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Want to jump straight to the answer? The best domain registrar service for most people is GoDaddy or Hostinger.
Just need a domain name without hosting? Domain.com is one of the best domain registrars for people that only need a domain name. It’s affordable and easy to use. Click here to get 25% off at Domain.com with the coupon code QUICKSPROUT.
Need hosting, too? You can instantly get a free domain name when you sign up for Hostinger web hosting (starting at only $2.99/month!). This is recommended if you need a hosting account for your new domain name, which most people do.
Finding the right domain registrar is crucial for your entire website-building experience. But there are thousands of options to choose from.
Fortunately for you, I’ve purchased hundreds of domain names throughout my career. So I know exactly what to look for in different situations. Based on my research and experience, I’ve narrowed down and reviewed the top seven domain registrars on the market today.
If you’re buying multiple domains or planning to buy and sell domain names as a business, it’s usually best to keep domain registration separate from web hosting. Domain registry and web hosting are very different, and you should stick to expert providers for each service.
But if you’re starting a blog or simple portfolio website, it’s perfectly fine to get your domain name and web hosting service from a single provider.
Hostinger is the best option to consider if you fall into this category. They offer a free domain name with very affordable web hosting. Hostinger is the fastest and easiest way to get a new website up and running—and you can save money by bundling your domain with a hosting package.
I’ve reviewed all my top picks in detail below. Read on to understand your options and make an intelligent decision about buying a domain.
GoDaddy is one of the largest and most well-known domain registration services on the market. It’s a simple and affordable way to register your domain and ensure its protection.
With GoDaddy, you’ll benefit from arguably the best introductory offers in the industry. You can register a domain name for just $0.01 for your first year when you commit to a two-year registration. It’s tough to find a better deal from such a top-notch domain registration service.
Where GoDaddy really shines above the crowd is with its privacy features.
Every GoDaddy domain comes with basic domain privacy and protection. This is available to you at no extra cost and protects things like your name, email address, phone number, and other personal information.
It’s common for other domain registrars to charge for domain privacy. So it’s nice that GoDaddy offers it for free.
For even more protection, you can upgrade to a Full Domain Protection or Ultimate Domain Protection package.
The Full package prevents hackers from stealing your domain or making changes. It also requires two-factor authentication for deletions, transfers, and other vital changes. The Ultimate package includes all of this, plus it holds your domain for an extra 90 days if your billing method expires upon renewal.
If you’re like me and you care a lot about your personal privacy and domain protection, then you’ll love GoDaddy.
Another unique standout of GoDaddy is its bulk domain search tool. You can use it to check the availability of up to 500 domains with just a few clicks. GoDaddy also gives you the option to purchase all of the available ones simultaneously.
If you’re thinking about getting into the domain flipping business, this tool makes it easy to list and park domains as well.
It’s also worth noting that GoDaddy has a domain broker service to help you purchase domains that are already taken. You’ll be assigned a dedicated agent to negotiate the deal between you and the current owner.
Get your first year for just $0.01 when you register a domain with GoDaddy today.
And read our full GoDaddy Review to get more information.
Hostinger is the best way to get free domain registration along with web hosting.
Instead of getting these from separate providers, use Hostinger and take care of everything in one place.
You’ll get fast, reliable, beginner-friendly web hosting, and you won’t have to pay any fees for domain registration for the first year.
Seriously, Hostinger offers free domain registration with plans starting as low as $2.99 per month.
It’s the service we recommend if you’re building a brand-new website. You can search for the perfect domain name on Hostinger, set up web hosting, and launch your website in minimal time.
WordPress is a one-click install with Hostinger, which makes it easy to start getting content on your site. What’s even better is that Hostinger offers one-click installs for more than 100 other apps.
Hostinger also includes free SSL certificates, which many domain registrars will charge you extra fees for. Plus, it’s easy to handle SSL certificates in hPanel, Hostinger’s user-friendly dashboard for managing your site. Our Hostinger review covers this in greater detail.
Another perk of getting your domain through Hostinger is the free privacy protection. The company automatically masks your contact information from the public WHOIS database. Other registrars will charge $10-$15 per year for this service.
Register your domain with Hostinger, lock in a great rate on web hosting, and get your site online in minutes. Save time and money setting up your domain with Hostinger.
See more in my in-depth Hostinger web hosting review.
Porkbun is a relative newcomer on this list, but they have made a name for themselves with affordable, competitive pricing–including on renewals, where a lot of domain registrars get you. Porkbun is committed to keeping its prices low and its options wide open.
With so many .com domains snapped up or way too expensive, it’s ideal to be able to take advantage of alternative domain extensions that make your URL–and your brand–more memorable.
Searching keywords on Porkbun will return a lot of new and trending domain extensions to choose from. Starting a blog about the best kinds of camping gear? Snag .review or .camp. Want to show off your portfolio and get new gigs? Try .studio, .art, or .ink.
A lot of these nontraditional but easy-to-remember extensions are available from Porkbun for under $8 for your first year. And they have literally hundreds to choose from, leading to nearly endless possible combinations with your desired keywords. Of course, they have .com domains available, too, starting at $4.75 to register a new one.
Right now, you can get a .shop extension for your web store starting at only $2.04 for the first year. That’s an incredible initial deal and it renews at a still reasonable $26.85/year after that. That’s better renewal pricing than just about anybody else on this list.
You can also purchase more than one year upfront, up to 10. Sure, you’ll lose out on the sweet first-year discount, but you’ll be able to secure your home on the web for up to a decade at Porkbun’s great rates. That same .shop extension can be locked down for ten years for just $228.93, an even better rate than their renewal pricing.
Plus, every domain purchase comes with the following extras for free:
Half of domain hunting now is brainstorming the right combination of keywords and extensions. The latter can be hard if you don’t know what’s available. But Porkbun’s helpful pages for trending domain extensions and their best deals can help you find something effective and cheap. At the time of this writing, Porkbun has the lowest registration cost on the market for over 200 extensions. And they have over 500 total available domain extensions.
Get creative with your URL and make something memorable that won’t cost an arm and a leg to register. Find your site’s one-of-a-kind home by registering a domain through Porkbun.
Domain.com is one of our top picks because of its quality of service, overall simplicity, and affordable privacy protection.
You can get a .com domain from Domain.com for just $9.99 per year. They also give you the option of purchasing the domain for up to five years, which means you can set it and forget it for the foreseeable future.
Where they really shine is in keeping your overall domain costs lower than average. While domain privacy and protection are two of the most important things when you own a site and domain, it is one of the add-ons where costs can really add up.
Domain.com only charges $8.99 per year for Domain Privacy + Protection. To compare, Network Solutions is $9.99 per year and only protects your information in the WHOIS database, skipping additional domain protection like malware scans.
Hostinger includes free WHOIS privacy protection with most domains registered through their service, which can amount to pretty big savings if you have a lot of domains.
With the addition of Domain.com’s SiteLock, you’ll get regular malware scans and blocklist prevention. Domain.com’s privacy protection also removes your personal contact information from the database and replaces it with its own.
You can add Domain Privacy + Protection at any time and it is available for all of the most popular domains, such as .com, .net, .org, .co, and more. There are some that don’t support domain privacy, including .ae, .es, .gg, and others. You can verify with the company if your chosen domain is supported.
Beyond privacy, Domain.com has other excellent services and 24/7 customer support. For example, you may be able to save even more money if you want to use them for hosting. Shared hosting with Domain.com is $3.75 per month whether you commit to 12 or 36 months. This is unlike some other hosting services, which only give you a lower monthly cost if you commit to several years upfront.
You can use the Domain.com website or online store builder to get everything you need in one place or use their services for domain transfers. They make the transfer process very easy.
The entire purchase process can be completed in a minute, including grabbing the privacy and protection add-on.
Fittingly for its own domain name, Domain.com should be one of the first places you look for a domain. Check out our Domain.com review to learn more about these services.
Get 25% off with coupon code QUICKSPROUT.
It’s crucial to lock down your dream domain once you find it. You want to own your prime real estate on the web for as long as possible without any worry about losing it by missing a renewal.
Network Solutions goes above and beyond the other registrars out there—you can secure your domain for anywhere from one year to 100.
You’ll have to pay upfront for the full 100 years if that’s the route you want to go (and there are no prorated refunds for changing your mind around the half-century mark). But if you’re betting on the longevity of your organization, company, or personal brand, Network Solutions makes it easy to set your domain up for the long haul.
While a full century might be overkill, the registrar’s options for 10 and 20-year terms are a real plus compared to other options on my list.
Even if you go with a shorter term, for just $9.99 per domain you can get expiration protection. If you forget to renew, are unable, or if you just have an old credit card on file that can’t be charged when renewal time rolls around, Network Solutions will keep your domain safe from poachers and rate hikes for up to a year.
Network Solutions also offers two common features, domain transfers and private registration, but in terms of cost they’re a little steeper than the others on this list.
However, Network Solutions has better search capabilities than most, allowing you to use their portal to bid on expired domains, place a certified offer on held domains, browse the inventory of premium reseller domains, search in bulk for up to 25 keywords or phrases, and score pre-registration deals on new domain extensions.
In any case, this is the registrar you need if you’re looking to lock down your dream domain for decades.
Head over to Network Solutions to search for your domain name today and use coupon code QUICKSPROUT to get 25% off.
True to their name, Namecheap offers great domain names at incredibly affordable prices.
They also give you a swift domain purchasing experience. In less than two minutes, you’ll be able to buy and register a domain name for less than the price of your average UberEats meal.
There are also limited upsells, nothing confusing about the process, and nothing to slow you down either.
It’s everything I want in a domain purchasing experience and nothing I don’t.
When you get to checkout, here’s my suggestion for which upsells to buy–ignore everything. Seriously, there’s nothing extra you need to purchase. Namecheap already provides domain privacy via a WhoisGuard subscription, a privacy protection that prevents your personal contact information from being displayed in the publicly accessible WHOIS database—and that’s free forever.
As long as your domain is with Namecheap, you’ll never pay for WhoisGuard. GoDaddy, on the other hand, charges $10 per year for it, and most other web hosts that offer domain registration charge $12 per year.
Once you’ve purchased your domain, the dashboard is clearly laid out.
I’ve found Namecheap’s knowledge base to be thorough and helpful. Great documentation is key, since buying and setting up a domain isn’t part of most people’s expertise. It’s just not something you do every day.
If you need more support, Namecheap has 24/7 live chat help and a two-hour ticket response time. To learn more about Namecheap’s support and additional benefits, check out our complete Namecheap review.
Maximize your small budget by grabbing a domain through Namecheap.
NameSilo is the second-fastest-growing domain registrar in the world. A big reason for this is their easy and affordable way to buy domains in bulk.
With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to search for hundreds of available domain names and purchase them. You also get a huge discount for bulk domain purchases.
In fact, their lowest rates clock in at $8.39 per domain per year if you purchase 5,000+ domains. That’s easily the lowest rate out there for domains.
Of course, you’ll have to buy enough domains to populate a small town. But if your business wants to secure an array of potential branding opportunities or get into the domain trading business, this is a fast and cheap way to do it.
There are just a few quick upsells, including a Premium DNS, SSL certificate, and hosting.
You can start configuring your domain at checkout—linking it to a third-party service (like a website builder) and entering custom name servers. Don’t forget to opt-in to WHOIS privacy protection.
Oh, and NameSilo throws in domain privacy for free (though you’ll need to opt-in by selecting it in your cart).
Get started with NameSilo today.
Finding the right domain registrar for your business can be tricky. Even in a list like this, how do you choose when each option is great?
Let me help you break it down.
Below are the criteria I used when compiling this list. I judged each product against these benchmarks to see how they performed. Use the following information as a framework to help guide your decision based on your unique needs.
When you sign up for a domain, you need to provide information for WHOIS—a public database filled with information about users who have purchased a domain name or created an IP address.
Think of it as a phone book for the Internet. Like a phonebook, you can use it to find the personal information (including the name, phone number, email address, and mailing address) of anyone with a domain name.
Spammers love the WHOIS directory. It gives them easy access to different people they can attempt to contact—as well as their contact information.
Luckily, you can keep the information out of their hands with domain privacy and protection.
Most domain registrars, like Namecheap, include WHOIS protection for free. Those who don’t charge about $12/year.
That might determine your ultimate decision on which domain registrar you go with. You’ll definitely want to research the domain registrar’s WHOIS privacy policy and whether or not you’ll have to purchase it at checkout.
You can also use your business info, since it’s already publicly available. But whatever you do, definitely don’t use your personal info unless you want to field spam phone calls and emails after your domain purchase.
It’s common for domain registrars to offer web hosting services. It’s also common for web hosting providers to offer domain registration.
These bundles might seem tempting, but in most cases you should keep each service separate. Why? Separation gives you a lot more flexibility if you want to change web hosts and/or domain registrars in the future. It also improves the quality of service on both.
I’d only recommend registering a domain and getting hosting with the same company if you’re not planning to buy more domains in the future. Companies that offer domains and hosting together will tout the ability to save money by doing both together. However, when you are purchasing a large number of domains, you often can receive a better deal by shopping around and separating the two services.
If you are doing something simple, like starting a blog or personal website, using the same company for both web hosting and for purchasing a domain can work well. When you have a simple website in your plans, you can save some money by using the same company.
If you do decide to bundle your domain registrar and web host in one provider, you should use Hostinger. It is the best service when it comes to delivering both of these services at an extremely high level while offering both of them a great price.
Domain transfers are a sneakily important aspect of a good registrar. This is especially true if you have chosen to bundle your services.
Why? At some point you’re likely going to transfer your domain, especially if you’ve chosen to bundle it with a web hosting service.
While I do recommend bundling with Hostinger for beginners, Hostinger is probably not the last place your website will live if you get really get serious about growing your traffic and web presence.
You also might end up finding a better deal with a different domain registrar later on. Or you might just not gel with the current domain registrar.
Whatever your reason, you’re going to want to make sure you choose a domain registrar with a clear and straightforward transfer policy. It shouldn’t cost you a bunch of money and time on the phone with a customer support rep just to transfer your domain to a new registrar down the road.
As you research, see what it takes to transfer a domain from their platform. Make sure it’s spelled out in clear and plain language. If not, you might end up resenting your choice down the road.
This certainly won’t apply to most of you—but for those it does apply to, this will be an important consideration.
Does the domain registrar you’re researching offer bulk purchases? This can be an important tool for many businesses, especially if you’re building out multiple sites or if you’re looking to get into the domain parking game.
Platforms like Namecheap, NameSilo, and GoDaddy are fantastic options if you want to purchase domains in bulk. They even offer great promotions and discounts, too.
But be sure to find a domain registrar with a simple and user-friendly bulk purchasing tool. That means it’s easy to use, and pushes no upsells or hidden fees.
It’s way too easy to get caught up in a flashy tool, only to later find out that you accidentally purchased a ton of upsells you didn’t need.
Whether you’re buying a new domain for the first time or purchasing domains in bulk as an investment, finding a reliable domain registrar will make your life much easier.
GoDaddy and Hostinger are the top domain registrars on the market today. GoDaddy stands out for its simple registration process and domain privacy and protection included with every purchase. Hostinger offers a free domain with web hosting—perfect for beginners who want to bundle both services from the same provider.
There’s no ranking factor more important than links. If you want to rank, you need to have lots of links pointing back to your website.
As simple as it sounds, a link is not a link. There are variables, such as: relevancy and authority.
We have over 30 guides that will help you master link building.
Learn the basics. This is the best place to start if you are new at building links.
How Many Links Should You Build to Your Website?
A Step by Step Guide to Modern Broken Link Building
How to Create a Link-Building Strategy from Scratch
What Is a “Good Link Profile” and How Do You Get One?
7 Link Building Mistakes You Ought to Avoid
7 Ways to Make Your Brand and Content More Likable
How to Combine PR with SEO for the Biggest Success
Types of Content That Attract The Most Backlinks
The Quest For The Perfect Link
The Link Builder’s Guide to Email Outreach
7 Reasons Your Outreach Emails Aren’t Getting Responses and How to Fix That
The Guide to Link Building Techniques
4 Ways to Boost the Conversion Rates of Your Link Building
How to Leverage Link Blending and Stage 2 Link Building to Maximize Your Rankings
7 Lessons Learned from Publishing 300 Guest Posts
Relationship-Based Link Building Guide
Advanced ScrapeBox Link Building Guide
.Edu and .Gov Link Building Guide
A Guide to Turning Images Into Links
How to Get Backlinks: The Complete Guide
A Thirty-Day Plan for Gaining 100 Authoritative and Relevant Backlinks to Your New Website
The Ultimate Guide to Content Link Building
How I Built 826 Backlinks to a Single Article in 8 Weeks
Here’s the Process to Help You Consistently Build 7 Backlinks a Week
The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting in 2019
Quick Sprout has everything you need to become a world-class digital marketer. We’ve included it all below. Treat this page …
Quick Sprout University Read More »
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Our favorite channel, by far, is content marketing.
We don’t have to push people to become our customers, all we have to do is release amazing content and great prospects will come to us.
For many us, getting into sales or paid marketing just as appealing as being able to help people while marketing our business. We get the best of both worlds. Not only do we grow our business, we provide a ton of value and solve problems for people along the way.
It’s not all roses though, content marketing does have some downsides. The main one being how long it takes. To build an audience that loves our content, we have to invest a ton of time.
To help you get results sooner rather than later, we’ve put together a huge collection of guides below that detail every step of content marketing.
Creating content is no joke.
The first few pieces are always fun and exciting, then it turns into a grind.
One of the most intelligent decisions you can make is how you approach content creation. Setting the right frequency, not getting burned out, using reliable templates, and getting the most from every piece of content makes it much more manageable over the long term.
Before jumping in and getting burned out, go through these guides and put some thought into your long term content plan.
How to Write 5 or More Articles a Week and Not Burn Out
How to Create a Popular Infographic
Does Infographic Marketing Still Work? A Data Driven Answer
8 Tactics to Increase Sales with Video Content
We all want engaging content.
That’s the difference between a successful content marketing program and one that’s dragging along without getting results.
If you spend the time to get really good at making each piece of content highly engaging, your entire program will light on fire. You’ll get endless shares, tons of word-of-mouth, and more links than you know what to do with. Engaging content is the cornerstone of any great content marketing strategy.
The Ultimate Guide to Creating Visually Appealing Content
9 Tips to Create Highly Engaging Content
How to Engage and Persuade People Through Storytelling
4 Ways to Make Your Content Gripping to Readers
30 Tips For Creating Content that Gets Shared and Discussed
Metrics in Google Analytics To Help You Make Better Content
How to Cut Your Bounce Rate in Half with Interactive Content
The 8 Underused Components of Compelling Content
How to Get 247% More People to Read Your Content
Content Creation Tactics That Will Amp Your Content’s Reach
Suck Your Readers In: 4 Types of Openings for Sticky Content
Formatting Tactics That Will Double Average Time on Page
Another major sticking point for content marketing is the blank page. What happens when you completely run out of ideas?
And how do we ensure that our ideas will resonate with our audience?
Over the years, we’ve learned that it’s too expensive to simply produce a ton of content and hope for the best. These days, we use a number of processes and step-by-step formulas to quickly generate a ton of ideas that our audience loves.
Feel free to use all of them yourself:
10 Tips To Help You Find Interesting Topics in Minutes
7 Ways to Find Better Content Ideas
The Top 15 Ways to Come up with New Content Ideas
Generate Clickable Ideas For Content Marketing
Infographics got really hot around the 2012-2015 period. It seemed like every infographic went crazy viral as soon as it was released.
Granted, they don’t pop quite like they used to but a great infographic can still cut through all the other marketing clutter. Especially since most folks aren’t producing them anymore.
5 Ways to Get Your Infographic to Go Viral
How to Enhance Your Content by Building Infographics
Also take the time to dial in your personal productivity. With the volume of content that needs to get produced, any small productivity win pays huge dividends over time.
The Best Time to Think and Write Creatively
18 Tools for Better Content Creation To Improve Writing
Produce More Content in Less Time With These 6 Tactics
Templates for Quick and Easy Content Creation
6 Unconventional Tips to Create Content Faster
How to Double Your Writing Speed Without Lowering Quality
One strategy has never failed me: when in doubt, improve quality.
If you ever find yourself stuck with a struggling content marketing program, push on quality. Find a way to make it better than anything else that your competitors are doing. If you improve quality enough and maintain it for a long enough period, you will win.
Discover Whether Your Audience Is Bored with Your Content
6 Teaching Techniques You Should Know
7 Tips to Take Your Content From “Meh” to Amazing
Is Your Content Good Enough? 6 Questions to Find the Answer
A Method for Finding Out Whether Your Content Sucks
How to Take and Edit Photos Without Hiring a Professional
Examples of Truly “Epic” Content: How Does Yours Stack Up?
Once you’ve gotten a content marketing program to work, the next major hurdle is scaling it.
Don’t take this step lightly, lots of folks stumble here.
At this point, you’ve spent countless hours honing your content skills. You’ve gotten pretty darn good.
But when you start getting contractors or employees to help, they’re not nearly as good. They’re also not as motivated as you were in the early days. And the folks that are really good? They’re either working on their own business or are too expensive.
When you first start scaling your content team, go slow and perfect every part of your process. These guides will get you up to speed:
6 Skills All Great Writers Have (and How to Learn Them)
The 15 Best Tools for Creating Content as a Team
How to Do Curated Content RIGHT: A Step-by-Step Guide
How to Create Content More Efficiently with Curation
11 Advanced Techniques for Repurposing Old Content
How to Run Contests That Encourage User-Generated Content
How to Leverage Crowdsourced Content to Grow Your Audience
How to Grow Your Business by Doing Less Work with UGC
With every year, video gets bigger and bigger.
The best part is that it’s not nearly as competitive as other types of content for one simple reason: it takes a lot more effort to produce.
Yes, video costs have come down tremendously over the years. All you need is an iPhone for great quality video. But the editing
and production of video still take a ton of time. Since it’s going to be a much larger investment than other content types, make your video is as good as possible:
If a Picture Says 1000 Words, Then Video Is… Priceless
How Text Drives More Traffic Than Video Content
Blog posts, articles, PDFs, and emails all form the core of any content marketing strategy.
Get good at these and you’ll always have a way to grow your business.
A Guide to Writing a Compelling Article Introduction
A Guide to Producing a 3,000-Word Article on Any Topic
The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Scannable Content
12 Content-Writing Secrets of Professional Writers
Learn To Write Content like a Pro
Creating the content is one thing, spreading it is another.
Yes, if your content is unbelievably good, it will spread on its own. But I wouldn’t recommend depending on this. I’d much rather plan for the worst and hope for the best. I do that by marketing my content and helping it spread.
If I can kick start the content sharing process, then the quality of the content can carry it the rest of the way. Here’s all of our tips, ticks, and hacks to give content that little extra push.
8 Content Marketing Tricks Helped Dollar Shave Club Go Viral
How to Use Content Marketing For a “Boring” Industry
Create Content That Will Increase Your Traffic by Tomorrow
10 Tips to Make Content Marketing Work for Small Budgets
A Guide on How To Create a Guide That’ll Drive 360k Visitors
How to Create Content That Drives Sales
35 Content Marketing Lessons Learned
93 Content Marketing Tools You Need to Check Out in 2019
34 Content Marketing Tips Every Marketer Needs To Know
Build Audience Connections with Content Marketing
What about the nitty gritty of where to publish and feature your content? Should you repost content? Reshare it? What about sponsored promotions?
We’ve broken down our recommendations on everything:
Should You Repost Your Blog Content on Other Websites?
Distribute Content Effectively Across Multiple Channels
How to Combine Native Advertising with Content Marketing
Leverage Basic Concepts of Sponsored Content to Boost Reach
Amplify the Reach of Your Content Without Spending a Dime
Create a Waterfall of Downloads for Your Ebook
How to Repurpose Your Content Across Multiple Platforms
Which Content Marketing Strategies Have the Biggest Impact
The best way to ensure results from your content marketing is by picking the right content strategy to begin with.
There are quite a few strategies for content marketing, many of them work in different situations too. So take the time to research all the options and then pick the best one depending on your exact situation.
How to Easily Add Gamification Techniques to Your Content
7 Ways to Ensure You Maximize Your ROI From Content
Give Away Your Best Content, Your Business Will Grow by 290%
How B2B Audiences Engage with Business Content Online
How to Use Humor to Power up Your Content Marketing
6 Steps to Your First Content Marketing Plan
The Future of Content: What It Will Look Like
Create a Content Marketing System That Runs on Autopilot
7 Required Content Marketing Principles To Master
10 Quick Low Hanging Fruit of Content Marketing
One Insanely Actionable Content Marketing Strategy
How to Make Your Content Marketing Impossible to Copy
How to Use Social Listening to Create Viral Content
A Useful Framework To Produce Great Content, Every Time
Should You Outsource Content Marketing?
Is Your Content Marketing Profitable? Here Are 22 Metrics
3 Content Creation Strategies That Will Help You Prosper
How to Influence Purchasing Decisions
Get Your Boss to Invest More Money in Content Marketing
This is Your Brain on Visualization
5 Simple Strategies For Monetizing Your Content
How to Plan Your Content for Maximum Productivity
Fundamentally, you need to make money, or you don’t have a business.
That’s actually the only true failure in business. No matter what happens, don’t run out of money.
Every other mistake can be fixed.
As simple as that sounds, there’s a reason why you can find over 90,000 business books on Amazon.
Most of what we focus on here at Quick Sprout, is helping you grow your business and make money with digital marketing. This section covers more of the general business advice and expertise that we’ve compiled over the years. Everything from how to start a business to how to control your emotions.
Regardless of your experience or role in business, there’s something here for you.
Looking back on previous businesses and jobs that we’ve had, the biggest failures all stem from the same lesson.
Get the fundamentals right and you can mess up just about everything else. Get the fundamentals wrong and it doesn’t really matter what you do.
Have you heard the business saying “a rising tide floats all boats”? That saying refers to this exact lesson. Pick the right tide and everything works out. Pick the wrong one and you won’t get very far.
Sounds obvious in theory but it takes a lot of experience and hard-won lessons to spot the subtle differences between a business with healthy fundamentals and a business that’s rotten to the core.
Instead of learning these lessons the hard way yourself, learn from our mistakes. The following guides will show you everything you need to build a healthy foundation for your business:
How to manipulate the law of supply and demand
101 Motivational Business Quotes
7 Lessons Learned From Running a Consulting Company
11 Business Philosophies to Live and Die By
What I Learned from Fighting a 12-Month-Long Lawsuit
16 Tips for Naming Your Startup
How a 23 year old turned $1500 into $128,000 in 1 year
Why Most Business Partnerships Don’t Work
Beginner’s Guide to Corporate Entities
Do Business Like A Drug Dealer
Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn’t Write Business Plans
How to Create a Company That Can Run without You
How a Ferrari Made Me a Million Bucks
7 Business Principles That You Have to Follow
How to Analyze Your Competition in Less Than 60 Seconds
7 Lessons Learned From Losing $739,135 In Bad Investments
Effective Marketing Strategy for Your Startup Company
Exercises That Will Help You Become a Better Entrepreneur
Charge More for Your Products by Enhancing Perceived Value
How to Monitor Your Competitors With These 10 Helpful Tools
How a 21 Year-Old Created a 38.5 Million Dollar Business
8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs
5 Ways Metrics Can Cause Bad Decisions
How Spending $138,491.42 on Meals Made Me $992,000
53 Ways to Become a Better Entrepreneur
59 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs
10 Timeless Business Tips From 10 Millionaires
Provide Better Customer Service by Implementing Live Chat
How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500
How to Increase Profits by Analyzing Your Competition
How to Increase Revenue Without Acquiring New Customers
9 Ways to Get Your Startup Funded
How to Identify the Target Market of Your Startup
Generate More Profits by Focusing on Your Pricing Strategy
How to Write a Business Plan for Your Startup
Keep Your Employees Happy While Pushing Them to Their Limits
How to Turn a Failed Startup Launch into a Success Story
How to Write a Great Value Proposition
Business Card Ideas To Help You Stand Out
A great brand is like having a business super power. Everything gets easier.
Every step of your funnel has a higher conversion rate, you get more traffic, customers stick with you longer, and it’s easier to recruit people to your team. A brand is one of the few aspects of business that impacts everything at once.
Brands don’t just happen though, they need to be built deliberately. Then once you have a brand, you need to protect it.
These guides will show you exactly how to build a brand for your business:
How to Get Your Customers to Recommend Your Brand to Others
6 Branding Approaches You Won’t Learn in Business School
How to Increase Your Brand Exposure with Public Relations
How to Connect With Your Customers
How to Build Brand Awareness for Your Business
The A to Z Guide on Creating a Memorable Brand
Manage Customer Testimonials For Brand Credibility
How to Improve Your Customer Service By Getting Feedback
A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Authenticity and Transparency
Personal brands, like business brands, have an enormous impact on your success.
But the execution is a bit different for a personal brand. Some things matter much less (like logos) while other things matter a LOT more (like your wardrobe). We break down all the unique aspects of building a personal brand here:
How To Create Your Personal Brand Vision
How To Connect With Mentors To Build Your Personal Brand
Be Yourself Because Everyone Else Is Taken
How To Build Your Brand Through Outreach
How To Define Your Target Audience
How To Build Up Your Online And Offline Assets
How To Get Free Press Coverage For Your Personal Brand
How To Monitor Your Personal Brand
The Complete Guide to Building Your Personal Brand
What Effect Does Swearing Have on Your Brand?
How to Improve Your Online Reputation
Why You Should Dress to Impress – The ROI of Fashion
How to Become the World’s #1 Expert in Your Niche
Personal Brand Building Hacks That Will Earn More Customers
How to Launch Your Personal Brand if You Have No Credibility
7 Ways to Use Your Personal Brand to Find More Clients
The Marketer’s Checklist for Establishing a Personal Brand
Build a Million Dollar Business From Your Personal Brand
15 Things You Need in Place for Creating Your Personal Brand
How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview
A Process to Become an Influencer in Your Industry
Daily Activities To Double the Size of Your Personal Brand
A Guide to Using Live Video to Build Your Personal Brand
We’ve worked with a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs and hired hundreds of people in our careers.
Do you want to know what separates those that succeed versus those that flounder for years on end?
It’s mindset.
Even if there’s an unlucky setback in the beginning, the folks with the right mindset always make it eventually. Sooner or later, they achieve their goals.
But no amount of luck can overcome a poor mindset. Year after year goes by and these folks are still struggling with the same problems, never growing into their true potential.
Any improvement that you put into your own mindset will have an immense impact on your goals.
Why Being the Loudest Makes You the Weakest
Why I’ll Never Live in a Rich Neighborhood…
How Much Money Do You Really Need?
Why Immigrants Are More Successful than You!
What Should You Do if Someone Attacks You Online?
Why Successful People Are Douchebags
The 10 People Who Led Me to Success
A day in the life of Neil Patel
How to Be a Workaholic And Not Get Burned Out
Tony Soprano’s Top 11 Tips for Success
Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover
15 Little Life Experiments That Will Change Your Life
The Two Reasons Why You Aren’t Making Over $100K a Year
10 Efficient Ways to Save Time So You Can Follow Your Dreams
The Less You Know, The More Money You’ll Make
Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful
Whether we’re entrepreneurs or working for someone else, it’s up to us to take control of our careers.
There are reliable steps that anyone can take in order to have an amazing career. Focusing on the right areas, building a network, and attending conferences without wasting time will push you way ahead of your peers.
These guides walk you through all of it:
You’re the Reason Why You Don’t Have a Job
Focus on what you’re good at, and nothing else!
Why Consulting Is A Job Everyone Needs To Experience
Got Screwed? Think twice before burning the bridge!
Conferences can be a waste of time, they can also instantly uplevel your career. If you’re going to do them, do them right:
Beginner’s Guide to Attending Conferences
Is It Worth Speaking at Conferences?
How to Speak in Public… Even If You Hate Public Speaking
Also focus on building your network, it’ll increase the quality and quantity of opportunities that come your way:
How I Got to Know Over 100 Millionaires and How You Can Too
The 10 Secrets That Make Networking Easy, Fun and Effective
How to Build Influential Relationships
The Real Secret to Successful Networking
The old saying that everything depends on sales may be a cliche but it’s true. Everything we do in our business is fundamentally a sales activity.
Sell your co-founder on a strategy that you want to pursue, sell your team to get behind it, sell a potential partner on co-promoting a marketing campaign, sell someone on joining your team, sell you boss on how you want to accomplish a goal, sell a teammate on helping you with your project, sell a customer.
Some of the selling is a monetary sale, a lot of it isn’t.
No matter what role you have, sharpening your sales skills will accelerate your business and career.
7 Common Sales Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them
10 Tips for a Killer Presentation
Implement a Customer Referral Program That Drives Sales
How to Upsell to Your Customers
The Startup Guide to Building a Killer Sales Team
7 Ways to Gain Lifelong Customers after Making a Sale
Sales 101: Change their mood, not their mind
How to Leverage Your Brand’s Story to Drive Sales
A Guide to Winning (Almost) Every Single Negotiation
How to Generate Sales for a New Product Release
6 Effective Ways to Become a Better Sales Person
Case Study: How I Used a Case Study to Grow My Sales by 185%
8 Psychological Principles That’ll Double Your Sales
What Interviewing 31 Sales People Taught Me About “Sales”
How to Guide People’s Emotions to Drive Sales
Want to be successful? Learn how to sell!
Generate Recurring Sales by Implementing Subscriptions
Boost Your Revenue Through Upselling and Cross Selling
Increase Sales by Implementing a Customer Loyalty Program
Increase Profits by Focusing on Customer Retention Strategies
How to Increase Sales by Mastering the Art of Storytelling
How to Boost Sales by Accommodating the Needs of Mobile Users
Increase Sales by Personalizing the Customer Experience
Google is still the place to find answers to questions.
Search engines have changed over the years, and the barrier to entry has gotten a lot higher. When we started, all it took was a ton of content in order to get search traffic.
The game has changed.
Not only do you need a ton of content, it needs to be incredibly high quality, your on-site SEO and architecture needs to be polished, and you need enough backlinks to compete. You really do need all of it.
But the rewards are still well-worth the effort.
Across all the sites that we’ve built and managed, no traffic source compares to SEO in quality, consistency, and volume. Once you have it, it’s a persistent flood of traffic for your business.
Our playbook is below.
We always start with an audit on every site we touch. Whenever we skip this step, we always regret it later. The last thing you want is to spin up an entire SEO program, poor a ton of time and money into it, and then lose a bunch of rankings later because of core site problems.
Complete your site audit first so there aren’t any problems lurking just out of sight.
How to Score Your Website’s SEO in 10 Minutes or Less
How To Perform an SEO Audit – FREE $5000 Template Included
Next, go through the foundational elements of SEO.
You’ll find a lot of SEO “experts” claiming quick hacks or tricks to get higher rankings. Be careful with that stuff. It might work today but it seldom works for long.
Whenever starting an SEO program, we spend the bulk of our time focusing on the foundations.
The Proven Method to Ranking on the First Page of Google For Any Long-tail Keyword
SEO vs. PPC: Which Should You Focus on First?
A Step-by-Step Guide to Dominating Any Keyword You Choose
The Psychology of Search Engine Optimization: 10 Things You Need to Know
How to Get Search Traffic from Google’s Knowledge Graph
Ways To Improve SEO Rankings in 2019
What SEO Used to Be Versus What SEO Is Now
How to Get Extra Organic Search Traffic with Google’s “Related Questions”
How to Create Content That Drives Lots of Organic Traffic
Quantify Your Results: The 14 Most Important SEO Metrics
10 Ways to Get More Traffic, Attention and Higher Rankings Through Social Sharing
5 Practical Steps To Improving Your Website’s Domain Authority
Augmented Reality SEO: What to Expect in the Future
How to Gain More Branded Search Volume to Your Website
A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Content Audit
The Step-by-Step Guide to Fixing Any Google Penalty
Don’t Get Fooled: 17 Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Company
How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings
The Complete Guide to Keyword Research For SEO
How To Structure The Perfect Search Engine Optimized Page
How to Avoid a Google Penalty in 2019
What Matters To Google: Ranking Factors in 2019
A Guide For SEO’s In The Agency World
How to Build An SEO Plan From Scratch
Definitely read up on the best SEO tools, these will save you countless hours and instantly uplevel your SEO game:
The Ultimate Guide to Using Google Search Console as a Powerful SEO Tool
28 Browser Extensions That Make an SEO’s Life Easier
The Best SEO Tools the Pros Really Use in 2019
WordPress SEO – Everything You Need To Know
No matter how good your content is, sooner or later, you’re going to need to build links.
Links turn an “okay” SEO strategy into an “industry dominating” SEO strategy. All the most hardcore SEO teams have a very deliberate and focused effort on link building.
Once you’ve mastered the basics and have a healthy site, it’s time to start link building.
A Step by Step Guide to Modern Broken Link Building
The Beginner’s Guide to Optimizing for Bing Search
A Thirty-Day Plan for Gaining 100 Authoritative and Relevant Backlinks to Your New Website
7 Reasons Your Outreach Emails Aren’t Getting Responses and How to Fix That
How to Combine PR with SEO for the Biggest Success
Why Link Building Is NOT the Future of SEO
4 Ways to Boost the Conversion Rates of Your Link Building
7 Ways to Make Your Brand and Content More Likable
How I Built 826 Backlinks to a Single Article in 8 Weeks
How to Create a Link-Building Strategy from Scratch
How to Leverage Link Blending and Stage 2 Link Building to Maximize Your Rankings
Here’s the Process to Help You Consistently Build 7 Backlinks a Week
7 Link Building Mistakes You Ought to Avoid
What Is a “Good Link Profile” and How Do You Get One?
The Link Builder’s Guide to Email Outreach
How Many Links Should You Build to Your Website?
The Ultimate Guide to Content Link Building
7 Lessons Learned from Publishing 300 Guest Posts
Why And How To Build an Online Brand Through Guest Blogging
.Edu and .Gov Link Building Guide
Advanced ScrapeBox Link Building Guide
The Guide to Link Building Techniques
A Guide to Turning Images Into Links
The Quest For The Perfect Link
Relationship-Based Link Building Guide
The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting in 2019
How to Get Backlinks: The Complete Guide
Types of Content That Attract The Most Backlinks
Lastly, you’ll want to get your onsite and technical SEO in tip-top shape. Most of these items are smaller details but they can make the difference when pursuing those last few rankings.
After you’re on top of all the other parts of SEO, work through all the technical details. That’ll keep you ahead of your competitors and give you that extra edge.
You Can Use 404s to Boost Your SEO. Here’s How.
Here’s How to Perfectly Optimize Your Infographic for SEO
How to Create an SEO Friendly Infinite Scrolling Page
Does URL Structure Even Matter? A Data Driven Answer
How to Optimize Images for Better Search Engine Rankings
How to Retain at Least 95% of Your Organic Traffic After a Site Redesign
Demystifying SEO: How to Skyrocket Your Traffic Through Schema Markup
How to Decrease Your Bounce Rate
4 Steps to Making Your Search Listings Stand Out on Google
The Ultimate SEO Checklist: 25 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Your Next Post
The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO
Do you want to lean how to get backlinks? Here are 21 ways to get links in 2019. It takes hard work and persistence.
It’s always good to get more quality backlinks—the ones that are natural because you have content worth linking to. You can build these backlinks using a few tactics.
Some SEOs engage in risky blackhat tactics, but unless you can operate on a large scale and are fine with getting penalized later on, it’s not particularly profitable.
The other main strategy is to earn backlinks by creating great content and getting it in front of the right people.
Although there haven’t been any new tactics for link building in a while, some proved to more effective than others in 2019. Plus, you can always find ways to improve each of the tactics.
Quora is filled with people looking for help. All you have to do is search for keywords related to your industry, and you’ll see hundreds, if not thousands, of questions.
For example, let’s look at the key phrase “content marketing.” With a quick search, I was able to find this question, asking if content marketing actually works.
Respond to the question, and if there is a specific blog post or article within your domain that helps reinforce your answer, you can link to it.
The screenshot above illustrates the idea. It has my answer with the link I provided to a blog post I wrote that covers a few data points relevant to the discussion.
When doing this, make sure you don’t link to your site just to gain a link. You don’t want to spam Quora as it will hurt your reputation. Instead, you want to focus on responding with a great answer and only add a link to your website when it makes sense.
You’ve heard of HARO, right? Of course you have, but are you actually on it?
In case you don’t know what HARO is, it is a website where journalist go when they need help.
They post questions, and if you can help them answer any of them, you can get some free press. You can get published on a news website or a magazine like Entrepreneur.com, which makes HARO a great place to pick up high quality backlinks.
You won’t get a ton of links from this site, but the links you do get will help drive traffic as this site links to authoritative sites.
To get these links, all you need to do is spend 30 minutes to an hour on HARO each week.
Broken link building is hard unless you focus on the right type of broken links. A lot of blogs and websites have them, but very few are willing to fix them.
Your best bet is to find resource pages related to your field and to look for broken links within those pages. I’ve found that web masters are more likely to fix broken links on resource pages as they tend to generate more traffic than general blog posts.
To find these broken links and resource pages, you can use a tool called Broken Link Finder.
The tool costs money…but it is worth it.
If you end up using the tool, make sure the keywords you input contain words like “resources” as it will help you find the right type of broken links.
Have you ever used forums to build links? If you haven’t, why not?
Chances are you are afraid of the Penguin penalty. Assuming you are participating only on relevant forums and aren’t spamming them, you shouldn’t have much to worry about.
For example, Warrior Forum and a few other marketing forums talk about Quick Sprout. Every time they do, I see an influx of 300 to 700 visitors. It’s not too shabby for just one link.
When responding to questions on forums, use the same principles as you do when responding to questions on Quora: respond to questions and link to your website when it makes sense.
Again, don’t spam these forums. Only respond when it makes sense, and make sure your answer is thorough.
When adding a link to your website, avoid using rich anchor text.
I know this may sound crazy, but linking to other relevant sites within your own content is a great way to build links.
For example, I recently published a post on competitive auditing that linked to over 20 websites.
Before I published the post, I visited each of those websites and grabbed an email address of someone who works there. If I couldn’t find an email address of a specific employee in the marketing department, I looked for an email address on the contact pages of these sites.
I then sent out a personalized email to each of those websites:
Hey [person’s name],
I just wanted to let you know that I think [insert their website] is such a great resource that I had to mention it in my latest blog post [link to your blog post].
I know you are busy, so no need to reply. But if you get a spare moment, check out the post. If you like it, feel free to tweet it out.
Thanks,
[your name]
Don’t expect people to link back to your website. Some people will do it naturally, but that number will be less than 5%. Roughly 20%-25% of the people you email will tweet out your post. This action will bring more visitors to your website, and a portion of those visitors may end up linking back to you.
Do you know what some of the most popular and linked to posts are on the Internet? It’s round-up posts.
If you aren’t familiar with round-up posts, read this one on link building, in which 50 experts share tips on how to build links.
That post generated over 383 social shares and 34 backlinks according to Ahrefs. That’s not bad for a round-up post.
How do you go about creating one of these posts? All you have to do is find a bunch of experts in your field and email them asking one question. You don’t want to ask them more than one question as it will drastically decrease your response rate.
You also want to find at least 30 experts as round-up posts that don’t contain a large number of experts don’t do very well.
I recommend making a post with at least 50 experts. When emailing these experts, make sure you give them a deadline to respond by. In addition, make sure you email at least twice the number of experts you need to complete your post as about half of them will not respond.
Once you publish your expert round-up, email each expert with an email like this one:
Hey [expert name],
I just wanted to thank you for participating in the expert round-up on [insert the topic of the round-up].
You can find the post at [insert url], and I’ve also included a link to your website.
Feel free to tweet it out and share it with your following.
Thanks for participating.
[insert your name]
Similarly to Backlink tip #5, this action will bring you more visitors from the social web. A portion of those visitors may end up linking back to you.
Any backlink tool can tell you who is linking to your competition, but very few of them sort these links by freshness.
Cognitive SEO has a tool that shows you the freshness of these links. In other words, it’ll show you who recently linked to your competition. All you have to do is select “Fresh Links” within its dashboard.
As you can see, the Cognitive SEO provides a list of the most recently found backlinks.
You can then take that list and manually hit up each of those sites with an email like this one:
Hey [insert their name],
I was just reading your blog post on [insert the post title and link to it] and noticed that you didn’t link to [insert your URL]. I’m not sure if you are familiar with it, but it can teach your readers about [insert the value their readers will get].
I just thought I would mention it to you because you linked to [insert competitor URL], but you forgot to mention [insert your URL].
Anyways, keep up the great work. I love your content.
Your fan,
[insert your name]
For every 100 such emails you send out, you’ll typically generate 7 to 10 links. It’s not a lot of links, but it adds up.
Almost every new business has the same problem: no one knows you. Even if you have a lot to offer, again, no one knows you.
One of the main objectives of the link building tactics we’ll look at in this post is to get attention.
And there are many ways to get the attention of people you don’t know.
The best way, in most cases, is to offer something of value—as big of a value as you can provide.
Here are a few options.
Option #1 – create a photo gallery: Any good blogger knows the importance of having great images in posts.
While some bloggers hire a designer for the most important pictures, it’s inconvenient and not always affordable for less important pictures.
However, most bloggers would gladly exchange a link to a site for a free picture.
That’s why I propose hiring a designer (or taking pictures yourself) and creating a free image gallery. Then, send out the link to the gallery to medium-top bloggers in your niche, explaining that they are free to use them in exchange for a link back.
For example, in the fitness niche, you could take pictures like these:
Spending a few hundred dollars upfront here will not only open doors to other bloggers but get you several dozen really good links.
A final important note is that you should create images around common points in your niche.
For example, if you were in the content marketing niche, you could create custom images for things that are often mentioned such as:
And so on…
Option #2 – create a free tool: If you’re interested in getting a ton of traffic yourself, on top of links, you can create something for your community of users rather than just bloggers. And that something is a tool.
Tools can be a great way to grow your site and earn backlinks at the same time.
For example, the keyword research tool Keywordtool.io has been linked to by over 3,880 unique domains. Honestly, that’s a relatively simple tool to build or get built.
After a bit of time, you can get links (good ones) that work out to under $1 per link, which is amazing. Add all the traffic that you can also get on top of that, and you can see why tools can be a great thing to make.
The big drawback is that it will take some time to build the tool in the first place, especially if you can’t code it yourself.
Additionally, you’re going to have to promote the tool. Write posts about it in niche forums, subreddits, and on social media.
Option #3 – do original data analysis (or research): One option that I really love, yet almost no one does, is to do original analysis or research.
Look at any good data-driven post—for example, my post about how to win on Facebook.
What you’ll see is that most posts link to someone else’s research.
It takes a lot of time and effort to do original research, which is why it’s much easier to link to someone else’s research than to do your own.
You can take advantage of this by providing the research that bloggers in your niche link to.
In that above post, the research was done by Buzzsumo, and I simply analyzed the data that they sent me. Of course, I’m going to give them a few links for that, and it also opens the door for a great relationship.
Find an interesting question always asked in your niche, dig in, and do the research. When you’re done, email the results to the top bloggers in your niche, and give them first dibs.
Most link building strategies for new sites are fairly slow.
They take consistent effort and deliver consistent results.
But you rarely get thousands of readers and hundreds of links within months unless you do them exceptionally well.
I consider guest-posting an exception to the rule. Even though you have to do it really well to get results, most bloggers have the ability to succeed with it.
And guest-blogging works for you even if you’re brand new. If you have a good pitch, it doesn’t matter what your name is.
When I think of guest-blogging to build up a new site, I think of Danny Iny, who is often referred to as the “Freddy Krueger of guest-posting.”
He got this nickname because he seemed to be everywhere when Firepole Marketing (now Mirasee) first launched.
His main strategy for getting traffic and links was guest-posting. He wrote dozens of guest posts and quickly took Firepole Marketing to the top tier of marketing blogs.
I won’t go into guest-posting in detail here because I’ve done it multiple times before:
The one adaptation that you will have to make, since you’re brand new, is not to start at the top.
Don’t start by pitching to a site like Copyblogger or Forbes. Instead, find a few smaller sites that are more receptive to pitches.
Then, you need to wow them with your post and promote that post as well.
Once you can prove that your writing is great, then you can start pitching to bigger sites, citing your other successes as proof that you’re a serious blogger.
One of the easiest ways to build links is to interview experts. If you email your prospects telling them how great they are and how much you want to interview them, chances are they won’t say no.
I myself get asked to do around four interviews each week, and I never say no. I’ve also emailed dozens of other people with requests for interviews, and it’s also been rare that they said no… this even worked when my blog wasn’t popular.
So, how do you build links when you interview an expert? Well, most experts have a website. So, once you interview them, you can ask them to share the interview with their readers or even tweet and post it on Facebook.
I’ve found that over 90% of the time, people will at least share the interview on Twitter and Facebook, and over 40% of the time, people will link to it from their website. One trick to boosting your link percentage chance is to find out if people have a press page before you ask them for an interview. If they have one, the chance of them linking to your interview is over 95%.
This is my favorite method of building links as I love making complex data easy to understand. Mint used this strategy heavily in their early days. They made complex financial data easy to understand through beautiful graphics.
We also do this at KISSmetrics, and our infographics have received over 3,741 links.
So, what’s the key to generating links from your infographics? Well, you first need to have an embed code at the bottom of each infographic so people can link back. Secondly, you should follow the promotion strategies in this blog post.
You may know Matt Inman as the guy behind the Oatmeal, but most of us SEOs know him as the master of quizzes. He got his start at SEOmoz and then moved into link creation through linkbait.
He ranked Mingle2 for all of the online dating terms by creating viral quizzes such as: how many 5 year olds can you take in a fight. He then took that same strategy and got a payday loan site ranked for all of the payday loan related keywords.
Matt currently has quizzes on The Oatmeal, and you should consider replicating the strategy if you want to build thousands of links. Just be careful as both his dating site and payday loan site got dinged by Google, but you shouldn’t have that problem if you follow these rules:
Do you remember Elf Yourself? JibJab created that campaign for OfficeMax, and hundreds of thousands of people Elf’d themselves. They uploaded a picture of their faces, and JibJab created Elf videos for them.
At the end of the video, you were given a link that you could share with others, whether through email or blog post.
According to Open Site Explorer, Elf Yourself has over 10,000 links…Not too shabby for a Christmas promotional video.
If you can come up with a creative video concept that allows people to personalize the video, you can leverage it to build links. People love sharing funny personalized videos.
One of the simplest ways to build links is to sponsor an event. Conference sites list each and every sponsor. In addition, in most cases, they link back to their sponsors.
This may not seem like a fun idea or creative link building strategy, but just think about this… you’ll be able to go to the conference. 
If you work in the corporate world, you may get a bit tired of working in the office, so it will be nice for you to get a break by attending a conference. Plus, you’ll get a link out of it.
When getting links from conference sites, keep in mind that they may be taken down in the future, which means you will have to continue to sponsor the event each year. The cost can quickly add up if you are a small company, but it’s fun to go to conferences.
I love the non-profit world because it’s a great way for me to give back to the rest of the world. If you sponsor a non-profit, in many cases, you can get a link back.
When I used to own KISSinsights, we used to give away our product for free to non-profits, and they would link back to us. We came up with this concept when a non-profit asked us for a free account in exchange for press on their blog.
The beautiful part about this strategy is that it doesn’t require an exchange of cash. You can volunteer your time, your products or even services for a link. Whatever it may be, I’ve found that non-profits are open to almost anything as they don’t have a big spending budget.
There are always people looking for images, especially high quality stock photography images. I myself don’t mind paying for images, but it can get expensive really fast.
If you have a really good digital camera, such as an SLR, take high quality photos of anything related to your industry. Then pop them up on a page on your website and let people know that they are royalty-free images. Just make it a requirement for people to link back to you if they decide to use any of your images.
The cool part about this strategy is that you will get highly relevant links as people in your industry are most likely to use them.
The basic idea behind all these tactics is to create something that your target simply has to read.
You don’t need to trick them into reading it. You just need to make it extremely interesting to that specific person.
This first tactic involves creating a positive case study. You’ll publicly show how your target blogger helped you accomplish something.
Here’s how to do it.
Step #1 – Pick a blogger to target: This technique is very personalized, so you need to know your target really well.
Pick a blogger whom you regularly follow—and with whom you would be happy to establish a relationship —even if it didn’t lead to links right away.
This strategy takes a lot of time and effort, but it can produce results much more valuable than just a few backlinks.
Step #2 – Pick one of their techniques or strategies: While you can certainly create a case study for a blogger’s paid products, you can stick to free blog content as well.
Find a technique that’s fairly recent (bloggers don’t care as much about old stuff) and that was created by the blogger.
If you are an SEO or marketing blogger, you might follow Brian Dean at Backlinko.
He has published many link building techniques, which makes it easy to find one.
For example, he has a technique called “Guestographics,” which is his own spin on infographics:
In this article, he lays out a detailed plan on how to get backlinks using infographics.
Step #3 – Practice it: Here’s where most people mess up. They use the tactic once, get mediocre results, and then create their case study.
And guess what happens when they let the influencer know? Nothing.
Why would the influencer get excited and want to share your case study when you didn’t make them look good?
Even if the technique you are trying out is good, you have to use it a few times before you fully understand how to apply it to maximum effect.
If I wanted to see what benefit I could get with the Guestographic link building tactic we’ve chosen in our example, I wouldn’t stop with the first infographic. I’d do that one, and then another, and then maybe even another.
Do what it takes to get an impressive result.
Step #4 – Execute and record all details: While you are putting the technique to the test, you need to document everything.
A case study isn’t impressive if you just say:
I did Brian’s method; here is a link to my infographic: (link). I was able to get 200 high quality backlinks.
Even though it’s a good result, on its own, it doesn’t do much for Brian. You need to create a detailed story that Brian would be happy to show his other readers.
You essentially want to be the favorite student of the teacher whom he uses as an example.
Step #5 – Let them know about it: Once you’ve gotten the technique to produce an impressive result, you’ve done the hard part.
Now, you just have to let the influencer know about it. If you did things right, they will be interested.
Send them a quick email that highlights the results. Here’s a sample:
Subject: Great results using (tactic name) – Thank You!
Hi (Blogger name),
I’m a long time reader of (blog name), and I finally took your advice (I should have sooner).
I used your (tactic name) technique and was able to (impressive result).
Obviously, I’m pretty happy with this!
I made a point to document everything during this trial so that I could put together a case study on my site – (site name).
Just wanted to say thanks!
Cheers,
(Your name)
If you say something short and simple like that, you will get a reply, often asking for more details.
Once you’ve opened a dialog, you could even ask if they’d be interested in publishing the case study on their site instead.
Or you can just publish it on your site and send them the link. They’ll usually be more than happy to share it on social media and comment on the page.
Our example for this tactic wasn’t hypothetical—it’s actually been done.
Brian previously published a full blog post highlighting two case studies of the Guestographic method implemented successfully:
And in the article, each of the subjects got a nice link back to their domain:
More importantly, Brian now knows who these people are and probably likes them as well. Now, if they asked him for a favor (a link, share, or review, etc.), he’d probably help them out.
In this case, Perrin’s site wasn’t exactly relevant to Backlinko, which limits how much that relationship could produce. That’s why I recommended at the start to target a relevant blogger.
Think back to your first school yearbook.
What did you look for first?
Pictures of yourself, of course.
People love to feel special, and it doesn’t change as you get older.
This tactic revolves around making your chosen influencer feel special by featuring them as an expert. Who wouldn’t want to read a flattering article about themselves?
Option #1 – Quote them: The simplest way to highlight someone is to quote them.
You can either email your influencer asking for a quote or take a quote from one of their previously published articles.
Including a link to their website or a social media account is a nice way to make them feel extra special.
In the past, one of the Kissmetrics‘ writers compiled a list of 50 inspiring quotes from social media influencers.
He took this tactic to extreme, and it paid off.
The article generated over 40 comments and over 1,500 Tweets on top of hundreds of shares on other networks.
When you include a quote from someone, they’ll usually share the article and often will leave a comment as well:
Option #2 – ask them to contribute to the article: If you really want someone to feel invested in the content you produce, you need to find a way to get them to contribute to the article.
I warn you: this isn’t always easy.
If you’re going after a fairly popular influencer, you have to have quite a bit of influence yourself; otherwise, there isn’t much of an incentive.
The more you ask them to do, the more invested they will be. On the other hand, the more you ask them to do, the more you need to offer.
The most common example of this option in action is the expert roundup.
You ask a bunch of experts to write short contributions to your article answering a simple question.
For example, Richard Marriott included 55 SEO experts in an expert roundup about link building tools:
He published each influencer’s content—whatever they sent him, which was typically a few hundred words:
The article generated hundreds of comments and social shares, many from the experts included in the article.
Someone who has taken the time to write content for you will be more likely to promote your post than someone you simply quoted.
Option #3 – use their work as an example: Finally, you can simply link to some of the influencer’s best content. This option works best once your brand is well-recognized.
I do it often in Quick Sprout posts:
I take special care to say something positive about the quality of the resources I link to. I do this for two reasons:
And when you mention people, they’ll get excited.
I often get comments and social shares from people I mention:
In addition, they often find places to link back to my content in their future content; so it’s a win-win situation.
After featuring someone, you don’t need to send a giant email. Just send something quick like this:
Subject: Featured you in an article
Hi (name),
Just thought I’d give you a quick heads-up: I linked to you (and said a few nice things) in my latest post. If you’d like to see it, here’s the link:
(your post URL)
Keep cranking out the great content!
(Your name)
Almost everyone will check out the article, and most will share or comment as well.
But if your post was really great, they’ll check out some of your other articles as well. Assuming that they’re also top-notch, you might have just gained a long-term reader who will link to you time and time again.
It’s really tough to get someone to link to you when they don’t like to link out.
Conversely, it’s really easy to get someone to link to you if they are actively looking for sites to link to.
Link roundups are a popular type of content in just about every niche. The author of a link roundup collects the best posts in the niche for the week or month and publishes links to all of them together.
The best part is that most authors typically create these on a regular basis. It’s relatively easy to get included in these as long as your content is solid.
Step #1 – Make a list of roundups: Although you could try a few different search strings, almost all roundups are called “roundups,” which makes them easy to find.
Search for:
intitle:roundup + (your keyword)
Don’t stop with just the first page. Keep going through the pages until you stop finding new link roundups.
In most niches, you can easily find over 20 regular roundups, which gives you quite a few targets. Add them to a list somewhere.
Step #2 – Establish contact: To maximize your chances of getting your link included in their next roundup, it’s a good idea to get to know them a bit. Comment on a few of their articles, and share their content on social media.
Once you’ve done that, you can send over your request to be included in the future roundup. Here’s a sample template:
Subject: Weekly roundup on (site)
Hi (name),
I stumbled across your weekly roundups a short while ago, and I love how much effort you put into including only the best posts of the week. I know that must take a ton of time.
I hope it’s not too forward, but I just published an epic post that I think would be great for a future roundup. It’s a (length) word guide on (topic) that is incredibly detailed and actionable.
Can I send you a link to the post?
Best Regards,
(Your name)
Hopefully they’ll respond favorably, and you’ll be able to just send over the link.
Step #4 – Help them help you: This step can be the difference between getting one link and getting several, so don’t skip it.
When you are included in link roundups, remember what the author is looking for: shares, comments, and traffic.
If you can help the author get those things, they will love you and want to include your new posts in future roundups.
At the very minimum, leave a comment on the post once it goes live, and share it a few times on social media. If you want to do more, e.g., send the post to your email list, that’s even better.
I mention Brian Dean and his site Backlinko all the time. He’s best known for his Skyscraper Technique.
He’s written quite a few case studies of his readers getting great results from it. One reader got several backlinks along with 36,282 visitors and 1,000 subscribers. Another reader was able to drive 17,584 unique visitors to a brand new website in one day.
The basic idea is to create the best piece of content by far for a particular subject. Then, reach out to people who have linked to inferior content and ask them to add a link to yours.
Here’s how it works…
Step 1 – Pick a keyword and research the SERPs: First and foremost, this technique is for you to get some high authority links. The traffic is just a bonus.
In order for this to work well, you need to pick a keyword with a decent search volume (at least 1,000 searches per month). You’ll see why this is important soon.
You’re free to use any keyword research tool you’d like, but I’ll use the Adwords Keyword Planner for this example. Start by searching for your main niche:
You’ll get a list of relevant keywords. Next, filter out any results with fewer than 1,000 searches per month:
Now that we have a list of keywords with a decent search volume, we can look for a good keyword to target with our content.
This isn’t the greatest list. Some keywords are too general (e.g., “search engine optimization”), while others are too specific (e.g., for a certain product).
One possibility is “search engine optimization tips.” This is related to conversion optimization but only loosely. So I would keep trying other search terms in the tool to find a better keyword.
Next, I inserted “split testing” into the tool and found that “AB testing” had 4,400 searches per month. That’s a good keyword to target.
Next, go to Google (in incognito or private browsing), and search for your keyword. Start looking through the results to see what you’re up against:
Don’t get put off if you see content from extremely authoritative domains ranking highly. Remember, the goal of this technique is to get backlinks. You may rank for your target term, but you may not. You can still get traffic and rankings for long-tail searches, and the links will help your other content as well.
Step 2 – Create the best piece of content ever: There are many ways to improve content. You can make it longer, more in-depth, more trusted, better looking, or improve some other aspect of it.
It’s important that you improve upon the content in the first few search results not by a bit, but by a lot.
You want to be able to reach out to site owners and say that linking to your guide will improve their articles or resource pages a lot.
Here are some great guides to producing exceptional content:
Step 3 – Use email outreach to “steal” links: Once you have your content, it’s time for an email outreach campaign. You can do this yourself or hire a virtual assistant to do it for you.
First, you need a list of competitors. Use Scrapebox or this online tool to scrape the Google results for your target keyword:
Copy the results into a spreadsheet. Next, you’ll have to run the URLs through Ahrefs or Majestic. Then remove those that have fewer than five links.
Once you do that, you’ll have to get the full backlink profile of each URL:
Export the list of backlinks, and add a new sheet for each URL’s backlink profile.
Finally, you need to visit each of these pages that link to your competitors’ pages, and send them an email asking them to include a link to your page. Brian has outreach templates you can use.
As you can see, this is not an easy technique. It will take at least 20-30 hours of work. However, you should be able to get a good level of traffic and, more importantly, 20+ great backlinks.
Do you know what the #1 objective of most businesses is?
It’s to make money.
If you can help them do that, they will love you.
Here’s what you do: Make a list of all the products you use to run your blog or business that you genuinely like.
Then, fill in the blanks in this sentence:
“(Product name) has helped my business (achievement).”
This is what businesses are looking for. They want to show testimonials and case studies from businesses who have actually accomplished something with their product.
Then, get in touch with the company (marketing director if possible) and offer to provide a testimonial. Include that sentence from above. You need to show that you have some data to back up your claims.
Additionally, offer any other data you have, or offer to do a video review as well.
If you have something to offer, there’s a good chance you can get a solid link from an authoritative domain such as this:
Not all companies have a testimonial page. You can still offer to give one—they can use it in blog posts or on various sales pages. Just mention that you’d appreciate a link with it when it makes sense.
One of the biggest myths in SEO is that quality content generates natural links. It doesn’t. Thousands of site owners bang out hundreds of pieces of quality content every single day…without a single backlink to show for it. To earn links in today’s crowded content world, you need to take your stuff to the next level. In this chapter I’m going to walk you through the steps you need to take to be able to produce the type of quality, epic stuff that generates links on autopilot (or with a little push).
Before you can write link-magnet content you need to have a handle on what’s already out there in your niche. Here’s how.
The first step is to find keywords in your niche that you can frame your content around. It doesn’t make sense to write a 3000-word article that rocks your industry if it’s going to rank for a keyword with only 100 searches per month.
First, open the Google Keyword tool and enter a few keywords that you’d like to rank for:
Under “Match Types”, choose “Exact”.
Then you’ll see a list of keywords that get decent search volume in your niche.
Sort by local monthly searches.
Export these keywords into a .csv by clicking the download button and choosing “All search results”:
This .csv will be a working list of the keywords you’re going to build your epic content around.
Now, delete any keywords that are irrelevant or have insane competition:
If the keywords Google pulled up for you are too competitive or not particularly relevant to your site, you can use an awesome free tool, SEMRush, to see the keywords that your competition is already ranking for.
Once you create an account, sign in and go to your dashboard. Enter a competitor’s domain into the field at the top of the page:
You’ll get a ton of fancy charts and graphs, but you want to zero-in on the “Organic Keywords” area of the page:
Sometimes you’ll find unique keywords that the Google Keyword Tool didn’t show you. Copy and paste any keywords you’d like to rank for into your spreadsheet:
Once you’ve finalized your list, it’s time to see what’s already ranking for your target keywords.
Take the first keyword with decent search volume and check out Google’s top-10:
Keep in mind, a lot of these pages rank due to domain authority and the site’s overall popularity (more eyeballs = more links).
Your job is to look at each of the top-10 results and write something that’s not only better, but is produced in a way that generates natural links and social shares. Which brings us to our next step…
Most content — even great content — has the potential for another level. Here’s how to find holes in the reigning content so that you can create something even better.
Using the example keyword above, let’s take the #3 result for a spin (http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml):
As expected, this is a superb article on an authoritative domain. It’s going to be tough to beat. However, there are a few ways we could trump this article in both quality and on-page SEO.
Open up WordPress and follow along so you can outline your next piece of epic content.
First, take a look at the page’s on-page SEO, including meta tags, and content optimization, using the Search Engine Analysis tool at: http://www.seoworkers.com/tools/analyzer.html
Just head over to the page and enter your competing page’s URL:
And you’ll get a thorough report on the page’s on-page SEO.
In this case, this page doesn’t have the exact match keyword (“link building”) in the title tag:
The page also lacks a description tag:
And the alt image tag doesn’t contain any information (target keyword or LSI keywords) to give clues to Google on what the page is about:
Ideally you want to include your keyword in your page’s URL. In this case the page lacks a keyword-rich URL:
Those are four simple opportunities to get an on-page edge over this page. Start your draft WordPress post with these.
Set the permalink that includes the target keyword.
Add keyword-rich alt text to an image:
And include your keyword in title and description:
However, that’s not going to be nearly enough. If you want to stand toe-to-toe with the big boys you need to beat them with better stuff.
Now it’s time to see where you can improve on the content that’s already out there. Here’s the exact checklist that I use.
One of the easiest ways to surpass the content that’s already out there is to create something more up-to-date. While some niches have mostly evergreen content (ie. dating), most are changing all the time. To find the date of your page’s creation, just copy and paste the URL into Google:
In fact, this post was created as a more up-to-date version of another link building post:
Although SEOBook’s post is fairly new, in a fast moving industry like SEO, you can never be too up-to-date. However, simply updating this list isn’t going to be nearly enough. But it will help.
You’d be surprised how many pieces of content get links from their sheer volume or “wow factor.” Although the SEOBook article in this example is high-quality, the fact that it’s a whopping 101 tips and strategies definitely plays a role. In fact, another top-10 result for this keyword is a 100+ list:
One way you could stand out is to create a list way bigger than these. Could you create a list of 200, 300 or even 500 link building strategies? Imagine how easy it would be to build links to a page with 500 strategies or tips.
Add that to your draft post:
Design is one aspect of link building that doesn’t get discussed very often. But it’s crucial because people tend to evaluate the trustworthiness of a site’s content based on design.
In the case of our SEOBook example, the design is professional. But it lacks bells and whistles, like screenshots, images and infographics. If you not only produce a larger list — but create a better design too — you’ll be able to generate links on tap.
You can either make a custom page in WordPress (you’ll need to hire a professional designer) or simply add lots of screenshots. The best free screenshot software is Jing. Be sure to add arrows and other highlights for your posts to make following along even easier. Add a screenshot from Jing to your WordPress post so you remember to include them:
Another way to get an edge on your competitor’s content is to make something more thorough than what they’ve put out there. SEOBook’s post gives some instructions… but more detailed steps for some of the tips and strategies would certainly add more value.
Write “Steps” in your draft post to remind you to flesh out the steps in your article.
Now that you have an outline of your content, the hard work begins: creating a winning piece of content that people naturally want to share with others. But just because the SERPs for your target keyword are littered with massive lists doesn’t mean you have to follow suit. Here are some other content formats that have a track record of attracting links.
Gathering the opinion of experts in your field is one of the easiest ways to get fistfuls of links to your content. Because you’re featuring the insights of bloggers in your niche, they (and others) can’t help but link to you.
First, think of a topic in your niche that many people wonder about or has some dissenting opinions. In the SEO field, a roundup on the future of SEO, black hat vs. white hat and the influence of social signals would work well. You can also do a roundup on lessons learned, funny stories, or tips on how to do ___ better.
Second, find bloggers to pitch to using AllTop.com and Technorati.
Alltop is a merit-based directory of top blogs and websites in almost every vertical under the sun.
Head over to http://alltop.com/ and enter a keyword that describes your field:
The site presents you with a list of options. Sometimes there are blogs in related fields that you can hit up, so consider searching through the suggested keyword lists later.
For now let’s just stick with what we were searching for: SEO. Alltop will show you a list of the top blogs in your niche:
Then go to Technorati’s homepage” http://technorati.com/. At the top of the screen hit the “blogs” button so you’re searching for blogs, not posts:
Enter your keyword and hit the magnifying glass button:
The thing that’s great about Technorati is that you can often find sites laterally related to yours that you may not have found at AllTop.
While you can look at metrics like homepage PR, Twitter followers and other signs of quality, it’s not necessary. The sites listed in Alltop and Technorati usually get a ton of traffic and have more than enough PR to throw around. Instead, make a quick spreadsheet of all the sites on this page, along with their contact info.
Now it’s just a matter of reaching out to them one by one to ask if they’d like to contribute to your roundup.
If you’re new in your field, expect a low response rate. To maximize your chances, use this proven email template:
Hey [Blogger Name],
I’d love to hear your opinion on [industry topic] for [your site]. I’m doing a roundup of opinions on my site and I think people would love to hear what you think about [industry topic].
Here’s the question:
[Question]Of course, I’ll include a link back to your site (with a photo).
Thanks!
[Your Name]
Producing the bar-none ultimate guide to something is a timeless link building strategy. By having the most thorough information on the internet, people will naturally link to it when they mention the subject.
Creating a definitive guide isn’t easy: you need to work your tail off to make something this comprehensive and useful.
First, find a topic that lacks a solid, definitive guide. Go to Topsy.com and enter these search strings:
Choose “All Time” from the left hand sidebar:
And choose to sort by links:
Now sift through the list and find a definitive guide topic that you could beat:
I didn’t see anything in the list about anchor text. Considering how important that’s becoming in SEO, it seems like a fantastic opportunity. To make sure, I put the same search strings into Google to see what’s out there. Except this time, I use a more specific keyword:
I don’t see anything out there based on the first 30 results in Google:
Looks good! There’s nothing out there that consolidates everything there is to know about anchor text.
Here’s how to actually write the definitive guide.
First, find the best content that already exists. These will be your references. Head to top blogs in your niche and enter your keyword:
Looks like some amazing stuff! Repeat the process at other leading sites or using Google.
Read each piece of content and use it to make an outline in WordPress. Make sure to fill in any information gaps that other articles seem to have missed:
Now just fill in the blanks, reference the sources you found and you’ve got yourself a link magnet!
Quizzes tend to attract a lot of links because they’re unique and interactive. Keep in mind that the quiz can be something a bit whimsical and fun, like those found at http://theoatmeal.com/quizzes. Or you can make a quiz that tells the person something about who they are. Traditional quizzes that test people’s knowledge can also work.
Let’s say you wanted to make an SEO-related quiz: “Are You a White Hat or Black Hat SEO?”
Head to your WordPress dashboard and click the “plugins” tab.
Click “Add New”:
Enter “Quiz” into the plugin search bar:
Choose Wp-Pro-Quiz from the list of options.
And activate the plugin. Click “WP-Pro-Quiz” from the WordPress Dashboard sidebar:
Then add a quiz title.
And add a description of your quiz.
Click “Save”. 
Hover your cursor underneath your quiz’s title and click “Questions”.
Then “Add Question”:
For a quiz like this, you want to record a certain number of points depending on their answer.
Check off “different points for each answer.”
Then, create your first question:
Choose “Multiple Choice”:
And create your answers. Depending on your quiz you may not have “correct” answers. For a quiz like the one in this example, you can consider certain answers “correct” (like white hat answers) and others “incorrect”:
Or you can assign the different choices a different amount of points, and determine the result of the quiz based on the number of points that they have.
Once you’re done with your first question, hit “Save”:
Repeat until you’ve added about 10-20 questions. Then head back to the plugin’s dashboard and click “edit” underneath your quiz:
Now add something to the “Results Text” to let your participants know where they stand:
Finally, copy the shortcode found next to your quiz’s name:
And paste it into a blog post:
When you publish the post, the quiz will appear within the post:
You’ve spied on your competitors and produced a piece of content that blows their stuff out of the water. Now what? Your goal is simple: get your content exposed to the most amount of people possible. The more people that see your content the more likely you’ll generate backlinks from it. And the three days following your content’s posting is ripe for links and social shares.
Alerting your social media existing followers is one of the fastest ways to get the word out about your epic content. This isn’t your average post, which means you need to be a tactician with your Twitter outreach strategy.
First, plan your tweets so they go out at a time where they’ll get retweeted by the most people: usually 5pm EST on a weekday.
However, you may also want to check out Tweriod, which gives you free, personalized Tweet optimization information.
Head over to http://www.tweriod.com/. Click on the “Sign Up With Twitter” button:
And allow the app to access your Twitter account.
Then the app will show you the best times to tweet, based on your follower’s activity:
This data is obviously more precise and reliable than the general rule to tweet at 5pm EST.
To make sure you get the timing just right, use Buffer.
First, login using your Twitter account.
Then hit the sharer button at the top of the screen:
Put in your message and hit “Buffer” to time your tweets:
If needed, change your Buffer schedule to match the timing information you received from Tweriod:
StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery program is a lightning-fast way to get more visitors to your fresh, epic content. With clicks as low as 5 cents, you can usually get a few hundred eyeballs with a small investment. And a fair amount of these will organically stumble, tweet and like your content… meaning more potential backlinks.
First, go to https://www.stumbleupon.com/pd and create an account:
Click “create new campaign.” 
Enter your content’s URL.
And set your budget. You probably only want to run your campaign for a few days to add fuel to the buzz.
Name your campaign.
StumbleUpon automatically targets your content to a demographic that they think will respond best to it. But if you want to make sure, you can hit the “edit” button under “audiences” and choose the demographic and interest information that best fits your content.
Hit “Save and Review”: 
Then “Create Campaign.” 
And you’re done!
Scoop.it is content curation on steroids. And it’s a great (free) way to give your content the push it may need to go viral.
First, create an account. Hit the “My Topics” button at the top of your Scoop.it page. Choose “Create Topic.”
Make it something related to what your content is about.
Now, search for other curators that have Scoop.It pages similar to what your content is all about.
Pay special attention to users with lots of views: 
And Twitter followers (most Scoop.It addicts tend to tweet the content that they scoop): 
Follow them by hitting the “Follow” button on the right side of their page. 
Once you have a few followers it’s time to Scoop your own content.
Click “New Scoop.”
And choose “Create Your Own Scoop.”
Then copy and paste your content’s URL.
It will ask you where you want to post the content. Choose one of the other curators that you follow:
And click “Suggest.” 
Now your content is sent to that curator. If they think it’s as awesome as you do, they’ll post it on their Scoop. It page!
When the dust settles and the buzz surrounding your content has died down a bit, it’s time to do some outreach and earn a few more quality links.
Link roundups might be the most underrated link building technique on the planet. Where else can you find site owners in your niche actually looking to link to your content? If you’re not familiar with link roundups, they’re simply blog posts that link out to the week’s best content.
Here are a few search strings to help you quickly find link roundups in your niche.
Make sure to set the date for the last year or so to make sure you’re only looking at sites with active roundups:
Here’s one that looks promising:
Sure enough, it looks like this blogger posts a roundup every Friday:
Now it’s a matter of reaching out to this blogger and suggesting your content.
If you don’t find anything — or want to get more even more links — hunt for link roundups in niches closely related to yours.
And repeat the process.
This is a little bit devious, but it’s darn effective. What you’re doing is looking at who already links to your competitor’s content… and try to get them to replace their link with yours. The reason this works so well is that you already know the person wants to link to a resource about your topic (because they already have). It’s just a matter of convincing them that yours is better (more on that later).
First, take a few of the results from the top 10 results of your target keyword.
And enter them into OSE.
Choose “Only External,” and click the filter button.
Now hit up each of the results and see if you spot an opportunity for the site owner to swap their link for yours (or simply add yours to the page).
Here’s one that has potential:
Sure enough, the post was published three years ago, meaning it’s probably due for an update:
One of the most effective ways to get your link posted is to tell the blogger that you have a more up-to-date resource than the one that they’re linking to. Site owners are petrified of linking to obsolete stuff.
Just contact the site owner and let them know about your fresh, cutting edge resource.
You may only get a 10% response rate. But that 10% of links will comprise aged, heavily linked-to pages that will pass a ton of trust and authority onto your site.
Thanks to Ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce and Wix, creating an online store has never been easier.
Even with a full staff of developers and designers, we still use Shopify for our Ecommerce websites.
The downside here is that the barrier to entry is low, which creates more competition. It might be easier than ever to launch an Ecommerce website, but it is harder than ever to make sales.
On this page, you’ll find everything you need to start and grow your online store.
How to Create an Ecommerce Website
If you’re looking for products to sell, then you’ll find our review on the best dropshipping companies helpful.
We highly recommend Shopify for Ecommerce, despite the fact that we use WordPress for everything else. Here’s our take on WordPress Ecommerce, and here’s a guide on how to transfer your website to Shopify. If you decide to go with WordPress for Ecommerce, here are the Themes we think are best.
Some more guides on getting started with Ecommerce:
Best Ecommerce Website Builder
Running A Successful Ecommerce Website
You need traffic to get sales.
We have many hundreds of digital marketing guides on Quick Sprout. Here are just a few that are specific to Ecommerce.
Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization
How to Create a Trust Seal On Checkout Page
Target Mobile Customers With Push Notifications
Grow Email List as Ecommerce Brand
Increasing Average Order Value
Building Hype For Holiday Season as Ecommerce Brand
Shoppable Posts on Instagram For Ecommerce
How to Get First Sale on a New Ecommerce Website
Creating a website is overwhelming. Don’t worry, that’s completely natural when building your first website.
When we built our first sites, it was so complicated. And so many articles and YouTube videos on how to create a website made it seem a lot easier than it ended up being.
We’ve outlined all the specific steps below on how to create your own website. We included everything that we learned over the years from building hundreds of sites.
We’re here to help.
This page is a collection of 70+ guides.You won’t need to read them all in order to build your website. Browse through and read what’s relevant to your situation. This will save you countless hours of frustration.
Don’t get confused by all of the different options for creating a website.
In most cases, we highly recommend to build your website with WordPress. It’s an open source platform that allows you to run your website with very little technical expertise.
Some of the biggest websites on the Internet are built on WordPress. TechCrunch, The New Yorker, Variety and MTV News, just to name a few.
It’s also the most popular blogging platform, so there are hundreds of thousands of smaller websites that use WordPress.
WordPress is used by 33.4% of all the websites, and has a content management system market share of 60.3%.
Much of our content is centered around WordPress because we use it for all of our websites outside of Ecommerce.
Here’s the guide on how to create your website on WordPress.
For Ecommerce, we like Shopify — which is an Ecommerce website builder that allows you to get an online store up and running quickly.
The reality is that creating and running an online store can be a huge pain. Shopify takes that pain away. That’s probably why they are growing so quickly, and so many great online stores are popping up on the platform.
Here’s the guide on how to create your website on Shopify.
If you’re reading this right now, then you most definitely fall into the category of someone that should be using WordPress or Shopify.
In rare cases, it might make sense to create a website using Wix or a similar website builder.
In other (very) rare cases, it might make sense to have a custom built website.
Start with our guide on how to create a website in 120 minutes. Along with that, there are a number of useful guides to consider as you start working on your website.
How to Plan Out Your New Website
How to Buy The RIGHT Domain Name – A Detailed Guide
How to Develop Your First Brand Identity on a Budget
10 Trending 2019 Website Color Schemes
9 Places To Get Website Images (Paid and Free)
The Best Website Fonts That Go Together in 2019
13 Website Design Best Practices
7 Reasons Why You Do NOT Need to Hire a Website Designer
The 22 Key Elements of a High Quality Website
How Much Copy Should You Write on Your Homepage?
10 Contact Page Techniques That Make People Contact You
How To Create an About Page That Matters
How to Make a Wix Website in 6 Easy Steps
Some useful guides for optimization as your site gets up and running:
5 Easy Steps to Creating a Sitemap For a Website
Should You Switch Your Site to HTTPS? Pros and Cons
The Top 10 Principles That Boost Your Website Loading Time
You need a web hosting provider in order to have a website.
We recommend SiteGround for most people. For advanced WordPress users, with high traffic websites, it could make sense to move to WP Engine at some point.
More about The Best Web Hosting Companies here.
Here are some additional guides to help you learn more about web hosting:
Everything You Need To Know About Web Hosting
The Best Web Hosting for Small Business
The Best Web Hosting for WordPress
The Hidden Costs of Website Hosting
An analytics tool is important if you want to know what’s happening on your website. It tells you how much traffic you’re getting, where it’s coming from, and what people do on your site. Google Analytics is the standard. That’s what we use for Quick Sprout.
Read more about why Google Analytics is the best.
Installing Google Analytics is easy. Consuming the reports is a bit more complicated.
Here are some guides to help:
The 2 Website Analytics Tools Pros Actually Use in 2019
Setup Google Analytics in 3 Steps – The Beginner’s Guide
10 Vital Customizations to Make in Google Analytics
A Guide to Google Analytics Add-on for Google Sheets
How to Track Your Leads with UTM Parameters
A WordPress website is basically made from what’s called a WordPress Theme and WordPress Plugins. All of the features of your website will come either from the theme or the plugins you install.
To help you get started, we reviewed all of the best WordPress Plugins across the most popular categories.
Here’s an in-depth review for each category:
Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
Best WordPress Security Plugin
Best WordPress Calendar Plugin
Best Google Analytics Plugins for WordPress
Best WordPress Directory Plugin
Best Membership Plugins for WordPress
Best Social Media WordPress Plugin
If the primary purpose of your website is to sell products, you’ll need an ecommerce website. We recommend keeping it simple and going with Shopify.
Read our full review on Shopify to see why.
Check out our review of the Best Ecommerce Platforms, to get a comparison to the other options out there.
Get the step-by-step on how to start an online store.
Our guide on how to create an Ecommerce website.
More useful guides on building an Ecommerce website:
How to Transfer Your Website to Shopify
Best Ecommerce WordPress Themes
Best Ecommerce Website Builder
How to Create a Trust Seal On Checkout Page
When you really break it down — most websites are blogs, and blogs are websites. They have become one and the same. The most popular blogging platform is WordPress, and that is also the same platform we use for any other website, blog or otherwise.
If you’re thinking about starting a blog specifically, and that is why you’re trying to figure out how to create a website…we have over 40 guides on blogging.
Here are the blogging guides specific to getting started, and building your blog:
Best Blogging Platforms / Blog Sites
Best WordPress Themes for Blogs
11 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My First Blog
The Top 12 Tips for Running a Successful Video Blog
10 Lessons Seth Godin Can Teach You About Blogging
100 Lessons Learned from 10 Years of Blogging
Creating your website might seem overwhelming at first. It really comes down to starting with these simple steps:
Our recommendation for most people is WordPress with Hostinger because it’s easy to set up and there are no limits to what you can do. Host your WordPress site on Hostinger for $1.99 per month.
Building a great blog starts with choosing the right platform—and there are only a handful truly worth considering.
Here are the best options, complete with in-depth reviews and a guide to help you decide which works best for you.
Best of 2023: LinkedIn, Medium, Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress with Hostinger.
While there are dozens of places that allow you to easily and quickly start blogging, my top picks are the most fruitful options for businesses.
To help make your decision even easier, I handpicked some of my favorites for 2023, including:
Whether you want to start affiliate marketing to drive sales, a blog to bring in new business, or showcase your creative portfolio, you’ll get everything to build an entire website in one place with any of the options above.
If you want to turn a profit on your blog, use WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace. You’ll be in complete control of your site and everything that’s on it. For people who want to blog with WordPress, we recommend using Hostinger as a web host to keep your speed high and costs low.
We’ll also cover options like Medium and LinkedIn that are great for hobby blogs and making connections–but not blogs for making a living. They are free, but you don’t get to choose how your blog looks, and adding your style is half the fun.
What makes these blogging platforms great? Where could they be better? To find out, we interviewed active users of each platform about where these platforms excel, and where they are falling behind.
WordPress is the best overall blogging platform because it’s free, easy to use, and customizable without limitations. Get started now for free.
WordPress is the most popular blog platform out there—for starters it’s free, you just have to pay for hosting.
We recommend Hostinger for WordPress hosting because it’s the best price for a simple setup. You’ll have a WordPress site in a few minutes with Hostinger.
It’s a highly customizable content management system (CMS) for bloggers who want to build out a site for their business. It’s also great if you plan to scale your blog for profit.
The reason? WordPress is open source. That means they don’t keep their source code a secret. Developers can go in and create widgets, plugins, and other tools to customize WordPress blogs—so you can create any kind of blog you want.
What this means for WordPress users is that no matter the action or functionality they need, there is probably a plugin or widget already available that does it. And it is incredibly simple to add that functionality to your website. You simply find the tool you need, install it with just a few clicks, then easily customize it to your specifications.
This dramatically streamlines your website customization and eliminates the need for you to know how to code or hire a developer to create something for you. Chances are, there’s a plugin already out there that does exactly what you want. It doesn’t get much easier than that when it comes to making your website your own.
One user on our panel, who has stuck with WordPress for four years, describes the CMS as “blogger-friendly” with plenty of SEO features baked in. Their experience is echoed by many of our other users.
That said, there is a bit of a learning curve. To get the most out of WordPress in terms of customizability, you’ll need to be more hands-on with the plugins and widgets you choose and how you manage the backend.
However, even this is fairly straightforward in WordPress—and it didn’t take long for our users to learn the ropes at all.
“With no knowledge of WordPress when I started, it was a bit of a steep learning curve but I figured everything out quickly enough,” said one user. “WordPress is very intuitive and if you can’t figure something out, you just have to Google it or check on YouTube and you will likely find an answer.”
Another echoed that sentiment. However, they also said that “it’s fairly easy to use” after blogging on the platform for a few days.
The tradeoff is well worth it, as you’re able to get a fantastic website fully customized to your exact specifications. That’s what makes it perfect for creating a website that’s primed for audience growth and profit.
One user was also able to promote items for third parties in order to generate even more revenue. “I was able to monetize my blog using affiliate marketing, along with info products like ebooks and minicourses once my audience got big enough,” they said.
They were also able to leverage plugins to help them build their audience—and generate revenue growth.
“One thing that helped with that was creating an email subscriber list and a newsletter using the Mailchimp plugin,” they added. “It’s a must-have if you really want to monetize your blog.”
With the sheer number of plugins and the ability to customize your site, you will be able to find any option you want to include on your site. As your blog and audience grow, you can continue adjusting your site to accommodate it in whatever direction you want to go.
Confession time: WordPress is actually the CMS we use here at Quicksprout—so we’re a bit biased.
In fact, we’re very biased.
If you plan on building out a blog that draws in thousands or even millions of readers—not to mention monetizing it—we can’t recommend WordPress enough. But the users are right when they say it’s a bit tricky to learn at first.
At first blush, the blog dashboard for WordPress seems more complex than most. But once you jump in, it’s fairly easy to wrap your mind around. And you’ll get used to it relatively quickly.
The WordPress Gutenberg editor makes the blogging and editing process very straightforward. You really don’t have to know HTML unless you want to get crafty. All the fundamentals you need to publish a blog are point and click.
Sure, it’s not quite like the drag-and-drop functionality as Wix and Squarespace have since you can’t edit the entire page—but it’s pretty darn close.
I’ve also found WordPress to be incredibly scalable. No matter what you want to build or how big you get, the platform will grow with you as long as you choose the right plugins.
A quick tip: Don’t make the rookie mistake of downloading a ton of plugins and widgets. It’s easy to think you need everything—but sometimes, less is more.
Plus installing a ton of plugins is an easy way to sloooooooow down your page’s loading speed.
One plugin we do recommend you get is the Yoast SEO plugin. This is an incredibly popular WordPress plugin that helps you set up your posts to be as SEO-friendly as possible with a few guided steps. It’s honestly a must-have if you’re using WordPress.
You can check out our guide on the best WordPress plugins for more recommendations.
And if you really want, you can start changing the code yourself. Since WordPress is open-source, that means you can do whatever you want with it. If you know PHP or are willing to hire a developer, you can change WordPress however you like.
One user put it best: “WordPress gave me everything I needed to create the blog I wanted. It gave me an easy interface to post my blogs, as well as everything I needed or wanted in my blog: a subscription box, an author area; just the look I wanted and the flexibility to change things as needed.”
To build your own site using WordPress, you’ll need to buy a domain name, get web hosting, and set up your account.
There’s more information on our posts about the best web hosting and the best web hosting for WordPress, which is about selecting a managed host that’s designed for WordPress. The quick answer: Go with Hostinger.
Hostinger is one of the most popular web hosts, especially for WordPress users. That’s because they run servers that only have WordPress sites on them–this allows Hostinger to configure servers specifically for WordPress security and performance.
This means–with no extra work on your part–you can have a faster, safer WordPress site simply by signing up with Hostinger.
With just one click, you’ll be able to get your WordPress site up and running within minutes. I’m serious. You simply select WordPress as your desired CMS during the signup process, and it’s automatically installed for you.
The price was a big factor for most of the users we spoke with. Hostinger comes in at the very low end price-wise, yet it’s jam-packed with features to help you grow. Starting at $1.99 per month, you’re going to get the ability to:
If you want to create additional sites or email people from a professional address @yourdomain.com, that’s going to cost extra with some of the other platforms.
Another helpful aspect of going with Hostinger is the 365/24/7 support via live chat. Most of your WordPress-related questions can be answered with a simple Google search–as the world’s most popular blogging platform, there’s a ton of info out there.
The user panel gave me varying feedback about WordPress’s beginner-friendliness. Some said that it was easy enough, while others pointed out that it was tough on novices at the beginning.
“I don’t like how it does take a bit of a learning curve to use,” said one user. Their thoughts showed that WordPress won’t be the easiest option, especially when building your first site. “Sometimes I’d like to have my hand held more through the blog creation process rather than having to look up a bunch of YouTube how-to videos to learn how.”
After testing and building sites myself using WordPress, I can say that it takes a bit to get the hang of it—but once you do, you’ll be glad you put the work in.
But even if you’re uncomfortable with it at first, it’s still the best option if you’re willing to learn and grow into the role of managing your website site.
Another flaw that one of our surveyed users mentioned is that WordPress lacks comprehensive customer support.
“I wish there was a help desk that you could contact either by email or by chat,” one user told us.
That is one other good aspect of signing up with Hostinger. There is someone you can reach out to via live chat any time of day or night. Their support teams handle a lot of common WordPress questions and may be able to help you out.
Along with performing very highly across all criteria, WordPress with Hostinger is a great place to start if you really want to build a blog that will grow with you no matter how big you get.
This is especially good if you plan on monetizing your blog and optimizing it for traffic/growth. Eventually, you’ll need to add more resources some other platforms might not be able to offer you. WordPress and Hostinger can do that.
Some WordPress users had minor issues with the platform’s learning curve, they all said that they were able to create their ideal blog once they got the hang of it. They especially liked WordPress’s level of customization — with some of them monetizing their websites using the site builder’s many plugins and widgets.
Bottom line: Building a WordPress website takes more time than a Wix website. However, the tradeoff is your website is much more customizable (and powerful). And Hostinger makes it easy to host your WordPress site. As such, we highly recommend this combination for bloggers who want to really grow their traffic and/or profit margins.
Wix is perfect for beginners because it doesn’t require any coding skills and you can start a new blog in minutes. Sign up for a free Wix account today.
Wix gives beginners a way to make it look like professionals designed their blogs—all without needing to learn code or web development.
In fact, one user told me, “I think it’s as straightforward as it can get for people with no coding background.” They created their site with ease without running into any stifling restrictions.
Another user called out the drag-and-drop editor’s intuitive UI and its tools to create individualized layouts and designs.
We jumped in and tested it out for ourselves and found they were right. You can create a blog in just a few minutes. Wix even walks you through the entire process step-by-step if you need it.
They offer hundreds of templates across many different categories of websites. For example, they have templates for travel blogs, simple portfolios, or photography galleries. We love how you don’t need to have any coding knowledge to move assets around and create the blog you want.
Another user agreed that Wix offered a very intuitive blog-building experience while adding, “If I’m unsure about a certain topic, it’s quick to find it via their support.”
Wix offers both live support via a 24/7 callback service (if you’re in the United States) and a massive knowledge base with articles to help beginners out when they’re stuck.
But you can also just let Wix’s ADI builder handle most of the dirty work entirely. This tool leverages artificial intelligence to help you build the exact website you want by just answering a few questions.
And, if security or reliability is a concern, Wix nails both with a robust 99.98 percent uptime rate and a team of security professionals on the job 24/7 monitoring the Wix ecosystem for potential cyber threats. All this protection lets you focus exclusively on creating great blog content.
Wix’s blog manager is indeed simple and intuitive, with analytics and SEO built right in.
It’s simple to add the basic features you might want on your blog, too—elements like social tools, likes, comments, hashtags, categories, and subscriber forms.
There’s a blog template category, which is a great place to start. Once you have your template selected, I suggest updating the font, colors, and logo to personalize your template and help it stand out from the rest.
Writing a post is as simple as clicking Create a Post, writing your copy, and adding images. You can save drafts or even give other contributors writing privileges for your site. This is all just as easy from a mobile device as from a desktop—no app required.
The blogging process is as intuitive and easy to use as folks described—but there were also some other additions that surprised me.
You can easily add alt tags to images and nofollow tags to links without getting into the HTML. This stuff is really important for ranking high in search results, and with Wix, you don’t have to know a whole lot to get your SEO ducks in a row. For more tips like this, you can refer to our SEO for blogs guide.
All your posts automatically get a read-time count to show readers roughly how long it’ll take to go through your post (something Medium also offers) and is a great feature to have for readers.
We also like the ability to use live chat to interact with your readers in the Wix app. If you build a real community in your blog or are open to answering reader questions in real time—say, about an online course you’re offering or a webinar that’s coming up—then it’s a cool feature.
Most Wix blogs tended to look great across mobile, tablet, and desktop—something our users said helped them draw in readers. “Since my website runs very smoothly on any device,” said one user, “it made it easier for an audience to browse through my work and contact me immediately.”
There are a few downsides to Wix — but even from our panel of users, it seemed their major complaints boiled down to a couple of points.
The platform sometimes doesn’t play well with mobile devices if you’re trying to do more ambitious scrolling designs, like parallax scrolling. One user said that “my scrolling effect cannot be achieved on mobile so I had to make a simpler version [of my website] separately.”
There’s also the matter of the subscription fee that—while fairly affordable—could cause some burgeoning bloggers to cringe (especially if you plan to be more bootstrap). If you plan on recouping some of that money with their ecommerce tools, you’ll still have to account for paying for a pricier plan for that functionality.
The panel of users rated Wix fairly low on monetization too—but that’s not to say it can’t be done. Occasionally Wix will feature stand-out blogs that use their platform, and that can lead to new opportunities as was the case with one of our users.
“Being featured on Wix did get me some freelance opportunities, and ultimately landed me my full-time job,” they said.
Ultimately, we think that despite the downsides, Wix is absolutely worth it for the platform’s ease of use and out-of-the-box blogging features.
Wix offers the best blogging platform for beginners. It offers a wide array of themes that’ll fit any type of blog and website you want to build.
You’ll also be able to easily change the look and feel of those themes to make your blog look the way you want it to—no coding knowledge needed.
The users we talked to praised Wix’s ease of use and the ability to customize their blogs on the platform. Our own hands-on research verified that. We could create a great-looking blog with zero experience with Wix in literal minutes. Imagine what you could do with more time.
And if you really want to take the guesswork out of designing your website, you can even let Wix take care of it for you by answering a few questions and letting their advanced AI take care of the rest.
When you choose to let Wix create a site for you, the Wix AI website-building platform, called Wix ADI, basically does the rest. You simply identify a theme you like, from multiple color and font combination options, and then Wix prompts you with a variety of homepage designs to choose from.
From there, you choose the pages you want to include on your site and that’s it. Your site is up and running in less than two minutes. Of course, all elements of your new AI-designed website are still fully customizable, so you’re not locked into anything. But this is a great option for those who don’t want to devote time to building their site from scratch.
Bottom line: We highly recommend Wix to beginner bloggers who want to easily build a great-looking blog that’s both reliable and secure. Even experienced website builders will find there’s a lot they can get out of Wix. And with tools like its ecommerce functionality and Wix email marketing, you can grow and shape your website to optimize for things like profit and audience growth. For even more insights, refer to our in-depth Wix review to see how it works and how to get started.
Squarespace is ideal for creative professionals because it has stunning designs and built-in tools for monetizing blogs. Sign up now to start your free trial.
The first thing I notice whenever I go onto a Squarespace blog is how gorgeous it typically looks.
Photography and graphic designs seem to leap off the screen. The blog owners themselves seem to always be artistically-minded like illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, home decor experts, and more.
Our panel was no exception. They were made up of a website design expert who teaches readers how to make stunning sites, a gardening influencer who frequently showcases mouth watering photos of his homegrown vegetables, and an interior designer who likes to flex their room designs off in gallery posts.
And there’s a reason they all chose Squarespace as their platform.
The trio rated Squarespace very highly across the board. Many of the users had glowing words to say about its ease of use and designs.
“I think I had my blog up and running within a day,” said the user who runs an interior design blog. Their site frequently showcases captivating photographs of eclectically designed rooms. “Squarespace offers clean, beautiful templates that you can easily tweak.”
Their claims are backed up by my own research of hundreds of Squarespace blogs. Each of the platform’s templates is created by their team of exceptional designers—and they all look stunning.
Editing your blog—from the contacts page, to the about page, to the home page, to your portfolio, to the actual blog itself—is very easy with Squarespace. Like Wix they have a drag-and-drop tool. And unlike WordPress, users don’t have to deal with an occasionally confusing backend editor.
“They have a great What You See Is What You Get builder,” said one user. “That means when you’re building the page, you see what the page will look like as you’re building it.”
That user is also known as Paige Brunson. She discovered the wonders of Squarespace years back and loved it so much she created a thriving career helping other people design on it too.
She believes that Squarespace’s backend editor is superior to that of WordPress because you can see changes as you make them.
“Sometimes, like in WordPress, you’re editing your site in the backend, but then you have to go to the front end to see what it’ll look like when you’re finished,” she said. “With Squarespace, as you’re building the blog post, you’re seeing the changes happen at the same time. And I think that’s really, really useful. That’s one aspect that makes it really easy to use.”
Squarespace also gives you tools to add an ecommerce portion to your blog along with a newsletter integration. That can really help you scale and transform your blog for profitability and audience growth.
“There are quite a few built-in features in Squarespace to build your business the way you want like a shop, integrated email marketing, a members area and podcast support,” said another user. “Plus they have many resources on their website about every feature and how to use them.”
Where our panel of users found Squarespace lacking can be boiled down to one word: Customization.
While the platform does offer ways to add email marketing, ecommerce, and membership functions to your site, it’s still relatively limited when it comes to overall customization when compared to a CMS like WordPress.
“Custom CSS is only available in the Business Plan,” said one user. “It’s doable for my website, I found some great tutorials on the internet for extra CSS customization and I had to buy a sidebar plugin because it wasn’t integrated in my template. For more complex websites this might be a problem.”
While Paige is an evangelist for Squarespace, she believes that it could be better when it comes to its mobile customization.
“The mobile editor is the thing which my students find the most annoying,” she says. “With Squarespace, building a website takes time [on desktop], and then you have to literally go build the thing a second time [for mobile]. It’s just a lot more time consuming of a process.”
Another user also had minor issues with Squarespace’s intuitiveness saying, “It could be more obvious what to perform certain actions. Sometimes you have to hunt and click here and there. Every now and then I’ve accidentally deleted a blog because I’ve clicked the wrong button.”
Squarespace users had extremely positive things to say about the platform’s stunning templates and overall usability.
Users might be turned off by the platform due to its lack of features. You also can’t access tools like the Yoast SEO plugin from WordPress. On top of all that, you need to pay a higher price for access to custom CSS.
It will cost you a bit more to maximize Squarespace’s ecommerce capabilities, as you need to opt into a more expensive plan.
If you’re interested in this blogging platform, check out our step-by-step guide on getting started with Squarespace.
Bottom line: Squarespace offers great looking templates, easy drag-and-drop designs, and an opportunity to show off your art, photographs, and more. Give Squarespace a try today.
LinkedIn offers a simple way to share your industry expertise and become a thought leader directly from your profile. Start blogging on LinkedIn with a free account today.
LinkedIn gives you a built-in audience of over 740 million business professionals. The audience comes from all stripes, including HR, digital marketing, finance, tech, and more.
Many of them are highly active on the site, frequently sharing thought leadership and articles with one another via their LinkedIn feed.
So if you’re interested in establishing yourself as an influencer or thought leader in your business space, the audience on LinkedIn is your bread-and-butter.
The platform has a ready-made culture and set of expectations that a business blogger would dream of creating on their own site. The challenge for you is creating compelling and share-worthy content to build a following.
After all, LinkedIn is a social network. Your influence grows in proportion to the size of your network. The more posts you publish, the more connection requests and followers you’ll attract.
Since it’s a social network for industry professionals, that makes it a great channel to access prospects and get quick feedback from peers on your B2B-style articles. You have an opportunity to put your thought leadership in front of everyone from potential clients and customers, to recruiters, to influencers in your field.
And, you can turn your audience into partners and customers.
Each of the users on our panel leveraged LinkedIn blogging to make key networking connections and develop an audience.
“So far, I have experienced getting higher-quality clients through LinkedIn by blogging and writing content on the platform,” said one user I talked to.
It might seem painfully obvious, but not a lot of people realize that the platform can be incredibly lucrative if you’re in business. The folks on LinkedIn are typically high-earners. They’re C-Suite executives. They’re industry movers and shakers who want to innovate and build lasting businesses.
And they’re willing to pay a premium to the right person who will get them there.
Said one user, “I can probably make $1,000 or so from LinkedIn every month indirectly if I really tried.”
Creating a blog on LinkedIn is very simple and just requires a profile, which is free. From there, it’s just a matter of clicking on a Facebook-like status button and creating an article.
Like Medium, LinkedIn uses that Gutenberg-style editor that’s fairly intuitive. Our panel also found it very usable, with one saying, “The article feature is pretty easy to use. I simply add images, write the text, and publish—and I’m done. No crazy misalignment or formatting issues.”
It’s also worth noting that there are differences between a LinkedIn post and article.
A post is a smaller update you’d share with your feed and connections. Think along the lines of a quick anecdote or pro tip. They’re limited to 1,300 characters, which is about 5 lines.
Articles are longer and more in-depth, of course. They’re something that the broader LinkedIn audience would be interested in reading. And who knows, maybe your post will get picked up by one of LinkedIn’s blogs on marketing or sales.
A person who reads your article can also follow you from there, so they’ll be alerted when you publish your next article. Any articles you publish will appear in the Articles section of your LinkedIn profile.
Is one better than the other? It depends, of course. After all, you might have a great idea for a long-form article that your audience will love.
But, one of the users on our panel thinks that the shorter the better. As such, they recommend avoiding making articles entirely.
“Go all in on multimedia posts and short status update posts,” said one user. “Do not post full articles here. If you want to get a lot of traction, post the right kind of content and figure out a way to divert that attention away to products or services that you can sell people on.”
While LinkedIn does offer a lot of opportunities for building your brand and creating thought leadership, it lacks in some vital areas.
For one, there’s no intuitive way for folks to access an archive of your past articles like you might find in Medium or a normal Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress blog.
Instead, the article will live in your Activity feed, which requires you to click on your profile, then your Activity feed, and then scroll down to your article. That’s a lot of work to find just one article.
“There’s not great discoverability for people who want to read my past blog posts on LinkedIn in my opinion,” said one user who went on to opine about the lack of a newsletter feature to help promote their blog.
That user also had a strong condemnation of blogging on LinkedIn as a whole, saying, “Articles notoriously get horrible reach in the feed. Creating an actual blog on LinkedIn, for me, is worthless.”
You also shouldn’t be using LinkedIn blogs a tool for attracting candidates. It’s much easier to use recruiting software.
LinkedIn is a social networking platform first and foremost. Everything else comes secondary to that goal.
The same goes for their articles. It’s not a blogging platform per se in the traditional sense—but it can be a very effective blogging tool to grow your network and make connections.
And some of our users have made a lot of money by using their blogs to make these connections.
“I make money indirectly from LinkedIn. I have to make a post, then throw a link to a webinar in the comments section. Some people sign up and then purchase my course through the webinar later on,” one user explained.
But ultimately, it’s not a very effective blogging platform if blogging is all you want to do. We’d recommend going with any of the previous options if that’s your goal and supporting your blog by sharing your posts on LinkedIn.
Bottom line: LinkedIn is a decent blogging platform only if you’re using it to support a platform you own, like your business’s website. You can’t directly monetize it, and you’re entirely dependent on an algorithm for reach and engagement.
But if you’re blogging about business subjects like management or marketing, LinkedIn is a good opportunity to grow your network and audience. There’s a pre-existing community of people there talking about those topics and ready to read your posts.
Medium is great for people that want don’t want to build an audience from scratch because it already has over 60 million readers and the opportunity to get paid through their partner program. Sign up now to try Medium for free.
Medium is easily one of the most polarizing platforms out there—and it’s certainly the most controversial one on our list.
It’s home to bloggers focused on crafting niche content for readers. It’s also where you can find some of the most thought-provoking, incendiary content online.
What really makes Medium stand out for writers is its built-in communities of readers. People can browse a vast library of publications and topics, find your blog, and subscribe to it with a single click–they can even choose to get your blog posts sent to their email inbox every time you post. Writers can post pieces under their personal account, a publication they own and run, or submit their writing to publications for a chance to be published on other Medium blogs and put in front of even more readers.
“It’s just plugging and chugging and going,” one user told us. “Even if you have no writing experience, and just want to write, it’s not hard to get started and find an audience.”
The ability to tap into a well of readers was a draw for many users—especially after their less-than-stellar experience on another platform on this list. A huge draw of Medium is not having to try to drive traffic to your own independent website.
“I definitely recommend not even starting with a traditional WordPress blog,” one user said. “Just go on Medium because it works as a blogging tool and a social media platform. Naturally, there’s going to be a much larger audience there for people to read your work.”
Medium also gives you the ability to get paid for writing through the Medium Partner Program. This allows writers to get paid for their work based on the amount of engagement their articles get.
Some bloggers routinely make six figures a year from their posts—though even Medium is quick to point out that only 7% make more than $100 per year. All this makes it a good platform if you want to find and cultivate an audience of fans of your writing, and make a little bit of cash along the way.
There are two primary ways to blog on Medium:
After using Medium to do both, I can attest to it being incredibly simple to use.
All you have to do is click “Write a Story” and you can get started writing a Medium article. The dashboard is a lot like WordPress’s Gutenberg editor, so it’s fairly intuitive. Once you’re finished, add a few tags and click “publish” and it’s out in the world.
Submitting to other publications is a good way to access audiences. However, you’ll be writing on spec. And there’s a chance they might reject your article entirely.
The alternative to that is creating your own Medium publication which I definitely recommend.
This gives you the option to add other writers and editors to your blog, along with the ability to accept submissions. This can really help pad out your editorial calendar with little effort on your part—so you can have access to a stream of content for your readers.
One of the users on our panel actually helped found one of the biggest and most popular publications on Medium: The Writing Cooperative. In fact, they currently boast about 226,000 followers on the site and publish multiple times each and every day.
“The Writing Cooperative began on Medium in 2014. In some regards, we’ve grown up with the platform” said co-founder Justin Cox. “[…] The Writing Cooperative’s content is often recommended in user feeds, which is a great way to grow an audience.”
Justin went on to say that he doesn’t make a living off of the Writing Cooperative, but he and his co-founder are able to generate some income by setting up a Patreon for the publication as well as launching a coaching program for their community. “Everything we do is geared towards supporting and encouraging writers,” he added.
You also have the option to accept submissions from other writers when you create a publication. That could be really great to help grow your blog while making connections with more users.
While our panel of Medium bloggers found that the platform was overall easy to use, they had varied perspectives on how it ultimately works to build an audience.
One of our users was simply not happy with the way the platform compensates them and signal boosts (or rather, doesn’t signal boost) their content.
“Medium did help me grow my audience by pushing my best content towards external promotions and new Medium users, but lately, this has stopped and I presume it is because of the large volume of new writers,” the user said. “When it comes to attracting new readers, I feel like Medium can do a lot more.”
They went on to explain how they were also frustrated by the platform’s payment system and the lack of transparency surrounding it. In fact, they even had to go a step further to help better market their blog.
“I had to invest money from my own pocket to publicize the publication which I think attracted new readers, but my efforts didn’t really get recognized by Medium,” they explained.
Another user expressed a similar opinion in regards to the payment program. “I make a few bucks,” they told me. “It does not pay nearly enough to justify the time and effort I put into writing.”
Inherent to the platform’s structure is a very Hunger Games-style of gaining readers and making money. You’re constantly competing against other articles for people’s attention, and fighting against bigger and more established publications.
This can be very discouraging for some bloggers—especially if you’re trying to launch a publication for the first time.
“Sometimes, even if your article is posted into those huge exclusive publications, they don’t even get much engagement in the first place,” said another user. “So, it’s kind of like you’re fighting for nothing.”
That’s some strong criticism that I can’t help but agree with to a certain extent. Medium is a platform for bloggers willing to put in the hours and craft content that people want to read, but it can be very discouraging both at the outset and after you start to gain traction.
Medium is a big player in the blogging space with the likes of former President Barack Obama and A-list celebs like Chrissy Teigen using the platform. Big brands like Patagonia also leverage the site to host their own blogs.
It’s a good platform for building an audience if you’re diligent at it and publish consistently—but its lack of transparency when it comes to the algorithm, as well as its Partner Program, resulted in a lower rank on the list.
Bottom line: Medium is a good all-around traditional blogging platform that gives you the opportunity of getting your writing in front of more people and potentially make some money blogging. Like our user panel said: It’s a blogging platform along with a social media platform.
The downside is that there are limits on how high you can go as a part of Medium. You won’t own the traffic, and you won’t be able to do things like sell ad placements, for example, so your profit potential is quite limited.
You can use Medium to get a feel for blogging, find your voice, and start attracting an audience. But once you gain a following, you’re better served jumping ship to another platform, like WordPress, that you have full control over.
We chose our top five blogging platforms by focusing on four essential qualities:
Tip: You can jump down below for an even more in-depth look at these criteria.
We researched dozens of the most popular and prominent blog builders and platforms using the four elements above as a way to judge the blog builder’s quality.
This process involved “lighter” research that looked different from platform to platform. We created accounts and built out simple test blog pages. We also looked at each of the platform’s features and tools across their payment plans if they had them.
By doing this, we were able to get a sense of each blog site’s strengths, weaknesses, and target users.
Finally, we narrowed down our list from 12+ to five once we felt like we had a set of products that exemplified each of the criteria in unique ways.
We had a good amount of general knowledge, and some insights into the user interface for each platform at this point.
But we didn’t know what it was like to use each product for years or what it was like to depend on these blogs for business. So we set out to find people who did.
The best way to understand the quality of a blogging platform is by talking to actual users.
They’re the ones who have hands-on experience with the product, having spent anywhere from hours to years building their blogs. They know what’s working, what they love, and what needs to be improved.
To get real reviews from real users, we reached out to users across each of the platforms in order to attain a panel of three users each.
In all, we reached out to 116 users in order to gain our results. To verify they were actually users of the blog platform, we:
Once verified, we asked each user if they would be willing to either be surveyed or interviewed about their experience on the blog platform.
Our biggest takeaway from our research: There simply isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to blogging.
A person using Medium is going to be a different blogger than a person using WordPress. The right platform for you is ultimately going to be unique to your needs.
However, there are a few elements that we believe are universally applicable when it comes to looking for the right blogging platform.
If you’re a new blogger, you probably don’t want to start out with an overly complex platform. You might feel ambitious and want to learn how to create a big website, but I highly recommend not doing so for two reasons:
1. You’re going to get burned out—fast. It’s easy to bite off way more than you can chew in the beginning. When that happens, you’re going to end up getting tired of your blogging project very fast. You might even abandon it completely as a result.
2. There are much easier (and better) ways to do it. All of the platforms on this list are easy to use, but some are easier to pick up than others.
So find a platform that lets you launch quickly, cheaply, and easily.
Medium and LinkedIn are fairly straightforward to get started: You just create an account and you can start publishing immediately after. You also don’t have to worry about things like domain names, web hosting, or even page customization with these choices. The platforms take care of all that for you.
But if you’re a beginner who wants to own their platform with a personal blog site, Wix is the standout choice. Add a button, image, or embed a video–it only takes a few clicks.
They have the easiest learning curve of any blog builder we’ve seen yet. And the users that we talked to had glowing reviews of their own experience using the platform.
“[Wix’s] very intuitive and has great tools to create individual website designs,” one Wix user told us.
So if you’re not afraid to get your hands a little dirty, then I highly recommend Wix. They’ll ultimately give you the best combination of simplicity and website power.
Perhaps the most important decision you can make for your blog is what topic you’ll be writing about. This is going to determine your audience, its size, and your ultimate success.
No matter what you choose, you’re going to want to make sure that your blog allows you to customize its look and feel to fit your topic’s niche. This helps develop your blog and brand’s identity, and create a stronger relationship with your audience.
As you can see above, the websites that we reviewed do not all have the same level of customization. For example, WordPress gives you many more opportunities to customize everything, from your website’s colors and article layouts to your domain name and the fonts that you use.
If there’s something you can’t do right from your dashboard, you can simply install a plugin or a widget to get it done for you (or get your hands dirty with a little code).
Both Wix and Squarespace follow WordPress in terms of customization. Each of these platforms offers thousands of themes you can use in order to choose the exact look and feel you want from your blog. They’re the best option if you want to go for a more traditional blog and own your own platform.
Platforms like Squarespace even offer native tools to do things like add an ecommerce store to even further customize your blog.
“One of the reasons why I recommend Squarespace to small businesses or bloggers is because you don’t need to go get a third-party plugin to add a shop or to have your Instagram in the footer, or create your email newsletter collection,” said Paige Brunton, the Squarespace design coach on our panel. “It’s really an all-in-one system, which is really wonderful.”
Websites like LinkedIn and Medium offer limited customization options, only giving you the ability to change your logo and the images in your blog posts. However, the tradeoff is that they offer better ways to grow your audience.
Good blogging platforms offer you different tools to grow your audience. This could come in the form of SEO tools (to help your posts rank better in search results) or they could help connect you with new readers on their own platform.
For example, Medium is a great blogging platform if you want to tap into a large, existing audience and go viral. Be warned: It’s going to take work—and even then, success isn’t guaranteed. You’re beholden to their algorithm and that’s always going to come with risk.
“Medium did help me grow my audience by pushing my best content,” one user told us. “But lately, this has stopped […] When it comes to attracting new readers I feel like Medium can do a lot more.”
Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress have a variety of marketing tools, such as integrations with Google Analytics and SEO dashboards to help grow traffic. In fact, any tool that helps you elevate your search engine rankings can really help turbo-charge your audience building efforts.
There’s a reason WordPress’s Yoast SEO tool is as popular as it is. When you focus on getting organic traffic, it saves you money you’d otherwise spend on digital ads on Facebook or Google. Overall, this is great if you want to have a much more hands on, under-the-hood approach to your growth strategy.
Platforms like LinkedIn lack these tools. However, they can be a part of a bigger growth strategy by allowing you to make vital connections with influencers and change-makers in your industry. Those connections can really help grow your blogging reach as well.
Let’s be real: You want to make money with your blog. That’s totally fine. In fact, we encourage you to do so.
However, the blog platform you ultimately choose is going to have a massive impact on how much money you can possibly make and how you make it.
For example, with LinkedIn, you’ll be the most limited in your profit making potential. That’s because the platform won’t allow you to implement typical blog profit-making strategies such as on-page advertising—but you can still make money by promoting things like webinars, ebooks, and online courses.
Medium offers its Partner Program that allows writers to earn money on their articles based on “member engagement.” That means if other people read, comment, and like your story, you’ll be paid by Medium on the strength of that.
But, you still won’t be able to earn money from advertising. And also, their Partner Program seems to be a fairly difficult way to make a living of any sort. We even had one user tell us that they had to invest their own money to publicize their publication.
Of course, you can still use those sites to make money via strategies like affiliate marketing or coaching and other freelance services. But remember: You’ll also be completely beholden to their algorithm for traffic. That means one algorithm change can mean the difference between making money and completely shuttering your business.
That’s not an exaggeration either. Algorithm changes have been notorious for shutting down once successful blogs by throttling their traffic.
If making money is important to you, then I highly recommend controlling your own platform by building your own blog with WordPress. You’ll be able to fully customize your site and build out your blog to optimize for profit.
Platforms like Squarespace and Wix offer native ways of monetizing your blog by giving you tools to add ecommerce stores to your website. However, they don’t boast the same level of customization that WordPress does—and so you’ll be more limited in how you can make money and grow your blog.
Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace give you a way of truly owning your blog at the end of the day. It’s your platform, so you can do with it what you want. You won’t have to worry about algorithm changes ruining your traffic. You’ll also be able to implement as many or as few profit-making methods as you please.
Your unique needs will determine the blogging platform you ultimately choose. I can see how some people would naturally gravitate to Wix as the easiest drag-and-drop blogging tool. But WordPress has everything you need to get the most out of your blogging experience.
You’ll be able to find what you’re looking for using our list above and methodology to guide you.
Save yourself a lot of time and headache: before you dive into building your new website, think through a high-level …
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The emphasis here is on first. This guide is meant to help you get your first dirty brand identity out the door.
It’s meant to be functional and good enough for now.
Both options will get you to the finish line. The trade off is your time vs. your money. If you are short on money, then do it yourself. If you are short on time, then use 99designs.
If you were to get a high quality, professional brand identity, it’d cost you tens of thousands of dollars (or $211 million).
A more professional approach with an agency would look something like this. If you hire 99designs, you won’t get this level of quality, but you’ll still have a very functional starting point. 99designs has a brand identity package that starts at $599.
If you aren’t familiar with 99designs, it’s a platform that runs design contests. I particularly like the contest approach for your first brand identity because chances are you don’t know exactly what you want yet. Having a bunch of options to choose from will help.
A brand identity can be extensive, but we’ll just focus on a few things that you need to get off the ground. Everything else is a bonus.
A more extensive brand identity might include things like: design systems, custom illustrations, photography guidelines, iconography, interactive elements, video or motion and even a full out web design. We don’t need more than the first 3 items: a logo, colors, and font/typography.
If you go with 99designs, when all is said and done you’ll automatically end up with everything you need.
You’ll start a contest, which will attract many designers to submit designs. They’ll typically start with the logo and go from there. You’ll have the opportunity to rate designs, submit feedback and tweak until you find the winner.
There are obviously a number of advantages of going the 99designs route, vs. DIY — however, if you don’t have the budget, then you don’t have the budget. In that case, here is how I would go about doing it myself, if I were in that same boat.
Start with Brandmark. It’s a very cool tool that is essentially a logo generator. Creating your logo will give you the essentials you need for your brand identity. I say start here because while Brandmark can give you what you’re looking for, it’s also very limited.
It used to be free, but now it looks like they are charging for the logos. You can still design as many logos as you’d like; but now you’ll pay to download the files ($25–175 depending on the package you pick). Still, that’s a very cheap option.
I went through the process for an example, and outlined it with images below:
Step 1: Enter your name and tagline if you want one.
Step 2: Enter some keywords.
Step 3: Pick the color style you like.
Step 4: Logo options are generated for you.
Step 5: Choose a logo and see style details.
Step 6: Purchase the logo. (There are 3 options.)
Give it a shot, and see how it feels. If it doesn’t work, there’s a second option.
If you don’t like the outcome of Brandmark, your next option is to go full-on DIY. With this approach, you’re simply going to use a standard lettermark logo. It’s essentially just picking a font. (Unless, of course, you have design skills, in which case, this entire guide is probably irrelevant to you anyway.)
First, decide on your fonts.
I strongly recommend sticking with Google Fonts. Here is a great article on different options for Google Font combinations. Pick one of the combinations that you like.
There is a great free tool to test different Google Fonts and color combinations called Typecast.
Here’s an example. Number 5 on that list is Playfair Display, Alice. I’m going to take that and use those for my brand’s fonts. I’ll use Playfair Display for my logo. Then on my website, I’ll use Playfair Display for headings, and I’ll use Alice for my body font.
It will end up looking something like this…
While you’re testing different fonts, you can also test and select colors.
Here is a good article on the best logo color combinations. Pick one you like and try it out.
This one is pretty cool, so I’ll use it as an example:
In this case, I would probably use the dark blue (#081c4f) as the primary font color for the body of my website, and potentially for my logomark. Then, I’d use the secondary greenish colors (#19fc88) and (#1c9391) throughout the website.
Now I have an example of two fonts, one of which I am using for my logomark (as seen above), and I have three colors.
That’s all I really need for my brand identity. Now, I can use these elements everywhere on my website, business cards, emails, social media accounts, etc. and my brand is clear and consistent. It’s certainly not going to win any awards, but it’s functional and it’ll work for now.
Remember that this is just your initial brand identity to get things off the ground. You can update it down the road. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but you should still feel good about it.
Doing it yourself and on a small budget can be a challenge, but there are viable options to get the job done. 99designs may seem expensive, but it definitely beats hiring an agency or going through the process of trying to find a freelance designer. It’s not very time consuming and it’s actually fun. You’ll have more time to work on your business or or to create your website.
My quick take? I prefer Domain.com over other top registrars. They have great prices and super easy to use. It’s the registrar that I personally use and always recommend.
You need a domain name.
More specifically, you need the RIGHT domain name.
This is like choosing the name of your child. You want to get it right the first time.
Don’t just register whatever domain name is available and call it a day. That’s a big mistake.
In this guide, I want to walk you through my process for buying a domain name, starting with how I go about coming up with a name in the first place.
If you already have a name you want to buy, awesome! Head on down to the next section.
If you want to see if your domain name is actually good (or if you don’t know what domain name to pick), keep reading.
This is crucial. It’s the name you’ll use for your business, or a campaign, or a blog. You want to try your best to nail this on the first try.
Take your project and write down of all the words, descriptors, phrases, ideas, mantras, etc. that come to mind. Come up with as many words as possible. Use a thesaurus to help. I like to call this a concept list. It’s the list before your final name list. It isn’t necessarily names, but for now, just concepts.
Some high level rules:
I personally find a mind map useful for this process.
Concepts are intrinsically more generative than specific words because concepts can include other concepts. —Operative Words
Once you have a thorough concept list, you can develop a more refined list of potential names. Start by listing all the names you like. Since you might not have an unlimited budget, make sure to dig deep here. You can’t be too picky yet, because that will end up limiting your options. Write down everything you think might work.
I recommend browsing through the following websites to get more ideas. You might get lucky and find something you like just by browsing. If you do, add those to your list as well.
BrandBucket — They put together more creative, brandable domain names and then sell them. I’ve found a lot of names here I would not have thought of on my own.
BuyDomains.com — They have a huge selection of domain names for sale. They have transparent pricing and offer a seamless experience. This is always my starting point, and preferred approach to acquiring a domain name.
Sedo.com — Probably the biggest selection of domain names and the most well known place to acquire a name.
BuyDomains.com and Uniregistry are the biggest players in selling domains. More times than not, if a domain name is for sale when I type it into my browser, it is one of those two companies that is behind the sale. I find them to be the most reasonable. HugeDomains.com is another one I have bought from.
If you get stuck, I recommend listening to this podcast episode with Anthony Shore from Operative Word, a company that specializes in naming things. Recently, he’s named the on-demand fitness system Tonal (love how it’s a word that conveys fitness tone and some sense of the futuristic) and Virgin Voyages (formerly Virgin Cruises, which really, who wants to take a cruise when you can take a voyage?). He uses a variety of tools, too, which I’ll list here:
OneLook.com – This is like a thesaurus juiced up with killer capabilities and wildcarding options. Say you want a name that starts with Bl and ends with rd, and it’s seven letters long — you can literally search for that.
RhymeZone – Pretty self explanatory. Bet you didn’t know that Quick Sprout rhymes with six out, big trout, this crowd, clear out, and sixth round. In addition to rhymes, you can also find synonyms and adjectives.
Sketch Engine – This is very intense corpus linguistics database; it uses a large body of real world language that it runs through a computer to organize and tag that language. Anthony sets his to all the news articles from 2014–2017. You can look up words that are used near or in relationship with other words. Basically, you’re finding words that are already natural together. This makes your name more relatable, credible, and adoptable. He talks about it more on the How Brands Are Built podcast.
MRC Psycholinguistic Database – He talks about this more in the podcast — it’s a pretty advanced way to search for words with certain criteria. You can use it to find words that start or end a certain way for example.
Now that you have a giant list of options it’s time to narrow down the list.
Narrow your list down quickly by typing in the .com for each name that you like. Type it into your browser and see what is there.
The best domains are typically the ones for sale unfortunately. But if you have the budget for it, it’s well worth the investment.
Once you have the narrowed down list, the next step is to dig even deeper to determine what your final options will be.
It’s now time for the big decision.
Remember the rules-of-thumb:
Then, ask yourself these 10 questions about each of your domain name options:
An approach that I am a fan of is to use the starter domain approach. The idea here is that you can start with a domain name with the intention to move to another one down the road.
Let’s say you identify a domain name that you really like, but it is out of range for your budget. For example, when I was coming up with a name for my latest company, I really liked GoodLife.com. Someone else owns it and isn’t necessarily looking to sell it. If I wanted to buy it, I would have to offer a lot of money — a lot more than I was ready to pay. If I wanted to take the starter domain approach, I could have gone with the name Good Life Media, and acquired GoodLifeMedia.com which is for sale for $24,500. (That price must have gone up, because it wasn’t that high when I was actually considering this as an option.)
Anyway, I could start with GoodLifeMedia.com and eventually try to acquire GoodLife.com. It would be very easy to rebrand from Good Life Media, to Good Life. Internally, we would just go by “Good Life.” The day that we eventually acquire GoodLife.com would be a huge milestone and would create a built-in company goal that we could go after as a team.
If you want a real life example, The Wirecutter just recently rebranded to Wirecutter.
In a perfect world, you’d pick a domain name whose social handles are also available. This isn’t a perfect world. My take on this is that it’s hard enough to get a good domain name. Don’t make it even harder or nearly impossible by also adding this criteria. When it comes to picking up the social handles, you’ll have options. You can get creative, or even potentially acquire the handles from the current owners.
It’s a good idea to consider social handles when making your final decision, but don’t let that stop you from picking the right name.
There are two options when it comes to getting your domain name:
Regardless of which option you go with, you’ll pay an annual registration fee of $7–$15/year on average. If you are acquiring the name on top of that, you’ll pay an additional acquisition price.
The cost of acquiring a domain name varies widely: You can easily spend 4–5 figures on a name. In some cases you can find a good one for hundreds of dollars. Some domain names aren’t for sale at all, while others have sold for millions of dollars. Recently, someone bought CoolQuotesCollection.com for $2,500 and Boot.com for $70,000.
There’s nothing wrong with registering a domain name that is available, as long as you’ve thought it through and are intentional about it. In fact, I encourage that.
The issue is that in many cases, people don’t even realize that there are other options. Getting your hands on the optimal name is more doable than you might think.
I suggest you put some budget behind your domain name — especially if it’s for your business. The tighter your budget, the more limited you’ll be more limited in what you can do.
Like most things you don’t pay for, a domain you get for free sometimes shouts to your customers that you’re cheap. I agree with Anthony Shore of the naming agency Operative Words that a non-natural word name probably won’t serve your brand well because it comes off as he puts it in this podcast, “domain desperation.” It’s not a good look.
At this point you should have a narrowed down list of viable options for your domain name. The next step is to own it.
Each of your options should fall into one of three categories:
We’ll tackle each one of these situations.
In this case, all you need to do is go to Domain.com and register the domain name (get 25% off with coupon code QUICKSPROUT).
You’ll find out for sure if that is an option or not once you type the domain name into the search bar.
You’ll go through a straightforward process here. Don’t buy any of the add ons or worry about web hosting or any of that yet except for “privacy protection”. It’s what will keep your name off a bunch of spam call lists. You want to use Domain.com to register your domain name and keep your information private (get 25% off with coupon code QUICKSPROUT). That’s it. They are the best domain registrar and I use them exclusively. I do not use them for anything else because there are other companies that I use for the rest of my web needs. I’m a huge proponent of going to the expert in each area of my business.
After you finish registering the domain name, you’re done! You are officially the proud owner of your new domain name. All you have to do moving forward is renew the domain name each year. If you fail to renew it, then someone else will be able to replace you as the owner. I recommend setting your domain to auto-renew. It’s just one less thing to worry about.
If the domain name seems acquirable, but it isn’t clear — you have two options. Either you can try to figure out who owns the domain name yourself and reach out to them. Or, you can hire a broker to do it for you.
If you hire a domain broker, there isn’t much risk. Typically, the only way you will have to pay a fee is if you buy the domain name. That’s the biggest downside.
Sedo is a good place to start if you want to hire a domain broker. I’ve used them before and have read good reviews from others.
In the case of doing it yourself, you can start with a WHOIS search to try to figure out who owns the domain name. Googling the domain name and seeing if it is tied to any social media profiles or other websites is also a good approach.
More times than not, I will fail at finding out who owns the domain name myself. It is common for people to use privacy features that hide their contact information. Most domain registrars offer this for free, so people tend to do it by default. (Like I said above, you should definitely opt into this feature.)
The benefit of a domain broker is that they have a huge network. They almost always know who owns what, and if they don’t, they have ways of figuring it out. Back to my GoodLife.com example. There is no way I would have figured out who owns that domain name if I didn’t have a broker figure it out for me. Of course, I still do not know who owns that domain name, but at least I have a broker who does.
Another benefit of a broker is that you do not have to deal with the awkwardness of negotiating price. You have a middle man who can be the bad guy for you.
Domain names that might be acquirable, as outlined above, can be challenging. I much prefer to focus on names that are clearly for sale. These are easy.
If the name is already for sale, the process is straightforward. The only thing you really need to think about is negotiating price.
There is often opportunity to negotiate price. Depending on who you are dealing with, there could be some room to get the price down. I don’t recommend pushing too hard or overthinking this. That might just lead to wasting time and potentially losing out on the name. However, there is no harm in giving it a shot and doing some level of negotiating.
Once you acquire the domain name, the next step is to transfer to your domain registrar. Again, I recommend Domain.com (get 25% off with coupon code QUICKSPROUT). You can see the process for transferring your domain name here. It also helps to understand how domains work.
Regardless of how you acquire your domain name, the final step is to see it sitting inside of your account. That is when it’s official!
Starting a business is daunting.
There is so much to think about and so much to do.
It’s hard enough trying to figure out how to build and grow a business. The last thing you want to think about is figuring out how to put together an operating agreement or pick the right accounting system.
The good news is that all of the things that need to get done in order to start your business have been done a million times before. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or waste brain power on figuring out what to do.
There are at least 23 things that you should do when starting a new business and I will walk you through each one of them step-by-step. These are the exact steps I take and the tools I use to start my businesses.
I cannot stress enough the value of building like you are going to grow from day one. I get that you are probably the only person in your business right now. You should operate as if you are an organization of people, not just yourself. This will save you an incredible amount of headache down the road, and also leave you room to try and fail in areas that you won’t want to fail when you do have a sizable organization.
I’m going to assume you already have a business idea, and I’m not going to show you how to build or grow your business in this article. These are the practical steps necessary to begin operations.
Don’t overthink this. You just need to be able to answer two big questions:
If you think long and hard about these questions, you’ll end up with a good starting plan. Be realistic about what it’s going to take. Do your research, and know your numbers. Put it all to paper, and the business plan will evolve into a useful tool and true north for at least the first 6–12 months.
Coming up with a name can be harder than doing the business plan! Your name is…well…your name. It has to be good. It does not have to be perfect and it does not have to be a fancy, made up word like Google or Yahoo. But, you will be saying this name a lot and it will be your url, too, most likely.
I wrote an entire guide to How to Buy the RIGHT Domain Name, which you might want to check out. Generally speaking, here is what matters:
Again, do not take this lightly!
Your domain name is not an area it makes sense to be cheap. I use Domain.com or Namecheap to buy my domains — you can read more about why in our review of the best domain registrars.
Depending on your business, you might say the url as much or as often as you say the actual name of your business. The more budget you have for your domain name, the more you’ll be able to do.
It’s tough enough to find a good name where buying the .com is possible. Chances are, you won’t get exact match social media handles as well. Do everything you can to get them, but if that fails — get creative. Your social media handles / urls are much less important than your website, but they’re still worth putting effort into.
You can choose how much effort to put into your social media right off the bat — you can simply get the name and hold them, you can populate them with a few images and pieces of information, or you can go all out. That’s up to you. For now, I just want you to make sure you have the handles.
It’s nice to have a logo, colors, fonts and a general look and feel to go along with your name. You can always update your brand identity down the road, so the initial run just needs to be good enough. 99 Designs is a great option for a full brand identity package. You can run a design contest that allows you to pick from hundreds of options.
Unlike your business name, your brand identity isn’t locked in stone. It’s more than OK to go with a “starter approach” here — it doesn’t need to be perfect (or expensive); it just needs to get done. You can always come back around and do another design round — most businesses do.
G suite is the most important tool for our business. I do almost everything using G Suite. My team’s emails and calendars are all on G suite, too. We also rely heavily on Google Drive / Docs.
You’ll need to get this set up as soon as you have your domain name. Then you can easily get your business accounts set up. As of April 1, 2019, a Basic account is $6 per user.
Your website can be a very big project depending on your business. In some cases your website could be the business. That’s why the focus here is simply on a basic, foundational website.
It’s good to have a one-page site live with information about your company. Then you can build further from there.
You can be up and running in the matter of minutes with Squarespace. Once you’re ready to do a full feature website, it’s easy to switch over to WordPress, using our guide on how to create a website with WordPress.
Your brand identity package from 99 Designs will come with business card designs. You can use them to get business cards printed online by Vista Print.
This might seem like an antiquated idea to you, but believe me. Once you start your business, you’ll be talking about it and every person you talk to should be handed a card with your information on it. I like to keep my phone number off the card, and hand-write it on there for people who I would actually want to call me. It makes it easier to hand the cards out freely — and it lets the people who I do give my number to know that I really mean it.
This one is easy to put on the back burner. You’ll save yourself a lot of hassle and potentially save your business altogether by getting ahead here. Line up the legal and tax pros ahead of time. There are lots of great options and your accountant and attorney can both be remote.
I haven’t personally used it, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about Upcounsel.
You can use your attorney for this, or you can use a service like LegalNature. Setting up an LLC is simple, so it’s a good spot to save some money by using a service like LegalNature or Legal Zoom.
Getting your Employer Identification Number is something you can take care of along with the LLC. They typically go hand-in-hand. You’ll need that to do just about everything, including business banking.
Even if it’s just you, an operating agreement is needed. Unless you have other people involved with your business, you can definitely get away with LegalNature here. Chances are, things will evolve and you will update your operating agreement down the road anyway. If you do have other people involved, have your attorney help out here.
If you’re using a lawyer, they can do all of this for you. Otherwise you’ll need to do some research into the requirements in your state, which also vary depending on the type of business you’re starting.
Pretty straightforward. You’ll need that EIN. It’s typically most convenient to go with the same bank you’re already using for your personal accounts.
One thing to watch out for is a the upselling that many of the bigger banks do. For example, with Bank of America, I went ahead and took them up on an offer for Intuit Payroll. It ended up being a terrible user experience. The people at Intuit recommended that I sign up for a new account directly with Intuit because they couldn’t figure out how to solve some of the problems we were having. They put the blame on Bank of America. This ended up working out because instead of signing up for Intuit Payroll, I researched other options and found Gusto, which is much better.
The point here is to use your bank account for a bank account and be wary of using them for other offers or services.
As I said, I really like Gusto. They are very good. I use them and find the service to be superior to Intuit Payroll.
You won’t need to worry about this until you start paying employees or contractors. It’s good to have it ready and on deck though. Not only will the service automate your payroll, but it will also take care of taxes and forms that need to be filed.
A QuickBooks account is essential from day one. This is how you’ll manage your books and ensure you always have good records. Going back and importing historical data isn’t fun. The sooner you get it set up the better.
The best bet here is to work closely with your accountant. A good approach is to ask your accountant what you need to be doing throughout the year to make things easier when tax season comes and to make sure all quarterly obligations are met.
QuickBooks does all of the heavy lifting, but there are still things you’ll need to stay on top of. There is some crossover with what’s already been outlined here, but Shopify put together a good guide on small business accounting.
The biggest thing here is to get in the habit of tracking all of your work. Even if you are the only person in your company, you should operate like an organization because someday you will have no choice. The other benefit besides creating good habits is the historical information and data that will come from working like this starting day one.
It’s very valuable for new people to come into your organization and be able to look back at what work has been done in the past. It’s context that will help them (and your business) be successful going forward.
It doesn’t matter what tool you use. You’ll likely change it a bunch of times anyway. We use Trello. There are dozens of great tools.
Just as you should use a project management tool from the very early stages, it’s extremely valuable to start documenting everything right away.
If you ever want to scale your startup, you’ll need your brain to scale too. Your internal wiki is like your brain. Giving your future team instant access to your brain is huge. If you already have a disciplined approach to documenting things in the wiki, your team will follow suit.
It’s not fun figuring out the value of a wiki system 3 years down the road, 50 people deep. You’ll think of an endless number of documents you wish you’d have written out as you went along.
We use Confluence.
Everyone loves Slack. It just works. Mobile communication is key. There is a Free plan that’s a good place to start. It’s about $7 per user per month for the next plan up, which grants you controls like guest access to different channels, and more storage and app connections.
By now you are starting to see the theme here: Reduce future headache! Set up your systems now and you’ll be able to focus on growth moving forward.
1Password is an excellent tool for managing all of your passwords and sensitive data. It makes it easy to securely share logins with your team — which is key because Centrify estimates that lost passwords cost $416 in productivity per person.
This is easy but often overlooked. 1Password is great for keeping track of your subscription logins. You still need some way to quickly see everything you have and what you are paying for, especially as you grow and have more people using and signing up for different tools and subscriptions.
A simple spreadsheet is all you need. Track the subscription, cost per month or year, terms (if any), payment method (what account or card is it tied to?), and renewal date.
Like your business plan, your strategic plan doesn’t need to be complicated.
Even in a one-person shop, taking the time to do this will force strategic thinking and purposeful action. It will help you avoid being reactive and randomly doing whatever comes your way.
It becomes even more important when you have a team that needs to know what direction to march. They will need that context in order to do their jobs.
Other guides written on how to start a business are pretty general. I don’t see a lot of value in reiterating what is already out there, so here is a list of guides that I would recommend for further reading on how to start a business:
