Podcast Advertising: 5 Experts Reveal Their Secrets

Are you one of the 7.8 million Americans who commute to work every day? If so, I'm guessing you've listened to a podcast or two. You're not alone. According to Infinite Dial, U.S. podcast audiences listen to an average of four to five podcasts per week.

The podcasting industry continues to grow YoY. In fact, Infinite Dial reports that, in 2021, 7 million more people were listening to podcasts than in 2020 alone.

That's why it's important to consider podcast advertising for your brand. Here, you'll learn everything you need to know about podcast advertising — from top podcast advertising strategies to advertising rates and networks.

Podcast Expert Advertising Strategies

Before you get started with podcast advertising, consider this advice from the experts.

Use podcasting for brand awareness, not lead generation.

Rebekah Bek: As a UX writer for Ahrefs, Bek was put in charge of podcast sponsorships. She writes her advice for podcast advertising strategies in this Medium post. Here are the key takeaways:

• Rather than being a tool for lead generation, podcast advertising is a tool for gaining exposure and brand awareness.
• It's not always about measurable ROI.
• Organic, not scripted, mentions perform best.

Understand your audience may have eclectic tastes.

Midroll: Midroll, a company that matches advertisers with shows , gives their advice to advertisers. Here is the key takeaway:

• It's wise not to adhere too strictly to a category. Don't assume that comedy audiences aren't also entrepreneurs or that listeners to a sports podcast aren't interested in a comedy special. You may be surprised at how broad and eclectic your audience tastes and needs are.

Ads read by the host perform better than third-party ads.

Jason Hoch: Former Chief Content Officer at HowStuffWorks, Hoch revealed what type of ads work best for their brand in an interview with DigiDay. Here are the key takeaways:

• Ads read by the host perform better than scripted, third-party ads placed in the podcast.
• Listeners feel like they are being shouted at with third-party ads.
• Consider producing organic mentions for better results.

Test and measure the success of your campaigns.

Kurt Kaufer: Partner and CMO at Ad Results Media, a podcast advertising agency, Kaufer wrote a survival guide for podcast advertising in this Forbes post. Here are the key takeaways:

• Measurement is the key to determining success in a podcast advertising campaign. Use promo codes, custom links, and post-checkout surveys to track success.
• Be comfortable knowing not every ad will work at first and that a breadth of shows will need to be tested to figure out what works and what doesn't.

Measuring the success of your podcast campaigns is best done with a tool, like Casted, that gives you an overarching view of critical metrics. With the tool, you can access behavior metrics, demographic data, and traffic information that helps you understand your content's true value. 

You don't need to sponsor the biggest podcasts, you can reach the same people on smaller shows.

Sam Balter: Former podcast marketer at HubSpot, Balter wrote about his podcast advertising learnings in this post. Plus, I spoke with him about his top podcast advertising strategies. Here are the key takeaways:

• Pre- and post-roll ad spots are generally cheaper than mid-roll and take less time. In addition, most ads have some sort of call-to-action that prompts listeners to go to a specific URL or use a discount code to get a discount.
• Podcast popularity and listenership will only continue to rise and so will the opportunity to connect with people in a new and novel way.
• When sponsoring podcasts, trust the host to deliver a message in their own voice.
• It's better to go for frequency than reach. Pick a podcasts where you can purchase three to five ads versus one on a large podcast.

Podcast Advertising Rates 2022

The amount you pay for podcast advertising will vary depending on the length and type of the ad.

It's essential to know that podcasts offer different pricing structures. Ads are sold on a cost per mille (CPM) or cost per acquisition (CPA) rate. CPM is the cost you'll pay per 1,000 impressions or downloads. CPA is the cost you'll pay to acquire a customer. Most ads are priced on a CPM model.

The current average cost of podcast advertising is a CPM of about $25.

AdvertiseCast notes that the average CPM for 30-second ads is $18, and the average CPM for 60-second ads is $25.

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Podcast Advertising Networks

A podcast advertising network is an agency that connects companies or brands with respected podcasts on which to advertise. The goal is to take away the friction in podcast advertising by helping brands promote their products on podcasts and helping podcasters monetize their projects. A few examples include:

1. Midroll

Midroll, now part of SXM Media, is used by over 800 brands to buy ad spots on 300+ podcasts. With such a wide variety of shows, advertisers have the opportunity to use audience-based buying to ensure ads align with podcast topics most relevant to your brand, helping you accurately target relevant users and maximize reach.

Your ads can be pre-recorded or host read, the ladder being a valuable tool for generating brand trust as audiences trust hosts and see them as a valuable source of social proof. 

Midroll prices ads on a CPM model, so you pay based on the number of certified downloads each episode receives. Its website notes that prices can range from $18 to $50 CPM, with higher performing shows being more expensive. 

The advertiser portal also gives you an overview of campaign metrics, helping you see important data like forecasted downloads and ad placement cost per show. 

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2. Podcast One

Podcast One sees more than 2.1 billion annual downloads and 350 different episodes produced weekly, making it a high-impact platform for podcast advertisers. 

It offers pre-recorded and live host endorsements, and you can use its geo-targeting and copy-split capabilities to ensure you target the right audiences and pick placements for your ads that are most relevant to your business. 

With PodcastOne, you also have the unique ability to use visual integrations for your ads in the form of a sponsorship splash, an ad banner, or a forced video ad.

3. Megaphone

Megaphone offers powerful podcast advertising tools with the Spotify Audience Network, helping you target the most relevant listeners that are likely to drive the most impact across a wide variety of podcasts. 

With the service, you can:

• Reach listeners according to their interests, purchase behavior, and things like apps, devices, and platforms that they use.
• Get actionable campaign insights that help you understand performance to ensure you have the right strategy.
• Use dynamic ad insertion to populate ads when downloaded so messaging is fresh and relevant.

Contact Megaphone to obtain pricing information.

4. AdvertiseCast

AdvertiseCast boasts 2,300+ podcasts, a 150,000,000+ monthly listener reach, and 4,200+ available ad spots to choose from, making it a valuable tool for podcast advertisers as you can select target audiences that are the best fit for your business. 

You also have three different podcast ad opportunities to choose from: 

• Baked-in host-read ads (its most popular option), where podcast hosts read your ads within the episode. Pricing is based on length (60 seconds or 30 seconds) and whether you select mid-roll or pre-roll placement. 
• Dynamically inserted ads, which are pre-produced, pre-recorded and scheduled to be inserted into podcast content. Pricing is based on the average number of downloads in the first 30 days. 
• Custom podcast ad units where you can be as creative as you’d like, like a social media plug for your profiles, a 10-second shout out, or a 90-second baked-in mid-roll ad. 

AdvertiseCast also offers an end-to-end ad campaign platform that you can use to manage your ads and view detailed metrics that help you understand campaign performance. You can also make use of the full service solution, where AdvertiseCast manages the process for you.

Podcast Advertising Statistics 2022

1. There are around 2,000,000 podcast shows and over 48 million podcast episodes as of April 2021. (PodcastInsights, 2021)

2. 75% of the US population is familiar with the term “podcasting,” which is up 5% since 2019. (Infinite Dial, 2020)

3. Half of Podcast ads lasted longer in 30 seconds in length. (Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2021)

4. A survey of 300,000 listeners found that 63% of people bought something a host had prompted on their show. (AdvertiseCast)

5. Cost per mille (CPM) or cost per 1,000 listeners is the most common pricing method for podcasts. (AdvertiseCast, 2021)

6. Dynamically-inserted ads increased the share of revenues from 48% to 67%. (Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2021)

7. Streaming audio and podcasting is projected to be one of the channels with the largest growth in 2022, with a 17.8% increase. (Inside Radio, 2021)

8. Host-read and pre-product ads increased share of revenues from 27% to 35%. (Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2021)

9. Local advertising for streaming audio and podcasting will outperform targeted banner advertising and broadcast TV. (Inside Radio, 2021)

10. U.S. Podcast Ad Revenue is set to exceed 2 Billion by 2023. (Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2021)

Podcast advertising is a marketing tactic that is continuing to grow. As a majority of people have listened to a podcast, and engagement rates are increasing, brands can no longer ignore podcast advertising.

Podcast Advertising: 5 Experts Reveal Their Secrets was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

What is User Story Mapping? Steps, Examples + Best Tools Available

Picture this: You're a product owner and your team has a backlog of features to implement.

The problem is: Your team is overwhelmed and no one is sure where to start and how to prioritize the tasks. Well, this is where user story mapping can come in handy.

Keep reading to learn how user story mapping is helping product teams get a better understanding of consumer needs and prioritize tasks with a user-first approach.

Before we get into user story mapping, let's go over the basics. A user story is a short and simple description of a feature told from the perspective of the user. For example, "As a user, I can add items that I'm not ready to purchase yet to my wishlist."

It forces product teams to build with a user-first approach. A user story map takes this a step further by visualizing the steps a user takes to complete an action.

When product managers, designers, and developers work on a product, sometimes they focus too much on feature specifications. User story mapping gets them out of this framework and redirects them to focus on consumer needs and desired outcomes.

In addition, a user story map will help break down the customer journey into bite-size pieces that teams can tackle and ensure nothing gets lost in the process.

But to be clear, the mapping process isn't solely for product teams. It can be a valuable cross-functional exercise that helps align marketing, engineering, UX/Design teams along with other departments.

In addition to getting everyone on the same page, creating a user story map also helps:

• Determine how to prioritize work if there's a large backlog of feature implementations, separating must-haves from nice-to-haves.
• Break down requirements and visualize how each piece interacts with the other.
• Expose roadblocks and dependencies that can impact product delivery.

Is agile story mapping different?

The short answer is no because user story mapping is used within an agile framework.

User stories are used in an agile framework as a way to provide context using simple and natural language. They also represent the smallest unit of work, just as sprints and epics are other measurements.

So, it's agile story mapping is another way to describe the process of mapping a user story.

User story mapping typically happens at the beginning of a project, as it helps offer structure and get everyone on the same page. However, it can be used at any phase of the project to help identify roadblocks and reprioritize.

1. Set the frame.

Before you start mapping the story, you'll want to narrow the scope. Otherwise, you may quickly start feeling overwhelmed and unable to start.

Here are some questions you should be asking:

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• How does this feature add value?
• Who is the audience subset we are building for? (If any)

Once you answer these questions, put it in user story format: "As a [user], I want to be able to [filter my search] results so that I can [quickly find what I'm looking for."

Following this approach will help you approach the problem tactically.

2. Map out the activities and the steps in the story.

In this step, you want to create a general roadmap for how the user would access and use this feature. Those are your main activities.

The goal here is to outline the big steps necessary to get from start to finish. From there, you lay out the steps.

Following the same example from the previous section, here's how it could look:

Activities:

• Search for products.
• Review product details.
• Check out. 

Steps:

1. Type into the search bar and head to the results page.
2. Scroll through search results in search of specific information.
3. Select the filtering option to narrow down options by cost.
4. Review the search results page again with updated options.
5. Select item and place in cart.
6. Complete purchase.

As you'll notice, story mapping requires going from macro to micro.

You'll likely use input from your participants to map out these details. You want your map to paint an accurate and full picture of what does (and can) happen in this story.

So, you'll want to lean on your team for input in this step.

3. Group and define the tasks.

Once you've mapped out the big details, this is where the collaboration takes off.

Under each step, you should highlight the key actions involved in each activity.

For instance, when a user is in step 5, which is selecting an item and placing it in their cart, there are several substeps they will follow, including viewing the image, reading reviews, scanning related items.

All of these should be mentioned under the big activity groups, also known as the steps. The goal is to identify any gaps in the features of your product currently.

By adding a must-have, could-have, and should-have options in your map, you can rank features by priority. Here's what you want to consider:

• Is there anything else your user could do during one of these activities?
• What could disrupt their process at this point? Where could they get stuck?
• How else could the user navigate through this page?

This will require a collective effort from your various teams to figure out what's realistic and what's doable. For instance, an engineer might point out that a particular task is too big to count as one iteration. Your user researcher could highlight an important step in the process that you guys hadn't considered.

4. Slice your tasks and get your minimum viable product.

Once everything is laid out, you and your team can start to move through the map to prioritize a list of tasks and cut them into slices.

Each "slice" will include tasks from each activity to create a viable end-to-end experience. It should have a clear outcome as well as a way to measure success. This will be important later when testing and tracking user behavior.

You will continue to separate your slices until you include all the tasks and have a clear plan to move forward.

User Story Mapping Example

In this example, the user story is as follows: "As a user, I want to buy a product easily on this website."

Once you have all those details, then you can create your map.

Once you've added the activities, steps, and tasks, now you can figure out your slices. 

For instance, in this example, the first slice would skip two tasks in the "Search" activity, skip three in the "Get product details" one, and three in the "Check out" section.

The second slice would include features like "Search by category" and "See product in AR." Once you have all your slices, your team is ready to get to work. 

User Story Mapping Tools

When it comes to user story mapping, there are a lot of ways you could do this.

The most straightforward way is with a conference room, a whiteboard, and a whole lot of sticky notes. That way, you can easily move pieces around as you work and make it a collaborative effort.

Now, if your team is remote, you'll have to rely on online tools to assist you in this process. Many agile project management software have story mapping features, such as Atlassian's Jira.

Additional online tools for user story mapping include Featmap, Miro, and Avion.

If your product team can't agree on where to start for an upcoming or ongoing project, consider creating a user story map. It may take some time away from building but it will definitely pay off down the line.

What is User Story Mapping? Steps, Examples + Best Tools Available was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

30+ Best WordPress Plugins for Marketers

Did you know there are over 56,000 WordPress plugins available today?

WordPress plugins allow you to enhance your website's functionality by adding features and capabilities that don't come standard with the system.

Whether you want to improve your writing, optimize a blog post for SEO, or interpret your site's analytics, there's a plugin out there for you.

But with so many options available, it's tough to figure out the best ones to use — and that's why we've done the work for you.

Below you'll find a list of the best WordPress plugins (not in any specific order) that every marketer should explore.

These plugins have been reviewed by some of the top marketers in the industry. They'll also keep both you and your WordPress website running efficiently and effectively. If you want more, check out the official WordPress plugin page.

1. HubSpot WordPress Plugin

HubSpot's drag-and-drop form builder allows you to easily build contact forms to use on your WordPress website. The plugin also includes a pop-up creator, live chat widget, contact database, and previously written code for you to simply copy and paste into WordPress.

All-in-one plugins provide multiple functionalities in a single plugin, making them a more lightweight solution than having multiple plugins limited to single functionality. Because HubSpot provides everything in one plugin, you can be sure it will not bloat your site, which is important as you consider load speeds.

2. Elementor

Elementor is WordPress's #1 drag-and-drop page builder with over 2 million downloads and counting. It offers 100+ templates and premade sections for services, testimonials, call-to-action pages, etc. Using Elementor in WordPress, you'll be able to quickly make the marketing content you need.

Customization features, such as Box Shadows, Background Overlays, Hover Effects, Headline Effects, and Animations, are available with Elementor. These eye-catching effects will help you hold visitors’ attention.

To help you take full advantage of this plugin, we have a free WordPress Training Course using Elementor to help you build your own website.

3. WordPress Landing Pages

Create stunning landing pages for your website with the fantastic WordPress Landing Pages plugin. The visual editor that comes with it makes customizing your landing page easier than ever before. You can even track your conversion rate with just a single click of the mouse. It offers you an easy way of implementing your own custom landing page design.

4. Gravity Forms

If you want to add complex and highly customizable forms to your website, Gravity Forms is a good option for that.

Gravity Forms allows you to build multi-step forms, polls, quizzes, surveys, and more. With this plugin, you can create a wide variety of smart rules and conditions. For example, you can create a rule to limit which domains are accepted on your forms to exclude non-business domains like Gmail or even domains from your competitors.

Moreover, you can easily set up integrations with a variety of tools such as HubSpot for your marketing and Zapier for automation flows. Gravity Forms also integrates with PayPal or Stripe so you can accept payment directly via your forms.

5. WPForms

WPForms is one of the most popular form builder plugins for WordPress, with over 5,000,000 active installations. With this plugin, you can easily add custom forms to your website including contact forms, registration forms, surveys, polls, newsletter signup forms, and many other types.

Creating a form is easy thanks to WPForms’ drag and drop builder. Simply drag the form fields you need and drop them into place. There are even 300+ ready-made form templates to get you started even more quickly.

WPForms also comes with powerful features like smart conditional logic, conversational forms, multi-page forms, email marketing integrations, and payment integrations, just to name a few. This plugin also connects with HubSpot so that you can automatically import contacts from your forms into the HubSpot CRM.

6. MonsterInsights

With MonsterInsights, you can add Google Analytics to your WordPress site without having to touch a line of code or hire a developer.

You can view easy-to-read reports about your site’s analytics straight from your WordPress dashboard. That means you don’t have to leave your site or search through multiple Google Analytics reports to find the important insights you need.

You can set up advanced tracking like eCommerce tracking, form conversion tracking, affiliate link clicks, outbound link clicks, and much more. This plugin works with both Universal Analytics (GA3) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4). You can connect to whichever version you’re running, or both at the same time with the dual tracking feature.

7. All in One SEO

All in One SEO helps you optimize your WordPress website for organic search. The plugin works for people with varying levels of SEO experience, from the non-technical to those with coding experience.

The SEO audit checklist will analyze your entire website for errors and provide actionable insights to improve your SEO and unlock maximum traffic. And with the TruSEO score, you can get an in-depth analysis of how well your content is optimized.

The plugin also has an XML sitemap and image XML sitemap support (which is what informs Google about the URLs on your website that are available for crawling). In addition, it provides you with support in other areas including Google Analytics and custom post types, which is helpful for marketers who are working to measure the success of their campaigns or SEO work and goals.

8. Jetpack

Jetpack is an all-in-one WordPress plugin that offers advanced features such as content tools, mobile themes, and more. You can take advantage of all of Jetpack's features to enhance your website, or pick and choose just what you want to activate based on your unique needs.

Some of these features include automated social media posting, site statistics and analytics, and different SEO tools to help you measure and promote your website success.

9. Smush

"Smush quickly compresses and optimizes images in bulk, letting you focus on other things," says Izaak Crook of AppInstitute.

Smush servers do all of the work for you, meaning your images will remain high-quality while reducing their file size. This frees up space on your server so your website will be significantly faster — with clearer, crisp imagery in the end.

10. Broken Link Checker

Want to prevent Google from following broken links on your website? Broken Link Checker parses your posts to identify broken links and notify you when they surface.

To save you time, the plugin makes it easy for you to edit a broken link from the plugin page, eliminating the need to manually go into each post to make changes.

11. The SEO Framework

With The SEO Framework, this plugin likely helps the users to make good decisions about optimization, which may help improve search rankings. You’ll have peace of mind knowing the fundamentals are covered.

Its features can optimize every page, post, and term on your website so it’s not only easier to find on the internet, but it’s also more searchable on all social sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

12. Just Writing

Just Writing takes WordPress' Distraction-Free Writing Mode (DFWM) to a whole new level. This is a WordPress plugin that could be a fine choice for marketers to focus on their work by removing distractions.

This tool also features spellcheck to improve the grammar of an article. It’s continually embedded with more new commands and features in the recent updates to facilitate the users with easy access.

13. Hustle

Hustle is WPMU DEV’s marketing WordPress plugin that features popups, slide-ins, embeds, and social share bars.

Embeds are your in-content ads or opt-ins and can be displayed using the built-in options such as before or after your post content, or both. You can also use shortcodes or widgets to display the embeds in more specific locations. That is in addition to the vast array of targeting options that apply to all other content types as well.

You can store all submissions locally or choose to use one of the many integration options, including HubSpot, to send them to your CRM or mailing list.

14. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps has the capability of generating a special XML sitemap so search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing could better index your blogs or pages. It then becomes simple for surfers to find your blog and retrieve them more efficiently.

This plugin is compatible with all types of WordPress pages and every Custom URL. A distinctive characteristic of this tool is its notifications that are sent to the search engines each time you create new content.

It's stated to be the best WordPress plugin. The active installs of this plugin are found to be above 1 million.

15. Pretty Links

Pretty Links is a regularly used plugin that can do more for marketers as it contains many interesting features. It's capable of performing shrink, track, beautify, and share URLs both on WordPress and off it.

By using this plugin, you can create links using the domain name. it's available for free in the name of Pretty Links Lite, and you can upgrade to the pro version on subscriptions. In simple words, it helps you in shortening links and exhibits the reports of hits by tracking each hit on your link.

16. Akismet

Akismet WordPress plugin examines the comments of visitors on your blog concerning the Akismet Web service and intimates whether the comment is spam or not. This plugin can spontaneously scan in the comments and would filter out spam smoothly.

You can check the status of the comments in the status history provided by this tool. It has a discard feature that intentionally blocks most hazardous spam, which naturally speeds up your site.

17. Pixel Caffeine

Pixel Caffeine allows you to manage Facebook Pixel and Facebook Commerce Manager all within the plugin.

Tony Capetola of Sales Orders says Pixel Caffeine is a great plugin because "marketers can make use of some more advanced features like the ability to track Facebook Ad conversions within WordPress's dashboard, the ability to create custom audiences based on last visit time (retention window), WordPress taxonomies (categories, tags, etc.), and previous customers behavior."

Added bonus: Pixel Caffeine automatically keeps up with Facebook's latest updates so you don't have to.

18. Calculated Fields Form

"[Calculated Fields Form] allows you to create simple calculators for your WordPress site. You can easily build finance calculators, quote calculators, booking cost calculators, health/ fitness calculators, and other link-worthy tools," says Roy Harmon of Advertoscope.

With this plugin, you can also create forms with automatically calculated fields and use predefined form templates that will save you time and ensure accuracy.

19. OptinMonster

Looking to grow your email list? This plugin comes with an easy-to-use form builder to help you create opportunities for your visitors to convert.

OptinMonster is an excellent plugin for email marketing solutions for beginners. You can create many kinds of forms such as Pop-ups, Footer bars, Floating Headers, and many more. All of these forms are mobile-friendly, giving users even more opportunities for growth.

20. Wordfence

Hackers and malware can damage your reputation and marketing momentum by serving malicious software or even disabling your website. The Wordfence WordPress plugin will protect you from those risks.

Once you activate this plugin, it will spontaneously scan your WordPress site to check for infections.

21. Title Experiments

The title of a blog post has a direct impact on click-through rates (CTR). Title Experiments make it easy for you to A/B test one title against another so you can track what converts best and increase your CTR.

22. TablePress

TablePress is a plugin that helps you create, customize, and embed beautiful and unique tables on your WordPress site. Your tables can include all types of data and be placed anywhere on your website.

Swadhin Agrawa of DigitalGYD.com says, "TablePress makes it insanely easy for anyone to create a customizable and responsive table on their blogs."

23. Editorial Calendar

Keep your blog organized with the help of this plugin. Editorial Calendar uses drag-and-drop functionality to simplify the way you schedule and manage your blog content.

You can also manage posts from multiple authors, quickly edit titles and publishing times, and manage drafts within the plugin.

24. TinyPNG

TinyPNG will make your website faster by automatically optimizing your JPEG and PNG images upon upload.

Images are analyzed, and then the plugin compresses them appropriately. Once this happens, the image is then sent back to your WordPress website to replace the original image.

25. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache helps you improve the performance of your blog. It enhances the user experience by increasing website performance and reducing the download durations through Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration.

It’s a fantastic tool for search engine optimization as it uses techniques such as caching, CDN, minify, and database support. These elements all work together to improve website speed, an important factor in how Google ranks pages.

26. Imsanity

Imsanity is a popular plugin that automatically resizes images without loss of quality and saves you from having to manually scale them before upload.

The Imsanity plugin matches the size of your images with the display in a browser. It resizes previously uploaded images by automatically scaling them down and replacing the original images with the new versions, which saves you time as all of the work is done for you.

27. Revive Old Post

Revive Old Post, previously called Tweet Old Post, helps marketers extend the lifetime of inactive Older posts by smoothly sharing these posts on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and more.

You can manage multiple accounts using this WordPress plugin so you can promote content across more than one to better serve your needs.

28. Head, Footer and Post Injections

Most WordPress users end up needing to use several plugins — some people even use dozens. Head, Footer and Post Injections is a plugin that allows you to copy any unique code that you use for other plugins, keep it in a centralized and organized location, and easily insert it wherever needed.

The plugin is theme-independent, meaning you'll never lose your data (no matter how many times you change your website theme).

29. Yoast SEO

Yoast helps you get the most out of your website SEO with straightforward XML Sitemaps, breadcrumb navigation control, content analysis, snippet previews, and several integrations that show you how your website performs in different search engines.

Nicolas Straut of Fundera, says, "This plugin identifies and suggests solutions for potential SEO problems in your content, identifies what you've done well and helps you easily edit your snippet, keywords, and other post details."

30. Redirection

Redirection is a free redirect manager that allows you to set up your 301 redirects and manage 404 errors. There is a logging feature so you can see all of the redirects on your site as well as information about each visitor that is redirected.

31. Autoptimize

This plugin aggregates scripts and styles, which enhance your site's overall performance. Autoptimize also has an extensive API available so you can tailor the plugin to your website's needs.

"[Autoptimize] makes it easy for non-technical marketers to make their sites lightning fast. We all know how important it's to have a fast website — without it, our Google rankings suffer and potential customers will go somewhere else," says Jon Nastor of Hack the Entrepreneur.

Market Your Business with these Valuable Tools

With plugins like these, you’ll be able to run your website more efficiently and market your business to the world. We hope you found this article helpful in your search for the best plugins WordPress has to offer.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

30+ Best WordPress Plugins for Marketers was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner's Guide

While Google keeps us on our toes with all the algorithm updates they keep rollin' out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize their websites for search: keyword research.

In this post, we’ll define what keyword research is, why it’s important, how to conduct your research for your SEO strategy, and choose the right keywords for your website.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google. The insight that you can get into these actual search terms can help inform content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy.

People use keywords to find solutions when conducting research online. So if your content is successful in getting in front of our audience as they conduct searches, you stand to gain more traffic. Therefore, you should be targeting those searches.

In addition, in the inbound methodology, we don't create content around what we want to tell people; we should be creating content around what people want to discover. In other words, our audience is coming to us.

This all starts with keyword research.

For an inside look into how Arel="noopener" target="_blank" hrefs can aid you in your SEO keyword research, check out our case study and exclusive interview here.

Conducting keyword research has many benefits, the most popular reasons being:

Marketing Trend Insight

Conducting effective keyword research can provide you with insights into current marketing trends, and help you center your content on relevant topics and keywords your audience is in search of.

Traffic Growth

When you identify the best fitting keywords for the content you publish, the higher ranking the it is in search engine results — the more traffic you’ll attract to your website.

Customer Acquisition

If your business has content that other business professionals are looking for, you can meet there need and provide them with a call to action that will lead them into the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the point of purchase.

By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent, you can tackle the questions that most people in your audience want answers to.

However, keywords themselves because Google has evolved beyond exact-match algorithms.

Keywords vs. Topics

More and more, we hear how much SEO has evolved over just the last 10 years, and how unimportant keywords themselves have become to our ability to rank well for the searches people make every day.

And to some extent, this is true, but in the eyes of an SEO professional it’s a different approach. Rather, it's the intent behind that keyword, and whether or not a piece of content solves for that intent (we'll talk more about intent in just a minute).

But that doesn't mean keyword research is an outdated process. Let me explain:

Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and, assuming you use the right SEO tool, how popular those topics actually are among your audience. The operative term here is topics — by researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to create content on. Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.

Elements of Keyword Research

There are three main elements to pay attention to when conducting keyword research.

1. Relevance

Google ranks content for relevance. This is where the concept of search intent comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the searchers' needs. In addition, your content must be the best resource out there for the query. After all, why would Google rank your content higher if it provides less value than other content that exists on the web?

2. Authority

Google will provide more weight to sources it deems authoritative. That means you must do all you can to become an authoritative source by enriching your site with helpful, information content and promoting that content to earn social signals and backlinks. If you're not seen as authoritative in the space, or if a keyword's SERPs are loaded with heavy sources you can't compete with (like Forbes or The Mayo Clinic), you have a lower chance of ranking unless your content is exceptional.

3. Volume

You may end up ranking on the first page for a specific keyword, but if no one ever searches for it, it will not result in traffic to your site. Kind of like setting up shop in a ghost town.

Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences.

How to Research Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

I'm going to lay out a keyword research process you can follow to help you come up with a list of terms you should be targeting. That way, you'll be able to establish and execute a strong keyword strategy that helps you get found for the search terms you actually care about.

Step 1: Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.

To kick off this process, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets. You'll come up with about 5-10 topic buckets you think are important to your business, and then you'll use those topic buckets to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process.

If you're a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you blog about most frequently. Or perhaps they're the topics that come up the most in sales conversations. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas — what types of topics would your target audience search that you'd want your business to get found for? If you were a company like HubSpot, for example — selling marketing software (which happens to have some awesome SEO tools... but I digress), you might have general topic buckets like:

• "inbound marketing" (21K)
• "blogging" (19K)
• "email marketing" (30K)
• "lead generation" (17K)
• "SEO" (214K)
• "social media marketing" (71K)
• "marketing analytics" (6.2K)
• "marketing automation" (8.5K)

See those numbers in parentheses to the right of each keyword? That's their monthly search volume. This data allows you to gauge how important these topics are to your audience, and how many different sub-topics you might need to create content on to be successful with that keyword. To learn more about these sub-topics, we move on to step 2 ...

Step 2: Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.

Now that you have a few topic buckets you want to focus on, it's time to identify some keywords that fall into those buckets. These are keyword phrases you think are important to rank for in the SERPs (search engine results pages) because your target customer is probably conducting searches for those specific terms.

For instance, if I took that last topic bucket for an inbound marketing software company — "marketing automation" — I'd brainstorm some keyword phrases that I think people would type in related to that topic. Those might include:

• marketing automation tools
• how to use marketing automation software
• what is marketing automation?
• how to tell if I need marketing automation software
• lead nurturing
• email marketing automation
• top automation tools

And so on and so on. The point of this step isn't to come up with your final list of keyword phrases. You just want to end up with a brain dump of phrases you think potential customers might use to search for content related to that particular topic bucket. We'll narrow the lists down later in the process so you don't have something too unwieldy.

Although more and more keywords are getting encrypted by Google every day, another smart way to come up with keyword ideas is to figure out which keywords your website is already getting found for. To do this, you'll need website analytics software like Google Analytics or HubSpot's Sources report, available in the Traffic Analytics tool. Drill down into your website's traffic sources, and sift through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people are using to arrive at your site.

Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have. And remember, if you're having trouble coming up with relevant search terms, you can always head on over to your customer-facing colleagues — those who are in Sales or Service and ask them what types of terms their prospects and customers use, or common questions they have. Those are often great starting points for keyword research.

Here at HubSpot, we use the Search Insights Report in this part of the process. This template is designed to help you do the same and bucket your keywords into topic clusters, analyze MSV, and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.

Featured Resource: Search Insights Report Template

Download the Template

Step 3: Understand How Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly.

Like I said in the previous section, user intent is now one of the most pivotal factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google. Today, it's more important that your web page addresses the problem a searcher intended to solve than simply carries the keyword the searcher used. So, how does this affect the keyword research you do?

It's easy to take keywords for face value, and unfortunately, keywords can have many different meanings beneath the surface. Because the intent behind a search is so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra-careful about how you interpret the keywords you target.

Let's say, for example, you're researching the keyword "how to start a blog" for an article you want to create. "Blog" can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and what a searcher's intent is behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article. Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post? Or do they want to know how to actually launch a website domain for the purposes of blogging? If your content strategy is only targeting people interested in the latter, you'll need to make sure of the keyword's intent before committing to it.

To verify what a user's intent is in a keyword, it's a good idea to simply enter this keyword into a search engine yourself, and see what types of results come up. Make sure the type of content Google is closely related to what you'd intend to create for the keyword.

Step 4: Research related search terms.

This is a creative step you may have already thought of when doing keyword research. If not, it's a great way to fill out those lists.

If you're struggling to think of more keywords people might be searching about a specific topic, take a look at the related search terms that appear when you plug in a keyword into Google. When you type in your phrase and scroll to the bottom of Google's results, you'll notice some suggestions for searches related to your original input. These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want to take into consideration.

Want a bonus? Type in some of those related search terms and look at their related search terms.

Step 5: Use keyword research tools to your advantage.

Keyword research and SEO tools can help you come up with more keyword ideas based on exact match keywords and phrase match keywords based on the ideas you've generated up to this point. Some of the most popular ones include:

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Ubersuggest
• Google Keyword Planner
• SECockpit
• Keywords Everywhere
• Moz
• KeywordTool.io
• KWFinder

How to Find and Choose Keywords for Your Website

Once you have an idea of the keywords that you want to rank for, now it's time to refine your list based on the best ones for your strategy. Here's how:

Step 1. Use Google Keyword Planner to cut down your keyword list.

In Google’s Keyword Planner, you can get search volume and traffic estimates for keywords you're considering. Then, take the information you learn from Keyword Planner and use Google Trends to fill in some blanks.

Use the Keyword Planner to flag any terms on your list that have way too little (or way too much) search volume, and don't help you maintain a healthy mix like we talked about above. But before you delete anything, check out their trend history and projections in Google Trends. You can see whether, say, some low-volume terms might actually be something you should invest in now — and reap the benefits for later.

Or perhaps you're just looking at a list of terms that is way too unwieldy, and you have to narrow it down somehow ... Google Trends can help you determine which terms are trending upward, and are therefore worth more of your focus.

Step 2: Prioritize low-hanging fruit.

What we mean by prioritizing low-hanging fruit is to prioritize keywords that you have a chance of ranking for based on your website’s authority.

Large companies typically go after high search volume keywords, and since these brands are well established already, Google typically rewards them with authority over many topics.

You can also consider keywords that have little competition. Keywords that don’t already have multiple articles battling for the highest rank can afford you the spot by default — if there’s no one else trying to claim it.

Step 3: Check the monthly search volume (MSV) for keywords you’ve chosen.

You want to write content around what people want to discover, and checking MSV can help you do just that.

Monthly search volume is the number of times a search query or keyword is entered into search engines each monthly. Tools like searchvolume.io or Google Trends can help you find out the most searched keywords over related keyword clusters for free.

Step 4: Factor in SERP features as you choose keywords.

There’s several SERP feature snippets that Google will highlight if used correctly. An easy way to find out about them is to look up the keywords of your choosing and see what the first result looks like. But for a quick overview of the types of SERP featured snippets, we’ll summarize what they are here.

Image Packs

Image packs are search results displayed as a horizontal row of images that appear in an organic position. If there’s an image pack, you should write an image-heavy post to win placement in it.

Paragraph Snippets

Featured snippets, or paragraph snippets, are short snippets of text that appear at the top of Google search results for quick answers to common search queries. Understanding the searcher’s intent and providing succinct, concise answers can help in winning the placement.

List Snippets

List snippets, or listicles, are snippets made for posts outlining steps to do something from start to finish — often for “How To” searches. Making posts with direct, clear instructions and formatting can assist in winning this placement.

Video Snippets

Video snippets are short videos that Google will display at the top of a search query page in place of text featured snippets. Posting a video on both YouTube and your website can help you win this placement if tagged in the targeted keywords people are searching for.

Step 5: Check for a mix of head terms and long-tail keywords in each bucket.

Head terms are keyword phrases that are generally shorter and more generic — they're typically just one to three words in length, depending on who you talk to. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer keyword phrases usually containing three or more words.

It's important to check that you have a mix of head terms and long-tail terms because it'll give you a keyword strategy that's well balanced with long-term goals and short-term wins. That's because head terms are generally searched more frequently, making them often (not always, but often) much more competitive and harder to rank for than long-tail terms. Think about it: Without even looking up search volume or difficulty, which of the following terms do you think would be harder to rank for?

1. how to write a great blog post
2. blogging

If you answered #2, you're absolutely right. But don't get discouraged. While head terms generally boast the most search volume (meaning greater potential to send you traffic), frankly, the traffic you'll get from the term "how to write a great blog post" is usually more desirable.

Why?

Because someone who is looking for something that specific is probably a much more qualified searcher for your product or service (presuming you're in the blogging space) than someone looking for something really generic. And because long-tail keywords tend to be more specific, it's usually easier to tell what people who search for those keywords are really looking for. Someone searching for the head term "blogging," on the other hand, could be searching it for a whole host of reasons unrelated to your business.

So check your keyword lists to make sure you have a healthy mix of head terms and long-tail keywords. You definitely want some quick wins that long-tail keywords will afford you, but you should also try to chip away at more difficult head terms over the long haul.

Step 6: See how competitors are ranking for these keywords.

Just because your competitor is doing something doesn’t mean you need to. The same goes for keywords. Just because a keyword is important to your competitor, doesn’t mean it's important to you. However, understanding what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for is a great way to help you give your list of keywords another evaluation.

If your competitor is ranking for certain keywords that are on your list, too, it definitely makes sense to work on improving your ranking for those. However, don’t ignore the ones your competitors don’t seem to care about. This could be a great opportunity for you to own market share on important terms, too.

Understanding the balance of terms that might be a little more difficult due to competition, versus those terms that are a little more realistic, will help you maintain a similar balance that the mix of long-tail and head terms allows. Remember, the goal is to end up with a list of keywords that provide some quick wins but also helps you make progress toward bigger, more challenging SEO goals.

How do you figure out what keywords your competitors are ranking for, you ask? Aside from manually searching for keywords in an incognito browser and seeing what positions your competitors are in, Arel="noopener" target="_blank" hrefs allows you to run a number of free reports that show you the top keywords for the domain you enter. This is a quick way to get a sense of the types of terms your competitors are ranking for.

Best Keywords for SEO

Understand that there's no "best" keywords, just those that are highly searched by your audience. With this in mind, it's up to you to craft a strategy that will help you rank pages and drive traffic.

The best keywords for your SEO strategy will take into account relevance, authority, and volume. You want to find highly searched keywords that you can reasonably compete for based on:

1. The level of competition you're up against.
2. Your ability to produce content that exceeds in quality what's currently ranking.

And You’ve Got the Right Keywords for Your Website SEO

You now have a list of keywords that'll help you focus on the right topics for your business, and get you some short-term and long-term gains.

Be sure to re-evaluate these keywords every few months — once a quarter is a good benchmark, but some businesses like to do it even more often than that. As you gain even more authority in the SERPs, you'll find that you can add more and more keywords to your lists to tackle as you work on maintaining your current presence, and then growing in new areas on top of that.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner's Guide was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns