality Content?

You probably know that creating high-quality content is a prerequisite to rank these days.

Defining “high-quality content” on the other hand isn’t easy.

But way back in my zero link building experiment I noted that Matt Cutts had defined it as-

• Something that is unique/different/original
• Useful/helpful to the community
• Answers common questions in your niche
• Original research
• Create videos
• How to guides and tutorials
• Create lists of helpful resources

Another way to define the quality of a piece of content is to tie it with its popularity.

That means, if your content attracts links and social shares then we can define it as high-quality.

At the end of the day, people don’t link or share to content they deem low-quality.

So, taking this idea into consideration, let’s check how many links and shares your content is getting.

We are going to check your content’s link popularity with Ahrefs.

Just drop the URL in Ahrefs Site Explorer to check the number of backlinks you have received and the number of referring domains.

There’s no right or wrong number of backlinks and referring domains but if you see zero links, you should review the quality of the content.

Next we are going to check the social popularity with another great tool, Buzzsumo.

Just drop your URL into the search bar and then check how many shares your content has gotten-

As you can see with the link results above and the popularity on social media we can conclude this is high quality content.

Hint: You can also use this WordPress plugin to grab the social shares of all of your content in one click

Don’t worry if you dont have any links or social shares – it could just be your content promotion wasn’t very effective.

But you should certainly pay close attention to these pages and review them against competing search results for relevant keywords.

Is Your Local Business Showing Up On Google?

Note: If you don’t have a local business, you can skip this part.

Local SEO is extremely important if you run a local business, as it works differently than non-local SEO.

Both local and non-local SEO need on-site optimisation and links to rank high in the search engines. The main difference lies in that local sites also need citations.

A citation is an online reference to your business’s name, address and phone number (also known as NAP).

Citations work like links, because Google uses them to evaluate the online authority of your business. What makes citations different from links is that the former don’t need a link pointing to your business’s website in order for you to be credited for them. Getting a NAP is already enough.

To check your local business, repeat what I showed up before; that is, search your business on Google.

Continuing with the pizza place example, I see they show up in the local results.

You should then check to see if your business comes up in listings for popular keywords, like “Pizza London” for example.

If your local business doesn’t show up for your target keywords you can use the WhiteSpark Citation Service to get a boost in local rankings.

If you don’t find your place anywhere, you need to add your company with Google My Business.

The process is straightforward:

In the Google My Business website, click on the “Start Now” button.

Once you do so, you will have to add your company’s information, including your business name, your location, the kind of business you run, and your company’s phone number and website.

The process won’t take you more than 5 minutes and will help you get your company listed on Google Maps.

Is My Content Fast And Easy To Access On All Devices?

Your websites speed not only affects your rankings but it also has a huge impact on user experience.

A 1 second delay in load time can lead to a 7% drop off in conversion and 11% fewer pageviews.

To check your page speed, you can use a tool like GTmetrix.

Once you have added your site, GTmetrix will tell you:

• The performance score
• The load time
• The page size
• The number of requests (i.e., how many requests did GTmetrix have to make to load all your site’s elements; the fewer requests, the better)

In general, you want a load time under 2 seconds, and a page size under 1 megabyte.

If you find your site to be above those two thresholds, focus on solving the problems GTmetrix shares with you.
Some of the most common problems related to a site’s speed performance are the lack of browser caching, progressive rendering, HTTP compression, among other problems.

If you want to learn more about the most common speed problems you can face, you can read Google’s own PageSpeed Insights rules.

Fortunately, you don’t need to become an expert in speed optimisation to make your website faster.

With the help of W3 Total Cache, a WordPress plugin with over 1 million downloads and 2,700 5-star reviews, you can optimise your site’s page speed in a few minutes.

Once you install it, you will find there are a large number of sections within the plugin you can check.

Before you get overwhelmed, remember you want to optimise for the problems your site has, not for every single possible you may face in the future.

To that end, you want to go back to GTmetrix’ performance review and check the problems they found.

In the case of Pizza Union, you can see they only have one problem: landing page redirects.

In other words, they have a problem with duplicate content, something that can be easily fixed with the help of Yoast SEO.

But if your website has other, more pressing problems, like lack of browser caching (which allows a user’s browser to “save” a page’s version in their “memory”), you want to use W3 Total Cache.

If that was the case, you’d need to go to Browser Cache, which is the seventh element in the menu as shown above.

Generally speaking, W3 Total Cache fixes the most common problems as default, so you may not need to do anything.

As you can see in the image below, W3 Total Cache has already specified the general cache policy:

Once you have installed W3 Total Cache, you should see an immediate improvement in your site’s speed.

If you don’t, and you don’t know what to do, you should talk to a developer who specializes in site speed optimisation to help you out solve the problems GTmetrix indicates.

Another common issue is the lack of a Content Delivery Network (or CDN), which would make the user download your site’s elements from the location of your server.

That means, if your servers are located in Liverpool, and your user is in Los Angeles, Bangkok, or Cape Town, it would take their browser more time to load your page.

But if you used a CDN like MaxCDN, they could download all the elements from the closest server, making the site’s download speed much faster and efficient.

If you click on W3 Total Cache’s General Settings section, you can select the CDN type you want to use, and the plugin will do most of the hard work for you.

Both the use of W3 Total Cache and a CDN will make your site speed much faster, improving your user experience as well as your rankings.]

You could also use a free plugin like WPSmush to optimize all of your images and reduce your overall page size in just a couple of clicks.

Is My Website Secure?

Back in 2014, Google added the use of SSL to their ranking factors.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. Basically, having a domain with SSL will certify your site’s security.

Because the use of SSL impacts in your rankings, you want to make sure you are using it in your site, especially if you accept payments on your site.

You can use the Let’s Encrpyt service which allows you to add a encrypted certification for free.

The easiest way to add a free SSL certification to your site, is by using a server that’s already integrated with Let’s Encrypt, which includes WPXHosting, Siteground & Kinsta.

Once you have the SSL certificate installed on a server level you can use a plugin like Really Simple SSL to enable it on the WordPress level.

If your business is running on WordPress, check out How To Switch From HTTP To HTTPS (13 Simple Steps) from Cloudliving.

Using Sitemaps

Finally, Google talks about making your content easier to find. On that end, they recommend the use of sitemaps:

A sitemap is a file on your site that tells search engines about new or changed pages on your site.

A sitemap tells Google which pages they should crawl, as well as determine the canonical version (i.e., the correct version) of each page.

Creating a sitemap is easy, you can use a tool like XML Sitemap Generator or, if you use WordPress, a plugin like Google XML Sitemaps or Yoast SEO.

Both tools make creating a sitemap like this one a simple process.

Once you have the sitemap, you want to add it to the Google Search Console as they explain in this article.

Hiring An SEO Expert

SEO takes a lot of time.

If you are a busy business owner, or if you prefer to focus on other parts of your business (like sales and operations), you want to hire an SEO expert.

As Google says in the Starter Guide:

Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies

Finding a trustworthy SEO company can be hard.

To help you find the right one, you want to check for the following things:

• The results they have gotten to their past and current clients. Ask for case studies and references. Make sure they show specific results (e.g., “Our link building campaign attracted 15 high-authority links which helped driving the organic search traffic 20% in 3 months”).
• The person in charge of your site. You want to make sure the company doesn’t outsource the work or give it to a junior executive with little experience. Make sure you talk to the person in charge of your site before signing off.
• The link building tactics they use. Make sure they don’t use black hat tactics, unless that’s what you need (for example, if you are in the gambling industry). Ask them to show you specific links they’ve gotten and how they got them.
• The timeline and deliverables. SEO takes time, but you want them to make progress on a month-per-month basis. At first, they should focus on keyword research, on-site optimisation, and technical SEO. Later, they’ll focus on link building and content creation. Tell them to tell you exactly what steps will be involved and the time each one will take.

(If you are in doubt which company to hire, you can contact my team for help. Feel free to browse our case studies, the tactics we’ll use, and the time you can expect to see results.)

Another important thing to take into consideration, is to get started with SEO before you need it.

As Google mentions in the Starter Guide-

If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.

Optimise Your Title Tags and Meta Description

You can have the best content in the world, but if neither Google knows what your page is about nor people understand the content of it, no one will visit your site.

That’s where title tags and meta descriptions come to the rescue.

As you may know, title tags are one of the most important on-site elements of your site.

Google weights the optimisation of your title tags heavily, so if you use the right keywords in it, Google will likely reward you with better results.

Meta descriptions on the other hand will help people (and Google) understand what your page is about.

If you do your job correctly, your click-through-rate (CTR) will skyrocket, increasing your organic traffic (even if you don’t rank number 1).

Here’s how you optimise your title tag and meta description.

Title Tag Optimisation

First and foremost, your title tags need to have the main keyword of your page. You can use an exact match of the keyword (that is, the exact keyword for which you want to rank), or simply use it within a phrase.

For example, if you wanted to rank for the keyword “Pizza London,” like in the case of the company we’ve been using so far, you’d need to add that keyword within the title tag.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case:

Long are the days where you could stuff your main keywords in your title tags and expect good results.

That’s why you need to get creative and use some SEO copywriting in your title tag.

In the case of the pizza place shown above, you could create a title tag that said something like:

Voted The Best Pizza In London – Pizza Union

If you run a local place or a company with a strong brand, you want to add your brand’s name somewhere in the title tag, especially in the main pages (like the homepage and category pages).

Finally, remember that title tags have a maximum length of 60 characters.

If you exceed that length, it won’t hurt your site. Rather, Google will cut your title tag short in the search results.

Meta Description Optimisation

While title tags matter for improving your page’s rankings, meta descriptions gives them context.

It’s with the meta descriptions where you want to use copywriting to improve your page’s relevancy.

Here’s a good example of a well-written meta description:

You can see that the company mentions what they offer (Neapolitan pizzas), where they offer them (in central London and Oxford), and how they offer them (in their venues, takeaway, or delivery).

For a local business, that’s a great structure. It’s concise and even actionable.

While in the past the meta description maximum characters were around 155 characters, according to Moz, Google has extended their length to around 300 characters.

Blocking Unwanted Pages

Your website likely has many pages you don’t want to show up in Google, either because they generate duplicate content, show sensitive information (like user or personal information) or because your users won’t find it useful.

This may not be the case if your site is small and has less than 50 pages or so.

Either way, if you think there are parts of your website you want to block from Google, here’s what you need to do.

First, use a robots.txt, which is a text file webmasters create to instruct search engine robots how to crawl and index pages on their website.

As the name suggests, this is nothing but a simple .txt file you add in your server’s root folder.

Robots.txt have some limitations in its scope. As Google explains:

Robots.txt is not an appropriate or effective way of blocking sensitive or confidential material. It only instructs well-behaved crawlers that the pages are not for them, but it does not prevent your server from delivering those pages to a browser that requests them.

One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs).

Also, non-compliant or rogue search engines that don’t acknowledge the Robots Exclusion Standard could disobey the instructions of your robots.txt.

Finally, a curious user could examine the directories or subdirectories in your robots.txt file and guess the URL of the content that you don’t want seen.

What Google is trying to say is that using a robots.txt is only one part of the whole puzzle. If you link internally to a page you want to block, Google may crawl and index it anyway.

If you want to make sure Google doesn’t index a page (even if it crawls it), you want to use a “noindex” tag, which goes in the header of a page.

You can manually add them to every page you want to block, or using a plugin like Yoast SEO.

By using the “noindex” tag, Google will crawl it, but avoid indexing it (and therefore, rank it).

Using Structured Data Markup

The way Google shows up the results has changed dramatically in the past 7 years. One of the biggest changes is the use of structured data markup.

In the words of Google, structured data markup is:

[A] code that you can add to your sites’ pages to describe your content to search engines, so they can better understand what’s on your pages.

Search engines can use this understanding to display your content in useful (and eye-catching!) ways in search results.

That, in turn, can help you attract just the right kind of customers for your business.

In other words, structured data helps users find out more about a site or page without visiting it. This can impact deeply on your CTR and search engine traffic.

Here are some examples to help you see how they look and work:

If you look for a company like Amazon, Google will not only show their site and pages, but also the following:

The information you see on the right represent two different types of structured data markup, the logos and articles ones.

Finally, if you have a local business, Google can show a lot of useful information about it, like in the example below:

If you aren’t sure whether to use structured data markup in your site, check what your direct and indirect competitors are doing.

If you need help getting started, follow Google’s guides, which explain in more detail how they work.

Once you get started implementing it on your site, use some of Google’s tools like Google Data Highlighter and Google Structured Data Markup Helper as well as some useful WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO and WP SEO Structured Data Schema.

Make sure you test your new markup using Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Optimise your images

While people love images, Google can’t read them. That’s why the “alt” tag exists: you describe what the image is about, and Google bases their analysis on it.

In Google words:

If a user is viewing your site using assistive technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture.

Optimising your alt tags is simple: add the main keyword (and variations of it) with a descriptive sentence.

Using the pizza example, if you had 10 images of your different pizzas on your homepage, you wouldn’t want to stuff all your images with the same keyword, as Google would consider that unnecessary.

For example you might set an ALT tag of “The Best Margarita Pizza In London” for your main margarita pizza image.

If you had 3 different images of each of your pizzas, you could add other variations, like “londons favourite margarita pizza,” “pizza margarita,” or “italian margarita pizza london.”

Of course, you should do some keyword research first.

Be relevant with your alt tags and Google will appropriately rank your pages for your desired keywords.

Another important element to consider is the image size.

That’s why I recommend using a service like Smush Image Compression and Optimization.

Once you install it on your WordPress site, the plugin will automatically compress your images making them smaller and easier to load.

SEO for Mobile Websites

Mobile organic traffic has become as important as desktop traffic: in 2017, the latter accounted for 50.3% of all web traffic generated worldwide.

That means you need to optimise your site for mobile traffic.

To optimise your site for mobile traffic you should use responsive web design

By using responsive web design, you are designing your site to automatically adjust itself to any kind of browser and screen size without the need to changhe URLs or your site’s structure.

A lot of the best WordPress themes are responsive by default, but not everyone runs WordPress so double check if your site is responsive or not.

Google recommends using the Mobile-friendly test to check if pages on your site meet the required criteria.

You can also check out the Search Console Mobile Usability report to fix mobile usability issues affecting your site.

Integrating AMP

Another way to make your site more mobile friendly is to use the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP for short) format.

AMP is a markup language focused on mobile phones which increases the speed your pages are served to users.

If you run your website with WordPress and you want to start using AMP, you can use plugin like AMP for WP or Automattic’s own AMP for WordPress.

Finally, Google recommends you provide the same functionality on all devices (which includes desktop, table, and mobile):

Mobile users expect the same functionality – such as commenting and check-out – and content on mobile as well as on all other devices that your website supports.

In addition to textual content, make sure that all important images and videos are embedded and accessible on mobile devices.

For search engines, provide all structured data and other metadata – such as titles, descriptions, link-elements, and other meta-tags – on all versions of the pages.

Wrapping It Up

Google’s updated SEO starter guide doesn’t represent a new way of doing SEO.

Rather, it’s an update to the things we already knew, but never heard directly from Google.

Now you know what Google expects from you, it’s time to get started.

Google will thank you for it.

Google’s New SEO Starter Guide: What You Need To Know was originally published on Matthew Woodward

We hope you enjoyed this.

This may be of interest to you.

A responsive web design should be your uppermost priority in this digital world if you want to keep your online business on the top of the competition. Not only this, a responsive business website helps you expand audience reach, boosts the conversion rate, keeps users happy and most importantly enables you to appear in more search engine results.

Responsive web design makes a website that can adapt to the screen size of a device that visitor is using to access the website. It optimizes the users’ web browsing experience by presenting them with responsive web pages that fit on all screen sizes.

Have a look at the following essential benefits of a responsive web design that will excite you to turn a non-responsive business website into a responsive one.

A Well-Branded and Seamless User Experience

For every website and business in the e-commerce industry, having a website that appears and feels the same across different mobile devices is necessary for excellent user experience. A responsive design prevents your users from zoom in and out to see the information or details they need. In short, a responsive website designed for a Watch Company will show all the details and information about its products like rolex hulk in a best possible manner without getting the users distracted. You can see how this is all in motion through the screenshot below.

With all of these elements in place it ensures the layout of a website fits properly on different screens to provide users with a seamless web experience. Enhanced user experience is one of the essential business benefits of responsive web design. It will not only keep them engaged on your site but they will come back again and will also tell others about your business or brand. Responsive design also improves brand perception by reducing the bounce rate.

Using Vibrant Colors that Represent Your Brand

If you are going to create a responsive and custom site for your brand or business, you need to make sure it not only has a fancy design, but also one that represents the branding of your logo, messaging, and existing online identity as well. The best accomplish this, it’s important to understand the power of colors in branding and how they each play a role in the consumer emotion and decision process.

For example… have you ever wondered by brands like Coca-cola, Puma and Diesel use red in their design? Here are a few highlights on why.

Red evokes a feeling of passion, intensity, and urgency, with various shades conveying different versions of that feeling. Bright red can invoke feelings of passion and energy, while dark red can be used to give a feeling of authority and luxury. Generally, red commands attention, so it should be used carefully and judiciously.

• Positive Connotations: It gives a feeling of energy and passion and is very eye-catching.
• Negative Connotations: Can be seen as overtly bold or aggressive.
• Suitable for: Food and/or beverage companies. Companies that have a sexy, yet sophisticated, image.  

Mobile Usage and Boosted SEO

As quality content is vital in search engine optimization to rank higher in search engines, responsive web design is important too in order to make your online business appear in more search results. Google recommends business owners and webmasters have a responsive web design in place because Google wants to provide its users with the best user experience possible. That is the reason; a responsive website can boost your SEO efforts to help you chase search engine marketing goals more effectively.

You can learn more about how Google looks at websites differently if they are responsive or not in this article. Not only will Google see and rank your site differently based on these results, they might also penalize your site or keep it lower in the rankings if your site appears differently on various devices. Google also offers a wide range of tools for site owners to check their site structure to make sure it passes all of Google’s viewing requirements.

Fast Loading Webpages are Crucial to Performance and SEO

According to experts, mobile users tend to skip web pages that take more than 3 seconds to load properly because they have short attention spans. And if a website is not optimized for mobile devices, it will take too long to load its pages in full that can cause a higher bounce rate in return. That’s why; responsive web pages are designed with latest performance techniques such as quick caching and responsive image display to make them load quickly on all screens.

If you don’t think site speed is that important, just take a look at these key statistics compiled by Kissmetrics, and how just a few seconds in loading time can make a huge different for a business:

• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
• 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.
• 73% of mobile internet users say they’ve encountered a website that was too slow to load.
• 51% of mobile internet users say they’ve encountered a website that crashed, froze, or received an error.
• 38% of mobile internet users say they’ve encountered a website that wasn’t available.
• A one second delay in page response can result in a seven percent reduction in conversions.
• If an e-commerce site is making $100,000 per day, a one second page delay could potentially cost $2.5 million in lost sales every year.

Increase Sales, User Analytics and Scalability

As online shopping is becoming popular day by day, security conscious people are confident while making purchases online by using their mobile devices. According to research, almost 80% of users use their smartphones for online shopping and this number is expected to grow more in years to come. It shows that a website designed for mobile devices can help a business secure more sales than a less-responsive website. When users find a website responsive, they stay longer on the site that will hopefully bring more sales on the way of a business or brand.

Worldwide eCommerce Sales 2014 through 2021 (Image source: Shopify)

At the same time, in this era of digital marketing, it is most important for businesses to know the actual traffic sources and how people spend time on your website. Such information and data can help businesses develop fertile marketing campaigns tailored to the user experience. Having a highly responsive business website significantly simplifies the data monitoring and analytical process for a business. Even analytical tools like Google Analytics can also provide details and data of a site into a single report. In results, a business is better able to see how the different elements of the site are performing on different screens.

The last factor to consider, is that responsive web design offers business various opportunities to support different technologies and screens in years to come. Responsive sites are made with a feature to scale up or down as needed to best fit in the screen of a device the site is accessed from. It also makes it easier for a business or brand to make necessary changes in the web design as per the latest web development trends without spending much.

Adapt to Responsive and Super Fast Speed or Die

Responsive web design is something that became a huge discussion a couple of years back, but there are still millions of websites and blogs that have yet to adapt, or are still lacking in the full optimization of their site and content.

If you feel your site is lagging behind and missing out on lost traffic and higher rankings, be sure to run through each of the factors we mentioned, and have them corrected or improved as soon as possible.

On the flip side, if you have the basics of responsive site design and loading times under control, head on over to our seo marketing site tips to further improve how your site ranks in Google and see if you have all of these SEO optimization and marketing methods in place.

The post Must-Follow Responsive Web Design and Branding Tips for 2019 appeared first on Zac Johnson.

We hope you enjoyed this.

This may be of interest to you.

Are you ready to get your affiliate program off the ground? According to Rosemarie Spiher, now is the best time for this launch — so your timing is perfect. However, there are things more important than timing, and we consider thorough preparation to be one of them.

Before you launch, you need to make sure everything is perfect, with all i’s dotted and t’s cross. Launching too quickly is one of the 8 mistakes to avoid when setting up an affiliate marketing program. Although you can’t wait to see your program go live and affiliates applying to join it, you should wait to test all components and sort out all the details.

If you launch your program too early, many affiliates looking at it will spot the problems. They will either not join, or remain your affiliates only by name, without actually promoting your products or services. You should not expect them to wait for you to solve your problems. They will most likely walk away and promote other merchants.

But don’t worry! Testing your program components and making sure you’re 100% ready for the launch is not that difficult. You can count on our help with it. In this very post, we will guide you through the process and explain everything in detail. Here comes our ultimate checklist to help you set yourself up for a successful affiliate program launch:

5 Components to Check Before the Program’s Launch

1. Affiliate Program’s Tracking Software

By now, you’ve probably already joined an affiliate network and set up your merchant account, or chosen to go with other affiliate tracking software.

If you haven’t done so yet, check out our post on Affiliate Marketing Tracking Software which explains everything you need to know about the tracking (and reporting) options and how they operate.

Before your affiliate program’s launch, you have to make sure that the tracking is properly installed and works as it should. It should be able to track visits and actions from any device or browser. If you allow other payment options besides credit card, like Google Pay or Paypal, you should make sure your software accurately tracks these transactions as well.

How you do that depends on the affiliate tracking solution you’ve chosen. If you’re running your program on an affiliate network, they will provide the technical support you need. They will also run test transactions — to ensure that your tracking works before allowing your program to go live.

If you run your affiliate marketing program in-house, testing your tracking software may be more challenging. Depending on the software you’ve chosen, you should be able to receive some technical assistance from the provider. If you have an affiliate program manager, they will know what to do.

You should not even consider an affiliate marketing program launch without adequate testing of your tracking software. Any failures could cost you affiliates, sales, and your reputation, so take your time to make sure that every qualified action will be adequately tracked and rewarded.

2. Automated Email Templates

Many affiliate networks and in-house affiliate tracking software allow you to set up automated emails for your affiliates. Obviously, you should have these ready before your affiliate program’s launch. At AM Navigator, we believe personalization is key to securing good affiliate communication.

Therefore, instead of setting up standard automated emails to send to all affiliates, we recommend setting up templates that you can personalize for each affiliate. Even if you’re starting your affiliate program on a network that already sends automated messages, you should look into the possibility of tweaking them — to look as your own.

These emails are the first step to creating a close, long-lasting relationship with your affiliates. Therefore, pay them the desired attention and prepare them ahead of time. How many templates should you create, what should they include, and when should you send them?

Both Geno Prussakov in his Affiliate Management: An Hour a Day book, and Ryan Hindes in his post on Mistakes to Avoid When Launching a New Affiliate Program recommend having at least three email templates ready to send to publishers applying to join your program.

I. Application Receipt

This is the email you send to all publishers who apply to become your affiliates. In it, you should:

• Acknowledge receiving their application
• Reserve a period of time to review it and inform them of your decision
• Encourage them to contact you if they need to

An acceptable affiliate application response time would be of 48 hours. If you can review their application and get back to them within 24 hours, that’s even better. Don’t forget to include your contact details in your email, just in case one of the publishers wants to get in touch with you.

II. Application Denial

This is the email you send to publishers that you decide not to accept into your program. As Geno explains in his book, bad denial emails can hinder recruitment. To make sure that does not happen to you, it is important to:

• Explain the factors that have led to your decision
• Encourage the publisher to contest your decision and explain how they are planning to promote your products or services
• Express your willingness to reconsider your decision should the circumstances change

Otherwise put, you don’t want to close the door on potential affiliates. Instead, tell them what to improve, and encourage them to re-apply into the program when they have. A smartly denied application could one day bring you a super affiliate.

III. Application Approval

This is the email you send to let your new affiliates know that you’ve accepted them into your program. More than just a welcome email, it can be an effective affiliate activation tool, if you play your cards right. Here is what it should cover:

• Welcome message – It could include a personal message from the company’s executive or a simple phrase thanking the affiliate for their interest in your program and announcing them that their application has been accepted.
• Brief introduction of your program and company – Affiliates often apply into several programs at the same time. Help them remember yours: what you sell, what commissions you pay, cookie life, etc.
• Performance incentives – If you have followed our advice to include performance incentives in your affiliate marketing program’s payment terms, don’t hesitate to let your new affiliates know of those incentives.
• Ready-to-use affiliate links and other creatives – Encourage your new affiliates to start promoting your products and services immediately by providing them with ready-to-use text links and banners that they can simply copy and paste into their content or onto their website.
• New affiliate promo – Many merchants choose to offer special incentives to new affiliates, and we usually encourage this practice. You can think of it as a call to activation. Common examples include rewarding affiliates for posting your first links on their website, generating the first qualified actions, or importing your product data feeds. A useful incentive that will not necessarily cost you is extended cookie life. For example, if your usual cookie life is of 60 days, you can double it for cookies placed within the first month from activation.
• Additional info packet – Think of it as the toolkit that will help your affiliates promote your products and services. In it, you should provide additional information about your company, products, and customers (company mission and goals, buyer personas, bestseller lists, etc.). It should also explain what sets you apart from your competitors (unique selling proposition, awards or other recognitions, product highlights, features, and benefits). Perhaps the most important component of your affiliate marketing toolkit should be your best creatives: content samples (press release and product review samples), lists of keywords and taglines, images, etc.

Other Approval Emails

In his Affiliate Management: An Hour A Day, Geno recommends sending additional approval emails when affiliates need to apply for access to specific data feeds or functionalities, following this formula:

• Approval message
• Activation incentive
• Performance incentive
• Instructions and/or advice on how to make the most of the data feed or functionality they have gained access to.

He also provides examples of emails you can start from in order to develop your own.

3. Affiliate Program Support

If you want your affiliate program to be successful, you will need a support base for it. You can start with as little as a link to your affiliate program page posted on your main website, an affiliate program landing page, and a dedicated email address. Let’s take a closer look at each of these elements:

Affiliate Program Link

Your affiliate program should have at least a dedicated page on your website (if not a dedicated separate mini-site), and a link to it on your main website’s homepage. This is probably the easiest yet most underused affiliate recruitment method. Anyone visiting your website who considers promoting your products or services can find out how to do it.

Many merchants, including Amazon, prefer to place it in the website footer, along with the links to their informational pages, monetization offers, products, and support links. Other merchants, like SSL.com, included their affiliate program in the main menu of their website.

Affiliate Program Page Tips to Follow

• Make sure your link is visible and its anchor text is relevant for your affiliate program. The most commonly used terms are various forms of partner, affiliate, and associate.
• As soon as your program is live, test the link. The last thing you want is a broken link facing your potential affiliates with a sorry, we can’t find the page you are looking for
• Set up a landing page with a clear affiliate program description or a link to it (affiliate program bio).
• Make sure your program description covers the following: company description and link to main website, commission structure and tiers/levels breakdown, cookie life and other tracking methods information, statistics (EPC, conversion rate, average order value, etc.), availability of co-branded landing pages and data feeds, affiliate tools and other competitive advantages, restrictions or program agreement highlights.
• Don’t exceed 250 words. Your goal is to entice potential affiliates to find out more or sign up, not bore them to death or scare them away.

Depending on the complexity of your affiliate marketing program and how serious you are about making it work, you should take Geno’s advice and consider creating a mini-site for it.

Affiliate Program Mini-Site Basics

Uploading a large inventory of affiliate creatives, embedding affiliate tools, and posting regular updates and tutorials could slow down your merchant website. Moreover, a dedicated website, with a blog attached to it, could help you attract publishers looking for affiliate programs to join online. The map of the ideal affiliate program website looks like this:

• Program details
• Program agreement
• Frequently asked questions
• Tips and ideas
• Creatives
• Blog
• Contact

4. Announcement of the Affiliate Program’s Launch

Just as you spread the word when you launch a new product or service, adopt new technologies, or attend an important industry event, you should announce your affiliate program’s launch.

You can do so in the newsletters you send to your customers, suppliers, and service providers, on specialty forums, affiliate program directories, through press releases, etc. Your announcement should resemble your affiliate program bio, but make sure to adjust it to the new audience.

Some of your readers may know nothing about your company or affiliate marketing, so your announcement should educate them and stir their interest. Here are the must-have elements for any affiliate program launch announcement:

• Merchant description
• Program details
• Statistics
• Calls to action

As far as calls to action are concerned, your main goal is to convince readers to apply to become your affiliates. This is what primary calls to action do.

When these fail or your readers are just not ready to follow them, you should have secondary calls to action in place, like invitations for your readers to contact you anyway. There are also post-primary calls to action you can use in your affiliate approval emails to activate affiliates.

To make sure your calls to action are effective, have them answer a simple question: what’s in it for the affiliate?

5. Creatives Inventory

We’ve covered affiliate creatives in depth before, and you should already have your inventory ready. However, before your affiliate program’s launch, you should double-check the availability of your keywords lists, bestseller lists (generic, seasonal, category-specific), banners, videos, and any other creatives your affiliates will have access to.

If you’re offering your affiliates the tools to generate their own creatives, put those tools to the test and provide clear instructions on how your affiliates should use them. Most affiliate networks have custom link-generating tools available (as the below screenshot exemplifies it).

The last thing you want is to have them use broken text links or promote products you no longer sell. One case that drew my attention was that of Money Done Right, an affiliate website with huge potential and quality content, but which seems to waste resources on broken links that will never get them the commission they deserve (see their reviews of H&R Block, Tally, and more).

As a merchant, you may think you can profit from readers looking up your products or services online. However, without commissions to motivate them, your affiliates will eventually stop promoting your products or services. Their negative experience may even reflect on your program’s reputation.

Final Advice for Your Affiliate Program’s Launch

By now, you’ve hopefully checked the components discussed above and prepared your affiliate program’s launch. However, before you let it go live, there is one more question you should answer:

Who’s Going to Manage Your Affiliate Marketing Program?

We’ve already explained that forgetting about the driver would be a huge mistake for your affiliate program’s launch. We also covered the basics of affiliate marketing program management on several occasions, so you know what the stake is. If you haven’t yet found a competent and experienced affiliate program manager, now would be the best time to do it.

Not only will they take over all the above hassles and responsibilities, but they will steer your program in the right direction, by recruiting, activating, and motivating affiliates, managing tracking, payments, and reporting, and proposing program performance-boosting strategies.

You have two options: hire or outsource. Having an in-house affiliate manager may seem like a great option. However, finding one with experience in your particular line of business can be challenging. Even if you succeed, their services may cost a fortune. If you settle for an inexperienced manager, you may have to postpone your affiliate program’s launch indefinitely.

A simpler, more effective, and often more affordable option is to work with an outsource program management agency like ours. You can even combine the two options and have the affiliate management company complement your affiliate manager’s efforts. At AM Navigator, we’ve successfully launched, managed, and audited numerous programs like yours.

We can help you, too. Get in touch now, and we’ll gladly use our knowledge and experience to help you prepare your affiliate program’s launch and secure its success!

The post The Ultimate Checklist for a Successful Affiliate Program Launch appeared first on Affiliate Marketing Blog by Geno Prussakov.

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This may be of interest to you.

One of the most overlooked ranking factors in Google is your bounce rate.

That’s because bounce rate doesnt have a direct impact on SEO.

BUT!

It does have a huge impact on lots of metrics that DO have a direct impact on your rankings.

In fact you are losing out on traffic every single day that you are ignoring your bounce rate.

I will explain more about that later, but first let me tell you…

What You Will Learn

• Why bounce rate is important for SEO
• What bounce rate really is (it’s not exit rate)
• How to increase traffic by lowering your bounce rate
• 8 ways lower your bounce rate right now

What Is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave without viewing any other pages on your website.

For example, if one of your pages has a bounce rate of 75%, it means that 75% of the people who come to that page leave after only viewing the page on which they entered.

It doesn’t matter if they spend 20 seconds or 20 minutes; if they leave without visiting any other page on your site, it’s considered a bounced visit.

If your site only has a limited amount of pages and few internal links, your bounce rate will naturally be high.

Think about it.

Where can people go?

On the other hand, if your page has more than a dozen pages, and particularly if they have good content, good design, and good internal linking—you will have a lower bounce rate.

To find your bounce rate, go to your Google Analytics account and on the left sidebar, click on Audience > Overview:

There — you will see your average bounce rate.

Note: This blogs bounce rate is 75.87%

This bounce rate isn’t representative of your real bounce rate because it includes the behavior of the new users and the returning ones.

That’s why you need to segment it by audience to get a true look at things.

In the left sidebar, click on Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Then, in the top bar, click on the “+Add Segment” button.

In the list of available segments, scroll down until you find the “New Users” segment and click on the “Apply” button.

The “New User” segment will only show you the bounce rate of the people who have never visited your site before.

In the All Pages report that you accessed before, you will be able to see how the bounce rate of your new visitors compares to the returning ones.

Bounce Rate Isn’t The Same As Exit Rate

Some people confuse bounce rate with exit rate. They may seem similar, but the truth is that they are different metrics.

Exit rate is the percentage of visits who actively click away to a different site from a specific page, whereas bounce rate is the percentage of visits that were the only one of the session.

In other words, the exit rate represents the visitors who exited on a specific page, after possibly having visited other pages on your site.

Bounce rate, on the other hand, records when a user exits directly from the page they entered.

Therefore, all bounces are exits, but not all exits are bounces.

How Bounce Rate Affects Your Rankings

Bounce rate has never been considered an important metric SEO-wise.

Sure it was nice to improve the user experience and there are many reasons to do that, but it had no impact on the way a site ranked in the search engines.

But all of that has changed.

One way bounce rate can negatively impact your rankings is when a user visits your site, clicks back to the search results, and clicks on a competitor’s result.

That’s called pogo sticking and is essentially a Bounce.

When that happens, the user is saying your site isn’t as good as your competitor’s one – and Google is tracking that!

A high bounce rate means you also likely have a high pogo sticking rate and that is casting negative votes against your rankings every day.

Not only that but a high bounce rate is often a symptom of weakness in other SEO factors-

1. Low engagement
2. Slow speed
3. Bad mobile optimization
4. Bad keyword matching
5. Bad design
6. Bad internal linking
7. Bad content

If you improve each of these aspects of your site, you will make your website more relevant and therefore, better suited to rank while taking care of the pogo sticking issue at the same time.

So let me show you just how easy it is to lower your bounce rate right now-

How To Lower Your Bounce Rate (And Increase Your Rankings)

If your site has many different pages, like blog posts, landing pages and an about us page — you can expect a wide range of bounce rates.

That’s why you need to take a look at the bounce rate of each individual page to see which one has the highest bounce rate right now.

You should focus on fixing the pages with the highest bounce rate and most traffic before anything else.

Here’s how you do it.

Step #1 – Finding The Pages With The Highest Bounce Rate

First off, go to Google Analytics, and click on Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Here you will see the pages on your website that have received the most pageviews and their bounce rates.

Sort the bounce rate by clicking on that column to see pages with the highest to lowest bounce rate at the top-

One problem with this report is that you will get pages with little to no traffic.

You want to ignore those pages with next to no traffic and focus on the ones that have at least a certain amount of traffic.

To filter those low-traffic pages, click on “Advanced.”

In the menu, click on the “Page” dimension, and scroll down to the “Site Usage” section.

Then click on the “Pageviews” filter.

Make sure the filter says “Greater than” and then define the minimum amount of pageviews you want to filter this report with.

Click on “Apply” and you will get a list of all the pages with the highest bounce rate AND more than 100 pageviews-

This report helps you see what pages you need to focus your efforts on.

Step #2 – Find The Parts That People Don’t Like Or Understand

You may think your website is simple to understand, but your readers may disagree.

Instead of guessing what people do on your site, you can use heatmaps to find the specific user behaviors that show you the parts people look at, scroll to, and click-through.

With the information from heatmaps, you can determine the best layout & content placement for your site.

For example, the following heatmap shows how the visitors of this site behave-

With this heatmap, we can see the visitors scrolled in the article’s title, in the badges at the top, and in the menu bar, particularly the “Post Categories” section.

Some others seem to click on the bottom right, probably to click on the scroll bar.

With the information from this heatmap analysis, I could optimize my site by testing-

• A larger top menu bar
• Adding/removing calls to action on the menu bar
• Adding a link to the award images (or placing a call to action near them)
• Remove the about me box in the sidebar and replace it with a call to action (takes lots of space, gets zero attention)

You can use a heatmap to find things like:

• The sections that people most look and most ignore, so you can make things more/less prominent
• The buttons people see but ignore
• Which page elements attract peoples attention

You should use the data from the heatmaps to carry out A/B tests and improve your pages.

A tool I recommend is Inspectlet, which not only gives you access to heatmaps, but also to session recordings, and form analytics, among other things.

Here is a handy coupon for you.

Step #3 – Make Your Pages Match Your Desired Keyword Or Message

The best way of lowering your bounce rate is by improving the engagement on your pages.

One reason why your pages have low engagement may be due to the fact your visitors don’t get what they want—or expect to get—based on the information shown in the Google results.

For example, if you’re running an ad on Google Adwords that leads to a page with high bounce rate (and low conversion rate as well), it may be that the ad promises something that the visitors don’t get.

The same applies to someone who reaches your site through an organic search result, email or social media.

It’s important that your content matches the intent of the keyword.

In the example below, you can see the results for the keyword “how do you start a blog post”

But none of the ads have anything to do with my search.

They are all about starting a blog, not writing a blog post.

I clicked on the third result, and here’s the landing page they offer:

Weebly is one of the largest website builders, yet in this case, their ad is completely irrelevant to what I was looking for, which is blog post writing tips.

How do you think this affects their bounce rate?

Make sure your title tags and meta descriptions paint an honest picture of what your pages are about. As the saying goes, underpromise and overdeliver.

Step #4 – Improve Internal Linking

I have already shown you how implementing the right internal linking strategy will improve rankings.

But besides the direct SEO benefits, internal linking allows people to visit more pages on your site, thus lowering your bounce rate.

The goal of your internal links should be to invite people to look further on your site.

Your internal links can be contextual (i.e., those that show up in a sentence), or separated from your content, like the ones shown at the bottom of this article.

For example, here’s one contextual link taken from the internal linking article:

And here’s an example of three non-contextual internal links:

If you have a blog or a niche site, you can add “Related articles” at the end of your content like I do on the blog using this plugin.

When linking contextually, think about other pages that people could be interested in.

If you have an e-commerce store, think about adding a “Related products” at the end of your product pages. Actually if you have an ecommerce store you should implement my 7 day ecommerce SEO strategy.

Look at how Asos uses three different types of related product recommendations-

1. One for shopping the whole look (which adds more relevance to the recommendations)
2. One that’s based on your preferences
3. One based on recently viewed products

If your design includes a sidebar, like the case of The Next Web, then include links that everyone should read.

For example, if you have one article you know that has high engagement or a high conversion rate, make sure to add it.

I do this with the Super Post plugin on the blog but you’ll notice my blog posts don’t have a sidebar – just my home page, archive pages and static pages do.

Step #5 – Optimize Your Site For Mobile

As I showed you in my recent post about Googles new SEO starter guide, mobile organic traffic has accounted for 50.3% of all web traffic generated worldwide.

If someone visits your site from a phone and it’s not mobile optimized, they will have a horrible experience which will lead to a bounce or negative pogo stick signal.

Most WordPress themes (including my Authority theme) are responsive and mobile-friendly.

But I highly suggest you browse your site on both a smartphone and a tablet to see how it looks.

A recent study by ConversionXL showed that when Bullymax optimized their site for mobile, they got a purchase conversion rate uplift of 24.5%-

What’s more, They also saw an increase in their search engine traffic after making their site mobile-friendly-

So pull out your phone or tablet and check your mobile experience right now.

You will be surprised at what gets through the cracks!

Step #6 – Make Your Content Easy To Read

One of the biggest contributors to a high bounce rate is badly written content.

But what is badly written content?

It’s not really got anything to do with grammar or spelling mistakes but it’s more about how that content engages people.

Does the content match the intent of the keyword? And if it does – does the content engage people enough for them to click through to other parts of your site?

For that to happen you need to make sure your content is easy to read and draws people in.

If you have read my content for some time, you know that all my paragraphs are short, easy to read, and clearly written.

You can do that by doing things like-

• Adding sub headings
• Adding images
• Making text bold/italic/underlined
• Adding bullet pointed lists (like this one)
• Breaking your content down into smaller pieces

And contrary to popular SEO advice:

Once I finish writing an article, during the editing process I try to reduce the word count as much as possible while adding value at the same time.

You can find an analysis of your writing by checking the results Yoast SEO gives you at bottom of your posts.

You don’t need to achieve the perfect score here (I never do) but you wants to try and get a green light on the majority of points.

While the plugin says there are two problems in my article, what matters isn’t to get a perfect score, but to get the majority of the points in green.

You could also take advantage of some of these SEO copywriting techniques to help keep people hooked!

Just take a look at how Steve Kamb of NerdFitness writes the intro in this article:

It’s emotional, it’s appealing, and it creates suspense on how to achieve the same results as the subject of the article.

There are more techniques you can use in your intros, including the Agree-Promise-Preview (APP) Model and The Bridge Model.

Whatever technique you use, having a catchy intro is a great way of sucking people into your site.

Step #7 – Make Your Site Faster

If your site is slow, people will bounce. Fact.

Not only that but it’s costing you more money than you realise.

Decreasing my site’s load speed time by 3.156 seconds allowed me to earn $30,587 in just 6 hours.

To increase your page speed, run your website through GTMetrix.

GTMetrix will give you a breakdown of your page, its loading time, and the problems it encountered loading it.

The best part is that if you click on each problem, you will get a specific analysis of the files it had problems loading.

If you need help improving your site speed, first you should also use a plugin like W3 Total Cache, which allows you to optimise your site’s page speed in a few minutes without spending a penny.

You can turbo charge that even further by using a Content Delivery Network like MaxCDN.

And if you are really serious about increasing your site speed (you should be) then use a good host like WPXhosting or Kinsta (who host this blog), which will have a huge impact on your site speed.

Step #8 – Add Clear Call To Actions

You can have a beautifully-designed page, but if it doesn’t have a clear call-to-action (CTA) you will be doing damage to your bounce rate.

Every page on your site should have a specific goal in mind, for example-

• A homepage that leads to a sign up trial, a lead magnet download, or a piece of content
• A blog post that provides a lead magnet or content upgrade
• An about us page that leads to a page where you show case studies from other clients

I visited the homepage of my favorite backlink checker on the planet, Ahrefs–

Not only is the title and description fantastic but the CTA is above-the-fold, it contrasts with the rest of the page and offers a clear benefit at a low price.

Obviously people are going to click through at a high rate because its both highly relevant and the most obvious thing to do on the page.

Make sure all your pages and posts have at least one CTA, even if you find it hard to find one that’s relevant – adding something is better than nothing.

It’s easy to imagine that a product page has a “Add to bag” button, like the case of Asos.

Your “About us” page should lead to a contact form for your services, a popular and profitable piece of content or a category page with your most widely shopped products.

Your blog posts should lead to your content upgrades or lead magnets backed up with an email marketing strategy

All of these things will not only lower your bounce rate, but increase your conversions and profits as well.

Wrapping It Up

So now you know how to lower your bounce rate, what are you waiting for?

Because you are literally losing traffic and profits every single day that you are not optimising your bounce rate.

Here are 4 quick ways you can get started today:

1. Use Google Analytics to find which pages have the highest bounce rate that alsorecieve a large % of your sites traffic – focus on these pages first.
2. Install Inspectlet to begin analyzing how your visitors interact with those pages. Based on the heatmap analysis, improve your site to make it easier to use.
3. Run your site on GTMetrix and check for any problems that slow down your site. Install W3 Total Cache and use MaxCDN. You might want to change to a faster host like WPXhosting or Kinsta (who host this blog).
4. Run your site through the Google Mobile-Friendly Test and fix any problems the tool finds. If you see your site isn’t responsive at all, it’s easier to change to a Worpdress theme that is.

Once you have taken care of those foundation problems you can focus on adding call to actions, making your content easier to read and improving internal linking.

But until then don’t forget:

Every day you are ignoring your bounce rate, you are losing traffic.

Which change has had the biggest impact on bounce rate for you?

How Lowering Your Bounce Rate Can Help You Increase Your Rankings was originally published on Matthew Woodward

We hope you enjoyed this.

This may be of interest to you.

Running a business is no easy feat. Not only are you tasked with creating great products and services, building effective marketing campaigns, and ensuring great customer service, but you also have to handle all the less glamorous behind-the-scenes tasks. Legal procedures are rarely fun to deal with, but they help guarantee that your business is in good standing and that you won’t be risking everything you’ve worked hard for.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of small businesses fail within the first year. Within the second year, 30% have failed. And within five years, 50% of all small businesses go under.

Image source: Washington Post

Of course, there are many reasons why these businesses aren’t surviving the infancy stage. Roughly 17% of businesses that failed lacked a business model or plan. But with the right legal actions, you can avoid some costly, crippling mistakes. Here’s what you should avoid:  

Filing Their Business Inaccurately

There are several business entities you can choose to file your business under. Among the most popular include sole proprietorship, limited liability company, C corp, and S corp. There are pros and cons to each, however, filing the wrong way can be catastrophic. For example, a sole proprietorship has no clear distinction between a business and the owner, and therefore, the business owner has zero liability protection. Yet many businesses set their company up this way simply because it’s easy, low-cost, and there are no corporate taxes or double taxation fees. But in a business economy where half of all businesses fail (more depending on the industry), you should take extra precaution. You could lose all your personal assets if your business doesn’t make it.

On the same token, many businesses choose to operate under a DBA, or “Doing Business As.” According to Incfile, “If you are a sole proprietor or cofounder of a partnership and you want to do business with a name that is different from your personal name, you can register a DBA name. This gives your business a certain marketing identity that is separate from your personal name, but it’s not the same as a corporate structure in the eyes of the law.”  Corporations can also do the same to use a different business name that’s separate from the corporation they’ve set up.

However, this can be extremely risky. When you operate under a DBA, you don’t have any official rights to your business name. And business owners that registers a legal entity using the same name would officially own rights to your DBA, which could hurt your marketing, credibility, brand, and bottom line. Similarly, you won’t be protected from your assets and the most you could do is have a business card with your DBA name on it.

Always be careful when it comes to choosing your legal entity. Consult with a lawyer to discuss what’s best for you personally, and what’s in the best interest of your company in the long-run.

Riding the Discrimination Line

Discrimination is a major concern for businesses today, and the line between what’s acceptable and what isn’t can be blurry. Whether you realize it or not, the threat of a lawsuit is real. According to CourtStatistics.org, the median costs of a business lawsuit for small businesses is around $54,000 for a liability suit, and $91,000 for a contract dispute.

There are countless examples of companies who have been sued for discrimination. Some of these companies are larger, and can afford to shell out hundreds of thousands on a discrimination lawsuit, while others could lose their business. IBM, for example, faced a class action lawsuit after three senior employees believed they were let go so that the tech giant could make room for a younger workforce.

The line can become even more blurry. The Wing, a renowned co-working space dedicated to women—faced another lawsuit after it was called discriminatory against men. Although the company’s branding, celeb guest speakers, and offices spaces—which include pink makeup rooms and breast pumping stations—have been consistently touted as a private space for women to work and network with other women, the company recently had to change their membership policy after discrimination complaints. Now, men can technically apply for membership.

If you’re aiming towards a specific target market, or targeting certain demographics, it’s important that you tread the line carefully. Think about who you could possibly be offending, and always err on the safe side.

ADA Compliant Signage

If your store isn’t accessible to handicapped persons, you could find yourself in trouble. Your retail space should include signage that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  Handicapped people should have easy access to your restrooms, parking lot, cashier stations, entryways, and fitting rooms. Permanent signs should include Braille, and need to be mounted at specific heights. There are many other rules for compliant signage, and you should take your time learning each of them. Consider hiring a third party company that’s proficient with compliance laws.

Unfortunately, many businesses have lost their companies because they failed to comply with these laws. Case in point: one man based in San Francisco filed lawsuits against a handful of businesses who were not ADA-compliant. These laws are strict, and business owners will almost always lose. There are several serial lawsuit filers who take advantage of this, and then there are others who file out of frustration when they have to deal with non-compliant stores. Therefore, it’s crucial to have your store up to par so you aren’t on the giving end of a settlement.

The post 3 Easy Legal Mistakes That Retail Businesses Make appeared first on Zac Johnson.

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This may be of interest to you.

Affiliate marketing is a legitimate industry. There are no two ways about that. Don't let anyone tell you the whole industry is a scam!

However, there definitely are some affiliate marketing scams that we've seen people fall prey to. This often happens to newbies and leaves them with a bad taste in their mouths.

We don't want you to become disillusioned with affiliate marketing, so keep reading and stay safe. 

Affiliate Marketing Scam Examples

Like any other online industry, there are plenty of scams doing the rounds in the world of affiliate marketing. Scammers (unfortunately) are always trying to find new ways to make money off innocent affiliates. 

These are some of the most common affiliate marketing scams we've come across.

1. Fake Affiliate Marketing Training

Most newbie affiliates like to do a training course to get started in the industry. There will be hundreds of people trying to sell you a course, an e-book, a webinar and various other kinds of information. Do your research before you pick your training program.

Many of these training programs are often nothing more than a rip-off. You don't actually learn anything useful and you're out whatever money you spent, as well. At the most, you might get an e-book that is full of fluff and no real, actionable lessons. So make sure do your training with a well known name. 

Check out AffiloBlueprint – a step-by-step system for newbies that shows you how to build an income from your website. 

2. Get-Rich-Quick Offers

The reason affiliate marketing gets such a bad rap is because of the proliferation of get-rich-quick offers everywhere. They promise you will make thousands of dollars overnight, or that you can just work 2 hours a day and have $5,000 in your bank account at the end of the week. 

Don't fall for it. 

If anyone tries to sell you a "secret system that works," don't believe them. Legitimate affiliate marketing takes a bit of time to learn and while you will make money from it, it doesn't happen overnight. You need a strategy and you need to implement it well before you make any income.

3. No Product/Service to Sell

Affiliate marketers make their money by promoting someone else's product or services. If a company is promising you thousands of dollars in income, look closer. What is it that you're actually selling? If there is no actual product or service, it's nothing more than a scam.

These affiliate marketing "opportunities" are designed like pyramid schemes where no one is actually making any money. You make an investment to join the program and after that, money is just passed around from one person to the next. These schemes are totally illegal! You will lose your investment, and you're not going to make any affiliate income from it, either. 

4. Pay-To-Join Programs

Real, legitimate affiliate programs are free to join. An authentic affiliate program should be risk-free for affiliates. You should never have to pay a fee to sign up to a program. If you are asked to pay a fee to join, steer clear. It is most likely an illegal multi-level marketing scheme. 

Be sure to check out our forum post on how to tell the legitimacy of an affiliate program. 

5. Domain Name Scams

This was a popular scam doing the rounds a couple of years ago. Say you owned the domain abc.com. You would receive an email (usually from China) telling you that someone is trying to register the domain name abc.cn in China. They are emailing you out of concern as they have noticed you own the .com domain. They want to make sure your trademark is protected in China.

If you fall for the blatant lie, they will tell you as the original owner of the particular business name, they will give you preference. So you have the right to register the abc.cn domain name with them, first. You will be sent a price list and they will make money off you by making you purchase a domain name that you didn't ever need.

There are a few other variations of this type of scam, so beware of any random emails concerning your domain names. 

How to Avoid Internet Affiliate Marketing Scams

The rule of thumb before signing up for any affiliate program or affiliate training course is to do your due diligence. There are some well known and reputable programs and courses in the industry (including ours!) but when you're new, it's hard to tell.

Follow these tips to make sure you don't get caught up in an affiliate marketing scam.

Ask Google

The easiest way to find out the legitimacy of any affiliate program or training course is to Google it. If it's a well known scam, you will more than likely see reports about it online. If you can't tell just by searching for the name, try searching for variations, such as "[affiliate program name] scam" or "[affiliate program name] ripoff." You can also search for "[affiliate program name] reviews," etc. 

The Company Website

If Google isn't yielding much information, head straight to the company website. Legitimate companies in the affiliate marketing industry always have professional websites. If this is not the case, it should raise a red flag for you.

Genuine Commission Percentage

As an affiliate, you will make money off commissions. If a company is offering a ridiculously high commission percentage, don't believe it straight away. It's not impossible (some programs really are quite generous), but it's better to do your research and see if they really pay out their affiliates. Also, make sure the products and services they offer are genuine and of good quality.

If It's Too Good To Be True

Image credit: Farces of Nature

The bottom line is, if something is too good to be true, you are better off being suspicious about it. Be wary of unrealistic offers, easy money schemes and any businesses (especially foreign) offering to help you with something out of the blue.

Use your common sense and you have nothing to worry about. There are hundreds of genuine and completely legitimate ways to make money as an affiliate. Be aware of the affiliate marketing scams, but don't let them keep you up at night!

Do you know of any other affiliate marketing scams that we've missed? Let us know and we'll add them to the list.

We hope you enjoyed this.