Broken Backlink Checker

For all you non-technical users out there, trying to determine if your website has a 404 error or a broken link can be difficult. Fortunately for you, there's a website called brokenlinkcheck.com. All you need to do is, type in your web address, click on "Find broken links."



It's going to do a little security check to make sure I'm human, hopefully, I am. I would suggest clicking the second box down here and then "Find broken links".



What the system is doing is, it's going out and it's looking for broken links. Now, I've already run this on the Simple Biz website, you'll see it's complete, and it processed 492 pages, zero broken links found. If it had found a broken link, it would list the URL of the webpage that had the broken link. Then you would need to go in, find out where that broken link is and fix it.

Year-End Website Check List 2015

What Is A Heat Map?

If you’re a visual learner and you’d like to know how your website is performing, a heat map is a great tool. While I always recommend having Google Analytics, not everybody can read numbers the same way they can see things visually. I like to use “Crazy Egg,” they have a plugin that you can install into your WordPress website and you can actually see it overlays your website and collects information where people are clicking.

Why it’s important? One, it will let you know where people are clicking most. That way you can go to those pages and make sure that the content is convincing, if you want conversion. The other thing you can do is if you see that people are clicking in areas maybe you’re not expecting them to, find out why. Look at the elements, look at the text, and make it different. If I’m clicking here and this isn’t doing anything it’s going to frustrate me as a customer.

How To Delete A WordPress Plugin From A Website

To delete a plugin from your WordPress website, the first thing you’ll need to do is log in, and then on the left hand side click on plugins. You’ll need to identify which plugin you want to delete and make sure that it is currently inactive.

So, as an example, this GoDaddy quick setup, I want to get rid of it, and you can see that it’s currently inactive because it gives me the option to activate it. That means it is currently deactivated, so all I need to do is click the red delete button, and it’s going to go ahead and remove the file. Typically, it is going to ask me if it wants me to delete all of the files. In most cases, yes, this is the case. So I’m going to go ahead and delete all files and data.

Any time you delete a plugin, I always recommend that you go back to your website and double check that it hasn’t affected anything since it is a piece of software. And that’s how you delete a plugin in WordPress.

How To Update A WordPress Plugin

WordPress and WordPress plugins are software, and they do need to be updated on a regular basis. The first thing you’ll need to do is log into your WordPress account.

Then on the left hand side, you’ll see plugins in the dashboard. You’ll see there’s a one next to it. That indicates that there is a plugin that needs to be updated. All you need to do is at this top bar right here is look for “update available”, click on it, and it will automatically pull up all the plugins that need to be updated. If you have multiple, all you need to do is click the button here, that will select all the plugins in this list, then click on bulk actions, and up-to-date. Click apply, and now your plugin is up-to-date.

The one thing you’ll want to do is make sure you check your WordPress afterwards, and make sure it didn’t create any problems. Since it is an update, it may cause interference with your WordPress site.

And that’s how you update a WordPress plugin.

Brand Social Media Accounts With Canva

Canva is a very simple graphic design tool that is free to use, all you need to do is go to canva.com. I use it personally for a lot of my social media content.

Now, what’s really cool about it is if you click on canva.com and log in, you click on this “more” button, they have a number of presets for your social media header. So you can create a consistent brand by clicking on a Facebook event cover, a YouTube thumbnail, a Tumblr banner if you’re on Tumblr, YouTube channel art, Twitter header, Google Plus photo, Facebook cover, email header, even if you… And look at this, they even have Etsy.

What’s really cool about it is it predetermines the size, the number of pixels across and the number of pixels down, and all you need to do is put your content in by uploading it. Start branding all of your social media accounts by visiting Canva today.

How To Choose The Right Fonts For Your Website

How Create A Twitter List

Twitter lists can be made on both the desktop and mobile application. In this case, I’m going to show you how to do it from a desktop.

What you’ll need to do is go to your profile, and you can click your image and then “View Profile”, and you’ll see right down here in the middle of the screen approximately is “List”. Go ahead and click on “List”, and any list that you’ve already created will show up here. On the right hand side, click “Create New List”, and then go ahead and give it a name.

In this case, I’m going to call it Influencers. I’m going to make it a public list so everybody can see it. If you only want you to be able to see it, just click “Private”. Once you’re done, save list. The next thing you’ll need to do is add people to your list.

In my case, I’m going to add Gary V, so I’m going to do a search. The little gear icon next to his name, go ahead and add to list, and I’m going to add him to my Influencers list.

And that’s how you create a list on Twitter.

Brand All Your Social Media Sites

We know how important social media is today to market your company online. So the big question is,why are you not branding yourself appropriately online?

Now, I’m a firm believer in the VCC process. That is, Visibility, then Credibility, then Conversion. The second step is credibility, and that’s where your brand comes into place. The question now is, how are people finding you? If they’re on their Facebook page, there’s my brand image. If they find me through YouTube, here’s my consistent brand image.

Regardless if they go to any of my social media accounts to do research, because that’s what people do online is research, they will see brand consistency. And what that does is build credibility in my brand, and therefore it makes it easier for people to pick up the phone and call me, and that’s the third marketing step, which is conversion.

This is why I’m a big fan of branding all your social media accounts.

How To Install A WordPress Plugin

There are two ways to add a plugin to your WordPress site. The first thing you’ll need to do is log in, then on the left-hand side in your dashboard, click on the plugins option. Up top you’ll see plugins, add new, click on the button.

The next thing you can do is, you can actually do a search for a specific plugin. If I wanted to add Buddy Press, as an example, I would just click install now. The other option would be to actually upload a plugin directly from your website. In this case, I don’t want to install this one so I’m going to return to the plugin installer without activating, but the next step would be to activate the plugin. The second option would be to upload a plugin.

This is going to come directly off of your computer. All you need to do is choose the file, choose the plugin that you’ve already downloaded, and click install. Again, once it’s installed, you will need to activate, which I’m not going to do in this case. But that’s how you add a plugin to your WordPress website.

How Change Google Plus Banner Image

Mid-November 2015, Google changed Google+, and one of the things that changed was how you update your banner image. The first thing you’ll need to do is log into your Google+ business page, and you’ll notice the icon up here in the upper right-hand corner. This way, you know you’re on the right page.

Now, on the left-hand side, all you need to do is click on “profile”. Here, you’ll see your current banner image, and you want to click on the “edit profile” button. Here, you can update your profile image or your banner image. All you need to do is click on the photo icon. You can choose a photo that you’ve already uploaded, or you can upload a current photo.

For me, I’m going to update the photo for a holiday photo, and I just want to make sure I grab my Google+, because it is a specific size. Once you’re done, click “done” here, and then “save” in the bottom right-hand corner. And this will update your banner image.

Optimize YouTube SEO Description

When uploading videos to your YouTube channel, it’s important to optimize not only the title of your YouTube video, but also the description. This one here is “Website Design Trends Moving Into 2015“, so the keyword I’m targeting is “website design trends”, and “2015”.

Now, a lot of times people will put a title in but they will not fill out anything in the description. The sad part is, this is a very important part. YouTube allows up to 5,000 characters for your description box. Make sure you incorporate your keyword phrase or keywords into this description box. The other thing I recommend adding is the link to subscribe, that way if people do like what they have, what you have to say, they can go ahead and subscribe, real easy.

If you haven’t been updating the description in your YouTube channel, do it now. Make sure you use the same keywords in your title as you do your description.

YouTube SEO Optimize Title

To help improve the search visibility of your YouTube channel, it’s really important that you SEO optimize the title to all of your videos. So we’re actually looking at my channel and you’ll see the title of this one is “How to Create a Custom URL Video”.

The keywords that I’m trying to target, custom URL, YouTube, is right in the title. The next one down, “How to Disconnect Twitter Auto Post to Facebook”. Twitter, Facebook, disconnect, auto post; all of these items are keywords that I want to be found for, and so I make sure that I include them in the title of the video.

All you need to do is when you upload the video, is make sure you include the title which can be edited. So if you have any videos that are not keyword loaded, you do not have specific keyword or keyword phrases in the title, go back and edit them. Go ahead and make the change here and then click save changes. It will really help the visibility of your YouTube videos.

How To Change Banner Image In Twitter

Why Brand Videos With A Custom Intro

The branded intro for Simple Biz Support looks like this. This is a custom made branded intro that I use sometimes at the beginning of videos, towards the middle of the video, or in some cases I only use it at the end of the video. And the idea of including the brand imagery is that when people watch the video, they know exactly who this video is about. And it increases your brand awareness over time.

The more and more people see your brand, the more comfortable they become with the brand, and you create more credibility.

Now, you already know from sales marketing or the sales funnel that you need multiple touches before people generally feel comfortable about considering the use of your product or service, and that’s why I use a branded intro on my videos.

How To Change Profile Image on Twitter

To change your profile image on your Twitter account, the first thing you’ll need to do is login to Twitter, then click on your profile and settings picture, right up here in the upper right-hand corner, click on “View Profile.” Once the view profile comes up, you’ll see this button right here it says, “Edit Profile,” go ahead and click on that.

Now, all you need to do is click on your profile image and you have two options. One, you can upload a new photo or you can actually take a photo using your webcam. Once you’ve uploaded your photo and cropped it, go ahead and save it and your profile image will be saved. And that’s how you change your profile picture on your Twitter account.

10 Facts Why Your Business Must Be On Social Media Today

How To Change Posted By In Facebook

There’s going to be a time when you’re on your business page, and you want to post as yourself, especially if you manage multiple business pages because it maybe for a client of yours that you’re logged into, but you want to leave a personal message. Well, the easy way to do that is find the post that you want to change. And you could see right now based on my profile image, that I would be posting as Simple Biz Support.

All you need to do is click on this little icon here, and I can choose who I’m posting as. Now, I’m posting as myself personally. And again, if you manage multiple business pages, you can also pick another business account and leave a comment that way. And that’s how you change the ‘posted by’ setting on your Facebook business page.

Pinterest Visual Search Tool

Good morning, Internet fans, Ryan Perry here, Simple Biz Support. Today is Wednesday, November 18th, therefore, it's Social Media Wednesday. As usual, I have the beautiful and talented Sarah Giometti with Provaro Marketing. Good morning, Sarah.

Sarah Giometti: Good morning, Ryan. How are you?

RP: I'm doing good. You're looking quite well. I understand you're not feeling too good today, so I appreciate you still being able to come on the show and talk about some fun social media stuff, seeing how it is Wednesday.

SG: Yeah. Not a problem. Yeah, I'm a little under the weather, but I think I should be able to get through the 15 minutes.

RP: All right. We'll do our best to make it a fast 15 minutes. Specifically, we're gong to talk about Pinterest, and they have a visual search tool that I didn't even know it exists, but I guess it makes sense, 'cause it's Pinterest, and that's what you do on Pinterest, you look at pictures. So, wouldn't it be cool if you could actually search by a picture? I guess the big question becomes, A, is there much difference between Google, 'cause Google has had that capability for sometime, and then, why would we use it, and how does it affect business owners?

SG: So, the difference between... Google ...click on an image, you can find that exact image where it originated from, so ...if, make sure you're not plagiarizing copyrighted photos, things like that. On Pinterest, the difference is, you can pinpoint an item within the photo. So, say you're on Pinterest and you see this picture of this cool living room, or dining room, and you wanted the chandelier that's in the picture, and clicking on the picture and going through to the blog article does not bring you to where that specific chandelier is. And so, with the Pinterest search, you can pinpoint and narrow down to that chandelier, and it will give you similar results, it will hopefully help you find where to buy that chandelier.

RP: Yeah. Is this available on mobile devices and desktop devices?

SG: Yeah. It's available both places.

RP: Okay. And then from a... I can see from and end user point of view, look if I just want to find, maybe it's an IKEA picture or something, I don't know, it's just a picture like we were talking about earlier, of a house or an office, being able to actually specifically narrow in on a lamp or a chandelier, or whatever it might be, is very cool from an end user point of view, but as a business owner, what's the real benefit for me?

SG: It will help you get found as well, especially if you have a similar... We'll stick with the chandelier. If you have a similar chandelier item, and you've put it up there with proper tags, proper hashtags, proper description, then Pinterest will... Well, hopefully the goal is to add your chandelier into the list of results for that end user, so it's helping you as a business owner get found better on Pinterest. And that's... And get found through other people's photos. So it doesn't even have to be your photo of the dining room with the chandelier, but if yours is similar, and you've hashtagged it properly, then you can come up in the similar results that are offered up to the end user as options to buy.

RP: Okay. Perfect. And do you know if you have to... I guess if you're looking for a specific item, then like you said, it doesn't... You don't have to have... I'm trying to think of how to word this correctly. I guess, the image itself that's on your account, on your Pinterest account, would need to be the individual object, because that's what we're looking for, versus the overall picture of the office, as... Or the house, I guess, since we're talking about chandeliers.

SG: Right. So you can... You would want to do both. So, you'd want to have the overall picture showing it in use, so that if that's what comes up when they're using a search, but then you also have the individual products, so it's really easy for them to click through, see all the information about it, how much it cost, that kind of stuff. So that... This is going to be really useful for e-commerce, or brick and mortar stores that have a product to sell, this is going to be really useful.

RP: Okay. And I'm thinking right now, if I'm one of those people, going, "Oh, okay. So I need to have the big image." And not necessarily just from a search point of view, but simply because from a sales point of view, people are gong to want to see what the product's gong to look like in a setting. It's kind of like a dress on a... That's just hanging on a hanger, it looks very much different when it's just hanging on a hanger, versus when you actually put it on and it's hanging on you. You could take a beautiful dress and go, "Eh." Or the opposite, you're like, "Well, I'm not crazy, but I'll try it on." And then it looks great.

SG: Right. And it... Yeah. And the same goes with any product. When you show it in use, it helps trigger the buyers' idea of how they could use our product, versus if they see just the plain product, they're like, "Oh, that's a neat product, but I have no idea what I'm gong to do with it." Whereas if you show it in use, they go, "Oh, that's what I could do with it. That's a really cool idea. Let me go buy it." And so, that's why you want to show it in use, but then you also want to have it as individual, so then they can just... They know that's the product they want and they can go buy it.

RP: And then, what about, we talked earlier before the actual episode started, about search. So as business owners, you can kind of use this as a reverse search tool.

SG: Right. So, you can use it for your own research. So, if you're trying to figure out what... Maybe what hashtags or keywords to use, as you're adding your products on Pinterest or as you're pinning... You should pin from your website into Pinterest, so that it tracks back to your website. But you can use it to check and see what other people are saying and using and like what interaction are they getting, are they getting a lot of shares, and likes, and repins? So you can actually use it for your own research to improve your Pinterest strategy, as you're trying to grow your business and sell your products online.

RP: Right. And the other thing I can think of, if you're selling a product that's a commodity that a lot of other people are selling is, why not do a search for that individual product and see who your competitors are online, and then also who's doing a good job? Because a lot of time... I'm not a big fan of reinventing the wheel, so if I can find somebody who's doing a good job in my space, check them out, see what they're doing, and trying to mimic their marketing tactics with my own style. So we're not copying, but there's a lot of good information out there that people are using currently, go check it out, pull the stuff that you like out of it, try it yourself, and see how that helps with gaining marketshare online.

SG: Yeah absolutely. You should always be watching what your competition is doing online, and be careful not to copy a failing strategy though. You definitely want to look and see how it's... Like you said, you're not copying it but you're looking to see what's working, what's not working and coming up with your own strategy based on what you're seeing. So you definitely want to look and see what your competition is doing, how successful they are, and what are some of the things that you can identify that are making it successful for them. So if you are a product based business Pinterest could...

SG: And especially if women are your target market, Pinterest could be really powerful for you, especially as we lead into the holidays. People are buying things, they're buying decorations for the holidays, they're buying... They're looking for ideas for table settings, they're buying products for their family, so... Or presents for their family. So this is definitely a great opportunity to look and see what your competition is doing and emulate it with your own spin so that you have more success online as well.

RP: Okay, perfect, so I think that pretty much covers how to use the Pinterest visual tool, I think the really cool thing is... I don't know how many people are familiar with it, so it's something to go check out and it is available both on mobile and online, is there anything else that we need to add to this?

SG: It is really new, it rolled out about a week, week and a half ago. The only thing is, it's a little tricky to find how to do it, but... So we can walk you through like real quick, give you a minute screen share to show you where to find the tool. And that way you can use it as your research. And then you have an idea you can direct people to do it as well.

RP: Okay, perfect. Since we're doing screen share it's gong to be on the desktop version then, so, on the desktop version this is how you're gong to go in and find it. On the mobile side if it's not an option right now you may need to do an update since it's so new.

SG: Yeah, it's pretty new but you should... Yeah your app should update if it hasn't already, or have an update in there waiting for it. So let's switch over to... Share... There we go. So I've done a search for table settings because holidays are coming up, and we'll just randomly pick this one here and I click on it to bring it up so it's a bigger pin. And then right here in the upper right corner of the picture has the little search. So now, you click on that little search bar, and I can drag this around and shrink this little box, and so I can say "I want just this camera, or this candle idea" and now it's popped up a whole bunch of candle ideas with some greenery around it.

RP: That's pretty cool. And what I love about it, it's instant, you don't have to sit there, resize it, click send or something and then go back and recharge. So it's working on the fly which is really cool.

SG: Yeah and so I can sit here and move it over here to this glass, and so you can just keep moving around a picture and it just instantly readjusts your search.

RP: Mmh. That is very cool. Actually, seeing it in use I'm actually more impressed with it now, seeing it in use.

SG: So, for the end user this could be, this is gong to be really cool, really fun if you're looking for like, "I love that glass" Here are similar glass items. Or, whatever it is. But for the business owner you can do the same thing to your own pictures and see what else pops up, what else is coming up with similar to that, is... Are you coming up? There's a lot of ways for a business owner. You can use this for your own research to improve your strategy, and then... You can also see up here is tags. So based on that glass that I picked up here are keywords where I can refine, I can click "champagne glasses" and I now gong to refine the results that I was given. So...

RP: And if you're looking for... You're a little confused, you're not sure what type of tags you should be associating with your own product, you can just look at that bar too then.

SG: Yup, absolutely. And this helps you figure out what to do with your own strategy and to see what other people are doing and what is coming up. Maybe you're trying to... Doing a photo shoot, trying to figure out how to stylize your products, this is a great way to get some ideas on how to do the photoshoot to give your products the most appeal to the end users and the buyers. There's a lot of ways that you can utilize this as a business owner, just think outside the box is really what the key is here.

RP: All right, very cool. That is a cool little tool, I'm actually gong to check it out myself, because I like cool new tools just like that. Anything else then?

SG: I don't think so. Just play around with it and see how you can utilize it for your business to get more traffic to your website and grow your business and online store, or brick and mortar. Get people to walk through the door.

RP: Right, definitely. All right, well that's it, that's the cool... The cool new tool from Pinterest, it is their visual search tool, check it out, it is definitely... Looks like it's pretty powerful, it'll be interesting, seeing how it just rolled out, how it's going to take off down the road. I think as people get used to it, it's gong to get used quite a bit.

RP: Sarah, as always, I appreciate your time and the energy that you put into the show. I hope you start feeling better. If you need to borrow my juicer, just let me know.

SG: I do have my own, you know.

RP: That's right. You just gotta start using it then.

SG: I know. I need to start using it so maybe I can get rid of this.

RP: Yeah. All right, everybody, that's it for this week's episode of Social Media Wednesday. We will be back next Wednesday, just before Thanksgiving. Maybe we'll talk about turkeys and something. I don't know. But it'll be social, I promise you. Take care, everybody and hope you have a great week.

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Don't Use An Autoresponder in Twitter

Website Trends Heading Into 2016

How To Create Custom YouTube URL

How To Disconnect Twitter Autopost to Facebook

FaceBook Local Reach Volume

When Is The Best Time to Post On FB Business Page?

10 Ways To Create Dynamic Storytelling via Website Design

How To Check Your Facebook Insights

5 Tips to Make People Love Your Brand on Instagram

How To Create A YouTube Create Thumbnail

How to Charge Profile Pic in LinkedIn

How Many Post Should I Publish On Facebook Daily

To answer this question, I’m going to look at Mari Smith who’s an industry thought leader for social media and she’s known as the Queen of Facebook. And in this post, she recommends that for her own personal social media channel, she recommends about five to six Facebook page post per week, ideally skipping a weekday or two but not weekends.

Facebook users are more active during the evenings and weekends. Now, this is a great place to start for you personally. But I’d always recommend that you test posting at different times throughout the day and different number of posts throughout the day to find a sweet spot. An ideal way of starting out is to post once in the morning, once in the afternoon, once in the evening, then checking your analytics on Facebook to see if there’s any major swings and difference in the number of views and interactions that you get.

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How to Boost a Facebook Business Page Post

What is the Social media 70 20 10 Rule?

How To Setup Facebook See First Button

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