When trying to grow an audience, SEO blog writing is a must. However, trying to stuff in too many keywords can easily push your readers away. So content creators and website managers must strive for the best of both worlds.

Does writing blog posts help with SEO? Yes, absolutely. Stick with us to the end of the article because you won’t need SEO blog services after you read it!

What Is Important to Consider for SEO?

Regardless of whether you are running a blog or your blog is just a part of the website you are managing, content marketing drives people to come visit. Here’s a good structural view of what a page must have in order to be indexed and rank properly:

• To be a part of the XML sitemap. (Or, in the case of blog articles, the parent directory part of the sitemap).
• Quick loading speed. The faster your page loads, the better ranked by Google it will be.
• To target specific keywords.
• To resonate with what a person would look to read after typing in these keywords in a search bar.
• Free value upfront.
• No keyword stuffing.
• Proper Meta tags – Meta title and descriptions relevant to what would make the user inclined to click on your article through Google or Bing.
• Proper H1 and H2 tags, good article structure.

There are practically two things that you must achieve to have a good SEO ranking. First, you must make people click on your articles, and second, they must stay for a longer period on your website. We can sum these two things up with impressions CTR (click-through rate) and average session per user in Google Analytics.

Carefully monitor these metrics, and do tests on how to improve them, and in the long run, you will have tremendous success.

Identify the Right SEO Keywords to Target in 3 Simple Steps

Contrary to popular belief, the right keywords can be found with or without the usage of professional tools. When it comes to blog writing for SEO, identifying the keywords of your competitors is very easy. Let’s be smart here.

1. Step one: Find a good article from a competitor on a similar topic.

2. Step two: Copy the text of the article

3. Step three: Check this cool thing out. Paste the well-performing text from your competitors, and you will instantly see the most commonly used keywords in it, by frequency. For example, if you paste this article, you will get these results:

And if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see the most used bigrams and trigrams, which are complex keywords:

If that doesn’t seem like a whole lot of help, then you are probably not ready to use more complex keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs because they provide you with a ton of features that might just be too overwhelming.

Aside from content SEO optimization, there are two other aspects we should pay a closer look to, as well.

On-page Optimization

As mentioned, load time and proper URL and website structure are essential to your website getting indexed and your pages ranking properly.

There are things that will slow down your website, and despite all the SEO blog writing you do or pay for, you might not rank as high as you want to. One of these things is the usage of gifs and super-heavy images or videos embedded on your website.

Hit “F12” on your browser while opening your website incognito, and pay close attention to the Network tab.

Then check the size of each element, and if there are any elements above 500kb, that’s bad news. Optimize all the images by converting them to .webp format and reuploading them. That will greatly increase the speed of your site, especially for mobile users using 4 or 5-g networks.

Off-page Optimization

Having a few hundred backlinks from high authority websites will undoubtedly help all of your pages rank higher, regardless of whether they are specifically linked or it’s just your domain.

It’s more important, however, to do guest posting on relevant platforms and websites that can allow you to expand your audience in a similar niche. Always prioritize backlinks not only by domain authority but by the core audience that they can provide you access to.

Building a Better Website Ecosystem

Step up your SEO game by following the tips in this article, and eventually, you will start ranking higher and higher. But in the meantime, make sure not to forget other core aspects of your website like Ad optimization, subscriptions, and Adblock recovery. Luckily, there are services like Publir that greatly automate the process for you. Give it a look!

The post The Top 2023 SEO Strategies That Will Drive More Traffic to Your Website first appeared on Publir.

Top Digital Marketing tools your Small Business

With all this in mind, we’ve highlighted some of the top digital marketing tools your small business should employ to find success in the online sphere.

Email marketing tools

In our post ‘Best Email Newsletter Practices for Small Businesses’, we discussed how email remains a key element in monetization strategies, due to the fact that it can target a wide range of customer personas and purchasing demands. In this regard, you should use email marketing tools to improve your business deliverability and create engaging offer campaigns. Such tools include Lemlist and Sendgrid, which offer various email marketing services such as flexible design options, in-depth deliverability, performance analytics, and personalization features.

Social media marketing tools

Social media has evolved into a key marketing channel for every business today. Aside from enabling businesses to easily connect with their customers, social media also helps with nurturing leads, building business relationships, and gathering valuable customer data. Given all of this, you should strongly consider using social media marketing tools such as Sprout Social and Hootsuite. These platforms can help you with managing your small business’s social media accounts by helping you to organize your assets and content calendar. This, in turn, makes it easier to publish and schedule your content across your social media accounts. Furthermore, these tools also generate social analytics, which you can use to focus on improving KPIs and secure ROI for your business.

Search engine optimization tools

Reports show that more than half of website traffic comes from queries on search engines. Because of this, you should aim to make your business’s website more visible on search engines. The best way to do this is by leveraging search engine optimization, or SEO. A post at the reliable finance website AskMoney.com has described SEO as a set of techniques that allow your website to rank high on search engine results. By extension, it’s a practice that you can use to increase brand awareness and visibility, which translates to higher revenue.

Admittedly, learning SEO can be difficult, and might seem complicated –– especially if you’re not used to very technical concepts. Thankfully, there are SEO tools that make it easier to optimize your business website. These included Ahrefs, which helps with generating keywords for your website’s content. Another tool that you should use to improve your website’s SEO is SEMrush, which helps you track the position of your priority keywords, as well as break down keyword ideas, variations, and difficulties to help generate useful content ideas.

Graphic creation tools

Digital marketing relies on engagement. With that said, you should be able to create graphics that are visually stimulating for your target audience and properly convey your message and branding. With that in mind, be sure to use graphic creation tools that help you produce eye-catching visuals. Trusted creative resource CreativeBloq.com lists some of the best tools for creating social media graphics. These include the ever-popular Canva and the infographics creation software Piktochart.

Final Thoughts

Through the practices and tools discussed above, you can ensure that your business won’t fall behind in modern digital marketing. To learn more about content monetization and other tools that can help your small business succeed in the digital space, be sure to check out what we offer here at Publir.

Featured Image credit: https://weedit.network/

The post Essential Digital Marketing Tools Your Small Business Needs first appeared on Publir.

Why Are Chatbots Popular? 

People don’t want to talk to companies. They want to talk to other people. Rather than calling and asking for help, or filling out a form hoping someone calls them back, companies want answers to their questions immediately, with control of the conversation. Chatbots are programmed chat interfaces that website visitors can interact with. Programmed to closely mimic human behavior, they interact with website visitors in a conversational manner. If you have used a live chat tool on a website, you’ve spoken to a chatbot. The questions and responses are programmed, instead of human reading and responding to each individual message. Chatbots help consumers get from point A to B quickly and smoothly, and are often referred to as little guides helping consumers find their way around your website.

What Are The Different Kinds Of Chatbots?

There are 2 main kinds of chatbots. Simple Chatbots and Advanced Chatbots. 

Simple Chatbots  

These respond to pre-written keywords or commands and are programmed by developers. Simple and limited in terms of communication, they fail to understand non-standard commands which aren’t in their scope of operation. 

Advanced Chatbots 

Advanced chatbots rely on AI (Artificial Intelligence) while communicating with online visitors. They can understand basic language and communication, and their responses are many. They don’t rely on pre-programmed keywords or phrases being entered. AI Chatbots are not human, but online visitors will feel as if they’re talking to someone in your office. 

What Are The Benefits Of Using Chatbots? 

Zero Waiting Time 

Hate waiting in line? The feeling is common. If there is a video that takes 10 extra seconds to load and play, 50 users shift to something else. This behavior is common for all services. We want something immediately. Imagine losing half your website customers just because you can’t respond to their queries. This is quite a bad loss because customers leave with a bad taste, never to return.

Personalization 

Personalization can transform a prospect into a customer, and a customer to a recurring client. Conversational chatbots that are dependent on AI, make the customer feel as if they’re having a conversation with a human being, not a robot. There are no commands to the website users, like CTAs. Instead, chatbots make customers feel at home by offering information or services in a conversational, friendly way. On a retail business website, a chatbot isn’t different from a salesperson, ready to help the visitor with product information, payment, and order tracking.

High Customer Service Levels 

Chatbots that use Natural Language Processing (NLP), can process or decode natural languages at different levels. They can break down syntax, semantics, discourse, and speech to get down to the sentence’s hidden intent. They can dive into human psychology to understand customers with relevant information. Timely responses are key in this regard. 

Improved User Engagement 

Under pressure to build the right User Experience (UX), web designers and developers are always under pressure. Customer expectations know no bounds, so UX improvement is an important part of it all. Chatbots if correctly designed, coded, and integrated into a business ecosystem can serve users constantly and spontaneously, delighting them always.

Target A Wider Audience 

A lot of messaging platforms like FB Messenger, Slack, Telegram, and Skype, give consent and resources for chatbot development and businesses. It is easier to target a wider audience because these messaging platforms already have success and a wide user base. It easily gets accepted into the market. 

Help in Deriving Business Intelligence 

The integrated AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning, help these chatbots collect and process a lot of conversational data accumulated over time, process it, and derive valuable actionable insights from it. This is very important for any business because it gives clues to improve and innovate products/services, staying relevant to customers and market demands. 

Help WIth Payments and Checkout 

If there are complications during checkout, customers might abandon their shopping cart altogether. This is a major challenge for eCommerce vendors. Sometimes it’s also the unsolved queries, besides the complexity of the process. A chatbot developer could integrate the API of a payment system like (PayPal, EasyPay, and Stripe), with the built chatbot, to help shoppers get answers to queries that are stopping them from completing the checkout process.

Assistance in Performing Surveys 

Chatbots can help survey customers’ experiences with purchased products and services, as well as process their requirements and expectations. Surveys are seen as tedious, and most attempts through emails and sites go in vain, as audiences, due to a lack of time, refuse to engage. Talking bots that involve customers in real-time discussions, make the survey engaging and successful.

Push Notifications Become More Relevant 

A lot of times, customers fail to notice notifications, both email, and push. They think it’s distracting. However, AI chatbot developments can make a difference to this. Customers might start paying more attention to alerts. 

Keep Up With The Trends 

Oracle estimates that around 50% of customers want businesses or service providers to stay online 24X7. Apps like Facebook Messenger, Kik, Skype, and others, are contributing to this. FB Messenger and Kik alone support around 30,000 chatbots. Customers feel at ease communicating with a brand online, through a chatbot, to make a purchase. 

Build Trust 

Since AI chatbots are the first interaction that a potential customer has with your brand, it is a great chance to educate the buyer about your products and services, and what they can do for them. Chatbots make a positive impression, and a bond is formed between your brand and your audience.

Chatbots Are Always There

As cheesy as this might sound, chatbots are the ones who will never leave us! They are programmed to be better than that. Chatbots are always there whenever you need them, day or night. Whether you have an urgent query at 2 am, the chatbot will be there waiting to help you for sure.

Chatbots ‘Talk The Talk’

Chatbots might not be human, but they are quite natural. They don’t need a filter to engage appropriately with customers. They keep conversation easy and flowing, so business is conducted in a natural and organized manner. Sometimes, the conversation is so natural that you might forget that you are talking to a bot. Bots are not human, so they don’t have the emotional hang-ups we deal with. They can keep customers cool, calm, and collected. If customers get worked up, a bot will not mind. 

Conclusion

Thus, chatbots are very useful and can diffuse some of the issues that arise out of human error. For instance, have you ever spoken to a representative who may be having a bad day, or may have an unpleasant tone in their voice? Bots treat everyone with equal, undivided attention and respect giving your company the advantage in the tricky field of customer service.

Read More

Ad Viewability and its Impact on Publisher’s Revenue

Top 13 Ways to Improve Your Organic Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The post Important Benefits of Integrating Chatbots with Your Business Website first appeared on Publir.

Whenever you visit a website, your browser downloads a copy of the website and stores the data on your computer’s hard disc. Once it is done, the next time you visit the same website, it will load quicker. Images, movies, scripts, and other technical data are examples of data it stores, resulting in a faster loading time. Cache is essentially a collection of items kept in a hidden place. Google Cache is nothing more than a raw HTML backup of a page’s content or a copy of a page that Google keeps as a backup.

What is Google Cache?

Google typically takes a picture of each page it analyses and caches or saves it as a backup. Google utilizes the cached version to determine if a page is a suitable match for our query. We can often retrieve a website’s cached version faster than the page itself since Google’s servers are often significantly faster than many web servers.

A cached link appears in almost every result of our search. Instead of sending you to the current version of the website, clicking on that link brings you to the Google cached version of the page.

How does Google cache work?

As its crawler studies a web page for indexing, Google takes photos of it on a regular basis. Most images are taken one to four weeks apart. The current condition of the corresponding website is examined in detail after each crawling and then saved in Google’s cache. Clicking on a search result will display a snapshot produced from Google’s cache if a cached page is momentarily inaccessible due to technical issues.

In addition, this cache is extremely significant for SERPs. In this cache, Google saves the content of all websites that may be relevant to users’ search queries. When responding to users’ search requests, Google’s server uses an index to search the cache for relevant and up-to-date web information. This guarantees that search requests are responded to in milliseconds or less.

Is Google cache important?

Because the internet is continuously changing, the Google cache is essential. Websites are continually updated by marketing teams and web developers to improve performance and user experience. However, if a page is destroyed or hacked, a user or webmaster may require access to the information that was previously available. That’s when they’ll be able to visit the cache. Aside from the backups you conduct manually, the cache can also serve as a handy backup.

There are other reasons why Google cache is important to you as a website owner. You may hope your website never goes down or has problems, but it does. Users may access your content even if something isn’t operating properly because of the cache. You may also utilize the cached version of your site to find out how your site is indexed and fix issues.

Every online company should use Google cache since it influences how relevant a website looks to Google. It’s crucial to have eye-catching visuals and a great website design to keep visitors on the page for a longer time; nevertheless, having well-organized information and relevant keywords is critical to help consumers locate the website.

Simply run a Google search to verify the cache date on a regular basis to guarantee that a page stays relevant. If you look at when the webpage was last cached, you could see if Google thought it was relevant during the most recent scan. The cache data should be as recent as possible.

What are the advantages of Google Cache?

The biggest benefit of Google cache is the quick response time to search requests. The caching process decreases the amount of time that users have to wait, which lessens their dissatisfaction and, as a result, their bounce rate. Another significant benefit is that consumers have access to stuff that is currently inaccessible. For instance, if a website’s owner has destroyed it, Google Cache will give backups of the most current version as well as the requested material. 

Additionally, Google Cache enables website owners to quickly and easily determine when a web page was last scanned by Google. The timestamp on the snapshot indicates the precise time and date of the last indexing. While a web page is being re-indexed, Google may or may not produce a fresh snapshot. Even if the material has been changed numerous times, an earlier version may appear in the cache and SERPs. As a result, while utilizing material from the Google Cache, users should always be cautious.

Why should you use Google Cache?

Google Cache is difficult to beat in terms of speed and ease of use. As a result, it’s a useful tool for keeping track of specific characteristics of your website. As a website owner, there are five methods for you to use Google Cache:

1. Make sure there isn’t any duplicate content. When you click on a cached link, you may end up on a website that isn’t what you intended. Duplicate content is one way this might happen. When Google discovers two sites that are extremely similar, it may decide not to keep them separate in the index. As a result, only one is saved in the cache. Please review the two pages and come up with a technique to separate them.

2. Check to see if Google respects your canonical tags. It is possible that your website has duplicate material on purpose, but you’ve inserted rel=canonical tags to notify Google which version to crawl. Examine the Google Cache version of a page you don’t want to be indexed. You should be sent to a cached version of the canonical page.

3. Ensure that your marketing efforts have been crawled. A fast peek at the cached version of a website can inform you whether it’s been crawled if you’ve increased your SEO or content development efforts and want to make sure Google is indexing the changes. It’s worth noting that even if your changes haven’t yet been displayed on the cached page, they may have been indexed. If you notice your revisions in the cache, it means they’ve been indexed and will begin to influence your search result ranks.

4. Monitor the changes to the websites of your competitors. Sometimes when you go about your business, as usual, your rival may unexpectedly snatch your spot at the top of the search results for a vital keyword. Have you ever wondered how did they get there? You can find it out easily via Google Cache. You can compare their cached sites to the current versions to observe what modifications the competitor has made recently.

5. Get the most recent version of your website. Always keep a backup of your website in case something goes wrong with it. Even the best-prepared person can experience the worst-case scenario. While the Google Cache version of your site does not substitute a full backup, it does occasionally allow you to view how your pages appeared before calamity hit. It can be used to recover lost or deleted material or code.

Final Thoughts

Google Cache is very useful for website owners. It’s a simple method to see how your site was indexed, and it may aid in detecting and diagnosing issues. Google cached pages assist in providing a consistent and trustworthy user experience. Google will offer visitors a cached page if sites load slowly or not at all.

Troubleshoot any site issues affecting your content, page load speed, or overall site performance to guarantee your pages are cached appropriately.

The post What is Google Cache? Everything Website Owners Need to Know first appeared on Publir.

How to fix the Largest Contentful Paint issue?

Sometimes, when you go to a website, instead of seeing a well-designed homepage, you may get nothing but a blank screen. This can occur as a result of problems with the largest contentful paint element. Simply put, this indicates that if the website’s largest element isn’t entirely loaded, visitors will see nothing but a blank page. This not only degrades the user experience on your website but can also cause visitors to leave right away.

Slower server response times, render-blocking JavaScript and CSS, slower resource load times, and client-side rendering can all contribute to poor largest contentful paint. If your site’s JavaScript and CSS are render-blocking resources, it might result in a poor largest contentful paint.

There are certain steps to fix the largest contentful paint element issues:

• Server response times should be reduced

The most common cause of resources not loading quickly on websites is your hosting plan. A shared hosting package will not provide lightning-fast server response times for most online shops. A sluggish host server makes it impossible to have a fast, responsive website. Aside from hosting, improving your server to handle traffic spikes is a smart approach to minimize LCP element problems. The usage of third-party plugins and technologies might potentially slow down the server response time. It increases the number of resources your site needs to fully load web pages by adding to your code. One of the greatest strategies to keep your LCP scores low is to enable page caching on your website.

• Optimize your images to load quickly

To load any image rapidly without generating any LCP difficulties, make sure it is optimized. Images can be compressed to load faster for all sorts of visitors and internet connections. Individual demands and business objectives must be considered while determining the appropriate compressional ratio. Furthermore, when it comes to images, most website owners make the error of employing a single large image for all screen sizes. Large photos must be optimized so that no additional resources are consumed. After giving several image sizes of the same picture, let the browser determine which image size to use.

• CSS and Javascript components should be optimized

All critical CSS and JavaScript files must be rendered before your browser can load your webpage. If CSS and JavaScript files are not optimized inside your code, this will slow down page load times and result in a low LCP score. Minifying and compressing code is one of the greatest techniques to eliminate superfluous “junk” code from your website in order to minimize file size and enhance page loading rates. Another excellent technique to improve response times and page speed is to remove all non-essential CSS and only use important CSS resources. Once you’ve identified the key CSS resources above the fold, you may experiment with eliminating or decreasing any irrelevant CSS from the code.

• High-priority materials should be preloaded

One thing that can help you speed up page load times and decrease your website’s LCP score is pre-loading important resources. You may preload above-the-fold photos, videos, important CSS, and fonts on your website so that they can be utilized whenever they’re needed without causing a delay later. Reducing the file size of text files like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will enhance your website’s LCP score. As text files are transmitted between the servers and the browser, it also improves loading times.

Why is LCP important for SEO?

Site speed is generally recognized as a ranking factor in the SEO market, but there are a number of reasons for this, and hence a variety of reasons why LCP will have an impact on SEO. We’ll explore five reasons why a decent LCP is vital for SEO and increasing the visibility of your websites to your target audience.

1. It is a measure created by Google

There are other search engines than Google, but because it is one of the most widely used, it is generally the one that businesses aim for first. Furthermore, when it comes to new features and algorithms for SEO, many other search engines like to follow Google’s lead, so it’s always a good idea to listen to the experts.

2. Rankings are influenced by site speed

The speed of a website is an essential aspect of its overall performance, and it is one of the signals that a search engine’s algorithm considers when ranking sites. Bounce rates are greater for sites that take longer to load. Many users will exit a website after three seconds if it has not loaded. Higher bounce rates might lead to lower conversion rates, which can have a detrimental influence on your SERP visibility.

3. Crawling is hampered by slow loading

You may gain a better knowledge of the load time of your web pages by using LCP reporting. This might reveal any areas that need to be improved in order to lower your LCP. This is important since poor page speeds restrict the number of pages a search engine can crawl at once, affecting your indexation. This will have a direct impact on how highly your site ranks in SERPs.

4. User experience is a key SEO ranking element

Page speed is crucial to visitors since it affects their experience on your site. Google has algorithms in place that seek to rank your web pages based on how enjoyable they are. It is an essential part of their algorithm to look at how delightful it is for people to browse your website. After all, they don’t want slow-loading, difficult-to-navigate web pages to appear at the top of their search results.

5. Visitors value content.

The LCP measure accomplishes something that no other metric does: it prioritizes content experience over all other aspects of user experience. Presenting relevant material that is valuable to the visitor has always been a big aspect of SEO and ranking high. This increases your domain authority and convinces the search engine that you’re a useful and reliable source that deserves to rank higher in the SERPs.

What is a good LCP score?

LCP evaluates rendering time, therefore the lower your score, the better, because your users will view the important material sooner. The 75th percentile of page loads, divided across mobile and desktop devices, is an excellent benchmark to measure to verify you’re reaching this objective for the majority of your consumers.

For a good score, LCP should be less than or equal to 2.5 seconds. In this situation, the page will obtain a green score and will pass the test. If your LCP is between 2.5 and 4.0 seconds, you’ll receive an orange grade since your score “needs improvement.” Assume the LCP is longer than 4 seconds. The score is then marked as “bad,” and you must rectify it as soon as possible.

Image source

Final thoughts

Largest contentful paint is a metric that shows how well your website is performing overall. It is the most significant measure for determining your website’s page speed and response time. You may strive for a lower LCP score by going through the many methods we outlined to solve the most contentious paint element issues. 

However, if you fail to monitor LCP and solve issues, it is going to be a major blunder that will harm not only the usability of your site but also your ability to attract consumers in the first place. Moreover, if you will implement the techniques discussed in this post, it will surely increase your LCP scores, enhance user experience, and assist you in meeting your conversion targets.

The post Largest Contentful Paint: A Helpful Metric for Your Website first appeared on Publir.

What is a VAST tag

In simple words, VAST is a script that allows video players and ad servers to interact successfully, guaranteeing that a video ad plays as intended and provides a consistent experience for the customer. A Video Ad Serving Template tells video players how to get an ad, when to render it, what ad-media to use, as well as the length, format, duration, tracking information, and price.

Publishers who use VAST have witnessed a substantial increase in video ad revenue over the years. In fact, video advertising expenditure is predicted to increase to $35 billion by 2024, up from $26 billion now. Many publishers are increasing their earnings by utilizing programmatic video advertising.

The details of each VAST tag vary depending on the information that an advertiser wishes to transmit to the video players of the audience. In general, though, you’ll see something that looks like HTML, with property items represented in each tag by straightforward assignments. A link to the media file that makes up the ad content is present in every set of VAST tags.

VAST tags are also used by advertisers to specify the format of an ad video file. The tag in this example informs the video player that the file is in mp4 format. Later versions of VAST extended support for various file types, such as Flash and Javascript, which aren’t always single media.

A VAST tag also identifies the type of advertisement that will be shown. This provides the advertiser some control over how the ad appears in relation to the content, such as pre-roll ads that appear before the content or overlays that appear over the content. Later versions of VAST enhanced its ad type support to provide advertisers more complex alternatives including ad pods, which are a series of ads presented in order to fill an ad break.

Who created VAST tags

VAST was created by IAB and has been updated to fit the evolving demands of the ecosystem since its debut. VAST 1.0 was released in 2008, and we are now on VAST 4.1 (June 2018 release). However, adoption is gradual, and efforts to enhance it are ongoing.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) uses tags to format directives. VAST provides marketers with an XML-based standard for connecting ad servers and various types of video players. Tags, i.e., pieces of code, are used in this language to allow marketers to specify specific features or controls for the video player to read and execute. 

How to create VAST tags

For digital publishers and developers, creating a VAST tag is a pretty easy technique. There are three methods for creating a VAST Tag, and it is up to publishers to choose the one that best matches their ad type:

Manual technique: Manually developing a VAST tag should be a pretty simple procedure for publishers who are already familiar with XML and the idea of pre-defined parameters. While publishers may choose to build VAST tags manually, AdOps engineers will utilize the parameters to validate the VAST ad tag, therefore there is a minimal advantage to doing so.

Through the ad Server of an advertiser (such as Google Ad Manager): The process of creating a VAST tag in Google Ad Manager (Google DFP) is rather simple.

1. Open Google Ad Manager and log in.
2. Select Inventory and then Ad Units from the drop-down menu.
3. Find your video ad unit and click it.
4. Select Generate tags from the drop-down menu.
5. Follow the three-step process, clicking Continue after each step (Tag type, Tag Options, and Tag Results)
6. When you’re finished, click Done.

Using third-party tools: VAST tags may be created using a variety of third-party tools available on the market, in addition to Google. Publishers, on the other hand, must ensure that their video players satisfy all of the needed criteria. This will eliminate any unwanted ad display issues.

What is VAST in Digital Marketing

The percentage of ad revenue spent on digital video is increasing, and with it, the need for regulations to control it. As a result, ad tech jargon like VAST, VPAID, and MRAID has become an alphabet soup. They may appear perplexing, but they don’t have to be. VAST is a script that tells video players which advertisement to play, how it should appear, how long it should stay, and whether or not people may skip it. 

It’s crucial because it allows video players and ad servers to communicate in the same language. Standards imply scalability, which implies greater volume to sell and more cash for publishers. When a video player requests a VAST ad server to play a video ad, the video player makes a request to the VAST ad server. 

It’s a basic HTTP-based URL that looks like this: 

http://www.example.com/?LR_PUBLISHER_ID=1331&LR_CAMPAIGN_ID=229&LR_SCHEMA=vast2-vpaid

Conclusion 

According to a Zenith press release prediction, the average individual would spend around 100 minutes each day watching internet videos by 2021. With a growing number of publishers actively pursuing programmatic video advertising, this rate is only projected to rise. Using VAST tags to implement video advertisements will improve video ad performance across all web pages. 

Video commercials are now on the rise, and they are developing at a breakneck pace. If you’re a publisher, your website monetization plan is probably inadequate if you haven’t yet prepared for video advertisements. Publishers, on the other hand, now have more power, scope, and bandwidth to monetize a video as a medium thanks to advancements like VAST. For more such articles, head to Publir Blog!

The post What are the VAST Tags and Steps to Create Them? first appeared on Publir.

What Are Rackspace Email Settings 

There are 3 primary Rackspace email settings that your email client or website needs to be configured to. 

IMAP Settings

You can receive incoming mail from your Rackspace email account if you configure your email client with IMAP. Other features like 2-way syncing, are especially useful for those checking emails from multiple devices. IMAP settings at Rackspace are as follows 

Server : secure.emailsrvr.com

Port : 993

Requires SSL

Username is your full email address.

Password is to be the same one you use for Rackspace webmail.

POP Settings 

Using the POP protocol, you can receive incoming mail. Usually not ideal for multiple devices because of its lack of two-way syncing, POP is better if you plan to use email on just one device. This is why IMAP is preferred over POP. POP settings are as follows. 

Server : secure.emailsrvr.com
Port : 995

Requires SSL. 

Username is to be your full email address. 

Password to be the same as used in Rackspace webmail. 

SMTP settings 

The SMTP protocol can help you send emails via Rackspace if you configure your email client accordingly. WordPress site owners can also use the SMTP server to improve deliverability. For Rackspace, the SMTP settings are as follows –

Server : secure.emailsrvr.com

Port : 465

Requires SSL

Email Address can be a username
Password can be the same one used to log in to Rackspace email

How Do You Configure Your Email Client With Rackspace 

You can use the aforementioned Rackspace settings for configuring various email clients. The most popular email clients used today are Microsoft’s Outlook, Thunderbird from Mozilla, and the default clients from Windows and Apple.

How To Configure Outlook Using Rackspace

If you are using Outlook, open the email client, and enter your Rackspace email address when prompted (this might happen if you’re opening Outlook for the first time). On reaching the next screen, click on IMAP, amongst the other advanced setup options like Microsoft365, Exchange, etc. Then, enter the same password used in your Rackspace mail. A success message saying “account successfully added” should appear, clicking on ‘done’ will get the job finished and you should be able to send and receive emails using Rackspace. 

Mozilla Thunderbird  

Clicking and opening Thunderbird will show you a prompt to set up your existing email ID. Enter your Rackspace email address, using the same password as the one for Rackspace Webmail. Thunderbird automatically detects protocols, and all you do is click ‘done, to finish the configuration. You can now send and receive emails. 

Windows Mail App 

Not everyone is a fan of Outlook. Some use the default Windows Mail App. Click on the Mail app to launch it, and if this is your first time, add an account. Else, visit your settings, go to ‘manage accounts’, and add an account. There is a list of account options, choose Other Account (IMAP or POP). Navigating to the next page enter the Rackspace email address and password, and you’re good to go.

Apple 

For iOS mail apps, the process is slightly different. Upon clicking on the default mail app, you will be prompted to add an email account, if you’re logging in for the first time. If you aren’t, you can visit the ‘add account’ section, under ‘passwords and accounts, in the settings panel, to add a new Mail account. You’ll get a number of options, like “Microsoft Exchange’, ‘Google’, ‘Yahoo’, ‘AOL’ and ‘Other’. Choose the ‘Other’ option, and enter the Rackspace email account and password used in webmail. At this stage, you might be asked to enter IMAP and SMTP details, which will be common for incoming and outgoing mail servers. Manual entering of port numbers is not necessary. Upon entering all the details, the Mail app runs a verification. If everything checks out, you can start sending and receiving emails. 

Common Problems and Overcoming Them

• If you are not able to receive emails, try logging in to your Rackspace webmail directly.

• If you see the email in webmail, but not in your email client, there might be something wrong with connection settings. 

• Ensure you use the right information because even the smallest typo errors in the username or password will make connection a problem. Furthermore, the correct port number according to your protocol is to be picked. For SMTP, it is 465, for IMAP, 993 and POP it is 995.
  
• If you have problems sending emails, try direct login to your Rackspace webmail to send an email from there.
  
• Emails that are sent successfully from the webmail but not from the email client can mean a problem with SMTP settings. If you are unable to send emails from webmail or your mail clients, your emails might get tagged as spam. Try to stick to some best practices while crafting messages. 

WordPress Email and Rackspace SMTP Configuration 

WordPress-based site owners can use the SMTP server for their website’s transactional emails, i.e day to day emails for password reset requests, form submissions, notifications, and more. The 10,000 email a day limit from Rackspace’s SMTP server gives you a wide berth unless you’re sending thousands of messages daily. All you need is an existing Rackspace email account, and a free SMTP plugin by WordPress, by which you can configure your site with Rackspace. 

These are the steps. 

1. Install and activate the free plugin, and visit the POST SMTP area in your WordPress site dashboard. 
2. Click on ‘all settings’ for access to all the Post SMTP Settings. 
3. Enter Post SMTP settings and click on the ‘message’ tab. 
4. Enter your Rackspace email or the name you want to use for your site’s mails, in the Email Address area. 
5. Save changes, and navigate to the settings menu again, visiting the ‘account’ tab this time. 
6. Visit the ‘transport’ section in this part, to configure the drop-downs accordingly. That should be Type: SMTP. Mailer Type: Post SMTP. 
7. This should take you to a new set of options, where you have to enter Rackspace SMTP information. 
8. Here, the information needs to be entered as follows –

• Outgoing Mail Server Host Name – secure.emailsrvr.com. 
• Envelope-From Email Address would be your Rackspace Email Address. 
• Security : SMTPS
• Authentication :- Login. 
• Username : Full Rackspace mail ID. 
• Password :- The same one used for Rackspace.

   9.Save your changes before you exit.
  10.Send a test mail to check if everything is okay. To do this, visit the main ‘POST SMTP’ area and choose the ‘Send a Test Email’ option.

  11.Enter your email address and then click on ‘Next’. 

If your configuration works, there should be a success message, and an email in your inbox, the sender’s ID being your Rackspace email address. You also should see the email in your inbox — it should display as coming from your Rackspace email address.

Conclusion

Rackspace provides affordable email hosting for those looking for it. You can configure any email client to send and receive emails using your Rackspace account, using the IMAP, POP, and SMTP settings. Read our blog on the best tools for email previewing, testing, and sending for assistance in spearheading your campaign effectively.

The post Rackspace Email Settings: What They Are and How to Use Them first appeared on Publir.

In any case, it’s tough to get promotional emails opened. Getting everything right has to be a priority. Well, before sending any email there are 3 very important steps to go through, so you can get an exact picture of your own email through your subscriber’s eyes. 

3 Steps Before Sending An Email

• Previewing
• Testing 
• Rendering 

In this article, we will look at various tools to perform each of these steps. Read to find out more!

Best Email Previewing Tools

SendX

An affordable email marketing software, it helps publishers reach new subscribers and grow their audience by providing features like a drag and drop editor. Their paid plan allows you to send unlimited emails to subscribers. You can also control parameters like past open behavior, time zone, domain name, email client, internet service provider, etc.

Every paid SendX plan allows you to send unlimited emails to opted-in subscribers. It optimizes email campaigns based on various parameters like past open behavior, time-zone, domain name, email client, ISP, etc. A heatmap report shows you which CTAs are the best, and which links attract the most people. You get more than 50 free premium and responsive email templates, for a range of uses across industries.

HUBSPOT Free Email

Hubspot’s email marketing software allows you to preview your emails across 30 different email clients. Their email preview tool assesses emails for colorblind accessibility,  RSS to Email campaigns, personalization tokens, missing images. One of the best advantages of this software is putting it to work with other email marketing software. Your email builder doesn’t need to preview your emails. You don’t even need a designer. All you need is this tool that helps you create lovely, customized emails.

Inbox Analyser

Test your email for spam, and send them to popular email service providers just to check what a final delivered mail looks like. This tool shows you whether the message goes to the person’s spam or inbox. Get real-time data about reputation alerts, sender scores, and blacklists. Scan your emails for issues and resolve them. 

Email on Acid 

This effective email preview tool assists users to display their email across various live clients instead of emulations and simulations. See what your subscribers see. Screenshots from this tool will tell you everything about email appearance on different devices. Check code irregularities, bad links, and poor formatting. Review, edit and comment on email previews directly on the software, making your testing process faster and more efficient. 

Inbox Preview by Campaign Monitor 

Cost-effective and dynamic, it allows you to preview emails across 20 different clients, on mobiles, desktops, laptops, and other devices. Their no-image preview, efficient spam testing, and user-friendliness have brought it favor with around 400,000 companies. What’s more. Pay only once you’ve used all the features for your email campaign.

Best Email Testing Tools 

Litmus 

One of the most famous names in email testing, Litmus is trusted by enterprise-level operations. Preview your emails and test them on a range of platforms, changing the code right on the platform itself. As part of its growing success, Litmus acquired the email testing tool PutsMail as well. 

Mailtrap 

Mailtrap allows you to send test emails, scan emails for spam, and more, all due to its ability to use its in-built fake SMTP server. This, so you don’t have to use a real mail server, ensuring that your test emails don’t go out to recipients by mistake. 

Glockapps

An all-in-one deliverability testing tool, this can test spam score, email placement, and IP reputation, while running authentication and blacklisting checks. Make use of its advanced bounce tracking and DMARC Analytics, and the easy-to-read and comprehensive reports all delivered immediately to your smartphone.

SubjectLine.com 

An email’s subject line makes a big difference. Get a rating out of 100, on parameters like word length, total length, urgency, etc. Remember, choice of words matters, so develop subject lines that are attractive to readers. 

Preview My Email 

Don’t be taken in by the name. Apart from being good for previewing, this tool is awesome for testing too because you get screenshots of your mail across all popular providers with a single click. It also has some useful analytics that can help you decode your audience.

MailChimp 

One of the well-known players in the email marketing game, Mailchimp. Allows you to manage your email lists, design the mails themselves, and send them out, after testing them comprehensively. Its built-in tools allow you to evaluate email spam scores and preview designs. Features like performance monitoring, content management, automated scheduling, and multi-channel communication make MailChimp a formidable and flexible tool while being quite user-friendly, thanks to its library of videos and articles providing support. 

Best Email Rendering Tools 

Stripo 

An email builder with email testing and a range of email service provider integrations supporting HubSpot, Mailchimp, Gmail, and Outlook, Stripo has a range of custom modules available to use across campaigns. Its fast, responsive HTML editor ensures you never have to worry about your email rendering across different recipient devices. Stripo even has a code validator so you can check for errors after building dynamic AMP emails. 

IBM Email Optimiser 

The erstwhile Unica email optimizer, this software has been designed to measure and track the level of efficiency of emails sent out. Previewing the email in AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, and other providers, this tool shows you whether your IP address has been blacklisted by any email servers. Any images used in your email will be shown how the receiver will see them. 

Sendinblue 

A nifty marketing suite for small to medium-sized enterprises, Sendinblue allows you to check email deliverability, manage campaigns, send SMS messages, and carry out other digital marketing activities. In order to check the efficacy of your message, send a test campaign to a contact list, and execute an inbox test.

GetResponse 

Want to create high-quality content, grow website traffic, boost sales, and more with a single software? Getresponse allows you to test and preview emails, across 25 of the most well-known email clients. See the real emails even with block images. 

Drip 

Drip is a nice all-in-one email marketing tool, assisting marketers in constructing and managing campaigns. Built-in features like available customer data, personalization options, engagement, and optimization make Drip a favorite, as does its intuitive and easy-to-use interface and effective customer service. 

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, the importance of email testing for marketers cannot be emphasized enough. While the above list may not contain every tool ever made, it should give you an idea so you can start finding solutions for your intended email campaigns. Use other options in conjunction with these tools for better results. Whatever you do, test your email, so you can minimize your bounce rate, save yourself from the spam folder, get high open rates, and steadily grow a list of loyal email subscribers who look forward to your content and engaging with your company. Have a look at our blog on Email Newsletter Practises, to learn effective tips and help build a great email marketing campaign.

The post Best Tools To Use For Email Previewing, Testing And Rendering first appeared on Publir.