Sports Card Strategy Show

Have you ever Google'd your business, then wondered why you're looking at search results on the right hand side of the page that have nothing to do with your business at all? Like if your address is being used for someone else's business, or if it is your business, with incorrect information? If you're thinking what I'm thinking, this definitely has to do with your Google My Business listing. But why would someone else's listing show when you Google YOUR BUSINESS? Your name? Your address? Someone else's business information? Here's what you can do.

Digital Marketers, Small Business Owners and Web Developers, you may all be wondering the same thing (and based on the amount of questions, comments and feedback I get regarding Google Analytics and Google Ads, there's a good chance you probably are) ...  Why aren't my conversions showing in Google Ads? Specifically, they are showing in Google Analytics but NOT Google Ads.  Well, the answer may surprise you - Google doesn't automatically show them in both places, even when your accounts are linked. You actually have to go into Google Ads and import your Google Analytics Conversions. This podcast explains how!

Have you recently tried to find your sitemap in your WordPress Website using Yoast SEO, but can't find it anywhere? Recent plug-in updates to Yoast have changed where this is located and it's not easy to find anymore. This video shows you how to find it. The importance of it is so that you can submit the sitemap URL to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Data Driven Daily Tip 300 - Google Analytics Accounts are free with GSuite and with regular Gmail accounts. To activate yours, go to analytics.google.com and log in with your credentials. With your email account, you'll get access to 100 different Google Analytics Accounts.  But if you're like me, those fill up fast. There's an easy way to free up accounts. Don't delete them! You can remove your own access without hurting the account itself. Here's how.

At Data Driven Design, we love change. It's our sixth differentiator. And it's a good thing we do, because Google is changing Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) all of the time. It used to be that you had to verify your domains for each domain prefix, www., http://, https:// etc., but now, there is a new feature called "Domain Properties" that takes care of all of them at once.  This is now highly recommended, but the verification process is different than before. You need to create a TXT record in your DNS settings now. It's simple to do, but can take up to 10-12 hours to propagate and for Google to see the verification. This video shows you how to verify your site with Google as a Domain Property.

I don't get hit with a lot of spam on my WordPress forms, to be honest, but some websites do, big time. And believe me, I know first hand that small business owners have no time to deal with spam from their new WordPress websites.  For a service provider like Data Driven Design and other agencies, spam can ruin the client experience, leaving a bad taste in their mouth, which is why this Data Driven Daily Tip talks about one of my favorite WordPress plug-ins, Gravity Forms, and how to implement Google reCAPTCHA once your site has gone live.

A common use case for Web Designers and Developers to need to figure out a client's old IP address after maybe not planning for it, would be something like trying to bring back a clients old website to take a look at the content after pointing the A Record to the new site.  Or, if you're like me, a couple weeks ago, I actually went in during the middle of the night to migrate a client's website, and pointed the WRONG A RECORD! Whoops.  I needed to retrace my steps, but hadn't documented what I was doing. So I needed to figure out how to get the old IP address.  Thank goodness I found SecurityTrails.com and brought their website back up immediately, as shown in this video.

In a recent Data Driven Design Q and A session with followers, I was asked, "how can my business build a Facebook Messenger Bot?"  While it's a great question, if you've never built a Facebook Messenger Bot, or managed a chat bot before, I'd recommend starting by utilizing Facebook Ads' ability to place a Facebook Ad with a Messenger Objective that has the ability to add an automated Bot reply. This article shows you how to do it, and it's a good place to start, because you can target an audience, spend $15, have a quick automated conversation set up with people who engage with the ad, and see how well it works for your business.

One question I've been asked a ton recently, and seemingly 40% of all web projects is about adding an automated chat feature to a website. 1. Paul, does it work? 2. Paul, how should we do it? The answer to the first question is, yes, it CAN work, but you have to nurture it just like your other digital marketing and customer service initiatives in order for it to work. For example, an office receptionist can work, if he does his job well, paying attention to people who walk in, asking them immediately how he can help, offering them something to drink, asking about how their day is going, and then directing them to the right place, and even occasionally asking them for their contact information so they can follow up. If you treat your chat bot initiative on your website in this manner, it can be one of the greatest customer acquisition tools in the history of digital. However, if your office admin (in this analogy), is NEVER at his desk - always off doing something else - and when he actually is sitting at his desk he's too busy to look up from his computer, your chat bot initiative will FAIL. To answer question 2, I'm fond of a third party service called TIDIO.com. I've used many WordPress chat plug-ins, and none work as well as TIDIO, which works on any kind of website, all you have to do is insert a line of javascript code in your website.

One of the things about having a WordPress website is that there are several factors that control your website's health, well-being and performance. One of them that controls your site's compatibility with Plug-ins - among other things - is the version of PHP that you're running. Now, if you've been on a Managed WordPress host like GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator or even WPEngine for several years, there's a good chance your website is running an older version of PHP, like 5.0 or 5.2. WPEngine is the only host that is requiring updates, allowing you to test on a one click staging environment, and identifying incompatible plug-ins that will break once they upgrade your site. But GoDaddy Managed WordPress makes it easy to upgrade as well. This video shows you how.