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?
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:
Evaluate and rearrange your schedule to get enough rest each night. According to the National Sleep Foundation, you need seven to nine hours to feel alert and recharged.
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.
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.
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.)
Below, I’ve compiled many great work-at-home tips and tricks from some of my awesome coworkers.
How to Work From Home
Communicate expectation with anyone who will be home with you.
Take clear breaks.
Interact with other humans.
Prepare meals the night before.
Pick a definitive finish time.
Eat and sleep.
Talk to your employer.
Join a remote-friendly company.
Start a career as a freelancer.
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.”
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.
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
Get started early.
Pretend like you are going into the office.
Structure your day like you would in the office.
Choose a dedicated workspace
Don’t stay at home.
Make it harder to use social media.
Commit to doing more.
Work when you’re at your most productive.
Save calls for the afternoon.
Focus on one distraction.
Plan out what you’ll be workign on ahead of time.
Use technology to stay connected.
Match your music to the task at hand.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Filtering your referral traffic: Get rid of the traffic that has the potential of ruining SEO reports, such as fake traffic.
Determine engagement metrics: Use Site Content Reports to determine engagement metrics on each web page, engagement for the directories and pages on your website, page exit metrics, as well as acquisition, behavior, and conversion of landing pages.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Are you worried about hackers attacking your website?
Cross-site scripting, also called XSS, is one of the most common attacks on WordPress sites. Hackers find vulnerabilities on your site and use them to steal information and misuse your website.
What’s worse is that if you don’t fix it immediately, these hacks could lead to more severe damage – the kind that’s really hard to recover from.
If your website is already under attack, we’ll show you how to fix it right away in simple beginner-friendly language. We’ll keep cybersecurity jargon to the bare minimum in this tutorial. We’ll also show you how to prevent future attacks.
First, let’s quickly understand what happens in an XSS attack so that you’ll be better equipped to handle it.
What is an XSS Attack in WordPress?
XSS stands for Cross Site Scripting which is a kind of injection attack where hackers inject malicious scripts into a website.
These scripts are disguised as good code on a trusted website. Next, when a user lands on this website, their browser executes all the code, including the malicious script, because it thinks it’s all trusted instructions.
In simpler terms, imagine you’re a spy and you’ve just received an official email from the government about a top-secret mission. It contains all the instructions you need to follow down to the T.
What you don’t know is that someone intercepted that email and added a few more instructions of their own. The government has no clue about it and you don’t bother to double check because you trust the source.
Some of it doesn’t make sense but you’re trained to obey every order to achieve your mission.
In this scenario, the government is your website, and the spy is the user’s browser. The browser follows the instructions from your website and can’t differentiate between the good and bad scripts.
These scripts are usually in Javascript, one of the most popular and widely-used programming languages. Although, these attacks can take place using any client-side language.
Now there are many ways to carry out an XSS attack. One way is to send a link to unsuspecting users to get them to click on it. Once they click on it, the attack can possibly do one or more of the following:
Redirect users to a malicious site
Capture the user’s keystrokes
Run web browser-based exploits
Steal cookie information of the user logged into an account
If the hacker is able to steal cookie information, they can completely compromise the user’s account. For instance, if you’re logged into your website’s wp-admin panel, the hacker can steal your credentials and log into your site.
What you need to do to prevent these attacks is to make sure all user data is validated and sanitized properly before it enters your website. That way, no user input can be malicious Javascript code. Added to that, you need to make sure there are no XSS vulnerabilities on your site that can allow a hacker to attack.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of XSS attacks but we hope you have a decent understanding of how a WordPress XSS attack works. Now if you suspect your site is hacked, follow our easy step-by-step tutorial below.
How to Find and Fix an XSS Attack in WordPress
To find any kind of malware or hacks on your site, you’ll need to run a deep scan on your entire website including its files and database.
We’ll be using Sucuri to scan and clean up your hacked site. Sucuri gives you a robust security setup including a firewall, malware scanner, and malware cleaner.
Sucuri offers a free website malware scanner that you can install inside your WordPress site by navigating to Plugins » Add New tab.
We recommend using the premium server-side scanner. This will turn your website inside out to find any trace of malware.
Added to that, here are a few of its highlights:
Monitors spam and malicious scripts
Checks for hidden backdoors created by hackers
Detects changes made to DNS (domain name system) and SSL
Checks for blacklists with search engines and other authorities
Sucuri comes with a price tag of $199.99 per year. If that’s out of your budget, you can try other security plugins. See our list: 9 Best WordPress Security Plugins Compared.
While selecting a security plugin, make sure it gives you all the cyber security features you need to find and fix malware infections and protect your website.
Step 1: Scanning Your Website
To get started, you’ll need to sign up for a plan with Sucuri. Then, log in to the Sucuri dashboard where you can add your site.
Here, you’ll need to connect your website by entering your FTP credentials. If you don’t know your FTP credentials, you can get them from your web host.
When your site is connected, Sucuri will automatically run a thorough scan of your website. Once done, it will show you a detailed report under the ‘My Sites’ tab.
Now you can click on the ‘Details’ button next to the warning message. This will open up the Monitoring page where you can view the details of the hack or infection.
Step 2: Requesting a Malware Cleanup
On the Monitoring page, you can see what kind of malware has infected your site. Sucuri adds a rating to indicate the risk level. So if it’s a critical or high risk, you know that you need to fix it right away. Added to that, it will also show you if your site has been blacklisted by any search engines.
Now that you know your site is infected, you need to clean it up and Sucuri makes this really easy for you. To get started with the process, click on the ‘Clean Up My Site’ button.
On the next page, click on New Malware Removal Request button and a form will appear where you can enter your site’s details.
Simply fill out the form and submit it. Once done, Sucuri’s security experts will clean up your site for you. In case you don’t know any of the details you need for the form, you can ask your web host for them.
Now you may be wondering how long would it take to get your site cleaned.
Sucuri gives first preference to users on the Business plan. They assure a turnaround time of 6 hours. For other plans, it depends on how complex your site’s infection is and the volume of requests they have in queue.
Immediately after an attack, we strongly recommend logging all users out of your site and changing your login credentials to be on the safe side.
How to Prevent XSS Attacks on Your WordPress Site
It’s always best to protect your website and prevent these kinds of malware attacks on your site. It’s much easier and cheaper than trying to fix a hacked website. Here are our top recommended steps to prevent XSS attacks on your site.
1. Enable a Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Sucuri has one of the best firewalls for WordPress sites. It not only blocks XSS attacks but all sorts of other malware attacks like DDoS, Brute Force, Phishing, and SQL injections.
The firewall will sit in front of your website and scan every user coming through. It will identify and block bad bots before they reach your site.
To enable the Sucuri firewall, navigate to the Firewall tab on your Sucuri dashboard.
Select your site, and you’ll see setup instructions that you can follow. Sucuri gives you 2 options to set up the firewall:
1. Automatic Integration: Simply enter your hosting credentials using cPanel or Plesk. This method requires you to give Sucuri access to your website’s server to automatically set up the firewall on your site.
2. Manual Integration: You can set up the firewall on your own without granting internal access to Sucuri. To get started, click on the internal domain link and make sure that it loads.
Next, you can configure your DNS to point your web traffic at the Sucuri firewall. For this, you’ll need to access the DNS records in your hosting account. Here, you can change the ‘A’ record of your site and enter the IP addresses that Sucuri provides.
If you’re stressed that this is all too complicated, you can ask your web host for help and they will guide you through the process. Added to that, you can also raise a support ticket with Sucuri and their support team will help you change the DNS records.
To open a ticket, you’ll find a link inside the manual instructions on the same page.
Once you’re done setting up the firewall, it usually takes a few hours for the changes to reflect. You can expect a maximum wait time of 48 hours.
When you enable the firewall, it will automatically add security headers to your site to protect it from XSS attacks.
If there’s an attempted XSS attack Sucuri will block it and report it to you in the Reports tab.
Now what we love about the Sucuri firewall is that it’s so easy for anyone to use, including beginners. You don’t have to be a cyber security expert or know any coding.
You can enable all sorts of protection features with just a click in the Settings » Security tab.
So for instance, you can enable DDoS protection and geoblocking to make it harder for hackers to attack your site.
To enable a security feature here, all you have to do is check the box and save your settings. When you need to disable it, you simply have to uncheck the box.
Aside from this, the Sucuri plugin will:
Regularly scan and monitor for spam and malicious code
Alert you of any cross-site scripting vulnerability
Block bad bots and hackers
Check for blacklists with search engines and other authorities
Monitor website uptime
Detect changes made to DNS (domain name system) and SSL
Send you instant security alerts via email, SMS, Slack, and RSS
So your site will be protected at all times.
2. Use Secure Forms
On a vulnerable website, forms are one of the most common targets for hackers. If your form is unsecured, this means anyone can simply enter malicious code in your form fields.
Our recommendation for securing your website’s forms is WPForms. It is the #1 WordPress form builder that has built-in security so your forms are protected right from the start.
By default, the forms have anti-spam protection turned on. Plus, you can even add CAPTCHA to your forms to block spam bots.
You can enable an invisible captcha or the type where a user will have to solve a little puzzle or tick a box to prove they’re human.
3. Set User Role Permissions
When you have multiple people working on your website, it isn’t wise to give everyone admin access. It’s better to assign them roles based on what permissions they need.
WordPress lets you create roles for:
Super Admin
Administrator
Editor
Author
Contributor
Subscriber
Now if a hacker gets control over a user’s account, they’ll be limited in what they can do on your site.
4. Auto-logout Inactive Users
Hackers can gain access to user accounts by hijacking their browser sessions and stealing cookies.
You can minimize this risk by logging out inactive WordPress users.
Many security plugins have an idle session logout feature or you can use the Inactive Logout plugin.
5. Update Your Website Regularly
WordPress plugins, themes, and even your WordPress installation get updates regularly. You’ll see them inside your WordPress dashboard when they’re available:
Many website owners ignore updates for a long time but this can expose your website to hackers. Updates usually carry bug fixes, new features, and improvements to the software. They can also have security patches. You can see if an update carries a security patch by viewing the details of the update.
This means a vulnerability was found in the software that hackers can use to attack your site. When developers find security problems, they patch them up and release a new version of the software.
All you have to do is update the software on your site.
So if you see it’s a security patch, update it immediately to avoid any risk of being hacked.
One of the main reasons site owners ignore updates is that they can sometimes break your site or cause incompatibility issues. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site and then run it on your live site.
With that, you’ve learned how to fix and prevent XSS attacks on your WordPress site.
Before we wrap up, we’ll give you one more security tip. Always take regular backups of your website.
Even with the strongest security measures on your site, there are many things that can go wrong. For instance, a user can make a simple human error that crashes your website.
1. Is WordPress vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks?
The WordPress core software is developed and maintained by some of the best experts in the world. Their software is pretty rock solid but keep in mind that no software is free from vulnerabilities.
The reason WordPress websites are attacked often is that the platform is so popular. And most users install tons of third-party themes and plugins. Vulnerabilities can develop in any of these elements and hackers can exploit them to hack your site.
2. Are there different kinds of cross site scripting attacks?
Yes. There are 3 main types of XSS attacks:
Stored XSS (also know as persistent XSS): Attackers stores their payload on a compromised server, causing the website to deliver malicious code to other visitors.
Reflected XSS: The payload is stored in the data sent from the browser to the server.
DOM XSS: Here, the server itself isn’t the one vulnerable to XSS, but rather the JavaScript on the page is.
Self cross-site scripting: Attackers can exploit a vulnerability that needs really specific context and manual changes. The victim here can only be yourself.
Blind cross-site scripting: In these attacks, the vulnerability commonly lies on a page that only authorized users can access. The attacker can’t see the result of an attack.
3. How do I make sure there are no other security issues on my site?
Make sure you always have a security plugin installed on your website. This is a must for all kinds of websites including WooCommerce, blogs, and small business sites. We recommend Sucuri, but you can also check out Wordfence, MalCare, and SiteLock. See more of our top recommendations here: 9 Best WordPress Security Plugins Compared.
That’s all we have for you today. We hope this post has given you everything you need to secure your website.
For more on website security, see our resources on:
Do you want to know what’s new in Google Analytics 4? How is GA4 different from Universal Analytics?
There’s a lot that’s changed in the new Google Analytics 4 platform including the navigation. Google has added new features and removed a number of reports you’re familiar with. And that means we’ll need to relearn the platform.
In this guide, we’ll detail the differences between Google Analytics 4 (GA4) vs. Universal Analytics (UA) so that you’re prepared to make the switch.
In this section, we’re detailing the things that are new in GA4 that aren’t present in Universal Analytics at all. A little later, we’ll go into depth about all the changes you need to know about.
Creating and Editing Events: GA4 brings about a revolutionary change in the way you track events. You can create a custom event and modify events right inside your GA4 property. This isn’t possible with Universal Analytics unless you write code to create a custom event.
Conversion Events: Conversion goals are being replaced with conversion events. You can simply mark or unmark an event to start tracking it as a conversion. There’s an easy toggle switch to do this. GA4 even lets you create conversion events ahead of time before the event takes place.
Data Streams: UA lets you connect your website’s URL to a view. These views let you filter data. So for instance, you can create a filter in a UA view to exclude certain IP addresses from reports. GA4 uses data streams instead of views.
Data filters: Now you can add data filters to include or exclude traffic internal and developer traffic from your GA4 reports.
Google Analytics Intelligence: You can delete search queries from your search history to fine-tune your recommendations.
Explorations and Templates: There’s a new Explore item in the menu that takes you to the Explorations page and Template gallery. Explorations give you a deeper understanding of your data. And there are report templates that you can use.
Debug View: There’s a built-in visual debugging tool which is awesome news for developers and business owners. With this mode, you can get a real-time view of events displayed on a vertical timeline graph. You can see events for the past 30 minutes as well as the past 60 seconds.
BigQuery linking: You can now link your GA4 account with your BigQuery account. This will let you run business intelligence tasks on your analytics property using BigQuery tools.
While this is what’s unique to GA4, there are a lot more changes than this. But first, let’s take a look at what’s gone from the Universal Analytics platform that we’re all familiar with.
What’s Missing in Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics 4 has done away with some of the old concepts. These include:
Views and Filters: As we mentioned, GA4 is not using Data Streams and we explain this in depth a bit later. So you won’t be able to create a view and related filters. Once you convert your UA property to GA4, you’ll be able to access a read-only list of UA filters under Admin > Account > All Filters.
Customization (menu): UA properties have a customization menu for options to create dashboards, create custom reports, save existing reports, and create custom alerts. Below are the UA customization options, along with their GA4 equivalent.
Dashboards: At the time of writing this, there isn’t a way to create a custom GA4 dashboard.
Custom reports: GA4 has the Explorations page instead where you can create custom reports.
Saved reports: When you create a report in Explorations, it is automatically saved for you.
Custom alerts: Inside custom Insights, which is a new feature in GA4, you can set custom alerts.
Google Search Console linking: There isn’t a way to link Google Search Console with a GA4 property at the time of writing.
Bounce rate: One of the most tracked metrics – the bounce rate – is gone. It’s likely that this has been replaced with Engagement Metrics.
Conversion Goals: In UA, you could create conversion goals under Views. But since views are gone, so are conversion goals. However, you can create conversion events to essentially track the same thing.
Now that you know what’s new and what’s missing in GA4, we’ll take you through an in-depth tour of the new GA4 platform.
Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics
Below, we’ll be covering the main differences between GA4 and UA. We’ve created this table of contents for you to easily navigate the comparison guide:
Feel free to use the quick links to skip ahead to the section that interests you the most.
New Mobile Analytics
A major difference between GA4 and UA is that the new GA4 platform will also support mobile app analytics.
In fact, it was originally called “Mobile + Web”.
UA only tracked web analytics so it was difficult for businesses with apps to get an accurate outlook on their performance and digital marketing efforts.
Now with GA4 data model, you’ll be able to track both your website and app. You can set up a data stream for Android and iOS.
There’s also added functionality to create custom campaigns to collect information about which mediums/referrals are sending you the most traffic. This will show you where your campaigns get the most traction so that you can optimize your strategies in the future.
Easy User ID Tracking
Turning on user ID tracking in UA was quite a task. But that’s all been simplified in GA4 with the new measurement model. You simply need to navigate to Admin » Property Settings » Reporting Identity tab.
You can choose between Blended and Observed mode. Select the one you want and save your changes. That’s it.
New Navigational Menu
In GA4, the reporting interface remains familiar and the navigation menu is still on the left! That keeps things familiar but there are quite a few menu items that have changed.
First, there are only 4 high-level menu items right now. Google may add more as the platform is further developed.
Next, each menu item has a collapsed view. You can expand each item by clicking on it.
Now when you click on the submenu items, it will expand the menu to reveal more sub menus.
In GA4, you’ll see familiar menu items you use for SEO and other purposes but in different locations. Here are the notable changes:
Realtime is under Reports
Audience(s) is under Configure
Acquisition is under Reports » Life cycle
Conversions is under Configure
GA4 also comes with completely new menu items as listed below:
Reports snapshot
Engagement
Monetization
Retention
Library
Custom definitions
DebugView
Measurement ID vs Tracking ID
Universal Analytics uses a Tracking ID that has a capital UA, a hyphen, a 7-digit tracking code followed by another hyphen, and a number. Like this: UA-1234567-1.
The last number is a sequential number starting from 1 that maps to a specific property in your Google Analytics account. So if you set up a second Google Analytics property, the new code will change to UA-1234567-2.
You can find the Tracking ID for a Universal Analytics property under Admin » Property column. Navigate to Property Settings » Tracking ID tab where you can see your UA tracking ID.
In GA4, you’ll see a Measurement ID instead of a Tracking ID. This starts with a capital G, a hyphen followed by a 10-character code.
It would look like this: G-SV0GT32HNZ.
To find your GA4 Measurement ID, go to Admin » Property » Data Streams. Click on a data stream. You’ll see your Measurement ID in the stream details after the Stream URL and Stream Name.
Data Streams vs Views
In UA, you could connect your website’s URL to a view. UA views are mostly used to filter data. So for instance, you can create a filter in a UA view to exclude certain IP addresses from reports.
GA4 uses data streams instead. You’ll need to connect your website’s URL to a data stream.
But don’t be mistaken, they are not the same as views.
Also, you can’t create a filter in GA4. In case your property was converted from UA to GA4, then you can find a read-only list of UA filters under Admin » Account » All Filters.
“A flow of data from your website or app to Analytics. There are 3 types of data stream: Web (for websites), iOS (for iOS apps), and Android (for Android apps).”
You can use your data stream to find your measurement ID and global site tag code snippet. You can also enable enhanced measurements such as your page views, scrolls, and outbound clicks.
In a data stream, you can do the following:
Set up a list of domains for cross-domain tracking
Create a set of rules for defining internal traffic rules
Put together a list of domains to exclude from tracking
Data streams will make a lot of things easier. But there are 2 things that you need to be aware of. First, once you create a data stream, there’s no way to edit it. And if you delete a data stream, you can’t undo this action.
Events vs. Hit Types
UA tracks data by hit types which is essentially an interaction that results in data being sent to Analytics. This includes page hits, event hits, eCommerce hits, and social interaction hits.
GA4 moves away from the concept of hit types. Instead, it’s event-based meaning every interaction is captured as an event. This means everything including page, events, eCommerce transactions, social, and app view hits are all captured as events.
There’s also no option for creating conversion goals. But GA4 lets you flag or mark an event as a conversion with the flip of a toggle switch.
This is essentially the same thing as creating a conversion goal in Universal Analytics. You can also create new conversion events ahead of time before those events actually take place.
In GA4, Google organizes events into 4 categories and recommends that you use them in this order:
1. Automatically collected
In the first event category, there’s no option to turn on any setting for tracking events so you don’t need to activate anything here. Google will automatically collect data on these events:
first_visit – the first visit to a website or Android instant app
session_start – the time when a visitor opens a web page or app
user_engagement – when a session lasts longer than 10 seconds or had 1 or more conversions or had 2 or more page views
Keep in mind that we’re only at the start of GA4. With Google’s ever-advancing and machine-learning technology, more automatically collected events may be added as the platform progresses.
2. Enhanced measurement
In this section, you don’t need to write any code but there are settings to turn on enhanced measurements. This will give you an extra set of automatically collected events.
To enable this data collection, you need to turn on the Enhanced measurement setting in your Data Stream.
Then you’ll see more enhanced measurement events that include:
page_view: a page-load in the browser or a browser history state change
click: a click on an outbound link that goes to an external site
file-download: a click that triggers a file download
scroll: the first time a visitor scrolls to the bottom of a page
3. Recommended
These GA4 events are recommended but aren’t automatically collected in GA4 so you’ll need to enable them if you want to track them.
We suggest you check out what is in the recommended events and turn on tracking for what you need. This can include signups, logins, and purchases.
Before we move to custom events, if you don’t see these 3 event types – automatically collected, enhanced measurement, and recommended – in your dashboard, you should ideally create a custom event for it.
4. Custom
Custom events let you set up tracking for any event that doesn’t fall into the above 3 categories. You can create and modify your events. So for instance, you can create custom events to track menu clicks.
You can design and write custom code to enable tracking for the event you want. But there is no guarantee that Google will support your custom metrics and events.
No Bounce Rate
The bounce rate metric has vanished! It’s been suggested that Google wants to focus on users that stay on your website rather than the ones that leave.
So this has likely been replaced with engagement rate metrics to collect more data on user interactions and engaged sessions.
No Custom Reports
UA properties have a customization menu for options to create dashboards, create custom reports, save existing reports, and create custom alerts.
A lot of this has changed in GA4. To make it easier for you to understand, here are the UA metrics and their GA4 equivalents:
Custom reports can be found in the Explorations page.
Saved reports are automatically created when you run an Exploration.
Custom alerts can be set up inside custom Insights from the GA4 home page.
One more thing to note is that you also won’t find a way to link Google Search Console with a GA4 property (at the time of writing). And that’s all the key differences between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.
Now you may be wondering whether you HAVE TO make the switch to GA4. A lot of our users have been asking us this question so we’ll tell you quickly what you need to do.
Do I Have To Switch to GA4?
Google will retire Universal Analytics in July 2023. You’ll have access to your UA data for some time but all new data will flow into GA4. If you have a US property set up, you’ll see this warning in your dashboard:
So you have to set up a GA4 property sooner or later and we recommend that you do it sooner. This is because your UA data won’t be transferred to GA4. You have to start afresh.
You can set up your GA4 property now and let it collect data. In the meantime, you can continue to use Universal Analytics and use the time to learn the new GA4 platform. Then when we’re all forced to make the switch, you’ll have plenty of historical data in your GA4 property.
Want to skip the guide and use a tool? Then MonsterInsights is the best to set up GA4. It even lets you create dual tracking profiles so you can have both UA and GA4 running simultaneously.
These posts will help you track your users and their activity on your site so that you can get more valuable insights and analytics data to improve your site’s performance.
Are you trying to fix issues with WordPress search not working on your website?
While WordPress comes with basic search feature, it has some common errors and limitations that can keep your visitors from finding what they’re looking for.
In this post, we’ll show you how to fix problems with WordPress search not working.
Why Do WordPress Search Errors Happen?
Most websites have a search feature that helps visitors find interesting content on your WordPress blog or products that they may want to buy on your online store.
However, WordPress’ built-in search feature is very basic.
By default, it doesn’t search all types of content such as comments, reviews, or custom post types. This may stop the visitor from finding what they’re looking for.
The built-in search also focuses on matching search words with the post or page content without paying attention to things such as tags, categories, or custom fields. This is important information that can help your visitors get more accurate search results.
Lastly, there’s no easy way to customize the built-in search. For example, if you wanted to prioritize a post’s titles over its excerpt, or exclude certain pages from WordPress search, you would need to edit the code.
With that in mind, let’s look at how you can easily fix common problems with WordPress search not working. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the issue you’re having with WordPress search.
While WordPress has built-in search feature, not all themes may come with a search bar design. If your theme doesn’t come with a search bar, then there are a few ways that you can create one.
You can add a Search block to any widget-ready area of your WordPress website such as the header or footer. This is a quick and easy way to show a search bar across every page of your WordPress site.
To add a Search block, simply go to Appearance » Widgets. You can then find the area where you want to add a search bar, and click on its arrow icon to expand.
Then, just click on the + icon.
In the popup that appears, type in ‘search’ and then select the Search block.
Once you’ve done that, you can customize the Search block using the row of icons that appears above the block. This includes changing the size of the search button and adding some text.
When you’re happy with how your Search block looks, go ahead and click on the ‘Update’ button. You can now visit your website to see the search bar live.
Another option is adding the Search block to a specific page or post. For example, you might just want to show a search bar on your homepage or landing page.
To do this, just open the page or post where you want to show your search bar. You can then click on the + icon and add a Search block following the same process described above.
WordPress’ ready-made Search block is an easy way to add basic search to your site. However, if you want complete control over how your search bar looks and acts, then you’ll need a page builder plugin.
SeedProd is the best drag and drop page builder for WordPress and comes with over 80 professionally-designed blocks including a Search Form block. This allows you to instantly add a search bar to any area of your WordPress website.
All you need to do is open SeedProd’s editor and then drag and drop the Search Form block into place on your website’s layout.
Once you’ve done that, you can customize it using all the settings in the left-hand menu.
Once you’ve added a search bar, you can use the SeedProd theme builder to design a completely custom search results page that perfectly matches your brand. For more information, please see our guide on how to easily create a custom WordPress theme.
How to Fix WordPress Search Showing 404 Error
When a visitor performs a search, your site may show a 404 error such as ‘This page could not be found!’
You can often fix 404 errors by regenerating your permalinks. This rebuilds and repairs the WordPress permalink structure without changing anything on your site.
This may sound complex, but WordPress does all of the hard work for you.
To regenerate your permalinks, simply go to Settings » Permalinks.
Then, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.
That’s it. WordPress will now regenerate your permalink structure. To make sure it worked, head over to your site and try performing a search.
How to Fix WordPress Search Showing Irrelevant Results
Every time a visitor performs a search, you’ll want to show relevant search results. This helps visitors find interesting content, which will keep them on your site for longer and increase your sales and conversions.
However, the built-in WordPress search doesn’t always show the most accurate results. This is because it looks for the search term in your post’s title and content only.
With that in mind, we recommend installing an advanced search plugin.
SearchWP is the best custom search plugin for WordPress, used by over 30,000 websites. SearchWP can search every part of your site including custom fields, WooCommerce products, categories and tags, PDF files, and more.
You can use SearchWP to adjust your website’s search algorithm and make sure your most important content appears at the top of the visitor’s search results.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the SearchWP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, click on the new ‘SearchWP’ button in your website’s toolbar. You can then go ahead and click on ‘Activate License.’
Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘License’ tab.
You can now either paste or type your license into the ‘License’ box. You’ll find this key in the email you got when you purchased SearchWP.
After that, go ahead and click on the ‘Activate’ button.
SearchWP integrates with WordPress search automatically, so right away your site will start showing more accurate results. However, to get the best results you’ll want to customize SearchWP’s search engine settings.
Here it helps to think about the way that search engines such as Google rank their content.
These search engines use algorithms to find high-quality content that closely matches the search term. It then ranks this content to make sure the best matches appear at the top of the search results page.
With SearchWP you can build your own algorithms and set your own rules, just like Google. This can improve the visitor experience, boost your conversions, and help you make money online with WordPress.
To configure SearchWP’s settings, click on the ‘Engines’ tab.
On this screen, you’ll see sections for the different types of WordPress content such as pages and posts.
For each section, SearchWP shows the attributes it looks at when performing a search. In the following image, we can see that SearchWP searches the page’s title, content, slug, and the page’s excerpt.
There is also an ‘Applicable Attribute Relevance’ scale for each attribute. This is the weight that SearchWP gives to each attribute when ranking its search results.
In the following image, we can see that a post’s title has more weight than its URL slug.
You can make an attribute more or less relevant using its slider.
There are no settings that are guaranteed to provide accurate results for every website. With that in mind, you may want to try different relevancy settings to see what gives you the most accurate search results.
You can also add different types of content to be included in your search results. For example, you can add PDF searching and indexing in WordPress if you have PDF files you want your visitors to be able to search for.
If you have any custom taxonomies or fields, then you can also tell SearchWP to look at this content when searching your site.
To add or remove attributes, click on the ‘Add/Remove Attributes’ button.
This opens a popup. To get SearchWP to ignore an attribute, simply uncheck its box.
If you want to add an attribute, then click to check its box.
Want to include a custom field or taxonomy in your searches?
Simply type in the name of that field or taxonomy, and then select it when it appears.
Once you’re happy with your attributes, click on the ‘Done’ button.
You can now change the relevancy for your new attributes following the same process described above.
Once you’re connected to your site, you can use FTP to open the wp-content/themes/ folder.
Inside the ‘themes’ folder, find the theme you’re currently using on your WordPress website. You can then open this folder and find the search.php file.
Next simply click on the search.php file and select ‘View/Edit.’
This will open search.php in your computer’s default text editor.
Now, check this template for any queries that contain query_posts, new WP_Query, or get_posts. This usually means that your theme is performing a redundant search.
If search.php has any of these queries, then we recommend switching to an alternative WordPress theme. To help you out, we’ve created a list of the most popular and best WordPress themes.
Another option is to hire a WordPress developer who can write a new template that doesn’t perform a redundant search.
How to Fix WooCommerce Product Search Not Showing Accurate Results
Fast search helps visitors find what they’re looking for in less time. This will improve the user experience and can increase your pageviews and conversion rate.
Unfortunately, the built-in WordPress search isn’t particularly fast. As you add more content, you may notice that your site takes longer and longer to return the search results.
The good news is that there are ways to speed up your site’s search. If you’re using an advanced search plugin like SearchWP, then you’re already off to a great start.
SearchWP is designed to deliver search results, fast. It’s also fully customizable, so you can ignore some of your site’s content when performing a search. For example, you may tell SearchWP to ignore your media metadata. This can speed up your search by reducing the amount of content it has to look through.
You can also improve the search experience by adding live Ajax search to your WordPress site. This is a dropdown that guesses what visitors are searching for as they type, which can make your searches feel instant.
Would you like to accept Google Pay on your WordPress site?
When you allow your customers to choose their preferred payment method, you’ll build trust and increase conversions on your website.
In this article, we’ll show you how to accept Google Pay in WordPress.
Why Accept Google Pay in WordPress?
If you’re selling products or services on your WordPress website or asking for donations, then it’s important to let your visitors pay using their preferred method.
Often they will want to pay by credit card or PayPal, but newer methods like Google Pay and Apple Pay are becoming more popular.
Google Pay is available in 40 countries around the world and makes online payments simple. However, your customers can only use it if they’re on an Android device running version Lollipop 5.0 or higher, so you’ll probably want to include additional payment options for people using other devices.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to accept Google Pay in your online store.
Note: We’ll cover how to add a Google Pay option in WordPress without adding a full eCommerce cart, but we will leave other helpful resources at the end of this article for those looking for full eCommerce solutions.
WP Simple Pay is a simple yet powerful WordPress invoicing and payments plugin. The best part is that WP Simple Pay does not charge you any additional transaction fees, and you can set it up without the complexity of a cart system.
It lets you add Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit card as well as ACH bank payments, so you can give users multiple payment options which improves conversion.
While there is a free version of the plugin, you need the Pro plugin to accept Google Pay, create on-site payment forms, and more.
Upon activation, the WP Simple Pay setup wizard will start automatically. You simply need to click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button to continue.
On the first page, you’ll be asked to enter your license key. You can find this information from your account on the WP Simple Pay website.
After that, you need to click the ‘Activate and Continue’ button to move to the next step.
On the second page, you will need to connect WP Simple Pay to Stripe. Stripe is a popular payment gateway, and it’s the easiest way to add Google Pay to your website. It also supports all top credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, ACH payments, and more.
Simply click the ‘Connect with Stripe’ button, and from there you can log in to your Stripe account or create a new one. Anyone with a legitimate business can create a Stripe account and accept payments online.
Note: Stripe requires your site to be using SSL/HTTPS encryption. If you don’t already have an SSL certificate for your website, then please see our step by step guide on how to add SSL in WordPress.
Once you’ve connected to Stripe, you’ll be asked to configure your WP Simple Pay emails.
The options for payment and invoice emails to your customers have already been enabled for you. So is the option for sending payment notification emails.
You just need to enter the email address where the notifications should be sent.
Once you’ve done that, you need to click the ‘Save and Continue’ button to complete your setup of WP Simple Pay.
Google Pay is enabled by default when using Stripe Checkout, and will be automatically offered to Android users in participating countries.
If you decide to disable Google Pay in the future, then you will need to change the payment method settings in the Stripe Dashboard.
Creating a Payment Form in WordPress
Next, you need to create a payment form.
You can do that by clicking the ‘Create a Payment Form’ button on the last page of the setup wizard. This will automatically take you to the WP Simple Pay » Add New page.
You’ll be shown a list of payment form templates. You need to scroll down until you locate the Apple Pay / Google Pay template.
Simply hover over the template and click the ‘Use Template’ button when it appears.
This will take you to the payment form editor.
If you like, you can rename the form and give it a description. After that, you need to select the ‘Stripe Checkout’ option under Form Type.
After you’ve done that, we’ll move on to the Payment tab.
Here you can set the payment mode to either live or testing. Testing mode will let you make payments that are not actually charged so you can make sure your form is working properly and emails are being sent.
Don’t forget to change this to ‘Live’ when you’ve finished testing and are ready to start receiving payments from your customers.
You can also add the products or services that you offer, along with their prices and whether they are a one-time payment or a subscription.
Simply click the ‘Add Price’ button until you have added as many prices as you need. After that, you will need to add a label and price for each one. You can also select other options, such as recurring payments, or the user can determine the price, as in a donation.
You can show or hide a price by clicking the small arrow on the right.
Next, we’ll move on to the ‘Form Fields’ tab. Notice that the essential fields have already been added to the form, including an ‘Apple Pay / Google Pay’ button, credit card details, and a checkout button.
Using the ‘Form Fields’ drop down, you can choose additional fields and add them by clicking the ‘Add Field’ button. Options include name, phone number, address, and much more.
Finally, the ‘Stripe Checkout’ tab allows you to select additional payment methods and tweak the checkout form that is displayed after the user clicks the ‘Pay’ button.
For this tutorial, we’ll leave those settings as they are.
When you are happy with your payment form, click on the ‘Publish’ button to store your settings and push the form live.
Now we can add the form to a post or page on your website.
Adding the Payment Form to Your Website
WP Simple Pay makes it super easy to add forms anywhere on your website.
Simply create a new post or page, or edit an existing one. Then, click on the plus (+) sign at the top and add a WP Simple Pay block in the WordPress block editor.
After that, select your order form from the dropdown menu in the WP Simple Pay block.
Once you’re finished, you can update or publish the post or page, and then click on the preview button to see your form in action.
When your users click the Pay button, the Stripe checkout form will be displayed.
If they are using an Android device running Lollipop 5.0 or higher, then the Google Pay option will be displayed at the top of the form. Otherwise, the Google Pay option will be hidden, and your customers can pay using a credit card.
If you’re looking for other ways to add Google Pay in WordPress, then you can use full eCommerce solutions like Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce. Both of them have support for Apple Pay and Google Pay options.
Are you looking to switch to the latest Google Analytics version?
Google is now recommending website owners to move to the new Google Analytics 4 because they will be sunsetting the previous Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. After the sunset day, you won’t be able to track data in the older version.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily switch to Google Analytics 4 in WordPress.
Why Switch to Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google Analytics. It lets you track your mobile apps and websites in the same account, and offers new metrics, reports, and tracking features.
If you haven’t created a GA4 property yet, then now is the best time to switch to the latest version. That’s because Google announced that it will be closing down the old Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023.
What this means is that Universal Analytics will no longer receive data from your WordPress website, and it will eventually stop working after the sunset date. That means that all your old analytics data will be lost.
Switching to Google Analytics 4 as soon as possible will protect you from starting from scratch with no historical data.
To do this right, a lot of smart website owners are using the dual tracking method which allows you to continue using the current Universal Analytics while start sending data to GA4.
This way, you can future-proof your data while giving yourself plenty of time to learn the new Google Analytics dashboard and features.
That being said, let’s see how you can switch to Google Analytics 4 in WordPress with dual tracking.
If you’d prefer written instructions, just keep reading.
Creating a Google Analytics 4 Property
If you already have an existing Google Analytics account using the old version, then you can eaily create a new GA4 property and start sending stats to GA4.
After that, head over to the ‘Admin’ settings page in the bottom left corner.
If you’re on classic Google analytics, then you’ll see the option to setup GA4.
Go ahead and click on ‘GA4 Setup Assistant’ under the Property column.
In the next step, the setup assistant will give you 2 options. You can create a new Google Analytics 4 property or connect an existing one.
Since we’re setting up a new property, simply click the Get Started button under the ‘I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property’ option.
A popup will now appear with the details about the setup wizard.
If you’ve implemented your Universal Analytics using the Global Site Tag (gtag.js) code, then you’ll see an option to Enable data collection using existing tags.
This uses the existing tracking code on your site to collect information. That said, if you don’t already have the right tracking code on your website, we’ll show you how to add it to your WordPress blog below.
For now, you can go ahead and click the ‘Create property’ button.
The setup wizard will add a new GA4 property and copy the Universal Analytics property name, website URL, timezone, and currency settings.
You can now view your new Google Analytics 4 property in the GA4 Setup Assistant.
Next, you’ll need to click on the ‘See your GA4 property’ button to see your Google Analytics tracking code.
After clicking on the button, simply click on the ‘Tag installation’ option to retrieve your tracking code.
You should now see your new GA4 property under Data Streams.
Go ahead and click on your new property.
A new window will slide in from the right, and you’ll be able to see your web stream details.
Note: Google Analytics 4 uses both ‘data stream’ and ‘web stream’. These both simply mean the flow of analytics data that Google Analytics receives from your website.
Simply scroll down to Tagging Instructions section and click the Global site tag (gtag.js) option to expand the settings. You’ll now see your Google Analytics tracking code that needs to be added to your WordPress site.
One thing you need to know is that Google Analytics 4 reports are quite different than what you’re used to in Universal Analytics.
They have introduced new terminology, and many familiar metrics and reports are missing completely. Basically if you were using common reports like the Top Landing Pages report or others, then you’d have to recreate those from scratch in Google Analytics 4.
It will help you see all the familiar analytics reports right in your WordPress dashboard, and it also lets you use both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 at the same time.
Not to mention, with MonsterInsights you get all the powerful tracking features such as outbound link tracking, author tracking, and more which can be enabled without writing any code.
Let’s take a look at how to easily set up Google Analytics 4 on your WordPress site with MonsterInsights.
Adding Google Analytics Tracking Code to WordPress Site
The best way to add Google Analytics tracking code to your WordPress website is by using MonsterInsights. This is the plugin that we use on WPBeginner.
MonsterInsights is the best Analytics solution for WordPress, and it’s trusted by over 3 million websites because it lets you easily setup advanced tracking without any coding skills.
You can use the MonsterInsights Lite version to set up Google Analytics in no time. There are also premium MonsterInsights plans that offer more features like custom dashboard reports, email summaries, scroll tracking, eCommerce tracking, premium integrations, and more.
MonsterInsights also offers dual tracking, meaning you can use both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 at the same time. This is available in both the free version as well paid, and we highly recommend using this to ensure that your transition to GA4 goes smoothly.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you’ll be taken to the MonsterInsights welcome screen in your WordPress dashboard. Simply click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button to add Google Analytics to your site.
After clicking the button, the setup wizard will ask you to choose a category that best describes your website.
You can choose from a business website, publisher (blog), or online store. Once you’ve selected a category, click the ‘Save and Continue’ button.
In the next step, you’ll need to connect MonsterInsights with your WordPress site.
Go ahead and click the ‘Connect MonsterInsights’ button.
Once you click the button, you’ll need to sign in to your Google Account.
Simply select your account and click the ‘Next’ button.
Next, MonsterInsights will require access to your Google Analytics Account.
MonsterInsights App needs these permissions, so it can help you setup analytics properly and show you all the relevant stats right inside your WordPress dashboard.
You can click the ‘Allow’ button to continue.
After that, you’ll be redirected back to the MonsterInsights setup wizard.
To complete the connection, select your Google Analytics 4 property from the dropdown menu and click the ‘Complete Connection’ button.
Next, MonsterInsights will connect Google Analytics with your WordPress website.
On the next screen, you’ll see some recommended settings like file download tracking and affiliate link tracking.
Next, you can scroll down and select who can see reports and add different WordPress user roles.
Once you’re done, click the ‘Save and continue’ button.
After that, MonsterInsights will show different tracking features that you can enable for your website.
You can scroll down and click the ‘Skip for Now’ button.
Next, you’ll see a checklist showing that you’ve successfully connected Google Analytics to your website.
For example, it will show that you’re successfully connected to Google Analytics, the tracking code is properly installed, and the data is being collected.
That’s it, you’ve added Google Analytics 4 property to your WordPress site.
Creating a Measurement Protocol API Secret
If you want to MonsterInsights to track eCommerce purchases, form conversions, and more advanced tracking in Google Analytics, then you’ll need to create a Measurement Protocol API Secret.
First, you’ll need to go back to your Google Analytics account and then go to Admin settings. Next, click on the ‘Data Streams’ option under Property column.
Then you’ll need to select the Google Analytics 4 property that we created earlier.
Go ahead and select your property under Data Streams.
After that, you can scroll down to the ‘Advanced Settings’ section.
Simply click the ‘Measurement Protocol API secrets’ option.
A new window will now slide in with your Measurement Protocol API secrets.
You will have to click the ‘Create’ button.
After that, enter a nickname for your API secret so it’s easily identifiable.
When you’re done, click the ‘Create’ button.
You should now see your Measurement Protocol API secret.
Simply copy the API secret under the ‘Secret value’ field.
After that, you can head back to your WordPress website and navigate to Insights » Settings from your dashboard.
Now click on the ‘General’ tab at the top.
Next, you will have to scroll down to the ‘Google Authentication’ section.
Go ahead and enter the Secret value you just copied in the Measurement Protocol API Secret field.
You’ve successfully added Measurement Protocol API Secret in MonsterInsights.
Setting Up Universal Analytics Dual Tracking
Now that you have setup GA4, the next step is to enable dual tracking for Universal Analytics, so it can run alongside your Google Analytics 4 property in WordPress.
With MonsterInsights, you can easily set up dual tracking and simultaneously track both properties without writing code.
Note: If you already have Universal Analytics tracking code added to your WordPress website, then we recommend disabling it first. Otherwise, it could lead to double-tracking and can skew your data.
To start setting up dual tracking properly, you can head to Insights » Settings from your WordPress admin panel and then click on the ‘General’ tab.
Next, you’ll need to scroll down to the ‘Google Authentication’ section.
Now under the Dual Tracking Profile, enter your Universal Analytics (UA) code.
You can easily find your UA code in Google Analytics Admin settings.
Simply go to the Admin settings page in Google Analytics of your Universal Analytics property.
Then click on ‘Property Settings’ under the Property column.
You should see the Tracking Id, and it will look like this: UA-123856789-5
You’ve now successfully set up dual tracking on your WordPress website.
To see how your website is performing, simply go to Insights » Reports. Here you’ll find all the data you need to make the right decisions to grow your website.
Are you looking for the best WordPress themes of 2022?
With thousands of free and premium WordPress themes available, it’s hard for beginners to choose the right WordPress theme for their site.
In this article, we will share our expert picks of all the best and most popular WordPress themes of 2022.
The Most Common Traits of All Popular and Best WordPress Themes
WordPress themes are either niche-based or multipurpose in terms of features and options.
You can use a niche-based theme that’s designed especially for your industry, such as a restaurant theme.
Alternatively, you can choose a multipurpose theme that’s highly flexible and can work for any kind of website.
Regardless of the type, all the best WordPress themes have the following features and traits:
Mobile-responsive design: The theme designs are responsive and retina-ready, so your WordPress website looks great on all screen sizes and mobile devices.
SEO optimization: The theme follows the best SEO (search engine optimization) practices, so your website can rank higher in search results.
Page builder support: The theme is compatible with popular WordPress drag and drop page builders. This helps you create custom landing pages whenever you need them.
Speed and performance: Your theme plays an important role in the speed and performance of your website. You should look for themes that are well-designed to keep your site fast.
Customer support: The best themes include documentation and instructions that are easy to follow, are updated often, and are backed by a great support team to help you out if you get stuck.
These are the essential features that you should look for in a theme before selecting it for your website. Every theme in our list comes with many other useful features aside from the main ones that we mentioned above. You can read about these features in their descriptions.
Now that we have discussed the common traits of all popular themes, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best themes of 2022.
Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes and is owned by Elegant Themes. It includes an ultimate page builder. It has multiple visual elements and modules that help you create a beautiful website.
The theme comes with hundreds of free ready-made layouts for multiple industries and niches. The 1-click demo importer lets you import professionally designed pages and blog layouts to get started quickly. You can then replace the content with your own using the frontend editor.
With the built-in drag and drop page builder, you can move elements, save and manage custom designs, and use global styles on all your website pages. You can easily add testimonials, too.
Divi gives you complete control of the layout design, inline text editing, and custom CSS on your site. It’s highly flexible and easy to use. Plus, it’s SEO friendly to help your site rank well in Google and other search engines.
Elegant Themes offers great customer support if you have any problems with the theme.
Astra is a modern WordPress theme designed to create any website. It works with all the popular drag and drop page builders seamlessly.
The theme comes with several starter sites that you can use to launch your website quickly. These ready-made websites are perfect for small businesses, startups, blogs, and WooCommerce stores.
Astra has tons of amazing features, including page headers, mega menu, multiple layout choices, Google Fonts, unlimited color customization options, separate blog page layouts, and custom widgets.
Plus, Astra offers powerful integration with the WooCommerce plugin to create an online store. Their WooCommerce theme includes infinite scrolling, quick product view, shop page, product gallery, and cart options.
It also integrates with popular learning management systems like LearnDash. Astra has built-in SEO optimization to help your website rank well in Google and other search engines.
SeedProd is the best WordPress website builder on the market. It lets you design your custom theme layout with a visual drag and drop builder, without writing code.
SeedProd comes with several professionally-designed theme templates. These templates include all the page layouts that you need for your website, as well as high-converting landing pages. They can be used as-is, or completely customized to suit your needs.
You can use the SeedProd page builder to customize the layout and design of all of your theme pages. It shows a real-time preview of all the changes, so you can see how your website will appear to users before it’s even published.
Besides the theme builder, it also offers coming soon and maintenance mode templates. When you’re making your website, you can enable the coming soon page to engage your users and grow your email list.
SeedProd’s visual builder is powerful yet beginner-friendly. Whether you want to design a custom landing page or a complete website, it’s easy to set up with the drag and drop option.
Ultra is a powerful multipurpose WordPress theme built to help you easily make a website. It comes with dozens of ready-made sites for niches such as lifestyle, magazines, restaurants, photography, fashion, and more.
It also includes the Themify page builder that you can use for customization. Ultra has several builder addons to add advanced elements like progress bars, counters, pricing tables, an audio player, and more.
Other notable features include smart layout options, color choices, crisp typography, section-based scrolling, image filters, and portfolio options.
Ultra is also a perfect theme to start an online store as it has full WooCommerce compatibility. It’s easy to set up and customize your site with the live WordPress theme customizer.
OceanWP is a free responsive WordPress theme. It comes with a 1-click demo content importer and hundreds of ready-made sites to launch a website instantly.
The theme has multiple extensions to add features to your website like a login popup, an Instagram feed, a sticky footer, a featured posts slider, and more. It’s translation ready to create a multilingual website.
The OceanWP theme supports WooCommerce out of the box. It has built-in SEO features to help improve your website rankings.
Breakthrough Pro is a minimalist WordPress theme. It’s built on top of the Genesis Framework by StudioPress which makes it powerful and robust.
The theme is ideal for any business website. It comes with 9 custom widgets, 3 layout options, landing page templates, and a custom header. It works with the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg editor) to customize posts and pages smoothly.
Hestia Pro is a modern multipurpose WordPress theme that’s optimized for speed. It has both one-page and multi-page layouts to make any type of website.
With a slick design, Hestia Pro lets you showcase your business and services professionally. It integrates with popular page builders like Beaver Builder, Elementor, Visual Composer, and more.
Hestia Pro is fully compatible with WooCommerce, and it allows you to create beautiful products and shop pages easily. It also ships with multiple starter sites for eCommerce stores and other business niches.
Nozama is a WordPress WooCommerce theme built to start an online store quickly. It’s highly customizable to display your featured products on the homepage.
It comes with a built-in storefront to create product filters, custom product layouts, and more. Other features include social media integrations, color customization, and header visibility.
Eclipse is an advanced WordPress photography and personal blog theme. It’s well-suited for photographers, bloggers, and authors.
The theme comes with a featured slideshow, widgetized columns, Instagram image carousel, ad placement spaces, and more. It’s beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
Sydney Pro is a fantastic WordPress multipurpose theme. It uses the custom Elementor blocks for a carousel slider, pricing tables, and a timeline.
Other notable features include page templates, header choices, customizer options, and a video header. The theme is translation ready and allows you to create a multilingual website easily.
Storefront is a high-quality and popular WordPress WooCommerce theme. It comes with an intuitive and flexible layout to create an online store.
It works with all WooCommerce extensions seamlessly. The theme is fully customizable for background, colors, and font using the WordPress customizer that shows your changes in real-time.
Inspiro is a stylish WordPress theme. It comes with a fullscreen video background slideshow that supports YouTube, Vimeo, and custom videos.
The theme is perfect for a portfolio, small business, or eCommerce website. It ships with a gallery module to display your images, videos, and work portfolio beautifully.
Neve is a modern WordPress multipurpose theme designed to create all kinds of websites easily. It’s highly flexible and easy to use.
This theme is compatible with popular page builders, including the Divi website builder, Beaver Builder, and more. Neve also supports the WordPress block editor to customize your pages and posts.
Authority Pro is a powerful WordPress theme. It’s built with a multipurpose approach to let you create any professional business website or online store.
The theme is highly scalable and works equally well for small to large business websites. It supports the WPForms plugin to create a contact form or any other form quickly.
News Portal is a free WordPress magazine theme. It has a widgetized layout and multiple ready-made magazine templates to launch your online magazine instantly.
It comes with multiple color schemes, category color options, background colors, and more. The theme is easy to set up and manage with the WordPress live customizer. Plus, you can easily add widgets and shortcodes to the widget areas.
News Portal is also retina ready and uses responsive design, meaning your site will look great on all devices.
Shoptimizer is a fast WordPress WooCommerce ready theme. It comes with multiple features to set up and grow your eCommerce store quickly.
The theme has a beautiful layout, custom header, featured content section, cart options, a wishlist, and more. It’s optimized for SEO and speed performance. Plus, it’s designed to boost conversions.
Gema is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for photographers, personal bloggers, authors, lifestyle, and fashion websites.
It comes with a custom logo, a classic navigation menu, buttons, post layouts, and a style manager. The Gema theme is beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
Tusant is a unique WordPress podcast theme well-suited for musicians, bands, podcasters, vlogs, and any audio or video streaming website.
It allows you to embed videos and audios from multiple sources. The theme has several layout choices, crisp typography, and custom background color. You can also use the drag and drop page builders for customization.
Saved is a WordPress church theme ideally built for non-profits, churches, and fundraising websites. It comes with a built-in homepage builder to set up your website’s homepage quickly.
It comes with a Church Content plugin that lets you add sermons, staff profiles, events, and locations. Other useful functionality includes custom page templates, sticky menu, font choices, color schemes, and more.
Didi is a WordPress theme designed specifically for fashion, lifestyle, and wellness blogs. It comes with a white background that makes your content stand out.
It offers multiple layout choices, custom page templates, sidebar layouts, and video support. The Didi theme is compatible with WPML to create a multilingual website.
Travel Way is a modern WordPress theme ideally built for travelers, travel bloggers, and travel photographers.
It features a fullscreen custom header background with call-to-action buttons, social icons, logo, navigation menu, and other details. The theme has multiple sections to display your favorite locations beautifully.
Fitness is an elegant WordPress theme beautifully crafted for personal trainers, gyms, yoga instructors, and any health-related business.
It allows you to create custom pages for trainers and fitness classes, such as online yoga classes. With the 1-click demo content importer, you can import a ready-made website and get started quickly.
Foodica is a modern WordPress theme for food bloggers, food critics, chefs, and food recipe websites. It comes with a minimalist layout and 10 color schemes.
On the homepage, Foodica has a beautiful featured slider, featured recipes section, multiple ad placement spaces, and more. The theme integrates with WooCommerce to start an online food delivery service quickly.
Kale Pro is a premium WordPress food blog theme. It has a beautiful layout that you can also use to create a lifestyle blog, a fashion website, or an online magazine.
It features recipe index templates to showcase your recipes stylishly. Other features include a sticky navigation menu, an image slider, custom fonts, color schemes, and a background image.
Kea is a WordPress hotel theme designed for hotels, resorts, BnBs, and accommodation businesses. It offers a fullscreen image background on the homepage.
Kea allows you to integrate a reservation and booking service to manage your online bookings easily. The theme supports a fullscreen video or carousel slideshow to display your hotel rooms, lobby, and services.
Elite is a creative WordPress fullscreen theme packed with tons of features that you can use to launch a powerful eCommerce store. It allows you to showcase your products in beautiful image galleries and increase your sales.
It comes with image and video galleries, a custom logo option, Google Fonts, page layouts, and more. The Elite theme is easy to set up using the WordPress customizer with a live preview.
Essence Pro is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for health, wellness, and lifestyle niches. It features an eye-catching fullwidth custom header image to create a powerful first impression.
The theme is built on top of the Genesis Framework, which makes it rock solid and robust. It ships with the Atomic Blocks and WPForms plugin to help you get started quickly.
Other notable features include 6 layout options, custom widget areas, landing pages, and more. It’s translation ready and supports WooCommerce out of the box.
Panoramic is a free WordPress multipurpose theme to create any website. It has a minimal layout with a simple and clean design that makes a great first impression on your visitors.
The theme integrates seamlessly with popular WordPress plugins like WPForms, SiteOrigin’s page builder, and WooCommerce. It comes with a homepage slider and flexible theme options that you can manage using the WordPress live customizer.
Agama is a free WordPress theme designed specifically for digital agencies, corporate businesses, photographers, freelancers, and portfolio websites.
It has a white background with a beautiful color selection for fonts, links, and buttons. The theme is SEO-ready and compatible with the WPML plugin to translate your website easily.
Silk is a modern WordPress fashion blog theme. It comes with an attractive layout and a featured content slider on the homepage.
With this theme, you get an Instagram feed display, social tools, custom post layouts, an image slider, and a mega menu. It has color choices, animations, fonts, and custom backgrounds.
Blockchain is a crypto business WordPress theme. It’s ideally built for financial traders, investors, advisors, and consultants.
The theme includes cryptocurrency exchange tables, post types, unlimited color schemes, custom widgets, and more. It fully supports drag and drop page builder plugins and the WordPress WooCommerce plugin.
