For content creators, it’s easy to think about a topic or idea to write about. However, putting these ideas into structured words and paragraphs can be a little tricky. Seeing that white empty blank page can be intimidating for some writers or non-writers alike. It’s easy to get lost in your own head anfffd end up having no clue what to start writing about. This is where blog post templates come to the rescue! In this article, we’ll show you the best free blog post templates that will help you write faster and easier.
What Are Blog Post Templates?
A blog post template is a document that is pre-formatted with built-in sentences that are structured with blanks that you’re supposed to fill and customize for your blog. Blog post templates serve as a great starting point for writing new content.
There are many different templates you can use and some require you to pay a fee. But if you don’t feel like putting dents on your wallet, read this run-down of blog post templates that you can use for free:
Hubspot is one of the leading marketing software companies that is built to help marketers grow their marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM. They have blogs that we find very useful for marketers. One of the many helpful resources they have is their collection of nearly 400 content creation templates for blogging, infographics, ebook writing, and more. In this collection, they have five blog post templates you can use for your blogs. While their templates are nothing like fill-in-the-blank types, you can use them as a guide for the critical steps when writing blog posts.
West US is a communications service that helps office firms and coworkers to communicate efficiently. Their blogs contain tips and how-tos about hosting webinars and video conferences for business purposes alike. In one of their blogs, they broke down six press release templates for you to use. They have varied templates for different kinds of press releases such as the general press release, special events, unveiling or launch date, company developments, awards, and contact lists. These templates are indeed useful if you need help in writing a proper press release to promote announcements, events, or a new product.
Infographics transform difficult to read information into skimmable and easy to digest visual graphics. It’s a great way to spark your audience’s interest and appeal. As to why Venngage offers its customers a platform to create their own professional-looking infographics with their easy to use infographic maker. They have an overwhelming amount of different infographic styles, which can be confusing. As to why, as a guide, they published nine different infographic templates on their website. These templates vary based on the goal of your infographic and the type of data you want to convey.
Co-Schedule is an all-around digital marketing tool. It’s the tool for marketing, blogging, and social media strategizing and management. In one of their blogs, they published 10 simple blog post templates that cover all of the steps in the process of creating content. It’s basically a guide on how to write fantastic blogs without having to spend a lot of time. There’s just one template for blogging, but the other nine focuses on keyword research, social posts, and more.
Blog templates are reliable tools you can use when writing for content, especially when you don’t have much time to write. However, don’t depend on these templates too much. As much as these templates are very useful, only use them as a guide in constructing sentences and paragraphs. Nevertheless, continue to express your creative freedom and write from what you know and what you actually want to write about.
Keyword Research is essential for your website’s SEO. It’s a process that involves searching for the most popular words or phrases people type into their search engines when looking for something in particular. However, keyword research is more than just analytics, percentages, and rankings. It requires you to understand your audience and get to know them closely. In this article, we’ll show you how how to analyze your audience in keyword research by uncovering their intention for searching, the problem you intend to solve, and understand their vocabulary. Your audience’s demographics is one thing, but you need to know which topics will spark their interests, what tone of writing they’re going to read, what products they need, and much more.
Their Intention
People use the search bar for many different reasons. It usually starts with words like ‘how to’, ‘what is’, ‘how much’, “where is”, etc. These are called search intent— the reason people do a specific search on the web. As a website owner, you should be able to determine and make sure that your website serves your visitors’ intention with quality content or product.
There are about three reasons why people use the search bar; they look for information, they are trying to get to a particular website, or they want to purchase a product from the internet.
Their Problem
After knowing your audience’s search intent, analyze the problem you intend to solve for them. Nothing is more effective than a website that serves answers and solutions dedicated to help. After researching the best keywords that have high search volumes, decipher them into content that will serve an answer to your audience’s problems.
To analyze your audience in keyword research, think about problem-solving content that they will find useful. This way, your visitors will come back for reference purposes.
Their Vocabulary
Knowing the best keywords is one thing, but they should closely resemble the vocabulary of your audience. There are specific terms and sentences that specifically speak to your audience, as to why it’s important to know their language. You need to know what words they actually use, how they search for it, and what will get them clicking. Go for something that your visitors can relate to and be able to understand. Determine your approach and tone of writing that you’re going to use.
Take our website for example. We dedicate our blogs to educate small business owners that have little to no background in SEO, digital marketing, or web design. As to why we intend to use words that are simple, basic and non-technical. Meanwhile, there are websites that have technical terms and phrases that are solely catered to tech-savvy people.
Conclusion
Google Analytics and Facebook Insights are two of the many tools you could use to closely analyze your audience. However, sometimes in order to really get into the minds of your audience, initiating a conversation with them just might be the best thing to do. Get involved in the community and actually talk to your audience. If you could talk to some of them, you could get a better idea of who they really are.
Keyword research is essential in creating a website for your business. Our team of experts is highly trained in keyword research for SEO. We’ll take care of your website’s design, SEO, social media, blogging, and more. Contact us today!
Imagine one of your site visitors looking up something from your website and finds nothing but an annoying error page that says “content not found”. Uh oh, it’s a deleted page! This is frustrating to come across and instances like this are not good for your visitors and neither for your website’s reputation. In this article, we’ll show you how to delete website pages the right way so these error pages will stop appearing.
Updating your website may include deleting old or outdated pages that you think are no longer needed or relevant for your website, however, before you send off any of your web pages into thin air, you have to consider redirecting its old URL first so you won’t leave your visitors hanging with an empty deleted page.
“Content Not Found”…what?!
An Error 404 or Error 410 will appear once a page is deleted. The server stopped processing the requested page because there was an error. Here are two error pages that you need to know:
Error 404
As mentioned before, this is the error page that pops up and says “content not found” when you try to get access to a site or a page, indicating that it’s unavailable. Usually, it pops up when the URL is not typed correctly or it doesn’t really exist. It’s like a ‘dead-end street’ that is closed at one end and doesn’t lead you anywhere.
Error 410
Similarly to Error 404, this one is more specific and straight-up indicated that the content or page is deleted. This means that Google knows that the page is ‘gone’ for sure and it’s no longer accessible on the server.
How To Avoid These Error Pages:
Now that you’re aware of these error pages, let’s do something about it. When avoiding these error pages popping up, consider creating a redirect page (also known as Website Redirects). Website Redirects automatically send your site visitors and search engines from one URL to another. When someone tries to access the original link, they will be automatically transferred to a new page or website. There are several types of redirects but these two are best suited during deleting content or a page:
301 Redirect
It’s a page that permanently redirects your visitors to once the original one is removed or cannot be found. To avoid error pages, you use a 301 redirect. This way, you could redirect your visitors to a link from your website that gives the same information they might be looking for. This also comes in handy if you have an outdated content and you want your visitors to go straight to a newly updated one.
302 Redirect
While a 301 Redirect redirects pages permanently, a 302 Redirect does the same thing temporarily. This type of redirect is best used for when you want to send your site visitors to a new page for a brief period of time and you intend to bring the original page or URL back to your website. For example, let’s say that one page from your site is under construction, then a 302 redirect is a great option to go for.
There’s nothing more disappointing when an empty deleted page pops up when it had a really promising header or title. Error pages decrease your website’s quality and value and it negatively affects your SEO ranking as well. As to why when deleting pages from your site, do it properly by using Website Redirects.
Deleting web pages from your site is one of many tasks you need in order to have a beautiful and fully-functioning website. These tasks are very time-consuming and your time would be better spent on growing your business. Here at EZtransition, we understand small businesses. Our team of experts will handle these mundane but important web tasks while you focus on growth. We’ll take care of your website’s design, SEO, social media, blogging, and more. Contact us today!
Creating a logo design for your business can be a complex process. Employ the best graphic designer and issues can still crop up if you are not well informed. It is necessary for you as a client to continuously communicate with your designer to reach the best possible result. Logo designers are not created equally but even novice designers agree with the following 7 tips below.
1. Keep the design simple
A client may want to incorporate many elements in the logo and a designer may be forced to design a very complicated logo. A logo with too many complex elements often fails to create the expected impact. Keep the logo simple, ideally something that anyone can sketch in less than a minute.
2. Avoid Using Clipart
Clipart can be tempting because it is cheap and readily available. It takes a really skilled designer to make a logo look premium using clipart. Online logo makers typically use clipart, which can make your logo look like something that already exists. It’s best to stay away from clipart unless it is unique
3. Integrate the Company’s Spirit
A corporate identity should incorporate designs that reflect the company’s essence. It should represent the true nature of the business. For example, a consulting business logo should include formal colors and designs. Blue is an ideal color for consulting. On the contrary, a cartoon site may have a logo with bright shades of yellow or orange denoting fun and amusement.
This does not mean that the logo should incorporate all facets of the business. Let’s say your business quickly delivers nurses that provide multiple types of care to seniors, your logo should not be a graphic of a someone dressed as a running nurse with eight arms, enclosed in a beating heart.
4. Size matters
Your logo should maximize whatever real estate it occupies. A good logo should look great whether is stamped on a pencil or plastered on a billboard. Be sure to test this by viewing your logo on different devices from your smartwatch to your big screen tv.
5. Ask for different layouts
You probably won’t start off with billboards, instead, your use case may be more around business cards, websites, and promotional materials. Be sure to ask for different layouts to match the intended printed material
6. Use fewer colors
Colors play a crucial role in logo design so in most cases, use no more than two colors. Multiple colors can add all kinds of complexity from print costs to issues on third party materials. Remember you will be giving out your logo to other organizations if you want to do co-marketing or sponsorships.
Some colors that cannot be neatly transformed on some mediums. Be aware of such colors. A good rule of thumb is to stick to basic primary colors.
7. Show me the vector
Vector images are made up of basic geometric shapes such as points, lines, and curves. Vector images can scale up or down in size without losing quality. Jpeg, gifs, etc, on the other hand, are made up and pixels that do not scale as well. Logos should be created in vector programs like Adobe Illustrator. Always ask for the original vector file.
Need help with your logo?
A professionally designed logo will give your company’s image an additional boost. Contact the folks at EZtransition to design you a customized and professional logo.
EZtransition provides quality web services and products that enable North American small businesses to improve their image and quickly add value to their operation. We strive to continually improve all facets of the business in order to offer customers affordable prices and greater innovation.
We live in a real-time world and sometimes your customers just need a quick answer. There is no better tool to answer quick questions than a live chat widget on your website. There are many paid options for live chat, but Facebook provides a pretty good if not one of the best options for free. Its Facebook messenger and the good news is that your clients are probably already using it.
Why Use Messenger’s Customer Chat on Your WordPress Website?
1. Your customers are already using it.
This cannot be stated enough. There are 2 billion people already using Facebook messager, chances are your target customer is one of them. Why force them to use something else. Meet them on their own turf and make it easy for them to talk to you.
2. Target the customer again and again…and again
Once the customer engages with you once, Facebook records the interaction and will let you build a custom audience that you can run ads against. You can even use the sponsored ads feature directly in Facebook messenger. If a customer is reaching out to you, then they are most likely a high-quality lead. Facebook Messenger lets you re-engage as often as you need to.
3. Build and integrate Chat Bots.
Danger Will Robinson, Danger! Ok, not that kind of Bot. Facebook messenger platform allows you to build chatbots that can handle basic conversations without you and even learn the best ways to respond over time. Imagine your website engaging in a natural sales or customer service conversation then sending you only customers that are ready to convert! The Facebook platform makes this not only possible but relatively easy.
Adding the Facebook Messenger Plugin to Your WordPress Website
So we’ve reviewed the benefits now let’s go ahead and add this thing to our WordPress site. Facebook messenger chat can be added to your WordPress site Website in a number of different ways. We could use a plugin, but at EZtransition we tend to avoid using plugins if we don’t have to. This is a clear case of “don’t have to”. Since all our websites are powered by the DIVI framework, it super easy to paste some code into the theme which will give you that coveted Facebook chat widget at the bottom right corner of your page.
First, we need to get the code from Facebook. Go to your Fan page → Settings → Messenger Platform. In the Whitelisted Domains, enter your website address. Then click Save to complete.
Scroll down to the Customer Chat Plugin section and click “setup”.
Follow the three-step wizard then copy the resulting code.
Go to the General tab click on messages, check the box allowing people to use the message button, and save the changes.
Now we need to get your code on your website.
login to your WordPress site.
go to Divi -> theme options -> integrations
paste in your facebook code into the box that says “Add code to the < body > (good for tracking codes such as google analytics)”
That’s it, you’re done. Sit back and enjoy the customer conversations. If you’re an EZtransition customer, you can simply open a ticket and we’ll do this for you on request.
