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The best mind mapping software in 2022

Mind mapping is a creative way to brainstorm and find connections between different ideas. Done right, it’s a great way to come up with new ideas and solutions to tricky problems, outline an article or presentation, and generally just get your thoughts in order.

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I do most of my mind mapping digitally—and even when I don’t, I often recreate a paper mind map online so that I can have it safely stored and easily searched. (It’s a weird hybrid approach, but it works for me.) 

Over the past several years of updating this list, I’ve tested close to 50 different mind map tools, many multiple times as they’ve been updated and added new features. I’ve also made dozens of mind maps myself, both on paper and digitally. Pen and paper set a very high bar to clear, but these are the five best mind mapping apps that manage to clear it.

The 5 best mind mapping tools in 2022

  • Coggle for mind map beginners and occasional use
  • MindMeister for collaborating on a mind map with a team
  • Ayoa for a modern approach to mind mapping
  • MindNode for Apple users
  • XMind 2022 for personal brainstorming

What is mind mapping?

Traditionally, a mind map is done with a pen (or, ideally, loads of colored pens) and paper. You start by writing a central idea or theme in the middle of a blank sheet of paper. Then the fun starts: around your central theme, you create “nodes” connected by lines, each with its own related idea or theme. For example, if the central theme was “Summer” (say, for a marketing campaign), the first five or so nodes might be “Good weather,” “BBQs,” “Vacation,” “Air conditioning,” and “School’s out.”

From each node, you then repeat the process, drilling deeper into the different concepts. “BBQs” might lead to “Family time,” “Good food,” and “Burgers.” “School’s out” could lead to “Summer jobs,” “Extracurriculars,” and “Alice Cooper.”

Some ideas will also connect back to other ideas. “Family time” could also link to “Good weather” and “Vacation.” “Burgers” could link to “Summer jobs.” But by getting all these branching concepts down on paper, you can start to see the relationships between different things and generate new ideas. Who’d have thought before we started brainstorming that Alice Cooper flipping burgers at a family BBQ (or maybe in a fast food joint?) could make for a killer summer ad?

What makes for great mind map software?

How we evaluate and test apps

All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

Mind mapping with a sheet of paper and a pen is an incredibly intuitive and natural way to work. You just start drawing and go from there with almost nothing in your way.

It does have its downsides, though. Unless you have a gigantic whiteboard knocking around, you’re limited to a fairly small piece of paper. It’s not searchable, and you can’t easily undo things or make edits. And, worst of all, if you lose your mind map, you don’t have a backup. So even though pen-and-paper mind mapping is delightful, it might be worth considering a mind map app.

While each mind mapping tool on this list has its own unique benefits, they all meet at least the following criteria:

  • It’s actually a mind mapping app. A lot of drawing, diagramming, and flowchart apps are marketed as mind map apps—but they aren’t. While you could make a mind map in them, you could also use PowerPoint, Photoshop, or MS Paint. You could even get a key and carve a mind map into your computer screen. Just because something can be used to make a mind map, doesn’t mean it should or that it will do it well. These more general-purpose apps tend to lack the features that make creating a mind map digitally as easy as possible, like automatically linking nodes, brainstorming modes that let you get a lot of concepts down quickly, and search. For an app to make this list, we dug past the marketing and made sure it was designed from the ground up for brainstorming, not for drawing or creating professional diagrams or charts.
  • It gets out of the way. Mind mapping with a pen and paper is a joy. No app is ever going to be quite as intuitive, but it should come as close as possible. After a short learning period to get up to speed, you shouldn’t have to stop and think to create a node, or dig through menus to connect two ideas. The app should just fade into the background—the same way your web browser does. 
  • It offers an unlimited canvas. A digital mind map tool should have a practically unlimited canvas size, so you can make a mind map as big as you can conceive of, connecting huge numbers of ideas if you want. Using an app is all about overcoming the analog downsides, not reinforcing them. 
  • It allows you to attach files. Sometimes you need more than a few words to fully illustrate a concept—and doodling is a big part of analog mind mapping. For an app to make this list, you need to be able to attach images, videos, documents, web pages, and other assorted extras to your mind maps. 
  • It allows you to save and export. You can’t easily edit, save, or share your paper mind maps, so one of the big reasons to go digital is that you can. The best mind map software lets you come back to a mind map later and change it up, save it, and export it in different formats, so you can send it to your colleagues, classmates, or anyone else.

This is my third year keeping this list updated, so I’m very familiar with all our top picks—plus all the apps that come close to breaking into this list but just fall short. To test each mind map app, I use it. I start with some silly concept and just mind map away to see how it works and feels. (I’m always comparing things back to both paper and the other apps.) If it’s nice to use and ticks all the boxes, it goes on a shortlist to be considered for inclusion. If it’s awkward, gets in the way, or doesn’t have a key feature, I leave it off the list (though all the testing notes get added to an increasingly complex spreadsheet, so I can check if things improve next year). From that shortlist, I pull out the best of the best. So, here are the five best mind mapping apps.

Best mind mapping software for beginners and occasional use

Coggle (Web)

Coggle, our pick for the best mind mapping app for beginners and occasional use

Coggle is, in many ways, the mind map maker to beat. It’s fast, intuitive, and easy to use (with great keyboard shortcuts)—even though it’s only available through your web browser. Perhaps best of all, Coggle is free for up to three private mind maps. As long as you save your mind maps as PDFs, plain text documents, or images, you can delete your old drafts and basically have unlimited free mind mapping. If you’re only looking to use a digital option every few months, it’s practically perfect.

The moment you start a diagram in Coggle, you’ll see the central node of a new mind map. From there, you can create new nodes by clicking on the plus sign or—if you want a faster experience—tapping the tab key. There’s a handy cheatsheet of all the keyboard shortcuts in the bottom-right corner of the app, and it’s worth learning to use them.  

Coggle is packed with thoughtful touches. One of my favorite features is that you can format your mind map items and messages with Markdown, so you can get as fancy as you need to while adding your text, images, and links to the canvas. There’s also collaboration built in. If you want to bounce some ideas off a colleague, you can go ahead and add them to your mind map, carry on a conversation in the messages sidebar, or go into full-screen presentation mode to take a step back and do more high-level ideation.

In short, for occasional mind mapping (whether on your own or with colleagues), Coggle nails it, and it’s your best option s for free mind mapping software. Its paid offering is also great, but for $60/year, you can get other mind mapping apps that work natively rather than just through a web browser.

Coggle pricing: Free for up to three private diagrams; $5/month for unlimited private diagrams and extra mind mapping tools (like additional shapes and color control).

Best mind mapping software for collaborating with a team

MindMeister (Web, iOS, Android)

MindMeister, our pick for the best mind mapping software for collaborating with a team

MindMeister is one of the best collaborative mind mapping tools out there. It’s a little less intuitive to use than Coggle, and some features—like exporting your mind maps as a PDF or image, or attaching images and videos—are limited to paid plans, so it’s a less enticing option for solo mind mappers. For teams, though, its collaboration features are great: you can add team members and guests to your mind map, leave comments for each other, and otherwise work together to brainstorm or present ideas.

It also has a sleek modern interface and plenty of customization options (including some more corporate layouts). Plus, it automatically aligns your nodes, which makes it easy to create great-looking mind maps that won’t look out of place in a meeting room.

MindMeister is owned by the same people that make MeisterTask, a web-based, kanban-style project management app. The two tools are integrated, so you can turn your brainstorm session into an actionable project, assigning individual items on a mind map to members of your team, tracking task progress, and syncing it all with your other project boards inside MeisterTask—which even integrates with Zapier.

For an in-depth look at what a sample MindMeister/MeisterTask project might look like, take a look at our article about how to jumpstart new projects with mind maps.

MindMeister pricing: Free for the Basic plan that includes up to three mind maps and real-time collaboration. From $4.99/month for the Personal plan that includes unlimited mind maps, file attachments, and PDF exports.

Best mind mapping software for a modern mind mapping approach

Ayoa (Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows)

Ayoa, our pick for the best mind mapping software with a modern mind mapping approach

Ayoa is the follow-up to one of our previous mind mapping picks, iMindMap. It was created by Chris Griffiths, a mind mapping expert and author who has collaborated with Tony Buzan, the man responsible for popularizing mind mapping in the 1970s. Put simply, it’s got a serious mind mapping pedigree—and it shows.

Open Ayoa, create a Mind Map, and you have a choice of making an Organic Map, a Speed Map, a Radial Map, or a Capture Map—though you can also change between them at any time with a dropdown menu. (You can also make a Whiteboard or Task Board if you’re doing some more corporate-style brainstorming, though these features are limited to the more expensive plans.)

  • The Organic Map is the most traditional and mimics the kind of thing you’d draw with a pen and paper. You aren’t confined to just putting words in boxes. Instead, you’re encouraged to label the swooshing, Sharpie-like branches that connect different ideas. It’s a much more natural process than a lot of the other apps.
  • A Speed Map is similar, but with a stripped-down setup designed for rapid brainstorming. You’re almost forced to use keyboard shortcuts, like Tab for a new child branch and Enter for a new sibling branch, as the buttons to do the same are hidden away unless you deliberately click on a node. It’s great when you want to ideate quickly.
  • A Radial Map is a totally modern approach to mind mapping. Instead of nodes and lines, every idea becomes part of a series of concentric circles. A peripheral segment of your central idea becomes the center of its own circle of ideas as you move outward. It’s mind mapping that’s moving beyond the limits of what can even be imagined with paper.
  • A Capture Map is a blank canvas that allows you to quickly add ideas, whether they’re related or not. They float around the page as little thought bubbles. You can then connect them and turn your rough outline into an Organic Map, Speed Map, or Radial Map.

And Ayoa isn’t just limited to basic (and not-so-basic) mind mapping. The chat, real-time collaboration, whiteboard, and task management features make it ideal if you’re part of a small team looking to realize your ideas. It’s also designed to be accessible to neurodiverse people. Ayoa is under rapid development, so it’s worth keeping an eye on their roadmap to see what features are coming down the line. When we reviewed this app two years ago, the whiteboard features didn’t exist. Last year, they were worth mentioning. Now, they’re so good that Ayoa almost made our list of best whiteboard apps.

This year’s surprise feature addition was GenerateIdeas.ai—an AI-powered brainstorming tool (though it’s only available on the most expensive Ultimate tier). Click Open in GI, then right-click on any node and select Ideas, Questions, or Explain, and it will come up with up to four related concepts. I found it was a little too willing to dive into controversial concepts like weight loss (a problem with many AI-powered tools). Using “Spring” as a test bed, I quickly generated ideas like “go for a morning jog” and “chocolate Easter eggs,” which, when the AI expanded on them, led to suggestions like “go for a morning jog to lose weight” and “develop a healthier chocolate to help with weight loss.” Keep this in mind if you’re going to use it in your workplace.

Ayoa pricing: Mind Map plan for $6.95/user/month with all mind mapping features. The Pro plan for $13/user/month adds whiteboards and other advanced features.

Best mind mapping software for Apple users

MindNode (iOS, macOS)

MindNode, our pick for the best mind mapping software for Apple users

Most mind mapping apps are web apps, and if there’s a native app available, it’s really just a shell for the web app. It’s fine if you want the collaboration, sharing, and other features you get with an online service, but what if you just want a simple way to brainstorm by yourself?

MindNode, a native Mac, iPhone, and iPad app, is perfect for Apple users (and when I’m in a big mind mapping buzz, it’s my go-to app). Start a new map on one device and it instantly syncs to your other devices using iCloud. The app is just as easy to use (and as powerful) whether you prefer to tap the plus icon to add a new node on your iPhone or click it on your Mac. And since it’s a fully native app, no internet connection? No problem.

MindNode also has a load of other features that will keep you happy if you’re deep in Apple’s ecosystem, like a Quick Entry dialog in the Menu Bar on your Mac, Widgets for the Home screen or Notification Center, a Watch app, Apple Pencil support, and integration with popular to-do apps Apple Reminders, Things, and OmniFocus. Select any node, and click Add Task to turn it into a to-do item. Or click the share menu and Export to Things (or OmniFocus), and your mind map will get converted into a project in your chosen app with all your to-dos ready to be checked off. It’s a great brainstorming app that lets you turn a brainstorming session into something actionable.

MindNode pricing: Free limited Mac and iOS app; $2.49/month for MindNode Plus with image support, tasks, themes, and styling options.

Best mind mapping software for personal brainstorming

XMind (Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android)

XMind, our pick for the best mind mapping software for personal brainstorming

If you just make mind maps by yourself and don’t need to constantly brainstorm with other people, then a lot of the tools we’ve looked at are overkill. A lot of development time goes into supporting real-time collaboration, versioning, and the like. With XMind, however, all that same dev energy goes straight into making mind mapping nicer, faster, and easier. 

While XMind is available on the web (if you have mind maps stored in a cloud storage provider like Dropbox or Google Drive), its native apps are what shine. It’s available on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and even Linux. If you need something cross-platform so you and your family (or professional team) can all use the same app, even if you aren’t collaborating in real-time, it’s hard to beat. 

While it’s subjective, I also feel that XMind makes the nicest mind maps by default. It’s got a slightly hand-drawn style that I wish I could mimic with a pen and paper. It’s professional enough for the office (especially if you use the built-in Pitch mode), but also nice enough that you’ll want to use it by choice. 

Otherwise, XMind hits all the marks you’d expect from a mind mapping app. It’s intuitive to use whether you rely on keyboard shortcuts, a touch screen, or clicking buttons with a mouse. There are enough customization options and themes that you can make your mind maps how you like.

Really, the biggest downside is that, at ~$7/month, it’s expensive for one person—especially when you consider all the features it lacks compared to, say, Ayoa or MindMeister. If a nice solo offline experience is more important than the most features for the money, then it’s easy to recommend. On the other hand, if you’re not mind mapping that often or need to work in a more deliberate way with other people, it’s probably not for you. 

XMind pricing: $39.99 for 6 months (or $59.99 annually) for up to five desktops and five mobile devices.

If you’re wary of subscription fees and want something for personal use, SimpleMind is a solid XMind alternative. It’s available from €24.99 for Windows or macOS (€44.99 for both), $9.99 for iOS, and $8.49 for Android. 

Do you need a mind mapping app?

Mind mapping can be a great way to generate and connect ideas, but unless you do it all the time, you probably don’t need a dedicated mind map creator—or at least not a paid one. Because, when it comes down to it, mind mapping software is just brainstorming software—and you can brainstorm pretty much anywhere. If you want a compromise, Coggle is a great place to start for free mind map software, since the free plan is pretty generous.

Also, reconsider the pen-and-paper method. It’s really hard to beat—which is why there are so many mind mapping apps available and so few on our list—and you can always take a photo of it to save it or share it. It’s not as tech-y as an app, but it works if you don’t make mind maps all the time as part of your job, or even in your personal life.

Source :
https://zapier.com/blog/best-mind-mapping-software/

The 9 best free stock photo sites in 2022

How to find free stock images for business and commercial use

Stock photo sites are a dime a dozen, so it can be tough to know where to find free, high-quality images that aren’t also on every other website.

And as a freelancer and a business owner, I’ve done my fair share of scouring the web for that perfect stock photo. So I spent several weeks reviewing dozens of stock photo websites—and I narrowed it down to the nine best for your next project. 

The 9 best free stock photo sites

  • Unsplash for the widest variety of free stock images (and integrations)
  • Pixabay for a variety of media types
  • Gratisography for quirky images you won’t see anywhere else
  • Canva for adding simple enhancements and overlays
  • Burst for eCommerce companies
  • New Old Stock for vintage photos
  • Reshot for UX/UI designers
  • 123RF for photo sizes optimized for social media
  • Flickr for interacting with the photography community

How to find the best websites with 100% free stock photos

How we evaluate and test apps

All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

Finding images that are free for commercial use isn’t as hard as it might sound, thanks to a number of sites that aggregate photos, illustrations, vectors, and more. These sites usually let you search and filter by keyword or category, making it easy to find what you’re looking for. But that doesn’t mean every stock photo site is worth perusing.

The best free stock image sites all meet the following criteria:

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  • They must contain images that can be used without payment for both commercial and personal purposes.
  • I focused on sites that have at least 500 photos, but I favored ones that offer thousands of images.
  • A lot of free stock photo sites essentially offer the same pictures. I looked for sites that offered unique images, so your content can stand out.
  • If you plan to use stock photos for your website or branded content, you’ll need high-quality resolutions. Every site on this list offers at least one high-quality download size for its photos.
  • And of course, the website itself should be fast, easy to navigate, and from this century.

When reviewing these sites, I visited each one and signed up for an account if necessary. I explored the site’s menus and conducted a number of searches to see what types of photos would come up. I reviewed the quality of the photos and took note of things like how advanced the search filters were, whether there were high-resolution download sizes available, and if there was anything uniquely useful about the stock photo site in question.

Best free stock photos site for a variety of photos and integrations  

Unsplash (Web, iOS, Android)

Unsplash, our pick for the best free stock photos site for a variety of photos and integrations

With more than three million photos and multiple plugins, Unsplash is one of the most easily accessible and largest collections of stock photos available. 

It comes with native apps like an iOS app, an Android photo picker, Apple TV and desktop wallpaper apps, and even a Chrome extension that randomly selects a background image when you open your browser. Unsplash’s API is also already natively integrated into popular tools like Figma, Notion, Trello, and Squarespace, letting you search and use high-quality stock photos without leaving your favorite platform. 

The site is also easy to use: type a keyword into the search bar at the top of the page, and browse the results to find the best images for your purposes. And if you don’t know what you’re looking for, there are category tabs along the top of the homepage for inspiration.

Another feature that sets Unsplash apart from other free photo sites is its Collections section. Users of the site are able to create Collections—like “Christmas Traditions,” “Autumn,” and “Milkyway“—by curating photos they come across. If you want several similar photos of a specific theme, Unsplash may be your best option.

Best free stock photos site for a variety of media types

Pixabay (Web, iOS, Android) 

Pixabay, our pick for the best free stock photos site for a variety of media types

Pixabay hosts more than 2.6 million photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and videos—all of which are free to use. Click Images next to the search bar to look for images by type, or you can search more granularly by becoming familiar with Pixabay’s advanced search options. Pixabay lets you search by photographer, orientation (i.e., landscape or portrait), size, and even color. The site also features an Editor’s Choice curation section, which highlights the best images chosen by the Pixabay team. Click the Explore dropdown menu in the upper-right corner of the site to see their selections.

If you need a professional-looking illustration—i.e., a hand-drawn image or a computer-generated graphic—you should begin your search here. Royalty-free illustrations can be tricky to find on many free image sites, but Pixabay has loads of them. Just click Images, select Illustrations, enter in your search terms, and that’s that. You can also use Pixabay to search for vector graphics, videos, music, and even sound effects.

Best free stock photos site for quirky images you won’t see anywhere else

Gratisography (Web, Android)

Gratisography, our pick for the best free stock photos site for quirky images you won't see anywhere else

Gratisography doesn’t have thousands of pictures for you to browse through. What it does have is some of the quirkiest images you will find on the web—images you won’t be able to find anywhere else, like a young kid spray painting and an alarm clock that looks like it’s on the moon.

The site is pretty barebones—and its color scheme is distracting at best, with bright neon colors and cartoonish UI elements. Photos are organized into only nine different categories: Animals, Business, Fashion, Food, Nature, Objects, People, Urban, and Whimsical. And while the photo resolutions are high-quality, they only come in one size (and you have to download each photo to find out). 

But if you’re looking for an odd image that will bring your content to life, Gratisography is definitely the place to start.

Best free stock photos site for adding simple enhancements and overlays

Canva (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android) 

Canva, our pick for the best free stock photos site for adding simple enhancements and overlays

Canva is a web-based graphic design tool that makes modifying images easy. If you’re looking for stock photos for a graphic design project—like designing a social media banner or a flyer—Canva is a one-stop shop for your needs. Even with a free account, the platform offers a library of over 1.6 million free images you can use for any purpose.

If you’re planning on enhancing the images you find with simple text overlays or tweaking the transparency or vibrancy of photos on a regular basis, Canva will help you streamline the process. Find photos, and then use Canva’s built-in design tool to enhance them on the spot.

One helpful feature is that Canva automatically generates a color palette for any photo you choose. If you’re building a vision board or a design presentation, you can easily use the hex color codes to keep your project’s color scheme consistent.

Canva does come with a few downsides, though. As I was testing, I noticed that you can’t directly download a stock photo as you would from another stock photo site. Instead, you’ll have to click Use in a design. Canva takes you to the design dashboard with the stock photo on your digital canvas. While this is helpful if you intend to add text or graphics to the image, it’s an unnecessary complication if you plan to download a stock photo as-is.  

Also, many of the best stock photo sites let you choose the size of your photo before downloading it. Canva only provides one size—though the photos are all in high resolution.

If you’re looking for more stock photo sites for graphic design, PikWizard and Kaboompics are both great Canva alternatives. PikWizard is linked to DesignWizard, a design tool similar to Canva. And Kaboompics focuses on color palettes; you can even download your chosen photo along with with the color scheme it uses, which is useful for putting together vision boards and presentations. Kaboompics also lets you choose a custom pixel width when downloading an image, which is a helpful feature.

Best free stock photos site for eCommerce businesses

Burst (Web, iOS, Android) 

Burst, our pick for the best free stock photos site for eCommerce companies

Burst is a free stock photo site powered by leading eCommerce platform Shopify. The platform offers thousands of free images you can use to strengthen your content, including a large selection of business-oriented photos (e.g., retail, eCommerce, money, and products). The site serves up 28 different categories, several of which are broken down into subcategories to make it even easier to find the images you need.

Browsing, searching, and downloading are standard fare, but as an added bonus, Burst and Shopify offer advice on things like how to turn your online business ideas into reality.

Best free stock photos site for vintage photos

New Old Stock (Web) 

New Old Stock, our pick for the best free stock photos site for vintage photos

New Old Stock publishes vintage photos from the public archives. If you think old photos—like a group of men sitting outside a storefront in the late 1800s or a British dispatch rider in France—would match your brand, spend a few minutes scrolling through New Old Stock to see if anything catches your eye.

Unfortunately, the site doesn’t have as much variety as other stock photo sites—and not all of the photos are free for commercial use. The site creator advises commercial users to check with the originating institution’s rights statement through the provided link to the original Flickr posting of each photo.

The site’s search functionality also leaves much to be desired. And unlike most free image sites, New Old Stock doesn’t offer any way to filter photos. If you’re feeling lucky, though, click the magnifying glass in the upper-left corner of the site, type in a search phrase, and you may strike (vintage) gold.

Best free stock photos site for UX/UI designers

Reshot (Web)

Reshot, our pick for the best free stock photos site for UX/UI designers

Reshot is a relatively new resource for designers, whether they need stock photos, vector illustrations, or icons. The site’s collection is provided by the design team over at Envato Elements, a paid creative subscription service for templates, photos, music, and more. But Reshot provides free visual resources for designers on a budget.

Unlike many other stock photo sites, Reshot has a wide variety of vector illustrations and icons as well. The site boasts millions of images that are free for personal and commercial use. The website is minimalist in design, with a left-hand menu where you can choose to browse collections of icons, illustrations, or photos. Or if you know what you’re looking for, type your search terms into the search bar and narrow the results by media type and orientation. 

If you find an illustration you like, you have the option to download a vector or PNG—while icons come in SVG code or SVG. And since you’ll likely want to make additions or changes to these images, Reshot makes it easy to download files straight into Figma. 

One downside I noticed as I was testing is that while illustrations and icons have multiple download types, it appears that photos can only be downloaded as JPEGs—and only in one size. Those sizes are in high-quality resolution, but you can’t choose from a variety of sizes. But in general, if you’re looking for ideas or raw images for your wireframes or prototypes, Reshot is a great option. 

Best free stock photos site for optimizing images for social media

123RF (Web, iOS, Android)

123RF, our pick for the best free stock photo site for photo sizes optimized for social media

If you’re looking for free stock photos for Instagram or other social media sites, 123RF makes your search easy. The stock photo site not only provides a variety of free photos and vector illustrations, but it also lets you choose from a selection of download sizes, including Facebook cover, email header, Pinterest post, and even brochure cover. 

These pre-selected sizes can save you hours of cumulative time spent cropping and resizing images for social media. You can even apply a filter, add text, and remove the image’s background directly from the site before downloading it.

As I was testing, I did notice that you can’t reposition an image after choosing a social media-optimized size. So if you choose an image whose focal point isn’t the center, you may run into issues if you pair it with a small or narrow aspect ratio. 

Overall, the site is clean and easy to navigate. And if you’re willing to pay a few dollars per image, 123RF provides a wider variety of images as well as a variety of stock footage and audio for use in your next project.

Best free stock photos site for interacting with the photography community 

Flickr (Web, iOS, Android)

Flickr, our pick for the best free stock photos site for interacting with the photography community

Flickr is a photo sharing social network. The site—which boasts more than five billion images—brings together professional and amateur photographers from around the world.

The thing I appreciate about Flickr is that it places artists front and center. When you navigate to Flickr’s homepage, you’ll immediately see a gallery of suggested people to follow. Click into any one of their profiles to see a “Photostream,” or a feed of their latest and most popular images. Flickr is a great way to discover talented photographers, learn more about the field, and refine your own artistic eye.

The photos on Flickr are known for containing rich metadata, including geolocation information, EXIF data, tags, and more. So if you want to find photos taken in France, select the World Map under the Explore dropdown, and click on one of the pink dots that pop up in that country. If you want to find images of golden retrievers, simply type the term into the search bar in the upper-right corner of the Flickr homepage, and thousands of results will come back. Plus, Flickr lets you search by trending photos and most recently added photos. You can even explore galleries and search specific photographers’ collections by clicking on their usernames.

And if you’re a budding photographer yourself, you can even click Camera Finder under the Explore dropdown to see the most popular cameras currently being used in the Flickr community.

Keep in mind that you can’t use every photo you find on Flickr for free—especially for commercial use. But it’s easy to figure out which ones are usable. Run a search for an image, and then click the Any license dropdown menu and select Commercial use allowed.

If you get sick of seeing ads as you browse Flickr, you can upgrade to an ad-free experience for $5.54/month. The premium subscription also comes with unlimited storage (free users get one terabyte of storage). And if you want to even more with your stock photos, connect Flickr to Zapier to do things like share new Flickr photos on social media or back up new Flickr photos to Google Drive.

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If you’re looking for more sites that prioritize the photography community, Pexels is a great Flickr alternative. Pexels offers hundreds of thousands of photos that are free for both commercial and personal use. The site has a leaderboard and a number of photography contests for contributors, which makes it a great site for finding photographers who are engaged with the platform and constantly uploading fresh content. 

Other stock photo sites to consider

If you’re looking for something a little more unique (and you have the budget for it), you could try a paid option like Shutterstock, iStock by Getty, or Adobe Stock. These sites are all very well-established resources for paid—but relatively affordable—stock photos. You can subscribe to any of these sites for $29 per month for up to ten monthly image downloads.  

There are also many niche stock photography sites out there (like Foodiesfeed, which specializes in food photography). So if you’re looking for a specific type of image, it’s worth seeing if there’s a niche site available. These sites might give you a wider range of options in the specific category you’re looking for.

If you’re publishing content on a regular basis, you’ll likely get the best results by using a combination of our recommended sites. Just be sure that you keep your branding consistent: using too many eclectic images can muddy your brand and make it hard to stand out from the crowd.

A note on copyrights

Why can’t you just scour the web for an image you like and publish it? Because creators own the rights to their images, and if you publish one of them without their approval, you may be guilty of copyright infringement. In a worst-case scenario, that could land you a $150,000 fine for each violation, and possibly even jail time. Of course, you’ll receive a cease-and-desist letter first, telling you to take the images down, but even still, you’ll waste time and effort removing them—in addition to the time and effort you wasted finding them in the first place.

But some creators are happy to share their images with others. Creative Commons offers a number of different licenses that creators can use to enable other people to leverage their work freely. Of course, it’s not all or nothing: some licenses allow for personal use, while others allow for commercial use. Some licenses require you to attribute images to creators, while others don’t. Some allow you to adapt or modify an image, while others require you to use it in its original form. When using an image licensed through Creative Commons, be sure to read the fine print and abide by the terms.

Source :
https://zapier.com/blog/best-free-stock-photos/

The 5 best morning routine ideas of highly-productive people

A good morning routine sets the productivity tone for the day. But is it really as simple as a morning ritual and a healthy breakfast? After analyzing the advice and morning routines of six top productivity experts, we’ve pinpointed the most common practices of successful people for a productive morning. No matter how much chaos happens when your eyes open, know this: A morning routine for better productivity is a learnable science.

1. Wake up at YOUR right time

“Morning people” are supposed to be the high achievers. The early bird is supposed to catch the worm, right? And a cold shower to wake up? Groan. Where’s the snooze button on that? Can the early (or late) hours you sleep really make a difference?

One 2021 academic study found that waking up just one hour earlier was associated with a 23% lower depression rate. While some people who wake up earlier are more productive, night owls can still have a perfect morning routine that leads to a productive day. Think of it like breakfast and brunch. They’re both delicious, and they both work if you’re hungry.

Mike Vardy, productivity author, speaker, podcaster, and blogger at Productivityist, wrote, “Look, I’m a night owl—and proud of it. Why? Because despite having many say that my sleeping habits make me less likely to achieve, I prove them wrong. I don’t just do that every once in a while. I do it every single day.” The most important thing isn’t what time you get out of bed. It’s getting in tune with your body’s clock for a good routine. 

According to Sleep.org, your body knows what it should be doing and when. Don’t force yourself to be part of the 5:00 a.m. club if you can’t fall asleep before midnight. Forcing yourself out of bed is a recipe for burnout. If you’re not a morning person, your body will only work with you for a few days before it begs for mercy.

Good ol’ science can help you find your most productive time of day.

2. Prepare the night before to eliminate morning decision making

illustration of a brain surrounded by light bulbs

Many productivity experts and successful people spend evenings preparing for the next day. Their recommendation: It leaves mornings free for an early start on important work (and breakfast). 

Subscribe to the idea that an a.m. routine can start in the p.m. Lay out your outfit for the next day. Pack your lunch. And create your checklist or a to-do list. Former American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault told Fast Company they end their evenings writing three things they want to accomplish the next day. We have a limited amount of willpower and decision-making ability. Too many decisions in the morning slow us down and drain our brain for the rest of the day. Eliminate morning decision-making for more energy and more time for productivity.

3. Create a morning routine to focus your mind

illustration of a cup of coffee, a notebook, phone, computer, and glasses

Erik Fisher is the voice behind the Beyond The To-Do List Podcast. He’s interviewed over 100 different productivity experts on topics like lifehacking, work-life balance, and creativity. He points out that if you analyze productivity experts’ morning routines, you’ll find a few things in common. Most focus on big picture goals, gratitude, and planning for the day. 

Productivity coach Zack Sexton’s morning routine looks like this:

  1. Water (20oz. often w/ lemon)
  2. Cuddles (w/ fiancée Nikida)
  3. Coffee
  4. Meditation
  5. Read something inspirational (often in sauna)
  6. Shower (if sauna-ed)
  7. Look at calendar
  8. Start first journal entry (including prompts about something learned, things to be grateful for, and what to focus on for the day)

Set your mind on what you want to focus on for the day, and set your heart and mind with the right attitude. Kevin Kruse, author of 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management, starts their morning with five minutes of yoga stretches that accompany:

  1. Mental recitation of their personal mission statement
  2. Listing three items of gratitude
  3. Repetition of their three goals: Health, wealth, and love

Kevin thinks of what tasks he’ll do that day to help achieve each goal. “All that takes about five minutes,” he says.

You don’t need a lengthy meditation routine. Yoga, meditation, journaling, reading, or a quiet walk can help you focus on a positive outcome for the day.

4. Move around and hydrate in the morning

illustration of a yoga mat, a water bottle, a sneaker, a heart, and a clock

When you feel great, it makes it easier to handle the morning alarm clock. If it’s hard just get out of bed, you probably won’t be excited to run to the gym—and that’s ok. Simply moving your body will get your blood flowing and help get your day started.

Many successful people start their mornings in motion. Follow their lead to add some health to your life:

While you’re moving, stay hydrated. What you put in your mug matters. Drink water in the morning to kickstart your day and give you lasting energy.

Jeff Sanders, author of The 5 AM Miracle and host of the podcast with the same name, says his favorite morning habit is to drink one liter of water within the first 45 minutes of bouncing out of bed. “Hydration is incredibly important, especially after waking up. I always find that this larger quantity of water provides incredible energy and prepares my body for the day ahead.”

5. Eat the frog—or tadpole—first thing in the morning

Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways To Stop Procrastinating And Get More Done In Less Time, bases his morning philosophy off of a quote from Mark Twain. “If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.”

The “frog” is your most important task or work—the one you’re dreading the most because it’s large and looming over you. Build the habit of doing your biggest task first for a huge boost of accomplishment first thing.

But procrastination is real, making it even harder to get your day started. Whether you eat the frog or tackle some small tadpoles first, find your ideal morning routine rhythm and get started.

Create your ideal morning routine for a productive day

Mornings don’t have to be rough, and you can learn to become more productive throughout the day. No need to overhaul your morning routine all at once; introduce one new practice a week and track your improvement. They say if you win the morning, you win the day.

Morning Routine Tips | Productive Habits That Work For Everyone

Source :
https://blog.trello.com/best-productive-morning-routines

The Right To Disconnect: Why Leaders Should Encourage Employees To Unplug

What is the right to disconnect? The term means exactly what it sounds like—your employee’s right to shut off work after hours without fear of repercussion. As Fast Company points out, legislation is mounting in support of an employee’s right to not be available off the clock in France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and elsewhere. The European Union (EU) defines the right to disconnect as “a worker’s right to be able to disengage from work and refrain from engaging in work-related electronic communications, such as emails or other messages, during non-work hours.” What do “working hours” look like as the line between home life and work life blurs?

Know this: Overworked employees are overstressed employees, and the business impact of burnout is significant. A 2021 Employee Burnout Report from Indeed found that, “More than half (52%) of respondents are feeling burned out, and more than two-thirds (67%) believe the feeling has worsened over the course of the pandemic.”

A 2020 study from Deloitte estimates that employers lose approximately $56 billion a year in expenses that stem from burnout—including absence, presentee-ism (employees underperforming or functioning at reduced capacity), and turnover costs. And that barely begins to scratch the surface.

Make The Right To Disconnect From Communication A Priority

Employers who prioritize the wellbeing of their employees and their company create an environment where a healthy work-life balance isn’t just encouraged—it’s the norm. Build a culture in which considerate communication is the default. Adjust communication guidelines as needed to protect your employees.

Make Async Communication The Norm

An immediate response from a coworker should be the exception, not the rule, and employees should be encouraged to use asynchronous communication. Provide a maximum response time frame to keep projects moving forward (for example, within 24 hours, Monday through Friday), but let team members know they don’t need to be monitoring Slack, email, etc. 24/7.

Set And Share Working Hours

With employees on flexible schedules and/or across time zones, make sure it’s clear when people are available and when they aren’t. Google Calendar, for example, allows employees to set their working hours. And some teams have loosely scheduled face-time hours to allow for meetings across time zones (such as 9:00am-1:00pm). Encourage your team to set parameters to limit face-to-face meetings that don’t work for everyone. Help employees be respectful of their coworkers’ working hours and avoid scheduling snafus.

Embrace A “Schedule, Don’t Send” Policy

When employees know how they’re expected to communicate, it’s easier to make the decision to unplug once the workday is done. Clear communication expectations alleviate the pressure to check emails during dinner or frantically type up responses to questions that could wait until morning.

Coach teams to schedule Slack messages or emails (in Outlook or Gmail) for the following morning instead of sending them when the recipient is “off the clock.” For communication that’s not time-sensitive, employees should preface requests with language like “this isn’t urgent” or “later this week” so people know there’s no rush to respond.

Encourage Healthy Work-Life Balance

Sure, you may offer unlimited vacation time or flexible hours. But if your employees don’t feel they can take that time off without negative repercussions (like being passed up for a promotion), then they’re likely to burn out.

Model your company’s commitment to boundaries around work-life balance with internal policies that promote flexible work schedules, vacation, and time to relax outside of working hours. Evaluate your organization’s existing policies and ask if they provide clear expectations. And if you’re not doing so already, offer your employees the following:

Hybrid And Remote Work Options

Who can work remotely? And are there different expectations for remote workers vs. office workers? Spoiler alert: In equitable workplaces, there shouldn’t be. 

Could hybrid work be an option for some teams or individuals? While the pandemic forced a mass office exodus, it also created a new landscape of options. Evaluate your building capacity and decide who can safely return, and when. Employees need to know exactly what working remotely or on-site entails to decide what they enjoy and find productive.

Outline Tasks, Expectations, And Goals

Flexible work is great, but it needs parameters for success beyond just sitting at a keyboard for a certain number of hours. Provide employees with written guidelines on how much work they’re expected to complete each week, each month, or each quarter. To embrace flexibility and avoid burnout, employees need guide rails and metrics to know when their work is done.

Remind Employees To Use Their Benefits

Make certain employees understand all their benefits, including health and wellness perks such as mental health services or gym membership. And more importantly, make sure leaders and human resources use positive language when discussing these benefits to encourage their use. If employees feel like they can’t or shouldn’t use their benefits, they won’t, which drives them toward overwork.

Respect Vacation Time—And The Right To Disconnect

A generous vacation policy is only beneficial if employees actually leave the office behind when they’re away.

In the When Vacations Aren’t Enough survey by Visier, over a third of respondents surveyed said their employer expects them “to check in with work during vacation.” And 49% said taking time off alleviates feelings of burnout temporarily, but the prep work and catch-up work takes a toll.

Encourage creativity and productivity by ensuring employees get stress-free time away to recharge without interruptions. Consider the following vacation etiquette guidelines for your teams:

List And Delegate Tasks Upfront

Chances are that coworkers and/or managers will need to step in and help while an employee is out of office. Ask employees to create coverage documents that clearly define who will take care of each task in their absence. This resource gives everyone ample time to connect, gather relevant details, and clarify coverage questions before the vacation begins.

Promote Radio Silence

Remind your team to mute email, Slack or other work notifications while they’re on vacation. And create a shared public calendar or a Trello board where everyone can see out-of-office dates across the team.   

Track Team Updates In One Place

Nothing is worse than returning from vacation to a mountain of messages and trying to figure out what happened while you were gone. Set employees up for success with an enterprise-level work management system to catch all project info, files, and updates in one place.

With these safeguards in place, you’ll enable your employees to spend vacation the way it should be spent—in blissful, guilt-free relaxation! And you’ll reap the benefits of them returning to the office refreshed, inspired, and ready to hit the ground running.

Create A Company-Wide Knowledge Base

Tracking internal guides, notes, onboarding resources, and training materials is often a time-consuming nightmare. In the IDC white paper The High Cost of Not Finding Information,

60% of executives feel that time constraints and lack of understanding of how to find information prevent employees from finding the information they need. With a knowledge base in place, teams can get more done, and save time and effort with a single, organized repository where all knowledge is housed.

A knowledge base tool such as Trello Enterprise can centralize large catalogs of content for your organization. Playbooks, operations, and how-to guides can be found easily by anyone at any time. Knowledge bases benefit companies—especially enterprises—many ways:

A Knowledge Base Ensures Consistency

Ask three people to explain how to complete a specific task, and chances are they’ll all give different answers. With hundreds or thousands of employees, this variation can become problematic, or even chaotic. Knowledge bases eliminate this issue by standardizing how information is explained and/or learned company-wide, saving your team time, effort, and rework.

Knowledge Bases Help Employees Function Autonomously

Questions should always be encouraged, and a knowledge base makes it possible for employees to proactively find answers on their own. A solid information repository eliminates the need to reach out to a manager for clarification and promotes self-direction in the workplace.

A Working Knowledge Base Is Efficient

Repetitive tasks, such as routine training for new hires, is a time suck. With a knowledge base in place, your HR department (or any team with repetitive tasks) can turn training materials into an accessible library of written or video content to save time. Added bonus: New hires have a simpler, more engaging learning process.

With a great knowledge base in place, you can save time, increase productivity, and help employees to unplug. They’ll rest easy after hours knowing their coworkers have access to all the information they need. And team leaders have peace of mind that your internal systems for knowledge sharing are always-on.

Make The Right To Disconnect Easy

Encourage a healthy work-life balance across your org. Decrease burnout company-wide and make guilt-free unplugging a reality for everyone. Protect your teams’ right to disconnect and set up your company for success.

Source :
https://blog.trello.com/the-right-to-disconnect

How to tighten cybersecurity for remote and hybrid teams

Human error can open up your business to serious security vulnerabilities. Add security for hybrid or remote businesses presents extra challenges. Think third-party applications and slow response times from workers in scattered time zones on flexible schedules, and IT has a long row to hoe. In one 2021 IBM report, the average data breach costs $4.24 million, plus $1.07 million more when remote work is the reason behind the breach. And, 17.5% of companies report cyberattacks due to remote work.

A Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report found that “85% of breaches involved a human element.” And that same IBM study found that compromised credentials, phishing, and vulnerability in third-party software were among the top causes of a security breach. What do all of these vulnerabilities have in common? They could’ve possibly been prevented with better cybersecurity skills and awareness for teams.

In one 2021 IBM report, the average data breach costs $4.24 million, plus $1.07 million more when remote work is the reason behind the breach. And, 17.5% of companies report cyberattacks due to remote work.

Employees need a solid understanding of security risks for your business. And these three tactics—with a little help from Trello—can help you build a cybersecurity fortress to protect your remote and hybrid workforce.

Make IT security education part of onboarding

Instill good IT security habits from the start. Work with human resources to ensure IT security training is part of onboarding. Let new team members start their job with a clear understanding of your enterprise’s IT policies and procedures, like maintaining password hygiene or discouraging shadow IT.

Trello Enterprise can help teams with a standard onboarding workflow for new hires to follow, with IT security awareness built in. You can use a template like this 30 60 90 Day Plan, or create a board from scratch. And, of course, you can customize it for your organization or team needs.

screenshot of the 30, 60, 90 Day Plan template for cybersecurity onboarding with a Trello boardUse a Trello board like this one to develop an onboarding system with IT security training

Within this board, you can incorporate essential IT education for each column (or stage) of onboarding. In “Onboarding essentials,” you can add security awareness training in the “Important items” card, or make it a checklist item. In the “Helpful links” column, there’s a “Training resources” card to attach your IT policies and procedures. And within each timeframe column—from the first week to the first 90 days—you can add an IT-related goal.

New hires will become well-acquainted with everything they need to know about enterprise security. And you’ll have helped protect them (and your organization) from outside threats.

Conduct regular cybersecurity training

Cybersecurity threats grow and evolve, and consistent cybersecurity training is a necessity. While many industry experts recommend quarterly training, we recommend a cadence that supports your company goals. 

And there’s plenty to cover. According to the (ISC)² 2021 Cloud Security Report, the top IT security training topics enterprises find valuable include cloud-enabled cybersecurity, incident response, risk-based frameworks, and application security. 

Compromised credentials, phishing, and vulnerability in third-party software were among the top causes of a security breach. What do all of these vulnerabilities have in common? They could’ve possibly been prevented with better cybersecurity skills and awareness for teams.

Use Trello to make a board dedicated to security training topics and progress. You can create columns for topic ideas, such as phishing prevention or mobile security, approved apps, and upcoming training sessions (with dates). Stakeholders can upvote their most pressing initiatives with the Voting Power-Up, an app integration that lets team members decide on the topics they want to learn most. 

screenshot of the Voting Power-Up on a Trello boardAdd the Trello Voting Power-Up to Trello Enterprise to give teams a vote on which security training topics to tackle

Build a knowledge hub of cybersecurity assets

There’s a lot for your remote workforce to absorb when it comes to cybersecurity—IT policy and procedure handbooks, training videos, and more. Your team needs a source of truth for reference materials: An accessible knowledge hub where all IT security resources live.

Building an easy-to-update knowledge base specifically for IT information on a Trello board has many advantages for simplicity and organization:

  • You can quickly make columns for different resource categories, like videos, policies, playbooks, or reporting procedures. 
  • Within columns, a card for each asset nests copy, images, videos, and other related material all in one place. 
  • Employees can ask questions within cards on any resource. They can also comment to let your IT team know if a resource is outdated.
  • Cards are easy to move, and easy to share, across different boards and board views. 

Promote and protect enterprise security with Trello

Trello Enterprise relies on enterprise-grade security to help build cybersecurity awareness and keep your business safe. 

Security features like single sign-on (SSO), user management capabilities, and mobile device management help teams collaborate and work remotely.

Source :
https://blog.trello.com/cybersecurity-hybrid-remote-work

4 reasons you can’t focus at work (and how to destroy each one)

You tap into a Google Doc, then fall into a TikTok black hole. You look at your email, then decide to make a quick sandwich. Despite a lengthy to-do list or a looming deadline, you just can’t focus at work—and it’s infuriating. You need to get stuff done, yet it feels impossible to buckle down and focus. What gives? Why can’t you concentrate on your work? And, more importantly, how can you give your attention span a much-needed kick in the pants?

Reason #1: You’re, like, really tired (and killing off brain cells)

Are you yawning at your desk? Do you feel bleary-eyed and foggy, like you’re trudging through cement? I have news for you: You’re overtired. And it’s really hindering your ability to concentrate at work.

One study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine shows a direct correlation between sleep deprivation and impaired cognitive function—including your working memory and cognitive speed. Another facet that really takes a nosedive? Vigilant and executive attention. Not catching enough zzz’s can really sabotage your focus.

When neurons continuously fire without enough rest, they became damaged and destroyed. Mice lost a whopping 25% of their locus ceruleus neurons (LCns) in their brains—essential for brain alertness—after just three days of four-to-five hours of sleep.

Here’s what’s even scarier: Continued lack of sleep can destroy your brain cells. As part of a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers discovered that when neurons continuously fire without enough rest, they became damaged and destroyed. Mice lost a whopping 25% of their locus ceruleus neurons (LCns) in their brains—essential for brain alertness—after just three days of four-to-five hours of sleep. Scientists hypothesize that the same thing could happen in human brains. A lack of sleep could quite literally kill your brain cells.

In lieu of a nap at your desk, there are a couple of things you can do to wake yourself up, including:

Reason #2: All news is bad news (for your focus)

You have a life outside of work, and your emotional state is directly tied to focus. Negative news in particular has a severe impact on our mood.

“Negative news can affect your own personal worries,” says British psychologist Dr. Graham Davey, in a 2015 HuffPost article. “Viewing negative news means that you’re likely to see your own personal worries as more threatening and severe, and when you do start worrying about them, you’re more likely to find your worry difficult to control and more distressing than it would normally be.” Bad news can send you into a funk that tanks your mood and makes it tougher to dedicate your attention to your task list.

“Viewing negative news means that you’re likely to see your own personal worries as more threatening and severe, and when you do start worrying about them, you’re more likely to find your worry difficult to control and more distressing than it would normally be.”

–  Psychologist Dr. Graham Davey

Does that mean that good or exciting news has the opposite effect? It does, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. When you’re excited, it increases your adrenaline. But high adrenaline levels can actually lead to anxiety, which results—you guessed it—in decreased work performance. It’s called the Yerkes-Dodson Law, a principle that there’s an optimal arousal level to help you get stuff done. A thrilling event puts you past that optimal level—and makes it hard to concentrate.

Keeping thoughts and emotions in check can be a challenge. Experts recommend that you first acknowledge what’s distracting you. Then, re-center yourself by focusing on something more visceral—like your breathing, for example.

“You don’t have to stifle it or suppress it,” explains Rich Fernandez, CEO of the nonprofit Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, in an article for Harvard Business Review. “Make note of it, acknowledge it, and put it in a mental parking lot to think about later, when you can discuss it with someone else, or when you’re not at work and have lots to do.”

Reason #3: You’re spinning too many plates

As stressful as multitasking might be, it can be an ingrained habit. Our brains are adaptable, and we’ve literally “trained our brains to be unfocused,” says David Rock, co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, in a 2013 article for Entrepreneur. Multitasking isn’t always bad, but it can sabotage productivity. When your focus feels depleted, that’s a solid sign you have way too many plates spinning at one time. 

What’s so bad about this juggling act? In The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress, researchers found that while people work faster when they’re multitasking and constantly interrupted, they actually produce less. And the real kicker? They felt significantly higher levels of frustration and stress.

That matters because stress affects your brain. Your amygdala sends a stress signal to your hypothalamus and lets your adrenal glands know you’re under pressure. Your adrenal glands respond by releasing adrenaline into your bloodstream. And as stated above, too much adrenaline leads to too much arousal, which makes it more difficult for you to focus and perform.

What can you do about doing too much at once?

  • Control what you can to create an environment devoid of distractions. Put your phone in the other room. Close that email tab in your browser. Put headphones on so you don’t hear the humdrum of your surroundings.
  • Make a list of your top three priorities for the day. That shortlist will keep you focused and help prevent you from getting swept up in the minutiae.
  • Break your day into smaller chunks. Try the Pomodoro Technique or the system of 52 minutes of work followed by a 17-minute break. Blocks of time instill a greater sense of urgency because you have a time limit. And brief breaks give you a chance to take a breath and refocus.

Reason #4: You hate what you’re working on (and according to science, it’s literally causing you pain)

Perhaps you’d rather watch paint dry than tackle that monthly expense report (or another hated task). We procrastinate on an unpleasant task to avoid uncomfortable feelings of boredom, inadequacy, or fear.

Let’s face it—if you’re not excited about what you need to do, you’re going to find clever ways to put it off. As Phil Stutz, a practicing psychiatrist, and Barry Michels, a practicing psychotherapist, explain in a blog post for their company The Tools, that’s because taking action on a dreaded task inspires genuine pain.

How can we move beyond the pain? Conquer your most hated task first—before anything else on your list. Eat that frog and tackle your largest obstacle first thing every day. This way you know the worst is behind you. By contrast, everything else on your to-do list will seem painless. This will help you feel more focused and motivated throughout the day.

Source :
https://blog.trello.com/why-you-cant-focus-on-anything-plus-how-to-fix-it

What Is a Digital Nomad and How Do You Become One?

In the Cascade Mountains of Southern Oregon, there sits a volcano with no peak. But what takes the place of a billowing summit isn’t a barren crater — it’s an electric blue lake, surrounded by pine trees and the jagged remains of the volcano’s collapsed mouth, which crumbled during an eruption almost 8,000 years ago.

This place is called Crater Lake. It’s considered one of the most beautiful national parks in the United States. It’s also where Justin Champion, a Content Professor at HubSpot Academy, spent his work day last Thursday.https://www.instagram.com/p/BkTxa6cHCjr/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=8&wp=648&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.hubspot.com&rp=%2Fmarketing%2Fdigital-nomad#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A1813.1999999999534%2C%22ls%22%3A1638.5%2C%22le%22%3A1770.9000000001397%7D

A striking landscape, like Crater Lake, is a normal office view for Justin and his wife, Ariele. After working in the National Park, they headed north to Portland and spent a day in Mt. Hood. Then, they drove through Redwood National Park. And next week, they plan to work in Yosemite National Park.

Justin and his wife have been living, working, and traveling across America in a Ford F-250 with an Airstream trailer hitched to its back for the past two years. And their alternative lifestyle has helped them prioritize life experiences and close connections over material possessions. They’re modern day nomads. Or what most people call digital nomads.

What is a Digital Nomad?

Digital nomads are remote workers who usually travel to different locations. They often work in coffee shops, co-working spaces, or public libraries, relying on devices with wireless internet capabilities like smart phones and mobile hotspots to do their work wherever they want.

With 34% of remote employees working 4-5 days a week out of the office, the digital nomad lifestyle could be an exciting possibility if you’ve caught the travel bug and want to break free from the shackles of 9-5 life. Below, we’ll cover the benefits, job opportunities, and realities of this alternative lifestyle.

Let’s find out if it’s the right fit for you.

Living the Dream? 5 Benefits of Being a Digital Nomad

1. You’ll be more productive.

There’s no time to waste when you travel to gorgeous places almost every day. Exploring your new surroundings will motivate you to get your work done as soon as possible. Adventure can be one of the best types of motivation.

2. You’ll have more breakthrough ideas.

Creativity happens when you mash seemingly unrelated concepts together to form a new idea. Neuroscientists call this synaptic play, and the more incongruent the concepts are, the more synapses occur in your brain. Working in a different place everyday gives you a lot of diverse experiences that you call pull from to make these creative connections. And when your brain is chock full of these diverse inputs, your ideas are much more inventive.

3. You’ll become more adaptable.

Constantly traveling to new places pushes you out of your comfort zone. And to adapt to new environments everyday, you need to be willing to engage with different people and cultures. This makes you more open to new experiences in the future.

Traveling also improves your brain’s reaction to change. When you travel, the stress of navigating a foreign place sprouts dendrites in your brain. These dangling extensions increase your brain’s capacity and attentiveness during new and challenging situations in the future.

In a nutshell, traveling strengthens your desire and ability to learn new skills.

4. You’ll have more time to do the things you love.

Even though work can be great, we still work to live, not the other way around. Finishing work faster gives you more time in your schedule to explore your surroundings, do the things you’re passionate about, and spend more time with loved ones.

5. You’ll make lifelong friendships.

Adventure and memorable experiences forge close connections between people. When you embark on your journey, you’ll meet other digital nomads and become friends with them. And if you travel with a friend or significant other, your relationship will be closer than ever before.

Common Jobs for Digital Nomads

Today, most companies embrace remote work. 43% of American employees spent time working remote last year, and this number will only increase. But being a digital nomad and working a few days at home are two different animals. If you want to keep your day job while traveling, you need to prove to your manager that you can handle full-time remote work before you can do work on the road. Justin Champion decided to work remotely for six months before he even asked to travel.

If you’re looking for job, sift through sites that only list remote jobs, like We Work Remotely or Remote.co, and ask prospective employers if the role lends itself to your nomadic lifestyle.

Freelancing is also a common role for digital nomads. Before you embark on your journey, though, you must be realistic with yourself. How will you be able to make a living? Answer the following questions to help you figure this out:

  • What am I good at?
  • What do I like to do?
  • Is there a need for my skill?
  • Can I do this job online?

Once you know how you’ll be able to make money, you can enter the gig economy by marketing and selling your services on your own, or finding work on a freelance service marketplace like Upwork or Fiverr.

Whether you chose to work for a company or yourself, becoming a digital nomad doesn’t mean pigeonholing yourself in a specific role. Your job just has to be fully digital. Listed below are some common roles that lend themselves well to a fully remote lifestyle:

  • Accounting
  • Customer Service
  • Design
  • Editing
  • Healthcare
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Project Management
  • Quality Analyst (QA)
  • Recruiting & HR
  • Sales
  • Software Development
  • Teacher/Tutor
  • Transcription
  • Virtual Assistant
  • Writing

As you can see, there’s a lot of different industries and roles for digital nomads. Remote work is becoming commonplace, which is exciting and beneficial for the workforce. But that doesn’t mean anyone and everyone should be a digital nomad. It’s still a tough challenge. You need to be organized and disciplined, or you won’t be able to enjoy your travels — which is the point of the lifestyle, right? So how do you set yourself up for success?

How Do You Become a Digital Nomad? 5 Things to Consider Before You Get Started

1. Get rid of unnecessary expenses.

Paying for things that don’t greatly impact your life is never ideal. That’s why you need to get rid of all the expenses that you won’t need living as a digital nomad. Things like gym memberships, subscriptions, and debt are all expenses that’ll bog you down on the road. And if you’re a freelancer, they’ll be even more of a burden because you might experience some periods of inconsistent income. Getting rid of these expenses and paying off debt will allow you to fully focus on your work and travels.

2. Make sure you have income you can rely on for months in advance.

Whatever lifestyle you pursue, it’s always smart to have safety net. You never know when an emergency will arise. This rings especially true when you’re a digital nomad because you’re mostly own your own. You can’t find solace in a warm, comfortable home or family, and if you’re freelancer, you don’t have the luxury of a consistent paycheck. To widen your safety net, you should sell any unnecessary belongings, move the essentials into a storage unit, sell or rent your house, and save as much money as possible.

3. Get travel health insurance.

Traveling can give you some of the best experiences in your life, but it not always a blissful, perpetual highlight reel. It’s still real life. You’ll get sick, have emergencies and accidents, and need regular checkups. You also need immunizations to enter certain parts of the world. Your health should be your number one priority during your travels, so make sure you buy a solid health insurance plan that’s valid in all the places you visit.

4. Set yourself up for financial success.

Ample funds are the key to successful travel. American credit cards will usually charge you a fee if you use it abroad, so ask your bank for an international credit card. You should also sign up for credit monitoring services that’ll alert you if anyone tries to steal your identity.

5. If you travel internationally, unlock your phone.

Most countries have different cell phone carriers, so if you want to bounce from country to country, you need to call your current carrier and ask them to unlock your phone. You’ll be able to use your phone in any country because you can put a different sim card in your phone from each international carrier you use.

Once you square these things away, it’s time to start your new life on the road. But actually living life as a digital nomad is an entirely different ballgame than preparing to be one.

7 Tips for Living as a Digital Nomad

1. Make a budget.

As a digital nomad, your budget should be your bible. And if you follow it, you can live quite comfortably. To create a successful budget, calculate your living expenditures, the cost of traveling to each destination, staying there, the activities you’ll do there, the costs of working, and how it all affects your savings if you can’t earn a salary for a while.

2. Plan for the worst-scenario.

When you live abroad, It’s crucial to have multiple backup plans in case of any emergencies. Nothing really ever works out the way it’s supposed to. Things happen. What if your truck breaks down? Or what if you get stuck in a foreign country with no backup plan? What’s your plan B and C? You need to set these processes in place to handle the inevitable bumps in the road.

3. Join a digital nomad community.

Digital Nomad communities like Couchsurfing and Nomadlist will help you learn the nuances of the digital nomad lifestyle, and reduce its steep learning curve. Fellow nomads will be happy to answer any pressing questions about your new lifestyle and any areas you plan to visit. They’ll also teach you how to work effectively on the road. And arguably the most beneficial perk of these communities is that you can connect with other traveling professionals, which can lead to new business opportunities, partnerships, and friendships.

4. Make sure you have cell reception or wifi.

If your employer lets you work remotely, show them and your team some respect by being available as much as possible online. Not having wifi or cell phone reception should never be an excuse for missing a meeting or failing to get an assignment done. The same goes for client work, if you’re a freelancer.

To make sure you’ll always have internet connection, consider investing in a cell phone booster and a mobile hotspot mifi device. Cell phone boosters can detect the smallest shred of cell phone reception and send the signal to your vehicle. Mobile hotspot mifi devices strengthen your mobile hotspot service, so you don’t have to rely on a spotty, public wifi connection.

5. Make sure you can communicate with locals.

Knowing the language of the country you’re going to or knowing that they speak your language is crucial for successful travel. Assuming that there has to be someone who will understand English is a dangerous move. But if you must go to a place where you don’t know the native language or they don’t speak yours, use Google Translate or another translation app to navigate your new environment.

6. Research your destinations.

If you’re not living in an RV, find affordable housing on AirBnB or Couchsurf before you arrive to your destination. And make sure your lodging is near a hospital, emergency room or clinic in case of an emergency. You should also research the area to find safe neighborhood to stay in.

7. Draw cash from ATMs.

Airports are notorious for charging ridiculously high currency exchange fees. If you need cash, draw it from an ATM. Your bank will charge you a fee, but it’ll be much lower than the one at the currency exchange desk.

Before you set off …

If an adventurous lifestyle sounds appealing to you, then being a digital nomad can be one of the most rewarding yet challenging ways to live. But if you arm yourself with organization, discipline, and a thirst for learning, you could enjoy an exciting and fulfilling life on the road. Just ask Justin and Ariele Champion. They’re living the alternative American Dream. And they’ve never looked back.

Source :
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/digital-nomad

How to Work From Home: 24 Tips From People Who Do It Successfully

Working from home is awesome, right up until the cat throws up on your computer. And your neighbor, who you can only assume is building a time machine, starts firing up all sorts of power tools and noisy machinery across the street.

COVID-19 has caused remote work to become a necessity instead of a luxury for many professionals. But which environment allows us to be more productive: the home office or the office office?

In the office office, your colleagues often pose the greatest threat to keeping you from getting some real, heads-down work done. They drop by your desk, engage you in conversation, and invite you to lunch — or so I hear. The social benefits are nice to have, but they can become a challenge if you’re easily distracted.

However, at the home office, while family members can be a distraction, I find that it’s easy for you to become your own worst enemy. Because without coworkers around, you’re free to drop those pesky inhibitions. At the home office, no one’s watching. You don’t necessarily feel that same peer pressure or communal obligation to get stuff done. (Also, you don’t have to wear pants.)

Download Now: How to Be More Productive at Work [Free Guide + Templates]

Below, I’ve compiled many great work-at-home tips and tricks from some of my awesome coworkers.

Stop Managing Your Remote Workers As If They Work Onsite

How to Work From Home

  1. Communicate expectation with anyone who will be home with you.
  2. Take clear breaks.
  3. Interact with other humans.
  4. Prepare meals the night before.
  5. Pick a definitive finish time.
  6. Eat and sleep.
  7. Talk to your employer.
  8. Join a remote-friendly company.
  9. Start a career as a freelancer.
  10. Start a home business.

1. Communicate expectations with anyone who will be home with you.

Of course, you might be working from home but still have “company.” Make sure any roommates, family members, and dogs (well, maybe not dogs) respect your space during work hours. Just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean you’re home.

If you share space with another work-from-home adult, you may have to lay ground rules about meeting times, shared desks and chairs, and quiet times.

CEO Sam Mallikarjunan tells how he manages to get work done even when people are around.

“If anyone else is going to be at home when you’re working, they just have to be clear that when you’re in your ‘office’ (in my case, my signal to the family is having headphones on), you’re working — even if it looks like and feels like you’re hanging out at home.”

He continues, “It’s easy to get distracted by the many things that have to be done around the house during the day.”

2. Take clear breaks.

It can be so easy to get distracted as a telecommuter that you avoid breaks altogether. Don’t let the guilt of working in the building you sleep in prevent you from taking five minutes to relax.

However rather than just opening YouTube and watching some comfort clips, use your breaks to get away from your desk. Go for a walk, enjoy fresh air, or spend time with others who might also be in the house.

Take Ginny Mineo‘s advice. “Breaks, like making and eating lunch, can recharge you to do better work. Don’t assume you need to be working 100% of the time while you’re home to be more productive.”

3. Interact with other humans.

When your office starts working from home, you’ll likely miss the casual social interactions with colleagues you’re used to throughout the day. When working from home, you don’t have the small talk and other activities that make each day at the office unique.

So what can you do? Communicate.

Fight boredom and loneliness by frequent communication with other employees. Reach out to them through video chat via apps like Zoom and Slack, a hosted phone system,  or however else your company communicates.

Remember: You’re working from home, not the moon. Interacting with other people during the day is allowed, even if they’re not your colleagues. It’s a good idea to see another face during the day when most of your workday is solitary. So, use your breaks to interact with others.

“Go outside and find a human to interact with — ordering your coffee, running an errand, whatever. It keeps you sane.”

– Corey Wainwright

4. Prepare meals the night before.

When you’re in your own home, it can be tempting to spend time preparing a nice breakfast and lunch for yourself, chopping and cooking included. Don’t use precious minutes making your food the day of work — cook it the night before.

Preparing food ahead of time ensures you can use your meal times to eat and that you aren’t performing non-work tasks that spend energy better used at your desk.

Digital marketing strategist, Lindsay Kolowich, adds, “Cooking at home is time you wouldn’t have spent meal prepping if you’d been in the office that day, and I find the minutes can add up in the end. To mitigate that, I try to cook and prep my meals the night before, just like I would for a day at the office.“

5. Pick a definitive finishing time.

You might be under the impression that working from home establishes more work-life balance, but be careful with that assumption.

Working from home can also feel like being at a casino — you can get so caught up in your activity, in a relaxing environment, that you lose complete track of time.

“If you work from home full-time (or regularly), it’s really easy to let your work life bleed into your personal life,” says Tyler Littwin.

He continues, “Maintaining a boundary is important for both halves of the equation.”

In lieu of coworkers, whose packing up and leaving the office reminds you to do the same, set an alarm at the end of the day to indicate your normal workday is coming to an end. You don’t have to stop at exactly that time, but knowing the workday is technically over can help you start the process of saving your work and calling it quits for the evening.

6. Eat and sleep.

What is the biggest perk to working from home? One of the biggest benefits for some people (me), is complete access to the kitchen.

As soon as I take a break, I automatically drift towards the kitchen for some snacks.

An unhealthy diet can affect productivity and drain energy. When I switched to a healthier diet, it made me function better and get the most from my routine.

So eat well when working from home.

It’s also vital that you keep to a proper sleep schedule. Save binge-watching your favorite shows for the weekend. With the right food to keep energy levels high and sound sleep to refresh your body and mind, you can make a success of working from home.

7. Talk to your employer.

If you like your current job and don’t want to change it, the obvious step is to find a way to pivot the position.

One of the tips for doing this is folding the possibility of going remote into your next promotion cycle. Talk to your boss often about your intention to pivot.

And, if you’re not sure your employer will agree to working completely remotely, talk about the option of working remotely one or two days a week. When you use the work from home tips we’ve provided above, and your boss sees how productive you are, they could allow you more days to work from home.

8. Join a remote-friendly company.

If your work can be done remotely, but your current boss or organization doesn’t allow you to work from home, you might need to get a new job.

When looking for a work-from-home job, you can use the same methods you used in finding your regular office job. This includes channels like job sites, local job ads, and social media platforms.

Job sites that list work from home ads include:

Some remote-friendly firms include:

Check out these firms to see whether you meet the requirements to start working remotely for them.

9. Start a career as a freelancer.

If your current job isn’t remote work-friendly, you can go remote by starting your own business as a freelancer or a consultant.

Depending on the nature of your current job, you may start your own freelance business while still being employed.

The benefit of starting your freelance business while still employed is that it reduces the financial strain experienced by any new business.

10. Start a home business.

Starting a home business is one way to enjoy remote work.

Unlike other fields, certifications and education are not usually prerequisites. Instead, researching, having a smart business plan, and choosing the right business is more essential to the success of your business.

You can find more work-from-home tips in the books listed in this best remote work books article.

Working From Home Tips

  1. Get started early.
  2. Pretend like you are going into the office.
  3. Structure your day like you would in the office.
  4. Choose a dedicated workspace
  5. Don’t stay at home.
  6. Make it harder to use social media.
  7. Commit to doing more.
  8. Work when you’re at your most productive.
  9. Save calls for the afternoon.
  10. Focus on one distraction.
  11. Plan out what you’ll be workign on ahead of time.
  12. Use technology to stay connected.
  13. Match your music to the task at hand.
  14. Use laundry as a work timer.

1. Get started early.

When working in an office, your morning commute can help you wake up and feel ready to work by the time you get to your desk. At home, however, the transition from your pillow to your computer can be much more jarring.

Believe it or not, one way to work from home productively is to dive into your to-do list as soon as you wake up. Simply getting a project started first thing in the morning can be the key to making progress on it gradually throughout the day. Otherwise, you’ll prolong breakfast and let the morning sluggishness wear away your motivation.

Lindsay Kolowich says, “When I work from home, I wake up, put on a pot of coffee, and start working immediately — much earlier than normal working hours. I only start making breakfast once I’ve hit a wall or need a break. I’m a morning person and find I can get a ton done in the early morning hours, so this works really well for me.”

2. Pretend like you are going into the office.

The mental association you make between work and an office can make you more productive, and there’s no reason that feeling should be lost when working remotely.

I know that you love working in your pajamas (I do, too), but the mere act of changing clothes to something more serious will give you a signal to get work done throughout the day.

When you dress up, you give your brain a reason for dressing up, and it can keep you pumped throughout your work hours.

So when working from home, do all the things you’d do to prepare for an office role: Set your alarm, make (or get) coffee, and wear nice clothes.

Internet browsers like Google Chrome even allow you to set up multiple accounts with different toolbars on the top — for example, a toolbar for home and a separate toolbar for work.

Take to heart the words of HubSpot graphic designer, Anna Faber-Hammond, who says, “Get fully ready for the day and pretend you’re actually going to work. Otherwise, you might find yourself back in bed.”

3. Structure your day like you would in the office.

When working from home, you’re your own personal manager and can choose your working hours.

However, without things like an in-person meeting schedule to break up your day, you can easily lose focus or burn out.

To stay on schedule, segment what you’ll do and when for the day. If you have an online calendar, create personal events and reminders that tell you when to shift gears and start on new tasks. Google Calendar makes this easy.

Structuring your day as you would in the office also saves you from work creep. With this structure in place, working from home will not cause your work to invade your personal life.

“Are mornings for writing while you’re in the office? Use the same schedule at home. This structure will help keep you focused and productive.” – Ginny Mineo

4. Choose a dedicated workspace.

Just because you’re not working at an office doesn’t mean you can’t, well, have an office. Rather than cooping yourself up in your room or on the couch in the living room — spaces associated with leisure time — dedicate a specific room or surface in your home to working remotely.

No matter the space or location, have an area of the home to work and stay committed to throughout the day. And, after choosing your dedicated workspace, make the most of it by making it quiet.

CEO, Sam Mallikarjunan says, “Have a place you go specifically to work. It could be a certain table, chair, local coffee shop — some place that’s consistently your ‘workspace.’ It helps you get into the right frame of mind.”

5. Don’t stay at home.

Is your home office just not getting it done for you? Take your work-from-home life a step further and get out of the house. Coffee shops, libraries, public lounges, and similar Wi-Fi-enabled spaces can help you simulate the energy of an office so you can stay productive even when you don’t sit in an official workplace.

Content marketer, Corey Wainwright, comments, “I get out of my home to work and go to an establishment with actual tables, chairs, and people. It helps simulate the work environment and removes the distractions I typically have at home, like the urge to finally clean my room, do laundry, or watch TV. “

6. Make it harder to use social media.

Social media is designed to make it easy for us to open and browse quickly. As remote workers, though, this convenience can be the detriment of our productivity.

To counteract your social networks’ ease of use during work hours, remove them from your browser shortcuts and log out of every account on your phone or computer.

You might even consider working primarily in a private (or, if you’re using Chrome, an “Incognito”) browser window. This ensures you stay signed out of all your accounts, and each web search doesn’t autocomplete the word you’re typing. It’s a guarantee that you won’t be tempted into taking too many social breaks during the day.

Also, many have found it helpful to shut off social media notifications during the hours they work from home.

Alec Biedrzycki, product marketer at AirTable, says, “I remove all social networks from my toolbar bookmarks… you can get sucked in without knowing it, so eliminating the gateway to those networks keeps me on track.”

7. Commit to doing more.

Projects always take longer than you initially think they will. For that reason, you’ll frequently get done less than you set out to do.

So, just as you’re encouraged to overestimate how much work hours you’ll spend doing one thing, you should also overestimate how many things you’ll do during the day.

Even if you come up short of your goal, you’ll still come out of that day with a solid list of tasks filed under ‘complete.’

“On days I’m working from home, I tend to slightly overcommit on what I’ll deliver that day. So even if I get the urge to go do something else, I know I’ve already committed a certain amount of work to my team.”- Corey Wainwright

8. Work when you’re at your most productive.

Nobody sprints through their work from morning to evening — your motivation will naturally ebb and flow throughout the day. However, when you’re working from home, it’s all the more important to know when those ebbs and flows will take place and plan your schedule around it.

To capitalize on your most productive periods, save your more challenging tasks for when you know you’ll be in the right headspace for them. Use slower points of the day to knock out the easier logistical tasks on your plate.

Verily Magazine calls these tasks “small acts of success,” and they can help build your momentum for the heavier projects that are waiting for you later on.

Product designer, Brittany Leaning, says about her routine, “For me, the most productive times of the day are usually early in the morning or late at night. I recognize this and try to plan my day accordingly. Also, music that pumps me up doesn’t hurt.”

The responsibility is on you to know when you are most productive and build your work schedule around the periods of maximum productivity.

9. Save calls for the afternoon.

Sometimes, I’m so tired in the morning, that I don’t even want to hear my voice — let alone talk to others with it.

You shouldn’t have to give yourself too much time to become productive in the morning, but you can give yourself some extra time before working directly with others.

If you’re struggling to develop a reasonable work schedule for yourself as a telecommuter, start with the solitary tasks in the morning.

Save your phone calls, meetings, Google hangouts meetings, video call, and other collaborative work for when you’ve officially “woken up.”

Senior Marketing Director, James Gilbert, advises that you “Take advantage of morning hours to crank through meaty projects without distractions, and save any calls or virtual meetings for the afternoon.”

10. Focus on one distraction.

There’s an expression out there that says, “if you want something done, ask a busy person.”

The bizarre but true rule of productivity is that the busier you are, the more you’ll do.

It’s like Newton’s law of inertia: If you’re in motion, you’ll stay in motion. If you’re at rest, you’ll stay at rest. And busy people are in fast-enough motion that they have the momentum to complete anything that comes across their desk.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to find things to help you reach that level of busyness when you’re at home — your motivation can just swing so easily. HubSpot’s principal marketing manager, Pam Vaughan, suggests focusing on something that maintains your rhythm (in her case, it’s her daughter).

She says, “When I work from home, my 20-month-old daughter is home with me, too. It seems counterintuitive, but because I have to manage taking care of her and keeping her happy and entertained while still getting my work done, the pressure helps to keep me focused. When she’s napping or entertaining herself, I go into super-productive work mode.

The ‘distraction’ of my daughter (I mean that in the most loving way possible) means I can’t possibly succumb to some of the other common distractions of home.”

11. Plan out what you’ll be working on ahead of time.

Spending time figuring out what you’ll do today can take away from actually doing those things. And, you’ll have planned your task list so recently that you can be tempted to change your schedule on the fly.

It’s important to let your agenda change if you need it to, but it’s equally important to commit to a schedule that outlines every assignment before you begin.

Try solidifying your schedule the day before, making it feel more official when you wake up the next day to get started on it.

“Plan out your week in advance to optimize for the environments you’ll be in.”- Niti Shah

12. Use technology to stay connected.

Working from home might make you feel cut off from the larger operation happening in your company.

Instant messaging and videoconferencing tools like Slack and Zoom can make it easy to check in with other remote employees and remind you how your work contributes to the big picture.

It’s also vital to invest in the right technology. For instance, a bad-performance router can take the steam right off your enthusiasm to work, so it’s better to invest in a high-performance router.

CMO and former HubSpot employee, Meghan Keaney Anderson, remarks, “At HubSpot, we use Slack to keep conversations going remotely, Trello to keep us organized around priorities, and Google Hangouts plus Webex to make remote meetings more productive. Getting the right stack of support tools to fit your work style makes a big difference.”

13. Match your music to the task at hand.

During the week, music is the soundtrack to your career (cheesy, but admit it, it’s true). And at work, the best playlists are diverse playlists — you can listen to music that matches the energy of the project you’re working on to boost your productivity.

Video game soundtracks are excellent at doing this. In the video game, the lyric-free music is designed to help you focus; it only makes sense that it would help you focus on your work.

Want some other genres to spice up your routine and make you feel focused? Take them from startup marketer, Ginny Mineo, who offers her work music preferences below.

“When I’m powering through my inbox, I need some intense and catchy rap/R&B (like Nicki Minaj or Miley Cyrus) blasting through my headphones, but when I’m writing, Tom Petty is the trick. Finding what music motivates and focuses me for different tasks (and then sticking to those playlists for those tasks) has completely changed my WFH productivity.”

14. Use laundry as a work timer.

You might have heard that listening to just two or three songs in the shower can help you save water. And it’s true; hearing a few of your favorite songs start and end, one after another, can remind you how long you’ve been in the bathroom and shorten your wash time.

Why bring this up? Because the same general principle can help you stay on task when working from home. But instead of three songs off your music playlist, run your laundry instead.

Doing your laundry is a built-in timer for your home. So, use the time to start and finish something from your to-do list before changing the load.

Committing to one assignment during the wash cycle and another during the dry process can train you to work smarter on tasks that you might technically have all day to tinker with. And when you know there’s a timer, it makes it hard for distractions to derail your work.

People ops manager, Emma Brudner, notes, “I also usually do laundry when I work from home, and I set mini-deadlines for myself corresponding to when I have to go downstairs to switch loads. If I’m working on an article, I tell myself I’ll get to a certain point before the wash cycle ends. Then I set another goal for the dryer.”

Staying Productive While Working From Home

While you might miss the office, working full time from home can be good for you.

For one, you don’t have to worry about commuting every day and you can better care for your loved ones by being around more often.

The work from home tips that we have provided can help you make the most of your new routine. Try out a few and you might find that you’re just as productive working from home as you are in the office.

Take me to Projects

Source :
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/productivity-tips-working-from-home

29 of the Best SEO Tools for Auditing & Monitoring Your Website in 2022

There’s nothing quite like a sudden Google algorithm update to leave you feeling equal parts confused and concerned. It seems as though search engines like Google wait for you to get all of your ducks in a row and then unleash an update that makes your efforts instantly obsolete.

Plus, there’s still some secrecy behind how Google evaluates websites and determines which sites appear — and how they appear — on the search engine results page (SERPs) for different queries.→ Download Now: SEO Starter Pack [Free Kit]

The good news is that there are several search engine optimization (SEO) tools out there — some free, some paid — that can help you view

your website the way search engines like Google see it — this way, you can improve your ranking and relevance for your target keywords.

Note: Some of the free tools below also offer paid plans while some of the paid tools also offer free plans — so, we recommend you check out the pricing pages for the tools you’re most interested in to determine which plan is ideal for your needs and goals.

For universal SEO tips, you can use today to grow your business, check out our video guide below.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eGUEAvNpz48%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Best SEO Tools

  1. HubSpot Website Grader
  2. Google Search Console
  3. Google Analytics
  4. UpCity Free SEO Report Card
  5. Internet Marketing Ninjas
  6. Bing Webmaster
  7. Google Trends
  8. Seolyzer
  9. SEOquake
  10. Seobility
  11. Check My Links
  12. BROWSEO
  13. HubSpot SEO Marketing Software
  14. Ahrefs
  15. SEMrush
  16. KWFinder
  17. GrowthBar
  18. Woorank
  19. BuzzStream
  20. Moz Pro
  21. Linkody
  22. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
  23. Remove’em
  24. AnswerThePublic
  25. Keyword Hero
  26. SpyFu
  27. Seomater
  28. ContentKing
  29. SE Ranking

Free SEO Tools

These tools are free to use, but you might find a paid option that has more features. We’ve shared some of the best features in each tool as well as how you can get the most out of them for your SEO strategy.

1. HubSpot Website Grader

SEO Tool: HubSpot Website Grader

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The goal of marketing is to generate traffic and qualified leads via the company’s website. That’s why, as marketers, we need to understand exactly what we can do to improve the SEO of that website.

With HubSpot’s Website Grader, simply enter the URL of your website to automatically receive a report card with actionable insights about your SEO efforts. From there, you can sign up for the HubSpot Academy SEO course that teaches you how to improve your website’s SEO, user experience (UX), and more.

With the HubSpot Website Grader, you can:

  • Website performance: Learn about your website’s performance in seconds, and identify specific performance issues and receive clear, actionable feedback on how you can fix them.
  • On-demand support: Receive how-to education on how you can improve your website.
  • Improve specific website issues: Gain access to a five-lesson HubSpot Academy course on Website Optimization so you can understand how to improve upon your website’s specific problem areas.
  • Optimize for mobile: Discover how to optimize your website for mobile.
  • Boost web security: Learn how you can implement website security best practices.
  • Enhance the user experience: Personalize your website’s UX to create a delightful experience for users.

2. Google Search Console

SEO Tool: Google Search Console

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Google Search Console has a number of tools available to help you appear in the SERPs for the search terms and phrases your target audience is looking for.

If you’re the owner of a business or an SEO on your marketing team, Search Console can help you conduct an initial SEO analysis from scratch or update your existing SEO strategy with fresh keywords. Google Search Console monitors, debugs, and optimizes your website — and you don’t need to know how to code to benefit from this tool.

Here are some examples of website elements Google Search Console will teach you about and help you optimize:

  • Keywords: Learn about the keywords your webpages are currently ranking for.
  • Crawl Errors: Identify any crawl errors that exist on your website.
  • Mobile Responsiveness: Understand how mobile-friendly your website is and discover opportunities to improve the mobile experience for your users.
  • Google Index: See how many of your web pages are in Google’s Index (if they aren’t in Google’s index, you can use the tool’s URL Inspection Tool to submit a page for indexing).
  • Analytics and Metrics: The website-related metrics that matter most to you, like clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position.

3. Google Analytics

SEO Tool: Google Analytics

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Although Google Analytics has a paid version, the free version of the product can help you manage your website’s SEO — this is especially true if you pair Google Analytics with Google Search Console. In doing so, all of your website’s SEO data will be centrally located and compiled, and you can use queries to identify areas for improvement with the keywords and phrases that you want your website and web pages to rank for.

Other ways that you can use the free version of Google Analytics to understand and improve your SEO are:

4. UpCity Free SEO Report Card

SEO Tool: UpCity Free SEO Report

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The Free SEO Report Card by UpCity lets you analyze your website to determine how it stacks up against the competition.

In exchange for your email address and a few data points, SEO Report Card will serve up a report that covers the following:

  • Rank Analysis: A snapshot of where your website ranks on the most popular search engines.
  • Link Building: A detailed account of the number of websites that link back to your site.
  • On-Site Analysis: A look at how successful you were in incorporating your main keyword throughout your site.
  • Website Accessibility: Information about your site’s load time and accessibility.
  • Trust Metrics: An overview of your site’s level of trust or authority.
  • Current Indexing: An indication of how many of your site pages have been indexed.

5. Internet Marketing Ninjas

SEO Tool: Internet Marketing Ninjas

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Internet Marketing Ninjas is an SEO-focused company with a variety of free tools you can use to compare your website against the competition, optimize web pages for certain keywords, generate meta tags, and increase organic traffic to your website.

Here are some examples of the free Internet Marketing Ninja SEO tools you can take advantage of:

  • Broken link tool: Identify broken links and redirects and use the site crawl feature to generate an XML sitemap of your website.
  • Image metadata: See all of your page links (external, internal, etc.) on your web pages to review what’s working well and what’s broken or needs an update.
  • On-page optimization tool: Use this to evaluate your web page content, meta information, and internal links.
  • Side-by-side comparison: Compare the SEO of your web pages versus a competitor’s web pages.
  • Page load time: Analyze page-load time and how long each component of a web page takes to fully display.

6. Bing Webmaster

SEO Tool: Bing Webmaster

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Microsoft Bing Webmaster gives you access to many tools that offer insight into your website such as reporting, diagnostic, and SEO tools. The SEO tools that you can use for free have the power to help you analyze your website, manage backlinks, and review keywords to ensure your site is well-optimized for organic search.

Here are some of the other things you can do with Bing Webmaster’s SEO tools:

  • See backlink profiles: Learn about your backlink profile to understand referring pages, domains, and anchor links.
  • Perform keyword research: Determine which keywords and phrases your audience is searching for as well as the search volumes of those keywords and phrases.
  • Use the site scanning feature: Crawl your website and identify technical SEO errors.
  • Get SEO reports: Review any errors that are on your website and individual site pages.

7. Google Trends

SEO Tool: Google Trends

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Traditional SEO tools like the ones we’ve already discussed are great for conducting research and audits when your business is already established. But what if you’re starting a new business venture and want to know what popular industries, topics, and ideas people are exploring? Google Trends is a great place to explore untapped potential that can yield a large keyword landscape for your website.

You’ll want to note that Google Trends isn’t where you’ll get granular data. This tool performs best when you use it as a compass to set a direction for your SEO strategy, and then pair those insights with a more robust software like HubSpot’s SEO Marketing Tool.

Here’s what you should look for in Google Trends:

  • Trends: Look for trends in specific countries or regions of the world.
  • Popular topics: Find popular people and long tail keywords related to them.
  • Comparisons: Compare and contrast trends over time.

8. Seolyzer

SEO Tool: Seolyzer

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Seolyzer is a free site crawling, log analysis, and SEO tool that helps you determine how search engines like Google view your website. Seolyzer pulls information that crawling bots leave in your server’s log files while browsing your site to identify and create your SEO KPIs. The tool also identifies error codes, redirects, and page speed performance.

Additionally, Seolyzer can help you:

  • Monitor SEO issues: Identify poor response time, error messages, and crawl volume so you can resolve them before serious damage is done.
  • Manage your unique KPIs: Analyze page performance, crawl volume, HTTP status codes, active and new pages, and desktop versus mobile responsiveness.
  • Segment web pages: Determine what your most crawled pages are.
  • Compare web pages: See what Google deems as the most important to the pages that are crucial to your business’s bottom line.
  • Measure SEO impact: Understand the impact of your SEO efforts on a page-by-page basis or by the category of the page.

9. SEOquake

SEO Tool: SEOquake

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SEOquake is a Google Chrome extension that automatically checks a web page’s SEO parameters quickly for free. This includes on-page SEO audits, internal and external link reviews, real-time URL and domain comparison, and data file export.

Other things you can use SEOquake for are:

  • Link Analysis: Get a detailed description of how all of your links are doing — including URLs, anchor text, and other link types — with the tools Link Examiner feature.
  • Focus on metrics that matter: Adjust the SEOquake reports you receive to display only the parameters and metrics that you care about.
  • Audit your website’s SEO: Identify any SEO-related issues that would be findable by search engines.
  • Share your findings with stakeholders: Export the results of your SEO analysis into an adjustable and shareable report.

10. Seobility

SEO Tool: Seobility

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Seobility is a free SEO-checker tool. With it, you can test your website’s level of compliance with today’s SEO guidelines. By simply entering your URL, your site will be analyzed and you’ll receive tips on how you can better optimize your website.

In addition to a detailed SEO audit of your website, you’ll gain access to 1,000 subpage audits, email reporting and alerts, and keyword monitoring.

Here are some more advantages of using Seobility:

  • Find technical errors: Resolve on-page SEO issues quickly to recover lost traffic and prevent future traffic dips.
  • Accurate SEO scoring: Receive an SEO score that accounts for various website factors including meta-information, page quality, link structure, and more.
  • Meta information analysis: Understand the specific SEO issues with your meta information such as meta titles/ descriptions, meta tags, and invalid or incorrect domain names or page URLs.
  • Optimization opportunities: Identify areas for improvement regarding your page speed and quality (related to text, duplicate content, responsive design, and alt attributes for content).
  • Link structure suggestions: Understand how your page and link structure can be improved by getting data about your headers, internal links, and incorrect anchor text.
  • Server error fixes: Identify specific server errors related to any redirects, HTTP headers, or CSS and Javascript files.

11. Check My Links

SEO Tool: Check My Links

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Check My Links is a Google Chrome extension that you can use to ensure your links on both internal or external web pages work. For instance, if you were to search a term on Wikipedia, Check My Links would be able to tell you how many links that Wikipedia page has in total and how many of those links are broken.

This is helpful because you can make corrections to broken links immediately (or hopefully, before a page goes live). Check My Links is ideal for developers, content editors, and web designers according to its creators.

Here are some more examples of what Check My Links can do:

  • Identify broken links: Check each link on your webpages and identify all invalid links.
  • Auto-highlight issues: Quickly see the good links in green and the broken links in red.
  • Export broken links for further analysis: Copy all of your bad links to your clipboard in one click.

12. BROWSEO

SEO Tool: BROWSEO

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BROWSEO is an SEO browser that allows you to review your webpage in a limited format so you can analyze its UX and content as well as gain insight into its SEO. Once you input the URL, the output will hone in on your HTML so you’re able to understand the page’s structure, optimized search terms, and other SEO-related factors.

Examples of what you can do with BROWSEO include:

  • See the number of words on the page: Find the sweet spot for copy length on your webpages.
  • Determine the number of internal and external links on your page: This allows you to see how your linking strategy is working on each page.
  • See all of your meta information: Review title tags, alt text, and meta descriptions.

Paid SEO Tools

Next, let’s look at some paid SEO tools. (Note that some of these tools have free trial periods. Some also offer entirely free plans but with restrictions in terms of flexibility and customization.)

1. HubSpot SEO Marketing Software

SEO Tool: HubSpot SEO Marketing Software

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Price: $45/ mo for the Starter plan, $800 for professional, and $3,200 for enterprise.

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub includes an SEO marketing software tool that’s perfect for helping you build authority across your website. Since this software is integrated with HubSpot landing pages, webpages, and blog posts, you’ll never miss an opportunity to optimize your content for traffic and conversions.

No matter if you’re creating your first content strategy or you’re an expert in all things SEO, HubSpot’s SEO Marketing Software gives you the tools and the confidence to rank in the SERP and report on your performance.

HubSpot’s marketing software doesn’t keep SEO in a silo. This tool works in conjunction with:

  • Email: Send professional emails using your own branded designs.
  • Marketing Automation: Create dynamic campaigns for segmented audiences.
  • Lead Management: Track leads through each stage in your sales process.
  • Analytics: Review your campaign to identify success and opportunities for improvement.

2. Ahrefs

SEO Tool: Ahrefs

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Price: Seven-day trial for $7, $99/ mo for Lite, $179/ mo for Standard, $399/ mo for Advanced, $999/ mo for Agency

Ahrefs is an advanced SEO resource that examines your website property and produces keyword, link, and ranking profiles to help you make better decisions on your content.

Some of Ahrefs’ main features are:

  • Site Explorer: Shows you the performance of specific webpages on your website.
  • Content Explorer: This allows you to search high-performing webpages under specific keywords and topics.
  • Keywords Explorer: Generates the monthly search volume and click-through rates of specific keywords.
  • Site Audit: Crawls specified verticals within your domain and reveals a number of technical issues at the page level.

3. SEMrush

SEO Tool: SEMrush

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Price: $119.95/ mo for Pro, $229.95/ mo for Guru, or $449.95/ mo for Business

SEMrush is an elaborate dashboard that reports on the performance of domains as a whole and their specific pages. SEMrush offers numerous resources, one of which is the SEO Toolkit.

Toolkit allows you to track a website’s visibility improvement over time as well as identify which keywords it’s ranking for, what the page’s rank is for a keyword, the keyword’s monthly search volume, and more.

SEMrush also allows you to:

  • Build links: Analyze backlinks from other websites to your site.
  • Use the Keyword Magic tool: Identify all keywords you need to successfully build an SEO strategy.
  • See your competitors’ strategies: Identify the paid keywords or ad copy used in the PPC ads of your competition.
  • Receive recommendations: See how you can increase your organic traffic by optimizing your content.

4. KWFinder

SEO Tool: KWFinder

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Price: 10-day free trial; $29/mo

Sometimes you don’t need an SEO tool with all the bells and whistles if you only need to do keyword research. KWFinder is a great software that fills the gap between nuts-and-bolts SEO work and copywriting. You’ll find keywords that aren’t too difficult to rank for but still carry the potential to bring in traffic.

What makes KWFinder unique is how seamlessly it shifts between languages and regions so that you can serve your audience no matter where in the world they are.

Some of the top features KWFinder offers include:

  • Hidden long tail keyword insights: Find long tail keywords that give you more opportunities to acquire traffic.
  • Competitor keyword insights: See how your competitor’s keyword strategy compares to your own, plus find more keyword opportunities.
  • SERP analysis tool: Analyze competition in the SERP to understand what elements readers are looking for on your pages.
  • Local keyword research tool: See what searchers are looking for locally and appeal to local markets for more niche traffic.

5. GrowthBar

SEO Tool: GrowthBar

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Price: Free five-day trial, $29.90/ mo for Basic, $39.90 for Premium, and $79.90 for Agency.

GrowthBar is a Chrome extension that can help you perform keyword research, competitive analysis, and track SEO rankings. With the GrowthBar, access data points about any website directly from the search engine results pages. This allows you to assess your competitors’ performance and view the growth channels, keywords, backlinks, and ads that are working for them.

Here are some more key features of GrowthBar:

  • Use the Top Keywords and Backlinks feature: See which paid and organic keywords are driving the most traffic for your website and get a list of the most authoritative backlinks pointing to your site.
  • Get your Keyword Difficulty Score: Quickly assess how hard it would be to rank for a particular keyword based on the strength of the domain authorities of the URLs ranking on page one.
  • Use the Word Count tool: View the word count of any page directly from the SERP.
  • Run Facebook Ads: Get a visual of what they look like from a search engine’s perspective.
  • Use the Keyword Suggestions tool: Get a list of related keywords you might want to rank for along with their Search volume & CPCs.

6. Woorank

SEO Tool: Woorank

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Price: Free 14-day trial, $79.99/ mo for Pro, $199.99/ mo for Premium, or contact for Enterprise quote

Woorank’s in-depth site analysis helps marketers reveal opportunities for optimization and improvement. This analysis takes into account the performance of existing SEO initiatives, social media, usability, and more.

Each report is divided into sections to help you easily analyze your site and identify targets for optimization. Here are a few features of the report:

  • Marketing Checklist: Review common marketing tasks that you can complete as part of your SEO strategy execution.
  • SEO: Analyze your SEO metrics against your goals.
  • Mobile: Decide which mobile optimization tactics to employ based on the mobile data.
  • Social: Get insight into how social media is playing a part in your traffic and SEO goals.

7. BuzzStream

SEO Tool: BuzzStream

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Price: Free 30-day trial, $24/ mo for Starter, $124/ mo for Group, $299/ mo for Professional, $999+ for Custom

Although backlinks to your website are critical to ranking well on Google, the outreach you do while link building can feel a lot like cold calling. BuzzStream makes it easy to research the appropriate people, come up with effective email messages, and track who’s accepted each link request.

BuzzStream also helps you:

  • Identify candidates for outreach: Find them based on their industry and how engaged they are across various social networks.
  • Identify candidates for backlinks: These are individuals who will likely be receptive to your backlink request for other reasons that are unique to your business’s niche.

8. Moz Pro

SEO Tool: Moz Pro

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Price: Free 30-day trial, $99/ mo for Standard, $149/ mo for Medium, $249/ mo for Large, $599/ mo for Premium

The Moz Pro subscription serves as an all-in-one tool for increasing your business’ search ranking. Moz’s collection of research tools provides subscribers with the resources they need to identify SEO opportunities, track growth, build reports, and optimize their efforts.

Moz Pro also includes:

  • Website crawler: Analyzes up to 3,000 links on a given URL.
  • Email report: Details that crawl data for the pages your site links to.
  • Insight into various “crawlability” factors: These include duplicate content and redirects that could be influencing your SEO performance.

9. Linkody

SEO Tool: Linkody

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Price: 30-day free trial; $14.90/ mo for Webmaster, $24.90/ mo for Advanced, $49.90/ mo for Pro, 99.90/ mo for Agency, and $153.90 /mo for Agency XL

The best way to understand the performance of your off-page SEO is by having a good overview of your backlinks. Linkody allows you to discover, track, analyze, and disavow backlinks all from an easy-to-use interface.

Aside from that, the tool checks your links 24/7 and informs you of any changes so you can take immediate action in case a link is lost or broken.

Other Linkody features include:

  • “Spy” on your competitors’ backlinks: Simply enter the URL of your competitor and let the tool pull all the links and metrics. The information returned will help you discover niche-relevant, high-quality backlink opportunities for your brand.
  • Gain useful insights: See your most important metrics when it comes to backlink tracking, such as the ‘rel’ attribute, Google indexation status, the website’s Domain Authority, Spam Score, Alexa rank, and more.
  • Create white-label reports: Download reports that can be shared with your team and/or clients to get a better idea of your backlink distribution and link-building progress.

10. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

SEO Tool: Screaming Frog SEO Spider

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Price: Free or €149/ year

Designed specifically for the SEO-minded, this program crawls the websites you specify, examining the URLs for common SEO issues. This program simplifies and expedites an otherwise time-consuming process — especially for larger websites. (It could take hours or days to manually evaluate the same URLs.)

Other notable features of Screaming Frog SEO Spider are:

  • Java Program: Screaming Frog includes an intuitive Java program with easy-to-navigate tabs.
  • Easy export to Excel: Further analyze your SEO data.

11. Remove’em

SEO Tool: Remove'em

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Price: $249 one-time payment for Life-Time plan, $99/ mo for Subscription (one website), or $899/ mo for Agency (10+ websites)

If you’re buying a website domain that has been used in the past, or you’re rebuilding a poor SEO strategy, you may discover some problematic backlinks while conducting your audit. Artificial or unnatural links have the potential to seriously hurt your search ranking. Remove’em helps get rid of those links.

This tool has the ability to:

  • Scan your backlink profile: Discover a list of contact information for the links and domains you’ll need to reach out to for removal.
  • Export a list of backlinks: If you wish, you can disavow backlinks by telling Google not to take these “bad” links into account when crawling your site.

12. AnswerThePublic

SEO Tool: AnswerThePublic

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Price: $99/ mo for Monthly plan, $79/ mo for Annual plan, $199/ mo for the Expert plan

AnswerThePublic is a search listening and keyword tool that listens to autocomplete data from Google and other search engines, and then provides you with a list of phrases and questions that people are searching for around your keyword. This allows you to craft your website and content to your audience to increase traffic and conversions.

With AnswerThePublic, you can also:

  • Receive updates: See when people are talking about your most relevant keywords.
  • Monitor keyword trends: Understand keyword research behavior among your target audience and customers.
  • See real-time searches: View the keywords and phrases that your audience is researching in real-time.
  • Get ideas for your website and blog: Discover new content ideas based on relevant keyword research.

13. Keyword Hero

SEO Tool: Keyword Hero

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Price: 14-day trial for any plan, Free for Little Hero, $9/ mo for Big Hero, $49/ mo for Giant Hero, and $149/ mo for Ultimate Hero

Keyword Hero pairs your visitor’s sessions with the keywords they used to land on your page, all within your Google Analytics account. In other words, this tool gives you an understanding of the search intent of your organic traffic.

Here are some more actions you can take with Keyword Hero:

  • Identify the organic traffic and conversions: Uncover the success you receive from your intended keywords.
  • Separate traffic: Identify brand versus non-brand search traffic.
  • Optimize your position in the SERPs: Optimize your website for specific target keywords.
  • See query details: Understand whether your visitors used informational versus transactional queries to find on your website.

14. SpyFu

SEO Tool: SpyFu

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Price: $39/ mo for Basic, $69/ mo for Professional, $129/ mo for Unlimited.

SpyFu is a competitor keyword research tool for Google Ads. In addition to keyword research, it helps with PPC competitive research, SEO competitive research, and the creation of custom lists and domains.

The tool helps you drive traffic to your Google Ads campaigns and website, monitor both paid and organic rankings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and obtain reliable and accurate contact information for leads.

With SpyFu, you can also:

  • Download a competitor’s PPC keywords: Use this insight to develop more competitive PPC strategies that can compete in the ad space.
  • Download a competitor’s SEO keywords: Use this insight to develop more competitive organic keyword strategies that can compete in the SERP.
  • Review ranking trends: the ranking of a page or website for a keyword over time.
  • Discover keyword ideas: Keyword advice for your Google Ads to increase chances of conversion.

15. Seomater

SEO Tool: Seomater

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Price: Pay as You Go (starting at $5), $19/ mo for Small Business, $49/ mo for Professional, $179/ mo for Unlimited.

Seomater is an SEO auditing and website crawling tool. It assists with technical SEO analysis and SEO on-page optimization testing. Once the tool crawls your site, you’ll receive an SEO report that explains your website’s various SEO-related elements including internal and external links, backlinks, page quality and speed, social media, organic presence, and more.

Your analysis will also come with tips on how you can improve each of these SEO elements. In addition, you can:

  • Use the SEO Monitoring Alerts feature: Your website will be automatically crawled and you’ll get an immediate notification if something is problematic in terms of SEO.
  • Get detailed reports: Find insights about your on-page and off-page SEO elements.
  • Use the Domain Comparison tool: Compare two competitors’ websites to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their SEO (such as broken links, content quality, HTML tags, and more).

16. ContentKing

SEO Tool: ContentKing

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Price: $139/ mo for Basic, $319/ mo for Standard, $449/ mo for Pro, or $1,279 for Enterprise.

ContentKing is a real-time SEO auditing and content tracking tool — it tracks your website 24/7 so any issues related to SEO don’t go unnoticed for too long. The tool is cloud-based, meaning there’s no installation required and your data and reports are available whenever you need them.

With ContentKing, you can also:

  • Improve your SEO: Use ContentKing’s 24/7 website audits (and algorithms) to gain insight into your SEO and receive tasks that will help you optimize your webpages.
  • Get alerts: Get notified whenever something on your website is broken or is no longer well-optimized so you can efficiently fix the issue.
  • Track Changes: Follow the history of all your content changes on your site (such as changes on individual web pages and changes in robots.txt) and search the history of your changes.
  • Visualize data: See real-time dashboards and reports.

17. SE Ranking

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Price: $39.00/ mo for Essential, $89.00/ mo for Pro, or $189.00/ mo for Business.

SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO platform that analyzes website health and performance keyword rankings and traffic. It also provides insights into your competitors, allowing you to better understand the SEO landscape and adjust your marketing strategy. Since SE Ranking is a white label SEO tool, you can build custom SEO reports with branding and personalization options.

Now that you’ve learned about some of the best free and paid SEO tools on the market, determine which option will help you achieve your SEO goals and get started auditing, optimizing, and monitoring your website, individual web pages, and content.

With SE Ranking, you can also:

  • Keyword Rank Check: Monitor your and your competitors’ keyword positions and provide accurate keyword rank analysis, evaluate SEO potential, and show historical data changes.
  • Website Health Audit: Evaluate all your website pages to create an in-depth report of website tech and performance errors with actionable tips on how to resolve them.
  • Competitor Analysis: Scope your competitors’ website traffic dynamics, keyword rankings, and other data in organic and paid searches. 
  • Backlinks Analysis: Analyze any website and create a complete report of the backlink profile with dynamics of new and lost site links and referring domains, anchor text distribution, and pages linked out to the most.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

marketing

Source :
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo-analysis-tools

The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2022

What is the first thing you do when you need new marketing ideas? What about when you decide it’s time to find a new accounting software? Or even when you notice a flat tire in the car?

My guess is you turn to Google.

Impact Plus reported that 61% of marketers named SEO as a top marketing priority in 2021. And so, it’s a cold, harsh truth that without at least some presence on Google, your business faces a digital uphill battle. In this guide, you’ll discover a strategy to build your online presence — Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ll learn what SEO is, how it works, and what you must do to position your site in search engine results.

→ Download Now: SEO Starter Pack [Free Kit]

But before we begin, I want to reassure you of something.

So many resources make SEO complex. They scare readers with technical jargon, advanced elements, and rarely explain anything beyond theory.

I promise you, this guide isn’t like that.

I’m going to break SEO into its most basic parts and show you how to use all its elements to construct a successful SEO strategy. (And to stay up-to-date on SEO strategy and trends, check out HubSpot’s Skill Up podcast.)

Keep on reading to understand SEO, or jump ahead to the section that interests you most.

  1. What is SEO?
  2. How Google Ranks Content
  3. How to Build an SEO Strategy
  4. How to Measure SEO
  5. Local and Black Hat SEO
  6. SEO Resources

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. The goal of SEO is to expand a company’s visibility in organic search results. As a result, these efforts drive more visitors to the company’s website, increasing their chances for more conversions which leads to more customers and more revenue.

When asked to explain what SEO is, I often choose to call it a strategy to ensure that when someone Googles your product or service category, they find your website.

But this simplifies the discipline a bit.

There are a ton of ways to improve the SEO of your site pages. Search engines look for elements including title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links (also known as backlinks). Search engines also look at site structure and design, visitor behavior, and other external, off-site factors to determine how highly ranked your site should be in their SERPs.

With all of these factors taken into account, SEO primarily drives two things — rankings and visibility.

How Does SEO Work?

SEO works by optimizing a website’s content, conducting keyword research, and earning inbound links to increase that content’s ranking and the website’s visibility. While you can generally see results take effect on the SERP once the webpage has been crawled and indexed by a search engine, SEO efforts can take months to fully materialize.

Rankings

This is what search engines use to determine where to place a particular web page in the SERP. Rankings start at position number zero through the final number of search engine results for the query, and a web page can rank for one position at a time. As time passes, a web page’s ranking might change due to age, competition in the SERP, or algorithm changes by the search engine itself.

Visibility

This term describes how prominent a particular domain is in the search engine results. Lower search visibility occurs when a domain isn’t visible for many relevant search queries whereas with higher search visibility, the opposite is true.

Both are responsible for delivering the main SEO objectives – traffic and domain authority.

What’s the importance of SEO?

Why do seo? Four benefits of SEO in 2022

There is one more important reason why you should be using SEO: The strategy virtually helps you position your brand throughout the entire buying journey.

In turn, SEO can ensure that your marketing strategies match the new buying behavior.

Because, as Google admitted, customer behavior has changed for good.

As of June 2021, 92% of internet searches happen on a Google property.

What’s more, they prefer going through the majority of the buying process on their own.

For example, Ststista found that 60% of people research a brand online before making a purchase. What’s more, this process has never been more complicated.

Finally, DemandGen’s 2022 B2B Buyer’s Survey found that 67% of B2B buyers start the buying process with a broad web search.

But how do they use search engines during the process?

Early in the process, they use Google to find information about their problem. Some also inquire about potential solutions.

Then, they evaluate available alternatives based on reviews or social media hype before inquiring with a company. But this happens after they’ve exhausted all information sources.

And so, the only chance for customers to notice and consider you is by showing up in their search results.

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How does Google know how to rank a page?

Search engines have a single goal only. They aim to provide users with the most relevant answers or information.

Every time you use them, their algorithms choose pages that are the most relevant to your query. And then, rank them, displaying the most authoritative or popular ones first.

To deliver the right information to users, search engines analyze two factors:

  • Relevancy between the search query and the content on a page. Search engines assess it by various factors like topic or keywords.
  • Authority, which is measured by a website’s popularity on the Internet. Google assumes that the more popular a page or resource is, the more valuable its content is to readers.

And to analyze all this information they use complex equations called search algorithms.

Search engines keep their algorithms secret. But over time, SEOs have identified some of the factors they consider when ranking a page. We refer to them as ranking factors, and they are the focus of an SEO strategy.

When determining relevance and authority, following the E-A-T framework can help tremendously. E-A-T in SEO stands for “expertise”, authoritativeness”, and “trustworthiness”. And although these are not direct ranking factors, they can improve your SEO content which can impact direct ranking factors.

As you’ll shortly see, adding more content, optimizing image filenames, or improving internal links can affect your rankings and search visibility. And that’s because each of those actions improves a ranking factor.

What is SEO strategy?

An SEO marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan to get more visitors to your website through search engines. Successful SEO includes on-page strategies, which use intent-based keywords; and off-page strategies, which earn inbound links from other websites.

What is SEO strategy?

An SEO marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan to get more visitors to your website through search engines. Successful SEO includes on-page strategies, which use intent-based keywords; and off-page strategies, which earn inbound links from other websites.

SEO Tips For Beginners | Rank #1 on Google in 2022 (Tutorial!)

Three Core Components of a Strong SEO Strategy

To optimize a site, you need to improve ranking factors in three areas — technical website setup, content, and links. So, let’s go through them in turn.

1. Technical Setup

For your website to rank, three things must happen:

First, a search engine needs to find your pages on the web.

Then, it must scan them to understand their topics and identify their keywords.

And finally, it needs to add them to its index — a database of all the content it has found on the web. This way, its algorithm can consider displaying your website for relevant queries.

Seems simple, doesn’t it? Certainly, nothing to worry about. After all, since you can visit your site without any problem, so should Google, right?

Unfortunately, there is a catch. A web page looks different for you and the search engine. You see it as a collection of graphics, colors, text with its formatting, and links.

To a search engine, it’s nothing but text.

As a result, any elements it cannot render this way remain invisible to the search engine. And so, in spite of your website looking fine to you, Google might find its content inaccessible.

Let me show you an example. Here’s how a typical search engine sees one of our articles. It’s this one, by the way, if you want to compare it with the original.

The ultimate guide to marketing statistics in 2021 as a plain text version of the site that Google sees when crawling the site for SEO

Notice some things about it:

  • The page is just text. Although we carefully designed it, the only elements a search engine sees are text and links.
  • As a result, it cannot see an image on the page (note the element marked with an arrow.) It only recognizes its name. If that image contained an important keyword we’d want the page to rank for, it would be invisible to the search engine.

That’s where technical setup, also called on-site optimization, comes in. It ensures that your website and pages allow Google to scan and index them without any problems. The most important factors affecting it include:

Website navigation and links

Search engines crawl sites just like you would. They follow links. Search engine crawlers land on a page and use links to find other content to analyze. But as you’ve seen above, they cannot see images. So, set the navigation and links as text-only.

Simple URL structure

Search engines don’t like reading lengthy strings of words with complex structure. So, if possible, keep your URLs short. Set them up to include as little beyond the main keyword for which you want to optimize the page, as possible.

Page speed

Search engines use the load time — the time it takes for a user to be able to read the page — as an indicator of quality. Many website elements can affect it. Image size, for example. Use Google’s Page Speed Insights Tool for suggestions on how to improve your pages.

How to Reduce Page Load Time & Improve Conversions

Dead links or broken redirects

A dead link sends a visitor to a nonexistent page. A broken redirect points to a resource that might no longer be there. Both provide poor user experience but also, prevent search engines from indexing your content.

Sitemap and Robots.txt files

A sitemap is a simple file that lists all URLs on your site. Search engines use it to identify what pages to crawl and index. A robots.txt file, on the other hand, tells search engines what content not to index (for example, specific policy pages you don’t want to appear in search.) Create both to speed up crawling and indexing of your content.

Duplicate content

Pages containing identical or quite similar content confuse search engines. They often find it to be nearly impossible to display any of those pages at all. If search engines do find them, your website can be penalized. For that reason, search engines consider duplicate content as a negative factor.

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2. Content

Every time you use a search engine, you’re looking for content — information on a particular issue or problem, for example.

True, this content might come in different formats. It could be text, like a blog post or a web page. But it could also be a video, product recommendation, and even a business listing.

It’s all content.

And for SEO, it’s what helps gain greater search visibility.

Here are two reasons why:

  • First, content is what customers want when searching. Regardless of what they’re looking for, it’s content that provides it. And the more of it you publish, the higher your chance for greater search visibility.
  • Also, search engines use content to determine how to rank a page. It’s the idea of relevance between a page and a person’s search query that we talked about earlier.

While crawling a page, they determine its topic. Analyzing elements like page length or its structure helps them assess its quality. Based on this information, search algorithms can match a person’s query with pages they consider the most relevant to it.

The process of optimizing content begins with keyword research.

Keyword Research

SEO is not about getting any visitors to the site. You want to attract people who need what you sell and can become leads, and later, customers.

However, that’s possible only if it ranks for the keywords those people would use when searching. Otherwise, there’s no chance they’d ever find you. And that’s even if your website appeared at the top of the search results.

That’s why SEO work starts with discovering what phrases potential buyers enter into search engines.

The process typically involves identifying terms and topics relevant to your business. Then, converting them into initial keywords. And finally, conducting extensive research to uncover related terms your audience would use.

We’ve published a thorough guide to keyword research for beginners. It lays out the keyword research process in detail. Use it to identify search terms you should be targeting.

With a list of keywords at hand, the next step is to optimize your content. SEOs refer to this process as on-page optimization.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization, also called on-page SEO, ensures that search engines a.) understand a page’s topic and keywords, and b.) can match it to relevant searches.

Note, I said “page” not content. That’s because, although the bulk of on-page SEO work focuses on the words you use, it extends to optimizing some elements in the code.

You may have heard about some of them — meta-tags like title or description are two most popular ones. But there are more. So, here’s a list of the most crucial on-page optimization actions to take.

Note: Since blog content prevails on most websites, when speaking of those factors, I’ll focus on blog SEO — optimizing blog posts for relevant keywords. However, all this advice is equally valid for other page types too.

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a) Keyword Optimization

First, ensure that Google understands what keywords you want this page to rank. To achieve that, make sure you include at least the main keyword in the following:

  • Post’s title: Ideally, place it as close to the start of the title. Google is known to put more value on words at the start of the headline.
  • URL: Your page’s web address should also include the keyword. Ideally, including nothing else. Also, remove any stop word.
  • H1 Tag: In most content management systems, this tag displays the title of the page by default. However, make sure that your platform doesn’t use a different setting
  • The first 100 words (or the first paragraph) of content: Finding the keyword at the start of your blog post will reassure Google that this is, in fact, the page’s topic.
  • Meta-title and meta-description tags: Search engines use these two code elements to display their listings. They display the meta-title as the search listing’s title while the meta-description provides content for the little blurb below it. But above that, they use both to understand the page’s topic further.
  • Image file names and ALT tags: Remember how search engines see graphics on a page? They can only see their file names. So, make sure that at least one of the images contains the keyword in the file name.

The alt tag, on the other hand, is text browsers display instead of an image (for visually impaired visitors.) However, since ALT tag resides in the image code, search engines use it as a relevancy signal as well.

Also, add semantic keywords — variations or synonyms of your keyword. Google and other search engines use them to determine a page’s relevancy better.

Let me illustrate this with a quick example. Let’s pretend that your main keyword is “Apple.” But do you mean the fruit or the tech giant behind the iPhone?

Now, imagine what happens when Google finds terms like sugar, orchard, or cider in the copy? The choice of what queries to rank it for would immediately become obvious, right?

That’s what semantic keywords do. Add them to ensure that your page doesn’t start showing up for irrelevant searches.

b) Non-Keyword-Related On-Page Optimization Factors

On-page SEO is not just about sprinkling keywords across the page. The factors below help confirm a page’s credibility and authority too:

  • External links: Linking out to other, relevant pages on the topic helps Google determine its topic further. Plus, it provides a good user experience. How? By positioning your content as a valuable resource.
  • Internal links: Those links help you boost rankings in two ways. One, they allow search engines to find and crawl other pages on the site. And two, they show semantic relations between various pages, helping to determine its relevance to the search query better. As a rule, you should include at least 2-4 internal links per blog post
  • Content’s length: Long content typically ranks better. That’s because, if done well, a longer blog post will always contain more exhaustive information on the topic, thus keeping a reader on your site longer. That’s called dwell time, and it’s an important ranking factor for the search engines
  • Multimedia: Although not a requirement, multimedia elements like videos, diagrams, audio players can signal a page’s quality. It keeps readers on a page for longer just like longer content does. And in turn, it signals that they find the content valuable and worth pursuing.

3. Links

From what you’ve read in this guide so far, you know that no page will rank without two factors — relevance and authority.

In their quest to provide users with the most accurate answers, Google and other search engines prioritize pages they consider the most relevant to their queries but also, popular.

The first two areas — technical setup and content — focused on increasing relevance (though I admit, some of their elements can also help highlight the authority.)

Links, however, are responsible for popularity.

But before we talk more about how they work, here’s what SEOs mean when talking about links.

What is a backlink?

Links, also called backlinks, are references to your content on other websites. Every time another website mentions and points their readers to your content, you gain a backlink to your site.

For example, this article in Entrepreneur.co mentions our Not Another State of Marketing Report page. It also links to it allowing their readers to see other stats than the one quoted.

An example of a backlink from entrepreneur.com to HubSpot's Not Another State of Marketing Report

Google uses the quantity and quality of links like this as a signal of a website’s authority. Its logic behind it is that webmasters would reference a popular and high-quality website more often than a mediocre one.

But note that I mentioned link quality as well. That’s because not all links are the same. Some — low-quality ones — can impact your rankings negatively.

Links Quality Factors

Low quality or suspicious links — for example, ones that Google would consider as built deliberately to make it consider a site as more authoritative — might reduce your rankings.

That’s why, when building links, SEOs focus not on building any links. They aim to generate the highest quality references possible.

Naturally, just like with the search algorithm, we don’t know what factors determine a link’s quality, specifically. However, over time, SEOs discovered some of them:

  • The popularity of a linking site: Any link from a domain that search engines consider an authority will naturally have high quality. In other words, links from websites that have good quality links pointing to them will yield better results.
  • Topic relevance: Links from domains on a topic similar to yours will carry more authority than those from random websites.
  • Trust in a domain: Just like with popularity, search engines also assess a website’s trust. Links from more trustworthy sites will always impact rankings better.

Link Building

In SEO, we refer to the process of acquiring new backlinks as link building. And as many practitioners admit, it can be a challenging activity.

Link building, if you want to do it well, requires creativity, strategic thinking, and patience. To generate quality links, you need to come up with a link building strategy. And that’s no small feat.

Remember, your links must pass various quality criteria. Plus, it can’t be obvious to search engines that you’ve built them deliberately.

Here are some strategies to do it:

  • Editorial, organic links: These backlinks come from websites that reference your content on their own.
  • Outreach: In this strategy, you contact other websites for links. This can happen in many ways. You could create an amazing piece of content, and email them to tell them about it. In turn, if they find it valuable, they’ll reference it. You can also suggest where they could link to it.
  • Guest posting: Guest posts are blog articles that you publish on third-party websites. In turn, those companies often allow including one or two links to your site in the content and author bio.
  • Profile links: Finally, many websites offer an opportunity to create a link. Online profiles are a good example. Often, when setting up such a profile, you can also list your website there as well. Not all such links carry strong authority, but some might. And given the ease of creating them, they’re worth pursuing.
  • Competitive analysis: Finally, many SEOs regularly analyze their competitors’ backlinks to identify those they could recreate for their sites too.

Now, if you’re still here with me, then you’ve just discovered what’s responsible for your site’s success in search.

The next step, then, is figuring out whether your efforts are working.

How to Monitor & Track SEO Results

Technical setup, content, and links are critical to getting a website into the search results. Monitoring your efforts helps improve your strategy further.

Measuring SEO success means tracking data about traffic, engagement, and links. And though, most companies develop their own sets of SEO KPIs (key performance indicators), here are the most common ones:

  • Organic traffic growth
  • Keyword rankings (split into branded and non-branded terms)
  • Conversions from organic traffic
  • Average time on page and the bounce rate
  • Top landing pages attracting organic traffic
  • Number of indexed pages
  • Links growth (including new and lost links)

Local SEO

Up until now, we focused on getting a site rank in search results in general. If you run a local business, however, Google also lets you position it in front of potential customers in your area, specifically. But for that, you use local SEO.

And it’s well worth it.

46% of Google searches are for local businesses. They look for vendor suggestions, and even specific business addresses.

What’s more, they act on this information: 72% of searchers visit a local store or company’s premises within 24 hours of the search.

But hold on, is local SEO different from what we’ve been talking about all along?

Yes and no.

Search engines follow similar principles for both local and global rankings. But given that they position a site for specific, location-based results, they need to analyze some other ranking factors too.

Even local search results look different:

  • They appear only for searches with a local intent (for example, “restaurant near me” or when a person clearly defined the location.)
  • They contain results specific to a relevant location.
  • They concentrate on delivering specific information to users that they don’t need to go anywhere else to find.
  • They target smartphone users primarily as local searches occur more often on mobile devices.

For example, a localpack, the most prominent element of local results, includes almost all information a person would need to choose a business. Here are local results Google displays for the phrase “best restaurant in Boston.”

Local SEO example of a localpack featured snippet in the SERP

Note that these results contain no links to any content. Instead, they include a list of restaurants in the area, a map to show their locations, and additional information about each:

  • Business name
  • Description
  • Image
  • Opening hours
  • Star Reviews
  • Address

Often, they also include a company’s phone number or website address.

All this information combined helps customers choose which business to engage. But it also allows Google to determine how to rank it.

Local Search Ranking Factors

When analyzing local websites, Google looks at the proximity to a searcher’s location. With the rise of local searches containing the phrase, “near me,” it’s only fair that Google will try to present the closest businesses first.

Keywords are essential for local SEO too. However, one additional element of on-page optimization is the presence of a company’s name, address, and phone number of a page. In local SEO, we refer to it as the NAP.

Again, it makes sense, as the search engine needs a way to assess the company’s location.

Google assesses authority in local search not just by links. Reviews and citations (references of a business’s address or a phone number online) highlight its authority too.

Finally, the information a business includes in Google My Business — the search engine’s platform for managing local business listings — plays a huge part in its rankings.

The above is just the tip of the iceberg. But they are the ones to get right first if you want your business to rank well in local search.

What is black hat SEO?

The final aspect of SEO I want to highlight to you is something I also hope you’ll never get tempted to use. I mean it.

Because, although it might have its lure, using black hat SEO typically ends in a penalty from search listings.

Black hat practices aim at manipulating search engine algorithms using strategies against search engine guidelines. The most common black hat techniques include keyword stuffing, cloaking (hiding keywords in code so that users don’t see them, but search engines do), and buying links.

So, why would someone use black hat SEO? For one, because, often, ranking a site following Google’s guidelines takes time. Long time, in fact.

Black hat strategies let you cut down the complexity of link building, for example. Keyword stuffing helps users to rank one page for many keywords, without having to create more content.

But as said, getting caught often results in a site being completely wiped out from search listings.

And the reason I mention it here is that I want you to realize that there are no shortcuts in SEO. And be aware of anyone suggesting strategies that might seem too good to be true.

Should you outsource SEO or keep it in-house?

Whether you work on SEO yourself, delegate it to another team member, or outsource it completely, you’ll want to make this decision with as much knowledge as possible.

Doing SEO Yourself

Be honest with yourself — are you interested in learning SEO? Do you have time to learn the basics? Do you have the resources to bring in help if you redesign your website and accidentally deindex several pages? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then you might not want to take on the responsibility of SEO yourself. SEO is a long term play, and just like a muscle, you have to work at it consistently to see results. That can take a substantial amount of commitment. If you have any doubts, try the next best thing — delegating the work.

Delegate SEO to a Team Member

If you’re not quite sure about taking on SEO yourself, consider delegating the work to a team member. If you have a person who’s interested in growth marketing, development, or even web design, this would be a valuable skill to help grow their career. You could also hire a full-time search engine optimization specialist if you have the budget.

The person in this role can report to the marketing team, development team, or even design team. Because SEO touches nearly every function of a business while maintaining a unique set of skill requirements, this position won’t be subject to frequent changes if departments need to be restructured later on. The person you delegate to this job will contribute cross functionally more often than not, so you’ll have some liberty with managing them.

Outsource SEO to an Agency

You don’t have the interest in SEO, your team’s at full capacity, and you can’t spare the budget to fill a full time SEO role. Now what? The best bang for your buck is to outsource SEO to a reputable consultant. Why? First, a well-respected SEO consultant is highly skilled in bringing organic traffic, leads, and conversions to businesses. They do this day in and day out, so they won’t need the ramp up time that you or a member of your team would need in order to learn the basics.

Second, a consultant can be less expensive than hiring someone full-time for the role because they don’t require insurance benefits, payroll taxes, etc. But how much exactly would you be looking at for outsourcing your SEO?

SEO can cost between $100 and $500 per month if you do it yourself with a keyword research tool. It can cost between $75 and $150 per hour for a consultant, and up to $10,000 per month if you hire a full-service marketing agency. Small businesses generally spend less on SEO than big brands, so be sure to take that into account.

Incurring SEO costs can mean one of two things: the investment in your organic search strategy, or how much you pay for paid search engine marketing (SEM) services like Google Ads. If you’re paying for a tool, consultant, or marketing agency to help you optimize your web content, your bill can vary wildly with the depth of the services you’re receiving.

SEO Resources & Training

This guide is just a starting point for discovering SEO. But there’s much more to learn.

Here are online training resources to try next if your or someone on your team wants to take on this skill:

You can also pick SEO knowledge from industry experts and their blogs. Here are some worth reading:

Over To You

Without actively positioning its content in search results, no business can survive long.

By increasing your search visibility, you can bring more visitors, and in turn, conversions and sales. And that’s well worth the time spent becoming an expert in SEO.

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

marketing

Source :
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo

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