CRM is a piece of online marketing jargon that rarely gets explained fully. We know the stress that three-letter acronyms can cause when you’re new to an industry so we decided to bust the myth and answer the question, what is CRM?

By the time you finish this article, you will no longer be like a rabbit in the headlights the next time the CRM bomb is dropped in a Zoom meeting, you’ll know exactly what they’re talking about and you’ll be able to respond with some knowledge of your own.

This article will cover the definition of CRM, discuss the benefits, outline the costs, and help you find the right CRM tool that suits your needs.

CRM Definition

CRM stands for customer relationship management and refers to how a business manages the interactions with its existing customers and its communications with potential customers.

CRM can be a technology, a strategy, or a process:

CRM as a technology is a software product that companies use to hold the data of business contacts such as customers, prospects, clients, suppliers, and colleagues. From a centralized hub, CRM allows you to record, analyze, and report on interactions between your business and business contacts.
A CRM strategy is a way a business thinks about generating leads* and converting them into customers over time by building a relationship.
*A lead is someone with an interest in your product or service, usually captured with contact information like an email address, a phone number, or social media handles.
A CRM process is the way that a business goes about capturing and building customer relationships.

In this article, we are going to mainly focus on CRM as a technology and discuss what it does, why you need one, and how much it will cost you.

Why is CRM needed?

Imagining life without a CRM really puts into perspective why a business in the digital age needs one to be successful.
Picture how long it would take to manually record the contact information and sales data of the hundreds, if not thousands, of customers your business gets every year, and then trying to actually use that data that’s spread out across bits of paper and your inbox to create an actionable strategy for your business. Impossible, right?

Businesses with a CRM system in place are able to see a complete overview of their customers and all of their sales activity.
It takes the guesswork out of developing a business strategy and allows you to shape your activity around the actual needs and wants of your customers.

What does a CRM system do exactly?

Okay, so by now you’re hopefully understanding what a CRM is and why they’re important but what does a CRM actually allow you to do? Here’s a simplified list that outlines how businesses use customer relationship management systems:

1. Stores contact information

CRM software will record customer contact information such as email addresses, phone numbers, website URLs, social media handles, residential addresses, age, gender, demographics, and much more if it’s necessary for your business.

2. Increases sales through automation

A CRM tool can automate the sales process by taking care of everything from contacting leads, sending personalized marketing communications, taking payments, sorting out shipping & handling, managing customer service, and much more.
By streamlining this process, a CRM system allows you and your business to do more because you have to spend less time manually completing each of these steps for every individual lead or customer.

3. Generates reports & analytics

A CRM can dig into lots of customer and sales data and provide you with actionable insights.
For example, you could segment your customer database into demographics and see what that particular group purchased or engaged with most and then target a communication or create new content around that information.

4. Centralizes everything

You can install other systems you use onto a CRM system so that you can see everything all in one place. Anyone in your business can access it and see the same information so it reduces the chance of duplication and something getting lost in an email or forgotten after a phone call.

What is a cloud-based CRM?

A cloud-based CRM simply means that the customer relationship management system will store all of your information on remote servers and you access it through the internet. The alternative would be to host a CRM and store all of the data on servers located in your office.

One benefit to a cloud-based CRM is that the provider will take care of finding servers to host your data, which means that you don’t need to install lots of hardware in your own office and hire an IT team to manage it.
Cloud-based CRMs are also much safer because physical office computers can be infected by viruses, components like hard drives can fail, or it can simply die from old age. Cloud computers are more or less protected from this as your data is stored on multiple servers. If one fails your data will be available to access on a different one.
Another benefit is that cloud-based CRMs tend to be more secure as they will have a team of experts managing and updating the software all of the time.

Cloud-based CRMs are the most popular choice for individuals and businesses looking for CRM services because there are no upfront costs, you can work on a pay-as-you-go basis and you and your team can access it from anywhere. So, if your team wants or needs to work from home they can, or if you need to pull up some data while working in a client’s office, you can!

How much will a CRM cost?

The price of a CRM system will change depending on the features offered, overall design, and your individual requirements. You will most likely have to subscribe to a monthly plan and depending on which software you choose and what your business needs, it can range from $0 up to $1,000/mo.

If you’ve built a website using a website builder then lots of them will have a CRM system built-in which you can use without having to pay more than the monthly subscription you are already signed up for.
However, this may or may not meet your needs depending on the size of your business as website builder CRMs tend to be limited compared to dedicated CRM platforms. On most platforms you will have the option to upgrade your website builder subscription package to unlock additional features or install third-party plugins to increase the functionality of your system.

What are the best CRM systems?

It’s hard to mention just one CRM tool that will work perfectly for everyone reading this article, you all have different business needs and will have a different philosophy on how to build leads and manage your customer relationships.

Below you’ll see a list of CRM tools with a quick description of what they do best. The free plans for these brands might be all you need if you run a small business and you’re just starting off.
However, most of the CRM platforms below also have a paid plan which will unlock more features, such as a bigger contact list, more storage, and more user logins so that your team can use it too.

Whatever stage you’re at, we recommend signing up for a free plan or using the free trials to test the system and truly understand if it’s right for your business.
It’s important to check that it can do everything you need it to do right now as well as asking the question, will this system have everything I need in one or two years time?

This will make sure that you pick a CRM tool that allows you and your business to grow.

The best free CRM tools:

Hubspot CRM – great for businesses with a lot of contacts
Zoho CRM – best CRM for small businesses
Capsule – beginner-friendly and easy to use
Insightly – best suited for project management
Bitrix24 – top all-in-one CRM tool

Final thoughts on customer relationship management

Whether you will use the tools available from your website builder or if you sign up to a dedicated CRM system, it’s important to take customer relationship management seriously.
As we have outlined in this article, a good CRM system will allow you to transform leads into customers and streamline your business through automation, giving you time to do more and accelerate your growth as a company.

Free stock images have been the savior for many small businesses that can’t afford to pay for expensive visuals for their website. That’s why in this article we wanted to share with you some of the best free image sites on the web.

By the time you’ve finished reading this post, you will have a list of go-to image libraries for the next time you’re writing a blog post, building a website, or designing an advert. You can say goodbye to boring text dominant web pages and hello to outstanding levels of engagement and shareability.

Read on for the list of free stock image websites and to understand why it’s so important to upload nothing but good quality images to your website.

Why are images so important?

Have you ever got to the end of a blog post with zero images included, or purchased something from a website that was 100% text? No? Me neither!

Good quality images can bring the text on your website to life and provide context to readers that are skimming through your content.
Studies have found that articles with images get 94% more total views and it’s really not hard to imagine why.
Images also make your content more shareable. For example, Facebook posts with images receive 87% more engagement than those without images, and tweets with images get 150% more retweets!

What it comes down to is that humans are naturally more attracted to images because that’s how most information is transmitted to the brain.
Also, when people are surfing the internet to learn new skills, to buy a new product or to look for information, they want to be entertained and they want fast results.
Including images is the perfect way to meet those needs because visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text.

Therefore, good-quality images can make the process of consuming information easier and more enjoyable than one big block of text.

Free vs paid stock images

You might be thinking surely it’s better to use paid stock images for your website, right?

In the past, this might have been true. The amount of free-to-use images circulating on the web was relatively small which meant that other people would have been using the same images as you and the quality just wasn’t that great.
However, now with the evolution of free stock image websites, like the ones we’ve listed below, there are millions of royalty-free images for you to use on your site free of charge.

While it’s true someone else can still use the same image, the chances of a visitor landing on another website with the same images as you are very slim.
Also, a benefit that paid stock image services had over free stock images providers was the ability to download images in different sizes, but now some of the free services offer a variety of sizes too.
Finally, because free stock image libraries are usually populated by up and coming photographers, the images often seem less ‘stock image’ like. This is great for making your website feel more authentic and unique.

Of course, the main benefit is not having to spend any cash on visuals which will increase your return on investment and profit, whatever business you run.

Personal, commercial and editorial use

Some of you might be waiting for some sort of catch… but no don’t worry, there really isn’t one.
If you choose to download images from any of the websites listed below you can use them free of charge for personal, commercial, and editorial use, it’s as simple as that.
You can also edit the photos however you want. Feel free to crop, re-size, add text, or apply a filter.

You’re not even required to give photo credit, however, I’m sure the photographers would be really grateful if you could drop them credit where possible. You’ll score some good karma points if you do.

High-resolution free images

Let’s get into the list of the best free image websites where you can find millions of high-resolution visuals that will transform your website from looking drab and unfinished to professional and engaging.

Unsplash

Unsplash has over one million curated photographs that have been vetted by the company to ensure perfect quality. They have a community of over 157,000 photographers that contribute to the site who range from amateur hobbyists, professionals, and emerging brands.

They must be doing something right because they have received over 1 billion downloads from people wanting to use their images for a long list of different reasons.

Other platforms like Buzzfeed and Trello have started integrating Unsplash so that their users can access the high-quality images on offer. Even some website builders that you’ll find on our site, like Squarespace and Zyro, have integrated Unsplash so that it’s even easier to upload the free images to your website.

With Unsplash you can download your images in multiple sizes which include:

Original size – this will vary depending on the contributor
Large – 2400×3200
Medium – 1920×2560
Small – 640×853

Pexels

Pexels was first founded in 2014 and is another great site that offers hundreds of thousands of free stock photos with an easy to use interface and a neat search tool. They’ve gone to a lot of effort to make sure all of the photos uploaded are appropriately tagged so they’re easy to find.
Like most free image platforms, the photographs are sourced from a community of amateur and professional photographers that upload new high-resolution images every day.
The platform has received millions of downloads from writers, artists, programmers, web designers, and other creators.

You can download images in Large (1999x 1333), medium (1280 x 853), or small (640 x 246) sizes. You can also download it to your own custom size if you have unique requirements.

Pixabay

Pixabay has over 1.7 million high quality free and royalty-free stock images and videos. You can search for images, photos, vector graphics, illustrations, or videos so you can pull up exactly what you need.
The images are sourced from a vibrant group of creatives who have a passion for photography and design. As well as the free images there is also a bank of paid-for images that are marked with the iStock logo.

On Pixabay you can download JPG images in four different sizes:

6016×4016 = 8.6MB
1920×1281 = 1.0MB
1280×854 = 495KB
640×427 = 150KB

A cool feature on this platform is that every image comes with a details box that tells you what camera the photo was taken on, the resolution, and how many downloads it has.

Picjumbo

Launched in 2016 by 26-year-old entrepreneur and photographer, Viktor Hanacek, Picjumbo has now received over 7.5 million downloads and is loved by lots of online creators and some big brands too.

The platform offers free and premium photos for a large range of popular tags such as fashion, mountains, nature, winter, cars, technology, and much more.
You only have one choice of size for a free download and file types will always be JPG.
Like on every other platform in this list, all photos are free for personal and commercial use.

Burst (by Shopify)

Burst is a free stock image platform that is powered by Shopify and offers users thousands of high-resolution images that are ready to download and use of all types of websites, online adverts, and print media.
You have the choice to download in high or low resolution. Low resolution is better for small web graphics to improve loading time, whereas high-resolution images are best suited for large web images, print media, or for use in presentations and brand decks.

Because it’s powered by Shopify, if you see an image that inspires you to start a website you can do so in just a few clicks. Click on the ‘Create a website with this photo’ button, input your details and you’ll have made the first step in creating a website with Shopify.

All photos are under the Creative Commons licensing act.

Reshot

Reshot has taken a different approach to how they provide free stock images to online creatives, going for a quality over quantity approach.
Their mission is to give emerging photographers the platform to share their work and get noticed while providing people like you the chance to access and use world-class images for free.

They have a simple offer – see a photo you like, point-and-click, and you will receive a JPG file within a few seconds. There are no size options so you will have to resize it yourself if you need to.

Stocksnap.io

Last but certainly not least is Stocksnap.io that offers thousands of free stock images that are updated daily by their community of talented and passionate photographers.

They were founded because they recognized the need for free high-quality stock images and have worked on building one of the best image libraries on the web. You can browse by category or look at trending images to see what’s popular among online creatives.
As well as the free stock images, Stocksnap is also linked up with Shutterstock and will show a few premium options with every search as well.

For free downloads, you will only be able to receive one size and all images will come in JPG formats.

Final thoughts on the best free stock image websites

We recommend opening up all the links and saving them to your bookmarks so that next time you need to find free high-quality images for your website or creative project, you’ll know exactly where to look.

If you haven’t decided on a platform to build your website yet, head over to our listings page and check out our expert reviews on the world’s leading website builders.

Creating a stunning website has been made a lot easier with ready-made template designs that have been created for website builder platforms.

But, you’ll face an often overwhelming amount of options. Sometimes there will be hundreds to choose from and very little guidance from the platform itself on what is actually best for your business. Instead, they just show you what looks good.

You might be tempted to just pick any template that looks like it might work and worry about the rest later. However, this could be a big mistake as it may be difficult or sometimes impossible to change the template after you go live without manually transferring over all of your content.

Combining our collective years of experience from the team here at Website Builder Ninja and the knowledge from our own trials and errors, we’ve created a list of things that we wish we’d thought about the first time we picked a web template design.

This article will list everything you need to think about when looking at template design, starting with features, touching on the overall look and feel, and finishing with customer support.

We’re hoping it will help you get it right the first time around and choose a template that’s right for you now and right for you in the future as you and your business grow.

Know what you want & need from your website

Okay, I’m sorry if this first point sounds like I’m trying to teach a fish to swim, of course you already know what type of website you want.
However, if it’s your first time using a website builder, knowing what you want is just the start, knowing exactly all of the elements you need is more difficult. This is because it often takes some trial and error to figure this out, and by that point, you might have already picked a bad template.

Every business will require different features from a website in order to be successful, some will be easy to handle and come as standard in many templates, whereas others are more complex and therefore it will be harder to find an out-of-the-box solution.
Therefore, understanding the features of your website is a crucial step that will allow you to pick the right website template and the right website builder platform that can cater to your needs.

Make sure that it is scalable and allows you and your business to grow in the future. For example, if you’re an online store that only sells one or two things now but you know you want to sell more in the future, you will want a template that can support large product listings.
Here some quick questions to help you think about what other features you might need for your website:

What type of content will you use the most (galleries, images, articles, links, videos, product listings)?
How many titles will you need on your navigation menu? Different menus will be able to handle different amounts and lengths (we’ll get to that later!).
Do you need a login or members-only section?
Are you selling any products? Does your site need to be set up for ecommerce?
Will you need a blog?
Do you want to build a mailing list? If so, you’ll need signup forms.

Look for features & customization

Website builder platforms are great at showing you the sexiest templates and tempting you into picking the one that looks best.
Before you click ‘sign up’ and start the speedy onboarding process, take some time to explore the templates and features pages of the platform that you think you want to use.

If you’re not sure which platform to choose yet, head over to our home page to see our top ten list of website and ecommerce builders and read some of our in-depth reviews to get a sense of which one would be best for you.
Here’s a list of common features that your business might need that you can use to cross-reference when looking at features.

Lead capture forms (email sign-ups)
The ability to accept payments (eCommerce sites)
Subscription or members-only content
Video integration
Comment sections and forums
Video backgrounds
Third-party integrations (such as CRMs or bookings systems)
Menus & online ordering
Product listings and a storefront (eCommerce sites)
Advanced blogging features
Media galleries
Event listings & ticket sales

The more things you think your business website will need from the list above, the more likely it is that you’ll find it difficult to find the perfect template and will need third-party plugins to make it work.
If you know you’ll need lots of advanced features, then choosing a website builder platform with a large app market will be a good move to ensure that the platform can support everything your business needs.

Make sure it’s responsive

Mobile traffic made up 52.6% of global web traffic in 2019 which means that your content is going to be viewed on a variety of different screen sizes.
So you need to make sure that any template design you choose is mobile responsive.

While all of the template designs on website builder platforms are designed to be responsive, if you are purchasing a template outside of the platform, make sure to check if the design you intend to buy is mobile responsive.
If your site isn’t responsive to mobile screens it’s going to really limit your potential audience because your website will be illegible and horrible to navigate on anything but a desktop.

SEO friendly

A good looking website is important to impress your visitors but if your website has poor SEO it will be very difficult to build organic traffic and get people to your site in the first place. So, it’s worth spending some time to find an SEO friendly template.

It’s very hard to tell whether a template will be SEO friendly just from looking at it and it will take a bit of research to find out how well the template has been designed for good SEO performance.

Here are some things to look out for when choosing SEO friendly templates:

Find templates with a solid hierarchy and easy navigation
Faster loading times are always better, especially for SEO
The ability to create HTML headers (H1-H6)
Templates that automatically create sitemaps for easy indexing
Optimized images – can you do this manually or automatically? Either is good
In-text-code editors allow you or an SEO expert to optimize further

Why one-pagers are bad for SEO

Some website templates are naturally better for SEO than others.
A one-pager website is where all of the information on a website is found on a single page and instead of clicking-through to another page you simply scroll down the page or click navigation buttons to jump to each section.

This is becoming a popular choice of design because it can create beautiful websites.
However, one-pagers limit your SEO potential for a number of reasons.

Limited keywords – a single webpage can only be optimized for one focus keyword so having one page really limits you.
Poor loading times – trying to fit everything into one page will create a slow loading time compared with a site that spreads out over multiple pages.
Lack of links – good SEO practice involves including internal and external links, if you have a one-pager you can only create links to a different section on the same page.
Only one title and meta description – you only have one chance to grab people’s attention on search engine ranking pages, if they don’t like it they won’t click on your link.

Final thoughts on website template SEO

A lot of it comes down to how well the platform you are sourcing the template from has coded the template to be SEO friendly.
Here at Website Builder Ninja, we conduct our own SEO audit on every platform we review so that you know how well your website can perform in terms of SEO. Check out our in-depth reviews and head to the SEO section to find out more.

Content width – full or box width?

Now that you’ve thought about features, responsiveness, and SEO it’s time to start thinking about how your website will look.
Choosing the content width design affects the overall look and feel of the site and will set the tone for how the rest of your website is viewed.

There are two main types of content width design.
The first is a full-width design which is where background images stretch across the whole screen from one side to the other. Full-width designs are very popular and give your site a creative and modern feel. Here’s an example from Wix:

The second is a boxed-width design that forms a visible border for your website and the content within it. This creates the look and feel of a more traditional website.

A benefit of a boxed-width design is that the content will be displayed relatively the same across different devices compared to a full-width design that might change quite a lot when downsizing to a smaller screen.

Here’s an example of a box-width design from Squarespace:

There’s no definitive rule for choosing a content width design for a particular business.

It’s down to you to decide if you want your business to have a more contemporary and modern feel or a more traditional and business orientated feel.

Logo placement

Something else to consider when picking your template is where the logo fits within the overall design. There are a few options and what type of business you run will affect where it should be.
For example, if you’re a service-led business your logo is less important than a brand that is trying to sell products.

For service-led businesses having your logo to one side in the navigation bar is a good idea and changes the focus from your brand to the services that you promote.
Here’s a good example from a US marketing agency:

As you can see the logo is placed within the navigation bar to one side and the focus is on what they do as a company rather than the brand itself.

Now let’s compare that to a company that is brand-focused:

Tommy Hilfiger mobile screenshot of website

The logo is still at the same level as the navigation bar but it is now front and central, which is much better for brand recognition. It signifies to the reader to take notice of the logo and will increase the chances of them remembering what it looks like.

How the menu bar looks and where it is placed within your template will also affect how people view and actually interact with your site in a big way.
It’s likely to be one of the first things your visitors will see and it will help them find the content they are looking for.

Here are some things you definitely want your menu bar template design to include:

A clean and simple design that’s easy to use
A simple background color that’s pleasing on the eye and contrasting text color for easy reading
Create a hierarchy for your pages with the most important page closest to the left and least important closest to the right

You should avoid:

Adding too many pages to the navigation tab
Distracting backgrounds that make the tabs less clear and harder to read
Using small complex fonts

We’ve found some great examples of the different types of menu bar design and listed the pros and cons to each one.

Fixed position menu bar (scrolls with you)

Take a look at the Wix Skooled template for an example of a fixed position menu bar.

Six Skooled template - mobile screenshot

Having a menu bar that sticks to the top of the page is great for websites with really long pages and allows users to quickly click between pages without having to spend 30+ seconds scrolling back to the top of the page.

The downside is that there are fewer templates with this design so you will have less design options to choose from. It can also get in the way of your content as the user scrolls down, taking away from the overall aesthetic.
However, if you know that you will have a lot of content on each page it’s worth considering this type of menu bar, but only consider it if you really need it.

A static top horizontal menu bar

Shopify’s Artisan template is an example of a static top horizontal menu bar.

Website template from Shopify in desktop view

Website template from Shopify in mobile view

This is the most widely used menu bar design that people have become accustomed to when browsing the web.
The benefit of using this style is that people will naturally scroll to the top to find the navigation bar so you can create a seamless user experience by giving the visitor what they expect. It also allows the content on your page to be viewed without a menu bar obscuring a considerable chunk of it.

The only real downside is that on longer pages the user might get frustrated with a long scroll back to the top of the page to go somewhere else on your website. There is a danger that they will just exit if the page is too long.

A side vertical menu bar

Check out the SITE123 Infinitea template for an example of a side vertical menu.

SITE123 website template in desktop view

This type of menu bar design is great for graphic and image-heavy websites like restaurants and photography portfolios.
The side vertical menu is also great if you have a lot of navigation tabs to list or if the tabs have long titles as there is more room to play with.

The biggest downside is that they are not very common and most users have the habit of going to the top of the page to navigate. It could become frustrating for those visitors stuck in their ways and detract from the overall user experience.
However, the benefits might outweigh the negatives depending on your business.

A bottom horizontal menu bar

Finally, the Momentum template from Squarespace is a stunning example of a bottom horizontal menu bar.

Squarespace website template - desktop view

Squarespace website template - mobile view

This style of menu bar is also great for websites that want to focus on images and graphic content.
The main benefit is that removing the navigation bar from where the visitor expects it to be, forces them to take notice of the content presented to them. This works great on photography, architecture, interior design, and other similar sites.

If you do choose to use this style of menu bar, placing lots of links within the content to help users navigate through your website will help to improve the overall user experience by reducing the need for a navigation bar.
However, (you might have already guessed) the downside is that for some users this will be confusing and they might choose to go somewhere else with more traditional navigation.

The header area of your homepage is the first thing that will be seen by a visitor to your site and it will play a big role in their decision to either stick around or look somewhere else.

Website builder templates will have a particular type of header layout, most of which will look great, so how do you know which one to choose?
Again it depends on your business, your audience, and the intent behind your website.
Your header layout can either benefit or limit your website’s success so we’ve listed the different types of design and the pros and cons to each one to help you make your decision.

Static header image with no content

Big header images are something Squarespace is famous for and their Vandam template is an example of a static header image with no content.

Squarespace vandam website template in desktop view

Squarespace vandam website template in mobile view

The benefit of this style of header is that it creates a stunning aesthetic that’s uninterrupted by text content. This works well for websites that want to showcase stunning locations, products, or photographs.
For example, a hotel business could lead with a beautiful image of their building because visitors don’t need much context to understand what is on offer.

However, this style is not good for businesses that need to provide context to explain their offer. It might be easy for a hotel to describe what they do with one image but a B2B marketing agency and other service-led businesses need some text content to describe their offer successfully.

Static header with content

The Functional Studio template from Wix is an example that showcases a static header with content.

Six Functional Studio Template in desktop view

Six Functional Studio Template in mobile view

This is the most common choice of header layout because you get the benefit of a large hero image to create a good aesthetic with added text content to clearly describe to the visitor what the site is all about.

The headline – is used for the name of the business
The supporting paragraph – explains what the business does
The call to action – tells the reader what you want them to do

This type of header layout is good for any type of business because it’s a clear and simple method of welcoming people to your site.

Slideshow header with content

Shopify’s Handy template utilizes a slideshow header with content layout.

A slideshow header works well if you need to showcase a number of different products or services without making the visitor go off to a new page on your site.
This works particularly well for eCommerce sites that have a number of core products that they want customers to know about immediately.
Having the text content there as well provides an opportunity to start selling the product or service with carefully crafted sales copy.

However, there are some downsides to sliders which may make you think twice about using them…
If you’re not careful multiple offers may confuse people and what they came for might not be shown straight away.
For example, using the images from the example above, if I turned up to the website expecting to see leather handbags and saw image number one of a yellow shirt, I might think I’m in the wrong place and leave the site.

Also, the additional content can slow your loading times down and reduce your SEO performance.

Finally, there are more things to go wrong when the design is responding to different screen sizes, sliders are notorious for not working on mobile devices.
It’s all down to whether you think you need it and your customers would respond well to it. Just consider the downsides before jumping into this content-heavy option.

Customer support

Customer support is last on our list but should be in your mind at all times as you research template options.
It doesn’t matter if you’re making the simplest website ever or a really complicated design packed full of advanced features, at some point you will probably run into some issues and need some technical or expert advice.

Make sure that you can get access to support that you can use when you need it. Either by phone or a live chat system and that there will be someone available in your time zone so you don’t have to wait up until 1 AM to get some help.
It’s also worth checking out the platforms how-to guides and video tutorials to check if they are any good and have covered topics that you know you need to learn about.

Final thoughts on how to decide on a website template design

If you’ve made it this far you now know that there’s lots to think about when it comes to picking the right website template design for your website. It’s worth taking the time to really consider what you need not only right now but also in the future as your business grows to save yourself a lot of time, money and hassle in the long run.

In summary, the main things to consider are:

Do the template and platform have the features and customization options your business needs?
Is the template mobile responsive?
Is it SEO friendly?
What design features will suit my business (content width, menu bar style, header layout & logo placement)?
Are the overall usability and user experience right for your audience?
Can the platform you choose provide you with the support you need?

If you want to find out more about the design capabilities and other pros and cons of the world’s leading website builders, read our expert reviews on platforms such as Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and many more.

Some people embrace it, whereas others try and avoid it. However, if you’re serious about developing an online presence and you want to develop an effective long term strategy for your online business, you’re going to have to think about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

If you’re choosing to use one of the best website builders, like Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify to create a website, the good news is that all of the technical SEO has been done for you and is already built into the platform and templates. So, you won’t need to do any coding and instead can focus on keyword research, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.

In this article, we outline how to be effective with SEO when using a website builder platform. We will take you through some things that you can do on all DIY website builders and things you can do outside of the platform to boost your rankings. If you want to find out which is the best website builder for SEO head over to our home page and check out our expert reviews. We conduct our own SEO audit on every platform we write about so you know how well your website can perform. Follow the link here to see our Wix SEO analysis.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of finding out actual search terms that people across the internet type into search engines.
It should be the first step in any SEO strategy and will allow you to create relevant, useful, and engaging content based on what your target audience is actually looking for.

The data you get back from keyword research will vary slightly, depending on which tool you use, but the most common criteria you want to look out for is the average monthly search volume and the keyword competition index.
Average monthly search volume tells you how popular a keyword is and the competition index will tell you how hard it will be to rank for a particular keyword.

When you start looking into keywords for your topic you will notice that short-tail keywords (general search phrases with only one or two words) have a very high average search volume and are very competitive.
Whereas long-tail keywords (specific search phrases with three or more words) tend to have a lower average search volume and can be less competitive when compared to the short-tail keywords.

A good keyword strategy will target both short and long-tail keywords.

The Best Keyword Research Tools

Once you have an idea of the keywords you would like to focus on you can use a keyword research tool to help you find out what people are actually searching for and the data behind these search terms.
Deciding on the best keyword research tool will depend on your budget and how much data you need, but here are some to take a look at.

Google Adwords Keyword Planner
Yoast Suggest
Google trends
Moz
SEMrush
Ahrefs
Ubersuggest

On-page SEO

When using a website builder platform all of the technical SEO has been taken care of so you will spend most of your time concentrating on On-page optimization.
When done correctly On-page SEO will help search engines to understand your website and its content, helping it to decide whether or not it’s relevant for user search queries.

Website builders make On-page SEO easier by giving you things like drop-down menus within the text editor to create header tags and options pages with boxes to write meta-descriptions and URL tags so you can do everything without having to go into the HTML scripts.

We’ve listed below the easiest and most important things you should focus on when it comes to SEO for website builders.

1. Header Tags (H1-H6)

Header tags are HTML tags used to identify between headings and subheadings and provide context around what the subject matter of the rest of the content on the page is about.

H1 tags should be used for the main heading of the page and then H2-H6 tags should be used to organize the page to make the content easy to navigate and read.
Proper use of header tags has both benefits to search engines and users. Search engines will be able to understand and index well-structured sites much quicker.

For users, clear headings will make a website much easier to navigate because they will be able to find the content they need much faster and it will make the content easier to digest because they know what’s coming.

Pro-tip: If it makes sense to do so, include your target keyword in H1 headers.

2. Rich Content (Videos & Images)

When you think about SEO, you naturally think about optimizing text, however, having videos and images as part of your content plan, has a big impact on your site’s SEO performance.

Data from BrightCove tells us that if you include video content on your website you can expect to see an average increase of 157% more organic traffic arriving from search-engine ranking pages.

Including high-quality images has also been shown to reduce bounce rate and keep users on your pages for longer. Google values rich content because they know people like consuming it more than text content.

Most website builders make it simple to include videos and images. You simply add in a video or image content block, paste a video URL or upload an image, and it’s done.
We’ll talk some more about how to optimize your images for SEO later in the article.

Pro-tip: Give your images and videos some context, embed them in a place where it makes sense with other relevant written and visual content.

3. Internal / External Links

Using relevant internal and external links throughout your content will improve your website’s overall SEO performance, helping it to rank higher and increase its visibility.
Internal links – are hyperlinks that take the reader to another page on your website.
External links – are hyperlinks that take the reader to a relevant page on another website.

When done correctly internal and external links will increase the authority of your site which is a direct ranking factor.

Benefits of internal links

Internal links can increase the time a reader will spend on your website, making them much more likely to become a customer or a follower.
They are best used as call-to-actions or to give the reader more information about a certain topic.

For example, if I was writing an article about SEO on Shopify for this website, I would include an internal link to our review of the Shopify platform so the reader can find out more information and hopefully stick around for a bit longer.
Internal links also provide your site with a structure that makes it easier for the search bots to navigate through relevant content.

Benefits of external links

Including outbound links that send people away from your site may seem counterintuitive, however, it can improve the authority of your site by providing your readers with valuable references that benefit their overall experience.

The main thing to think about when using external links is to make sure you’re only linking to trustworthy and credible sites with high domain authority.
Avoid spammy and poorly managed sites at all costs as external links to these sites will damage your SEO.

An example of a good external link when writing about SEO would be to link to a page on Moz.com, Yoast.com, or Ahrefs.com as they are industry thought leaders that will have great domain authority.

Make a list of the thought leaders and most respected sites within your industry and use them for your outbound links when necessary.

Pro-Tip: Anchor text is the text that is linked to another page, often highlighted in blue and underlined. Make sure this anchor text is relevant to the link and use phrases that describe what the link is about. This helps the reader and search engines understand the context around the link, improving user experience, and SEO performance.

4. Titles & Descriptions

Title tags and meta descriptions are bits of HTML code in the header of a webpage.

They are displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable link that takes you through to a website (title) and the description underneath the link that gives readers information about the webpage (meta description).

It’s the only thing that will distinguish you from other competitor websites on the SERPs and therefore it has a huge impact on your click-through rate.

Similar to heading tags, title tags and meta descriptions give search engines and readers context about the web page.

How to write a good title tag

Try to write title tags between 50-60 characters as this is what will actually show up on the search engine pages.
Also, make sure to include relevant keywords and phrases to let search engines and readers know what the page is about.
Good context is the key to success.

If your title is going to be longer than 60 characters make sure that any keywords and phrases that are important are closer to the front of the sentence to make sure they show up on the search engine results pages.
The main thing to remember is that title tags give you the opportunity to gain click-throughs to your site, so make it compelling and right for your audience.

How to write great meta descriptions

Meta descriptions give you a bit more space to describe what’s on your page but are still very limited.
What will show up on the SERPs will be around 155-160 characters, which works out as roughly one or two sentences.

Again, the main purpose here is to attract people to your site, so the descriptions need to be captivating and relevant to your audience and the topic featured on your web page.
Use keywords and a call-to-action to give the reader context and a clear instruction of what you want from them.

Pro-tip: Create unique titles and descriptions for every page on your website to drive click-through rates, to help search engines understand that your content is valuable, and to signal that there is no duplicate content on your site.

5. Friendly URLs

URLs are another factor in helping readers and search engines understand what your webpage is all about.

When you first sign up to a website builder, before you purchase your custom domain name you’ll notice that your URLs will look something like this:
https://www.website.com/app/website/users/132022142/sites/506795768773583108/dashboard/editor#/page/0e9231d0-8ae7-11ea-b63d-e384bc90fc08/block/0e9b7340-8ae7-11ea-a1f0-7d1f6a6bd992

As you can see this isn’t helping anyone figure out what this webpage is about.
Luckily most website builders make it simple for you to edit URLs with a settings page that will look something like this one from Squarespace:

How to write SEO friendly URLs

Best practices for writing URLs that will benefit your overall SEO strategy will involve including a keyword and keeping them short.

URL keywords
Ideally, you will include your target keyword in your URL because this will be the most relevant to what you are writing about and will also signal to search engines, “Hey! This piece is about […]”

Keep it short and sweet
Long URLs make it harder for search engines and readers to quickly distinguish what the page is about.
Lots of studies have found a strong correlation between short URLs and higher-ranking pages, so the shorter the better.
Here’s an example using one of our own URLs:
https://websitebuilderninja.com/e-commerce-builders
As you can see our URL is short and includes our target keyword, e-commerce builders.

There’s no second-guessing what the page could be about, it’s simply about e-commerce website builders.

Pro-tip: Use hyphens in between words because these let Google and other search engines know that you want the words in your URL to be viewed independently and not as one big jumble of letters.

6. Effective Keyword Writing

So we now know that you should include your focus keywords in your title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and in your URLs to make it easy for search engines and readers to understand the context of your web pages, but what about the rest of the content?

To be completely honest, if you’ve included your keywords in those four areas you’ve done most of the hard work.
When you’re writing the rest of your content you should focus on writing naturally and in a conversational tone.

Using natural language is important to rank well because search engines will actually penalize or potentially ban pages that attempt to stuff keywords into a piece of content.

If you write how you would normally and genuinely attempt to educate and inspire the reader, your focus keywords will naturally flow throughout your content and create a relevant piece of text, both in the eyes of the reader and the search engine bots.

7. Optimize Images

We’ve already discussed the importance of using rich content like images to make your content more compelling for your reader.
Once you’ve decided on the right image, the next step is to optimize it for your website and to improve your overall SEO and user experience.
Here are a few things that you should consider…

Filename

Make sure your filename clearly states what your image is about and use a keyword where possible.

Choose the right file type

There are many file types to choose from and you might want to choose different file types depending on the type of image you want to use.
However, JPEGs, PNGs, and SVGs are some of the most common and preferred options.

JPEGs – are great for larger photos and illustrations. You’ll be able to maintain decent color and clarity with a relatively small file size.
PNGs – will produce better quality images but they come with a larger file size which will slow your loading time down. Only use when you need to preserve background transparency.
SVGs – are lightweight options for vector files such as logos, icons, and illustrations. A great benefit is that they can be resized without loss of quality.

Reduce file size

Page speed is a direct ranking factor so having pages that load as fast as possible is vital for good SEO.
On average images make up around 21% of a webpages ‘weight’ so reducing the file size is a simple way to speed up your site.
The simplest way to do this is to use a tool like Tinyjpg.com that will reduce your image file size for you.

If you want to see how much of an impact this has on your site, try testing your page speed using Google’s page speed insight tool before and after you upload the compressed images.

Captions

Captions should only be used when it adds value to the reader’s experience.
Simply give a bit of context to the photo so that if people are scanning your content they can quickly understand why the image is there and what it’s about.
If it’s appropriate you can include a keyword but be careful not to fall victim to keyword stuffing…

Image alt text

Finally, writing something for your image alt text is something that you should do for every image you put up onto your site.
Image alt text provides content for visually impaired readers that might be using a screen-reader and for those people who have images turned off on their web browser.

Again this is another opportunity to include the focus keyword if it’s appropriate.

Off-page SEO

You might have already guessed it but Off-Page SEO is everything that happens outside of your website that improves your SEO ranking.
It’s basically about generating traffic to your site and making your business look legitimate and successful.

While social media helps to some extent by proving to search engines that people engage with your brand, the main thing that will improve your Off-page SEO is backlinks.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is simply an inbound hyperlink from another website to your webpage.
Quality links from a good source can bring lots of traffic to your site.
Search engines use the number of backlinks a website or a piece of content has to determine how valuable a piece of content is.

The theory is if lots of people are using a particular page as a resource and are prepared to link to it from their site, it must be really useful and relevant to that given topic.

Sites with lots of backlinks tend to have a higher domain authority and sites with high domain authority on average rank well on search engine ranking pages (SERPs).

How to build links to your website?

There are a few black-hat or grey-hat online marketing techniques where you can exchange your hard-earned cash for backlinks, but this is not a good long-term strategy and can actually harm your SEO if the links are from spammy websites.
The best strategy is to write amazing content that people will naturally want to link to.

If you’re writing content that educates and informs the reader on a certain subject, in an entertaining way, you are much more likely to receive backlinks from other sites that have found it to be valuable and think that their audience would enjoy reading it too.

If you have a product, sending it out to websites that write about similar products or the industry you’re in can be a good way to build backlinks to your site.

Most people will be happy to write about and link to your website if they’re getting free stuff!

Final thoughts on how to be effective with SEO when using website builders

Website builders are great because they take care of the technical SEO for you. However, there is still lots to do before you reach the number 1 spot on the search engine ranking pages.

It all starts with keyword research so you can focus on the search terms that you want to rank for. Make sure that the ones you choose are relevant to your audience and that you are targeting both short-tail and long-tail keywords.

From there, following our On-page optimization steps will make sure that all the content you produce for your website is as search-engine-friendly as possible, so you can start climbing the rankings.

Finally, once the On-page optimization is taken care of and you have some quality content up on your site you should start building backlinks to your website to boost domain authority and referral traffic.

Launching a new website is both exciting and daunting.
It feels like there is so much to do and all you want is to start publishing content and making sales – we know the feeling!

However, getting things right the first time around is crucial and will save you a lot of work and hassle in the future.
That’s why we’ve pulled together a simple checklist covering everything you need to do when building a website.

Whether this is your first time building a website or you are an experienced developer, following these steps will make sure you set off on the road to success and simplify the process of creating a website.

1. Decide on a launch date

Setting a launch date makes any project come to life and will give you a deadline to stick to.
Depending on which platform you choose to build your website it could take anywhere from a week up to a few months to get your site up and running.
Make sure that it’s a realistic timeline and that you can stick to it. However, make it as strict as possible to increase your productivity.

Deciding on a launch date will be much easier once you know what you need to do… read the rest of the steps on how to launch a website to find out what’s involved.

2. Choose your website builder

There are lots of options when it comes to website building platforms. Some are cheap and some are expensive. Some are easy-to-use and some require technical skills.
It’s important to consider the best one for your business and find the one that suits your budget, technical skills, and design preferences.

If you don’t feel like testing every single platform, the team at Website Builder Ninja has done the hard work for you.
Read our top 10 list of the best website builders on the market. There’s a detailed review that outlines the pros and cons of every platform, links to example websites, and much more.

Here are some important things to consider when deciding on which platform to go for:

Search engine optimization (SEO)
Design capabilities
Ease-of-use
Third-party integrations
Customer support
Monthly fees
Features and tools
Online store options
Marketing capabilities

The best thing about using a website builder platform is that it simplifies your workload by having everything in one place.
You will be able to register a domain name and host your site with most, if not all website builder platforms, making steps 3 & 4 much easier as it will be part of the onboarding process.

3. Pick your domain name

Your domain name is what will appear in the web browser address bar when people search and land on your website. For example, our domain name is websitebuilderninja.com.
There are lots of options for domain names but ones ending with .com or .org are generally the most recognizable and respected.

However, their popularity makes them the more expensive options but if your budget can stretch to it, it’s definitely worth it to look more professional in the eyes of your visitor.
Having something that is easy to spell and remember will make it easier for people trying to find your site.
Having your business name is the best strategy however, sometimes it will already be taken. If so, try and include your location to make it unique but still relevant to your business.
For example, websitebuilderninjaNYC.com.

You can register a domain name with sites like Dreamhost and Bluehost. It usually costs between $10-$20 per year.

4. Decide on a website hosting service

If you’re not using a website builder or the platform you chose doesn’t support hosting then you will need to decide on where to host your site.
It’s worth taking some time to find a reliable host that can handle your traffic today and in the future.

There’s nothing worse than putting in all the hard work to bring traffic to your site, only to have it reach full capacity and not work for some visitors.
Some important things to consider when picking a hosting service and hosting plan for your website are:

Site speed – how quickly will your pages load?
Expansion – can you increase the bandwidth and storage memory as your site grows?
Flexibility – are you locked into a yearly plan or can you change your plan when you need to?
Security – does your hosting plan come with an SSL certificate and HTTPS?

There are lots of hosting services on the market with sites like HostGator offering plans for small businesses right through to business empires.

5. Design a logo

Deciding on your logo is another important step.
It can be difficult to get right because it might be the first time you are thinking about how to visually represent your business and its values.
It will also feed into the overall look and feel of your site and help you to choose a font style and color palettes.

You can create something yourself if you have some design skills and the ability to create high-resolution image files or you can choose a service like 99 Designs to do all the hard work for you.

Whichever method you choose, you want your logo to:

Represent your company values and what you do
Appeal to your target audience
Make a statement to gain recognition

Finally, any fonts and colors should be reflected across your whole website so make sure you’re happy with what’s in your logo.

6. Choose a website template design

With some website builders, you can easily add new pages and change themes with just a few clicks.
For others changing your theme can be an expensive and time-consuming process, so it’s worth getting it right the first time around.

Having the perfect template for the launch of your website will allow you to impress your first visitors which can be vital to the early success of your business.

Site pages and features

Make sure you have all the necessary pages for your business. What you need will vary depending on what you offer or what you are trying to show.
For example, an online shop is going to need a product page whereas a marketing agency will probably want a services page.

Planning out a site map before this step is a useful exercise to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Having the right features for your website is also vital, so make sure whatever website builder platform you choose has the necessary features before you get started.
For example, if you run a yoga studio, your website will need a booking and reservations feature or if you want to include a blog to your website you will want to pick the platform with the best blogging features.

Look and feel

The overall look & feel should reflect how you want to communicate your business to your target audience.
For example, a photography website should choose a template that has space for big and bold images whereas an eCommerce website will want to choose a template with an attractive storefront and space for featured products.

Images, graphics, videos, font style, and color palettes are all things that are going to bring your site to life.

Making the style of these elements consistent across your site is going to let your audience know what you stand for and make a stunning website that will make viewers want to stick around and enjoy your content and browse your products.

User experience

Something else you want to think about when choosing and editing website templates is user experience. This is the overall experience of the person using your website.

The aim of any website should be to create positive experiences and give the user everything they were expecting to find, without having to struggle to find it.

Here are some basic principles to follow:

Have a clear site hierarchy (the organizational structure of pages) by creating a logical site map and including internal links
Keep a consistent look and feel throughout
Make sure the template you choose is responsive to different screen sizes
Less is more – give images and text room to breathe so it’s easy to see and read them
Use simple and conversational language
Choose easy to read fonts – sans serif fonts are best for screen reading

7. Source high-quality images

Studies have found that people remember 80% of what they see compared to 20% of what they read.
So, having high-resolution images for your site can leave a lasting effect on your visitors and will give your site a professional look and feel.
Some website builders like Bookmark, SITE123, and Shopify come with thousands of free stock images already.
If you choose another platform there are still options with sites like Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay offering free professional stock images that you can use without worrying about copyright infringement.

8. Develop content

So by this point, your website is really starting to take shape and the next step is to fill your website with great content. It’s your chance to speak directly to your audience, sell your products, and optimize your site for search engines to attract organic traffic.

Keyword research

Conducting keyword research before you start writing will make sure you include the most relevant content for your target audience.
It will give you an idea of what people engaging with your topic or industry actually search for so you can provide them with content that they actually want.

Some great tools to carry out keyword research are Moz, SemRush, and Ahrefs.

Essential content

As well as crafting valuable and relevant content for your audience there are some basic pieces that every website needs.

Home page – with a clear description of who you are, what you offer, and a call to action (let the reader know what you want them to do).

Contact us – this needs to be easy to find and include multiple ways to get in touch, such as a phone number, email address, mailing address, and a contact form.

Customer testimonials – are a great way to build trust with your audience, if they can see someone else loves your product or has used your service, they are much more likely to engage (make sure these are real, it’s easy to spot a fake!).

FAQ’s – create a better user experience by answering some of the common questions users will face when browsing your site. For example, ‘How do I pay?’.

Technical and legal content

Copyright notices, privacy policies, terms and conditions, and advertising disclaimers are all very important if you want to deter people from stealing your content, let your customers know that you take their privacy seriously, and keep the advertising watchdogs off your back.

This is definitely the less exciting side of creating content for your business, however, once it’s done you won’t have to do it again and you’ll have peace of mind knowing that your website meets legal requirements and that you’ve limited your liability should anyone want to take you to court.

Even though a very small number of people will ever read this content, just having it there will make people trust your website more, making them more likely to buy your products, sign up to your mailing list and engage with your content.

Creativity is not essential here so if you really can’t face doing it there are a number of free and paid tools like Termsfeed that will do all of the hard work for you.

9. Set-up analytics

Some website builders offer their own analytics solution while others suggest setting up your site with google analytics.
Either way, you want to make sure that it’s set up and working before your launch date so that you can capture every bit of data possible.
This will enable you to understand how people are interacting with your site.
You’ll be able to see page views, unique visitors, referral traffic, bounce rate, and much more.
All of this data can be used to optimize your site and give you a reason to concentrate on certain areas as you and your business grow.
You’ll understand what you need to do more of and what you need to change for better performance.

It’s time to publish!

If you’ve made it this far through the checklist you will have everything you need to launch your website.
We can’t stress enough how important it is to take your time with each of these steps so you can get it right the first time around.

It will not only save you time and money in the long run but it will also give you and your business the best chance of seeing success straight after you launch your site.

Don’t be scared if you don’t get 1000’s of visitors straight away, you didn’t choose the wrong template! It just takes a little time to build traction on the web. If you stay patient, keep working hard, and craft high-quality content, the visitors will come.

If you’re still trying to decide on which website builder is best for you, head over to our homepage and check out our expert reviews on the world’s leading website builder platforms.

Increasing traffic to your website is important whether you’re just starting out or if you’re an established business looking for more growth. In the online world, more traffic equals a more successful business, period.

Writing quality content and having a good SEO plan should always be priority number one. However, there are so many ways to boost traffic to your website and in this article, we want to share 5 easy tips to get more traffic to your site for FREE.

1. Write great headlines

This one may seem simple but it’s far too often overlooked.
Clicks give you traffic and great headlines give you a better click-through-rate (CTR).

You could have the number one spot on the search engine ranking pages but if no one clicks on your headline then you won’t have any traffic.
Therefore, if you can write better headlines you will improve your CTR and create more traffic for your site.

Google and other search engines are much more likely to reward pages with higher click-through-rates because they want to show content that users will engage with. A 2014 study from Moz showed that there is a strong correlation between higher click-through-rates and a higher ranking position.

This is because your headline is what makes you stand out on the search engine ranking pages and is the difference between attracting clicks or being overlooked.
So, creating headlines that will improve your CTR is essential if you want to increase traffic from search engines.

How to write great headlines

A good headline will do one of four things:

Make a promise
Draw a picture
State a fact
Ask a question

When you do one of these things in your headline, you are much more likely to grab the attention of the reader. If you do it right, you’ll leave the reader interested, intrigued, and wanting to find out more.

Here’s an example of a headline-making a promise:

Kiss Back Pain Goodbye in 30 Minutes!

This headline has promised the reader a quick solution to a problem. If you’re suffering from back pain there’s no way you wouldn’t click on this.

Asking a question in a headline is a great way to involve the reader and create interest. Here are two examples:

Squarespace vs Wix: which is better?

Are you looking for a cheap website builder?

The first example uses a comparison followed by an unanswered question. This invites the reader to click on the article to find out more.
The second example uses the second-person pronoun ‘you’ to directly address the reader. If in the reader’s head they answer yes to the question you’ve directed at them, they are much more likely to click through to your article.

Free tools to help you with your headlines

There are lots of free headline analyzer tools that help you to optimize your headlines with the correct language and character length.

They usually give you a score based on how similar headlines actually performed. Play around with a few different titles until you get the best score before publishing your content.

2. Video content

This is maybe the most powerful tip to boost traffic to your website.

Producing and then posting video content to platforms like Youtube, Vimeo, and Facebook with links to your website as well as mentioning the name of it within your content can hugely expand your potential audience.
Anyone that views and likes your video content will click the link or search for your website, which can dramatically increase the number of unique visitors arriving on your web pages.

The reason this can be so powerful is because by 2022 online videos will make up over 82% of all consumer internet traffic, so without any video content to capture some of this traffic, you’ll be missing out on lots of potential visitors.

Embedding video content on your site helps you to gain more views from other visitors and creates even more chances to reach new audiences, especially when you consider that 92% of mobile video watchers are willing to share videos with their friends.

It can create a cycle of exponential growth as your new audience shares your video content again, creating even more exposure for your website.
You don’t need any fancy equipment to start seeing benefits from video content. Most people have phones that shoot in good enough quality to publish.

There are lots of different types of video content that people love to consume. Finding the right type for your audience is important but here’s a list of some great ideas to get you started.

Interviews / Q&A’s
Tutorials / How to’s
Product reviews
Animations
Live-streaming
Vlogs
Webinars
Behind the scenes
Testimonials
Brand films

Start experimenting with uploading videos using your mobile devices or create animations using free tools to start gaining traffic with no upfront cost.

It’s important to let people know about your content, you can’t expect them to find it for themselves.
With over 3.8 billion active users, social media provides a huge potential audience.
Simply spending some time sharing your content and engaging with people on social media will increase the potential reach and create another funnel for traffic to reach your website.
The best thing is that posting on social media is absolutely free!

How to get the most out of social media

Think about the platform
It’s easy to push out the same captions and hashtags across all platforms but users engage differently across social media channels and each one presents content in different ways.

For Twitter, you’re going to need to create short and snappy copy that can grab the reader’s attention in 280 characters.
Whereas on Facebook and Instagram there’s room to be more detailed and educational if it’s right for your audience.
Tailoring the copy to suit that particular platform’s audience will increase the likelihood that they will engage with your post.
Include an image
Including an image in your post can be very beneficial.
On average Tweets with photos receive 35% more retweets than those without.
Facebook posts with images receive a 37% increase in engagement.
Just make sure your image is high-res and relevant to the topic you are posting about so you can tap into this increased engagement from readers and bring more traffic to your site.
Use a hashtag generator
Adding hashtags to your posts increases your potential audience and is a great way to get your content in front of people that don’t follow you.
Posts with hashtags generate 12% more interaction.
Using a free hashtag generator like Kicksta or All-hashtag allows you to see the most popular hashtags for a particular topic.
The most important thing here is to include relevant hashtags that will target people that would want to read your content.
Also, lots of hashtags are not always best because you can appear spammy. Think quality over quantity for the best results.
Engage with your target audience
Joining groups and following popular hashtags that are relevant to your industry is a great way to start a dialogue with your target audience.
Try to find questions in the comments and produce an informative or entertaining answer with a link to relevant content that’s available on your site.

You can impress and help out the individual user by helping them to answer their query as well as attracting other users that are scrolling through the comments section.
If you answer enough questions and engage with enough users, you can create lots of additional links back to your site which can result in a considerable traffic boost.

Try to avoid posting any commercial content and focus on educating or entertaining so that group admins don’t remove your comments and kick you out of the group.
Reshare old content
Don’t be afraid to share your content more than once. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean people don’t want to read it.
Creating new content is very time consuming and there’s no guarantee that it will pick up lots of traffic.
Utilizing content that you know people will engage with is an easy way to bring more traffic to your site.

So much about going viral is being in the right place at the right time.
Try sharing your most popular and best-performing content once every 30 days with a new caption, on a different day of the week, and at a different time of day.
This will make sure a new group of people, with different social media habits, can be exposed to your content.

Pro tip: If you do have some budget behind you that you want to spend on boosting your chances of going viral, check out 99designs’ logo and social media pack for a custom logo and Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter cover images.

4. Tap into forum referral traffic

Finding areas of the internet where your target audience is active, and building a presence there, is a great strategy for boosting traffic to your site.
Just like engaging with comments in groups and on popular hashtags on social media, finding popular forum threads on sites like Reddit and Quora, and engaging with users, can be a great way to create more traffic funnels to your site.

And it will cost you nothing but your time!
The first thing you need to do to get the most out of driving traffic to your site from forums is to find popular threads, relevant to your industry, that attracts a lot of people and creates lots of engagement.

From there it’s about posting great content, asking good questions, and posting often to make sure that your profile is visible.
Make sure that you mention or have a link to your website in your signature so people have a way of getting to your site.
Always post links to relevant content from your site when it’s appropriate.

However, just be careful not to come across as ‘spammy’ by constantly posting links without any helpful advice. At the very least you will get ignored and at worst you will receive negative replies that will discourage other users from visiting your site.

5. Use email marketing

Research has found that 91% of consumers check their email every day so it’s a great way to gain more traffic if you can get into people’s inboxes.
Including a sign-up box on your website that allows readers to sign up to a newsletter will enable you to start building an email list.
It’s not always easy to get people to give away their details but here are a few things you can do to start building your mailing list:

Create content that gives value to your readers with a personalized call to actions

This could be an ebook, a quiz, exclusive articles, or a downloadable PDF.
If you offer content in exchange for an email address people tend to be more willing to sign up for your newsletters.

Create a pop-up banner for each page of your site

Setting a pop-up to appear after someone has spent a few minutes on your site will increase the likelihood of them inputting their details as they have obviously enjoyed the content if they have stayed to read it.

Include newsletter boxes on your about us page

If people are taking the time to read more about you and your company they must be interested in you. This is the perfect time to ask them to sign up to your subscriber list.

Now you have started to build a list, you can push out emails telling your subscribers about a new piece of content or your latest promotion on a product to increase the amount of traffic coming into your site.
It’s unlikely that you will get 100% of your mailing list to turn up to your site but even 10% could generate more sales.

Pro tip: If you want to get more out of your email marketing there are lots of services out there like Constant Contact that help you optimize your email campaigns with professional templates and expert insights into what works best. They offer a 60-day free trial that ends on its own once the time is up.

Final thoughts on how to boost your website traffic for FREE

Like we said in the intro, building traffic starts with great content and good SEO.
However, spending some time working on creating better headlines, posting video content, sharing on social media, getting active on forums, and growing a mailing list are a few simple ways for you to increase traffic to your website without having to spend any money.