Endless whiteboard sessions, shouting executives, drooping sticky notes, and moving back and forth between reams of spreadsheet data Does that sound familiar? It happens when you work without a robust project management software program.

Most marketing agencies handle multiple projects and lots of communication. It involves managing large teams and loads of data. On top of that, tight deadlines add to their miseries.

Chaos happens when you have manual processes because they lead to a lot of errors, inaccuracies, confusion, unnecessary delays, and workplace conflict.

This article will discuss things to look for when choosing project management software for your agency.

What Is a Project Management Software?

A robust project management tool streamlines the processes, enhances workflows, and prevents wasteful and monotonous activities. Apart from that, it allows you to seamlessly collaborate with local and remote teams. The biggest advantage of using a project management software tool is that it enables you to scale.

The other significant benefits are as follows:

• Enables you to simultaneously handle multiple projects
• It enables you to build fail-proof processes
• Helps you generate automated reports
• Enables you to adhere to project timelines
• Helps you keep your clients in the loop
• Enables you to remain within the predetermined budgets
• Helps you to track key performance indicators such as project ROI
• Helps you define and clarify the Scope of Work (SOW) with clients

As you can see, manual management of the tasks described above can be risky and daunting. It can soon create a mess.

So, if you want complete control over your projects, use agency project management software such as DashClicks' Projects app.

What to Look For in a Project Management Software Tool?

When considering different types of software tools, it's helpful to compare various robust systems designed to streamline operations. For healthcare facilities, a well-designed practice management software is essential for clinic management and ensuring the efficient handling of appointments, records, staff schedules, and other critical administrative tasks. Additionally, medical facilities benefit from features that support marketing strategies with efficiency. Here are the significant features you need to check when deciding to invest in your agency's project management software.

1. Better Communication and Team Collaboration Features

Team members must frequently communicate and collaborate in an agency environment to successfully execute tasks. A project management system minimizes your worries by allowing all inter-team communications in one centralized location. It increases transparency and prevents delays when teams aren't working in sync or working in the absence of real-time communication.

It helps in the following tasks:

• Delegating tasks
• Tagging concerned team members to inform or update about essential updates
• Sharing documents and files
• Keeping team members in the loop to avoid unnecessary communication and delays
• Sharing project plans and details
• Tracking progress

2. Resource Management Features

As an agency owner, you need to track the following things –

• Skilled and unskilled labor
• Project budgets
• Building resources (including equipment)
• Staff schedules
• Billable and non-billable clocked time

It should also assist you with time management. Your ability to track time spent on tasks is vital to scheduling staff, resource allocation, and receiving equipment and spaces.

Your project management system should have the features for building a work calendar and smartly analyzing your team’s capacity, time, and schedule.

3. Analytics & Report Automation

Project reporting is often a headache for agency staffers since it’s a tedious, boring, repetitive, and time-consuming task, often a necessary evil. The best project management software comes with automated reporting tools such as DashClicks InstaReports.

It brings you the needed insights through a beautiful dashboard with the best analytics features. So, the system not only houses your data but also provides crucial insights into your projects and processes.

Pro Tip: View analytics associated with your client’s marketing campaigns within DashClicks’ project management software. It helps you measure your performance and tweak your campaigns with the help of analytics-generated insights.

4. Integrations

A project might need information from multiple channels and third-party tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Unbounce, Callrail, Clickfunnels, etc. Integration is necessary to procure the required data from different channels to link the various moving parts of a project.

Integration also helps you understand how resource allocation affects the overall schedule of your project. Keep all your files in one central location so people can easily access and share them.

DashClicks comes with more with 60+ integrations, some of which are mentioned in the screenshot below. These integrations help in analytics.

Click the following links to learn more about our integrations and how to use them on the DashClicks platform.

• Facebook Ads Analytics
• Google Ads Analytics
• Google Analytics
• CallRail Analytics
• Listings Manager Analytics
• SEO Analytics

5. Ease of Use

The teams frequently use project management software, so it should be easy to learn and use. If they require more than one week of learning, there is no point in investing in them. Most marketing agencies don’t need such complex tools. So, if you’re investing in project management software, look for a software program with a simple interface but robust features. Make sure that you can customize and adjust it to meet your needs. The most crucial part is that it should enable you to scale your business.

6. Dashboard

The best project management software keeps your client’s data and information in one centralized location for better control over the project. It eliminates hassles related to accessing the desired information and potential errors retrieving data. In DashClicks, you have a single dashboard where you can manage all your projects under the “Projects” tab. You can add new projects and monitor your existing ones with illustrated graphics and KPIs.

But you can’t add a project to DashClicks manually. It’s all automated. When you purchase a fulfillment service or an InstaSites to build websites for a sub-account from the Fulfilment Store, DashClicks will automatically create and add a project for that sub-account to the Projects app.

7. Task Management & Prioritization

Your PMS should be able to manage and prioritize your tasks by tracking tasks and sub-tasks. For example, the task “publish quality content” can be drilled down into sub-tasks such as creating a blog, writing the copy, editing, adding graphics and interlinks, and optimizing for SEO.

Similarly, you can set deadlines, separate recurring tasks from one-off tasks, prioritize tasks, assign them to different team members, and improve collaboration.

If you do it using spreadsheets, you will have to do a lot of cross-checking. It might also lead to many errors, but using an agency PMS like DashClicks will become a cakewalk.

Final Words

If you want to run your agency with streamlined processes, less error rate, cross-team collaboration, and more successful projects, choose DashClicks. It’s a simple and intuitive project management tool, which enables you to save time, hit goals faster, and create a transformational experience by leveraging the DashClicks ecosystem.

A website content audit is a process of assessing and analyzing the performance of your site content.

Conducting such audits is absolutely necessary.

Why?

Poor on-page search engine optimization (SEO), broken links, and disorganized posts are some of the many issues that can arise when you create content at scale. Also, with the passage of time, these issues can compound, hurting your rankings, conversion rates, audience engagement, and eventually your bottom line.

Plus, if you don’t revisit the content, it can rapidly lose its relevance, become outdated, or get outperformed by your competition.

A content audit helps you take a detailed look at your website’s content to see how it’s performing and to make sure your content is relevant, engaging, and effective.

If you want to know more about a website content audit and how to successfully perform it, read on:

What Is a Website Content Audit?

A content audit is a process in which you systematically analyze and assess all your website’s content. Regardless of a corporation or a small business, a website content audit can benefit any company irrespective of its size.

Performing a content audit is a time-taking process, but it’s an incredibly effective method that helps you understand the performance of your website to take necessary actions. The knowledge you gain during the process sheds light on your audiences, your organization, and helps elevate your content strategy.

Why Do You Need to Conduct a Content Audit?

Running content audits is important if you want to move ahead in your industry. You need to dedicate time to run such audits in order to know about any gaps and to produce better content. You can’t just keep producing content and forget about it, thinking your job is done.

Take a look at these stats that emphasize the importance of performing a content audit:

• ​​65% of companies whose content marketing is successful perform content audits more than twice annually.
• 46% of companies whose content marketing did not succeed in 2021 didn’t perform any content audits.

Here’s a closer look at the benefits of running such an audit:

• Analyzing your content’s performance helps in making data-backed decisions about the pages you should improve.
• You are able to recognize SEO opportunities and content gaps, which you can fill with fresh, interactive content.
• You get to know the pages on your site that aren’t optimized for SEO. For example, some pages may have a poor heading structure.
• You get to improve the quality of content on your site and offer an upgraded reader experience.
• It helps you check for content that you can repurpose.

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Note:

There will be times when performing a content audit becomes absolutely essential. Run a content audit if:

• You are redesigning your site.
• You created your website a few years back and haven’t performed an audit till now.
• You have inherited a content marketing strategy from another team or simply don’t have a clear strategy.
• You think you’ve produced content on all possible topics that fall in your niche.

How to Approach a Content Audit?

How you should approach a content audit depends on your goal behind conducting it. Here’s a detailed look at some possible content audit goals:

1. Improve SEO Results

If you want to conduct a content audit to improve your results from SEO, then you need to perform an SEO content audit and an overall SEO site audit. The reason you need to conduct the SEO audit is to know which pages are getting the most organic traffic and/or which pages are ranking.

Tip: Use Google Analytics to identify the pages that have garnered the most views over time. You can then use this information to recognize pages that hold the potential to rank in the top 10 search results. Also, when you conduct the SEO content audit, you would need to look at title tags, duplicate content, meta descriptions, backlinks, and alt text.

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2. Boost Audience Engagement

If you want to use a content audit to boost your audience engagement, you can focus your content audit process on recognizing what kind of content your audience loves to engage with the most. This information will help you generate that content in the future that you know is going to be popular among your audience.

3. Increase Conversion Rate

If you are looking to boost overall conversions with the insights you gain from a content audit, you need to check the pages with the best user experience and the pages that get you the most leads and sales. Doing so provides valuable information that will help you improve your other pages.

Content Audit Tools

Before we discuss how to conduct a content audit, you should know about some important tools. Certain software tools form a crucial part of the process of content auditing. You can use them to automate a greater part of the process instead of doing everything manually. Here’s a list of these tools:

1. Ubersuggest

Ubrersuggest can help you conduct a content audit to improve your SEO. All you need to do is open the tool, type in your URL, click “Search,” and then click “Site Audit.”

The result will be a snapshot of the prevalent SEO problems on your website and how critical they are. This offers a quick overall look at how your site is doing. And the best part is, it doesn’t cost anything.

2. Google Analytics

You can use Google Analytics to determine traffic data for all the pages and compare the performance of each page.

Note: In favor of Google Analytics 4, Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. Before completing your content audit, you should make the switch to GA4 (if you haven’t already).

3. Broken Link Checkers

When you start analyzing your content, use Ahrefs, Integrity, and Dead Link Checker to search for and fix broken links.

4. Content Inventory

Use a content inventory tool such as DynoMapper or Screaming Frog instead of manually pulling each content link associated with your site. It will save tonnes of your time and you eliminate the risk of overlooking anything.

How Do You Perform a Content Audit?

If you want to know how to conduct a content audit, here is a complete list of steps:

1. Make a List of Your Content Assets

As a first step, create an inventory of your content assets.

Why, you may ask?

This is because when you see all of your assets in a single place, it’s more convenient to analyze content performance, highlight areas that need improvement, and update each content asset in a methodical way.

A tool you can use to extract content assets from your site is the Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool. When you use this tool, ensure you export the data into a spreadsheet and add relevant data points such as target keyword, meta description, number of images, word count, etc. for each content piece.

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Another thing you need to include in the spreadsheet is traffic data for each page. Take the help of Google Analytics for this. This way, you will be able to analyze content performance alongside technical SEO metrics.

Note: You can add a lot of data points and stats alongside each content piece. But you need to see what data is relevant to you according to the goals you want to achieve by performing a content audit.

2. Make a List of Content Issues to Check For

You need to analyze all your content assets after adding them in a single place.

Check each content piece to know how it’s performing. Typically, here’s a list of things you need to check for:

• Content Gaps: Go through your content assets and check whether something is missing in your content. Are there target markets you haven’t spoken to? Are there topics you haven’t produced content on yet?
• Outdated Content: You need to check for content that you need to update. Your site visitors don’t want to read outdated content. Even the search engines overlook it.
• Target Keyword: Check if a content piece targets a particular keyword and include it in the copy.
• Duplicate Content: Search engines give priority to new content. So, if you have duplicate content on your posts and pages, it’s time to remove or rewrite them.
• Metadata: See if you have meta descriptions and titles for all pages. You also need to check which of the descriptions need to be updated.
• Word Count: Check the word count of your pages to see if it needs to be cut down or updated for any of the pages. Your pages and posts should have enough words to optimize for SEO.
• Image Data: Go through the images and see if they have a descriptive title and alt tag. This helps make sure your images are accessibility-friendly and optimized for SEO.

Note: When you check for content issues, ensure you write a note next to every asset stating why it needs improvement, if any.

3. Resolve Content Issues

The last step in our list of content audit steps is resolving content issues.

As you can’t address all your content issues in one go, you need to prioritize which ones to tackle first. One strategy you can follow is group to each optimization issue and resolve them together. For instance, you can fix all the image issues, then update meta data on every page, and so on.

Another route that you can take to prioritize which content issues you should tackle first is to use the tool Ubersuggest. All you need to do is perform an SEO audit on this tool, and you will get recommendations on the basis of an issue’s difficulty as well as SEO impact.

To get a number of quick wins, consider tackling tasks with a high SEO impact and low difficulty first.

Note: At the time of addressing content issues, don’t be afraid to ask for help to split up the work. You and your colleagues can work on different issues instead of one person handling all the work. This will help save tremendous time and improve overall efficiency.

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Wrapping It Up

You may get overwhelmed by looking at all the content audit steps at first. But this shouldn’t stop you from conducting an effective content audit. Performing content audits helps you move in the right direction when it comes to improving your content marketing strategy.

Sure, performing a content audit will take up your resources and time, but it will also help you gain some extremely valuable insights. So, it will be worth it in the end! Perform a new audit at least once a year to check for gaps in your content and to know what and what isn’t working. All the best!

If you are a digital marketing agency owner, you must be quite familiar with the fierce competition in this industry. Still, it is surprising to see most agencies promoting themselves as full-service agencies with an integrated marketing approach.

Can you drive any benefit out of this strategy that has already been practiced by 90% of the agencies?

Using such tired cliches is the most common blunder agencies make worldwide, only to see dismal results later. This is the effortless method to get obsolete.

That is why every expert and consultant would suggest you differentiate your marketing agency from competitors. The Internet is crowded with such advice, but the big question remains unresolved: how to stand out from the competition.

Why Your Agency Needs to Outshine Your Competition to Succeed?

With information overload all around us and social media content exponentially multiplying, marketers will not be able to catch the users' attention if they repeatedly use the exact phrases and terms.

As of July 2022, there are about 4.70 billion active social media users globally, and over 200 million businesses used Facebook to reach their customers.

Platforms like TikTok are rapidly penetrating the masses and are responsible for decreasing attention spans.

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In such a scenario, your success as an agency highly depends on your ability to catch users’ attention. You should be able to engage them with your content.

Nobody would pay attention if you blew your own trumpet or used common strategies and repeated terminologies. What if everybody targets the same audience, offers similar services, and uses identical advertisements?

So, if your marketing sounds like another “me too” product, you’ll have a tough time winning clients and surviving in the market.

By choosing a different marketing positioning, you’ll be able to do the following –

• Attract and convert new clients.
• Exponentially increase the referrals.
• Meet special needs of specific industries requiring specialized skills.
• Build brand image and loyalty, trust and authority.

Many agencies try to differentiate themselves based on the following points.

• We provide excellent customer service.
• We hire trained professionals and digital marketing experts.
• We have a proven track record with years of experience.
• We offer cutting-edge SEO / SEM services that work.
• We understand your business goals and hence implement the best strategies.

It sounds pretty obvious.

It might make sense for a novice, but we disagree. We believe that almost everybody talks about conventional things in their adverts and marketing communications.

What Do Businesses Look For in an Agency?

Before we discuss how to differentiate your marketing agency from the competition, let’s discuss what a customer would look for in an agency before signing a contract.

A. Successful Track Record of Proven Results

This is one of the most crucial requirements for a successful agency as every other buyer needs to hire an expert who can deliver results.

Most of your competition is focused on making money, so what differentiates you from others are results.

You can use the following three methods to showcase your expertise.

1. Client Testimonials and User Reviews

You can find client testimonials on your websites, user reviews on Google, social media, and directories.

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2. Experience Quantified

It includes the data that proves your expertise, such as the number of clients serviced, years of experience, and the number of projects handled.

3. Content Marketing

It includes content that showcases your expertise, search as awards, certificates, trophies, memberships, seminars, case studies, and educational videos and reels.

You can create a fantastic agency portfolio this way.

Pro Tip: If you are an absolute beginner, you can publish ebooks, long-form blogs, branded content, run email marketing campaigns, and create social media video series, etc., to add instant reviews and kudos.

B. Timely Communications

Since digital marketing is data-driven, timely and consistent communication is one of the most sought-after qualities of an agency. For long-term relationships, it is important that you and your client are on the same page. So, you should consistently share digital marketing reports to keep them updated with the latest developments and achievements.

C. Excellent Customer Support

Lastly, people expect excellent customer support from their digital marketing agencies. Nothing can frustrate a client more than poor customer service. So, make sure you've trained customer service representatives onboard.

Your customer service staffers should be accessible & approachable and should promptly resolve their customers' pain points. This one quality alone can differentiate your agency from others. They should be well-informed about digital marketing and how to interpret reports.

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How to Differentiate Your Agency and Outshine Your Competition?

So, what differentiates you from others?

This article will discuss unique ways to differentiate your agency from the rest and enjoy the strategic advantage.

A few actionable steps can easily differentiate your agency from your competitors. Here are the top three steps.

1. Focus on Results

If you focus on results, you can easily knock down your competition. If you promise 4X ROI and try to deliver 10X, your happy customers will become your brand ambassadors, and you will never have to spend a single penny on marketing. Your results and expertise will speak for themselves.

Pro Tip: Focusing on results will blow your competition out of the water. If somebody gets 10X ROI instead of the 4X initially promised, they will spread the news everywhere, and your business will grow like wildfire.

Remember, most of your agency competition is focused on making money and not on results, so here is an ample opportunity you can capitalize on.

Pro Tip: To deliver the best results, you can outsource from DashClicks fulfillment services and concentrate your energies on customer service and marketing. Dashclicks' digital marketing fulfillment services are world-class yet affordable.

2. Focus On One Niche at a Time

A general marketing approach will never yield fruitful results. It will make you look like thousands of other cookie-cutter agencies, and your advertising dollars will go down the drain faster than you can imagine.

Instead, if you are focused on one niche at a time, you can soon become an expert in it, and word-of-mouth publicity will help you rope in dozens of customers without spending a single penny on advertising.

For example, if you are an agency dedicated to plumbers or dentists in your area, you will soon have an impressive portfolio of successful clients. These clients will refer other clients in the same niche.

Soon, businesses in your niche will start trusting you because of your expertise in the field and your ability to deliver results positively. They will choose you because choosing a full-service agency can be a gamble for them as they don't perceive such agencies as experts in that niche.

Once you position yourself as an expert in one particular niche, you can soon expand your portfolio and include other niches. However, it would be best if you kept your primary niche the same.

3. Become the Best in the World in Your Niche

In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone says, "competition is a limiting concept. For extraordinary success, you shouldn't worry about competing with others and focus instead on domination."

According to the principles of capitalism, competition is good. However, its drawback is that it creates dozens of choices. If you are focused on extraordinary success, do not go for competition, as it is a limiting concept. If you're looking for 10X success, do everything you can to dominate your field and not compete with your rivals.

Competition limits your perspective because when you compete with someone, your energies are focused on what they are doing. It prevents you from seeing the bigger picture and thinking outside the box. The most successful people are innovators and not competitors. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk are all innovators. They are driven by global objectives, invest in highly creative and innovative projects, and try to dominate their fields instead of competing with others.

Final Words

There are three key takeaways from this article, and you should religiously act on them to differentiate your agency from competitors. Focus on your results, try to dominate your marketplace, and specialize in one niche at a time. Once you become a well-known face in your niche, it will be significantly easier to scale and autopilot your business. This strategy will reduce your marketing budget and increase your efficiency manifold.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) are both forms of web security governing how data is transferred over the world wide web and protecting users’ data from breaches.

Trends on the internet keep changing and evolving every second. Back in August 2014, Google launched the update to shift its platforms from HTTP to HTTPS and also made HTTPS one of the critical factors of its ranking system. But why did Google, the mega-giant, choose to take this huge step not just for itself but for every website searched from its search engine?

Well, for one, HTTPS is much more secure for the users, leading to a better and safer surfing experience. And Google is all about its users. The following blog unveils everything essential you need to know about HTTP and HTTPS to upgrade your website’s SEO.

HTTP vs. HTTPS: What Is the Difference?

HTTP is the backbone of communication between server and client, while HTTPS is an upgraded, safer HTTP version. But before you shift from HTTP to HTTPS, it would be beneficial to have a detailed understanding of what these two are –

What Is HTTP?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) has rules that determine how web browsers and servers communicate and transfer data with each other. HTTP works at the application layer network built on TCP. For HTTP to perform, different commands are separately executed as it cannot handle more than one command together. It is also called “stateless protocol” for this reason. The executed commands are independent of each other, which can reduce the speed of websites with complex commands.

What Is HTTPS?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the safer and more protective version as it combines HTTP and SSL (System Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificates. It works on the transport layer and provides bidirectional encryption for added privacy. It is helpful for YMYL web pages and websites that take private information from their users, such as passwords and pins for transactions.

How Does HTTPS Secure the Website?

When discussing HTTPS vs. HTTP, it is intriguing to know how exactly HTTPS secures the website.

1. SSL Certificate

The System Sockets Layer certificates ensures that the owner uses a secure network to conduct information transactions over their website. It also allows a bidirectional secure connection between the server and your browser.

2. Verifies Authenticity

An independent authority verifies the certificate holder's identity. This additional verification gives every SSL certificate unique authentication details about the owner.

3. Uses Encryption Algorithm

HTTPS uses key-based encryption algorithms in its transaction protocols. The strength of this key is 40 or 120 bits.

4. Protects Data

HTTPS does not save data in the form of cookies on the client system, unlike HTTP. Cookies are used to save user preferences for given websites to enhance the experience. However, this data is open and can be breached and easily stolen by another party and used for personal benefit. Since HTTPS does not allow user data to be saved, it protects them from cybercrimes.

5. Restricts Permissions

Users can click on the authentication padlock present before the URL to check the website's cookies and all the allowed permissions. Users can also change their preferences or leave the website before giving their personal information away.

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Should You Use HTTPS vs. HTTP?

Every website shifting to HTTPS should mean it has got much more to offer than HTTP, right? Well, that's not entirely correct. HTTP and HTTPS both have their advantages and limitations. You need to decide if your website really needs one over the other. It is essential to know the key differences setting these two things apart to make intelligent choices.

When You Should Stick to HTTP?

If your website does not require users to share their personal information, you certainly don’t need to go through the troubles of converting to HTTPS. Here are a few more reasons to stick with HTTP –

• It saves you money as you do not need to buy SSL and other certificates.
• No handshaking is required before data transfer, hence more communication.
• There is reduced work of encryption, decryption, and extra header inputs.
• You can quickly access HTTP pages because they are stored on the computer and caches.
• The codes are independent of each other, allowing cross-platform porting.
• Overrides firewalls, giving global access.

However, you should also remember where the HTTP loses the game to HTTPS it does not use any encryption. Hence usernames and insecure passwords can be easily stolen by anyone who intercepts a transaction.

The question still remains, why HTTPS over HTTP. Although HTTP can provide faster information transfer, it is like an open channel where all the data is available to anyone. Netizens do not prefer this transparency for transactions involving money and data transfer. The following column will give you reasons other than security to choose your bidding.

More Reasons Why HTTPS Over HTTP?

Along with the benefits of security, HTTPS indirectly helps your website in multiple ways. Some of the advantages are -

1. Increased Ranking

Converting to HTTPS increases the security of your website, making your users more comfortable using your platform. Google prefers websites that use HTTPS protocols for ranking them on SERPs.

2. Affects SEO

If you check your referral data on an HTTP website using Google Analytics, it will show all the incoming traffic as “direct” traffic, making it unclear what you need to focus your SEO on. However, with HTTPS, you get more detailed information about your traffic, helping you craft a better SEO strategy.

3. Authenticity Proof

Google has added a padlock before the website's URL with HTTPS, whereas websites with HTTP have an open padlock representing an unsecured network. Users can check the legitimacy of your website with details provided there.

4. Warning Pages

In most cases, you will be redirected to a warning page that the website you want to visit is not secure, and you will have to accept to continue.

5. Build Trust

Providing your viewers with a secure network to continue their activities builds their trust in them. HTTPS uses the SSL (System Sockets Layer) certificate for security. Moreover, it performs at the transport layer giving your user absolute encryption benefits. Trust is an essential factor for better ranking in Google's UX core web vitals and E-A-T guidelines.

Can You Use Both HTTP and HTTPS?

It is possible for you to divide your resources into HTTP and HTTPS. By this method, the content on HTTPS will be secured, while that on HTTP will not. This form of content serving is called “mixed content protocol” since both the contents are available on the same page.

However, you should remember that hackers are always hunting for weaknesses in websites. If they find that you have mixed content on your website, they will steal user information and use your website to their benefit.

Web browsers warn the users about mixed content, just like HTTP insecure network, but by the time the user gets the warning, the data is already saved on the caches.

Moreover, with Google's preferences for HTTPS, it has now become mandatory for every website to shift to HTTPS. Otherwise, you will never achieve a ranking on its Search Engine Ranking Pages.

How to Change Site From HTTP to HTTPS?

Step #1 - Schedule your shift since the shift can take some time. It is best done when your website does not have much traffic.

Step #2 - Choose which SSL certificate you need for your website, depending on your requirements.

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Step #3 - Obtain and install the certificate from your website host.

Step #4 – Make sure you configure the certificate according to your website. Enabling HTTPS can be a lengthy task depending on your website’s complexity. Here are some things you need to update from HTTP to HTTPS –

• Website sitemaps
• Robot.txt files
• Code libraries like JavaScript and other third-party plugins
• Content Delivery Network’s (CDN) SSL settings
• Links in marketing automation tools
• Landing page and paid search links
• Old URLs and redirects
• Images and videos references
• The more intricate internal links

Step #5 - Add 301 redirects or use CMS (Content Management System) to automatically redirect the traffic. They will enable the users to directly visit your updated website. The 301 redirect pages also inform search engines about your update so they can index your website.

Step #6 - Enable HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), so your browsers use HTTPS every time.

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Step #7 - Enable OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) stapling, which will allow the servers to identify revoked security certificates, and no authority cross-referencing is required.

Step #8 - Add and verify the updated website on Google Search Console.

What Things Should You Remember When Switching?

• Inform Google about your shift from HTTP to HTTPS so they can crawl your website again for better ranking.
• Learn about all the different forms related to the SSL certifications that come with HTTPS. Although the security provided is the same for all three, the verification process is different. The three SSL certificates are- single domain, multiple domains, and wildcard SSL certificates.
• Use Google Analytics Tool to smoothly convert from HTTP to HTTPS.
• Allow essential bots like Google spiders to crawl and index your website.
• Add 301 redirect pages to every page, so your users are redirected to your new HTTPS pages.

What Is HTTP/2?

With the dynamic updates in online content, security and communications must improve too. HTTP updates have been on a halt for a long time, but now we have the all-new HTTP/2 with multiple new features.

There are certain upgrades in HTTP/2 over HTTP, like it can transfer multiple files at once, unlike HTTP, which uses a TCP connection. It uses binary protocols and not textual protocols, reducing the bandwidth. Moreover, it has increased security with encryption.

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Additionally, HTTP/2 also offers advantages over HTTPS, like- reduced overhead and improved efficiency for more SEO friendliness. Moreover, with the introduction of HTTP/2, costs and overhead on SSL certificates have dropped, making HTTP/2 a good competitor for HTTPS.

FAQs

1. Is It Necessary to Make the Shift From HTTP to HTTPS?

Google is known for its user experience. Security and Google both advocate for HTTPS websites because it enhances the E-A-T for the website owner. Ultimately, the user feels more comfortable using their website.

2. Why Is User Data Security Important?

As mentioned before, users will feel more confident while using your website for transactions because they know their data will not fall into the wrong hands and will not be misused. Increased trust improves their chances of returning to your website when they need more help.

3. Where Can I Get an SSL Certificate?

You can get your SSL certificate from your website host. Moreover, you can also ask them to configure it according to your website. But, if they do not provide it, you can reach out to other platforms that can avail the SSL certificates to you. You can get your SSL certificate from the places like ZeroSSL and Let's Encrypt.

4. What Is TLS?

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is interchanged with System Sockets Layer (SSL). TLS is a standard protocol for Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). TLS and SSL provide authentication, privacy, and data integrity between two communicating web servers and browsers.

5. Can I Use VPN With HTTPS?

It is preferred to use VPN in every case as it provides added security to your data transfers and hides your IP address from hackers. You can easily use a VPN along with HTTP, HTTPS, and HTTP/2.

Conclusion

We looked intimately into the world of security that the internet has to offer. However, it entirely depends on you and your website's purpose if you need to make the shift from HTTP to HTTPS and even HTTP/2 in the near future. The above blog guides you in deciding on the transfer and successfully shifting your website security from HTTP to HTTPS.

It may take some time and a lot of work, but shifting to HTTPS is better for your SEO and, ultimately, your ranking. Giving your visitors and users a trustworthy platform will increase their chances of returning to your website.

When you think about SEO and content, there is a high chance that you may end up focusing on just one thing – producing fresh content.

But it’s equally important to focus on your “existing content.” This means, removing low-performing and outdated content from your site.

Now, you may wonder, what’s the point of focusing on content that’s already present on your site?

This is because your old content can be negatively affecting your company’s growth. It can be the reason for some of your lagging traffic.

A process called “content pruning” helps remove low-performing and outdated content from your site.

It involves getting rid of content that has no value or usefulness and contains potentially harmful advice. It lets other content, which has potential, to flourish. The content pruning process also helps ensure that your link authority flows only to relevant pages.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the full benefits of content pruning and the steps involved in this process. Let’s begin.

What Is Content Pruning?

Let’s discuss what content pruning is before we move on to discussing its benefits.

Content pruning involves removing or updating content which weighs down a site and hampers its performance. When this dead weight is removed, the website’s overall health increases.

Chances are, you may have heard of the term “pruning.” It is a gardening term that means trimming or cutting back. If you think about it, content pruning is almost the same as pruning a tree. When you prune a tree, you remove the dead leaves and branches. All the tree’s resources then start to go to the parts that you want to grow. This helps increase the overall health of the tree.

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Now, you may be wondering, what kind of content is typically pruned? Here is a list:

• Pages with thin content or duplicate content.
• Pages with outdated information.
• Pages that are not or won’t ever get engagement or traffic.

Why Is Content Pruning Important?

Now, coming to the benefits of content pruning. Here’s a closer look:

1. Better User Experience

Content pruning provides an improved user experience to your site visitors. This is because this process lowers the risk of your site visitors finding any confusing or outdated information on your site.

2. Better Content Quality

Content pruning boosts the overall quality of your content by ‘pruning’ the content that doesn’t add any value.

3. Improves Metrics

Because pruning content leads to enhanced overall content quality, it improves metrics such as conversion rate, time on page, and bounce rate.

4. Speeds Up Indexing of Your Best Content

Another major benefit of content pruning is that it results in faster indexing of your best content.

Now, how is this possible?

This is because content pruning ensures that search engines no longer have to sift through old content pages.

Is Content Pruning Required Only for Large Websites?

Regardless of your website size, you would want your site visitors to find useful and updated information, right? Hence, content pruning is recommended both for large (10,000 pages) and small websites.

When Should You Prune Your Content?

Content pruning is not a one-time process. You need to do it continuously.

We recommend that you do it on a monthly basis. Whenever you create a new piece of content, keep an eye on its performance and state.

The reason we suggest you do regular pruning is because you have a lot to gain from pruning content. You must also go for massive pruning exercises once or twice a year.

To do content pruning on a monthly basis, you need to first complete one full content pruning cycle (talked about in the next section).

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Content Pruning Process

The content pruning process involves the following three steps:

• Content Inventory: Create an overview of your entire content
• Content Audit: Assess your content’s performance
• Decide the Fate of Your Content: Determine what you need to do with the underperforming content. In this step, you will decide whether to remove it or go for an alternate option.

Step 1: Content Inventory

Make a list of all your content.

Also include PDF files, images, and videos.

Next, supplement this list with an export from your CMS and backlink data from a tool (we recommend Ahrefs). Also include data from Google Search Console, your web analytics tool, and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Note: Ensure you eliminate any duplicates.

After you follow all these steps, you will be left with a list of unique URLs. This is the overview of your content.

Now, for every content piece in your list, add the following information:

• Its target audience
• The goal(s) you aim to achieve with it
• The search queries it should be ranking for

Step 2: Content Audit

You need to carry out a content audit to score how well your content is performing.

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Take the final list you have created from the previous step and add:

1. General Performance (visits and conversions in the last 6 months)

For pages, you will find the amount of traffic and conversions in your web analytics tool. For embedded videos, you will find this information in the platform you use to embed the videos. And for downloadable images and PDFs, you will get to know the amount of traffic and conversions if you are tracking clicks on links.

2. Organic Performance (visits and conversions from the last 6 months)

You can find the conversion numbers and the number of visits for all your content types (pages, videos, PDFs, and images) in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and your web analytics tool.

3. Social Performance (visits, shares, and conversions from the last 6 months)

You can know the number of likes and shares in a tool called BuzzSumo. For conversions and visits, you can get to know it from your web analytics tool.

4. If It Contains Outdated Information or Not

Use smart search queries in Google to check for mentions of any previous years in your site. This will help you know if your content contains outdated information.

5. If It Has Thin Content or Not

As per Google, thin content is content with “little or no added value.”

You can check for such content with the help of Screaming Frog.

6. If It’s Cannibalizing Other Content or Not

You can find cannibalizing content by looking for pages that don’t have unique H1 headings, meta descriptions, and title tags. Also look at pages that are ranking for the same queries.

7. The Numbers of External Domains Linking to Your Pages, and Internal Links

To find the number of external domains linking to a URL, you can use Ahrefs.

And to find the number of internal links to a URL, you can use Google Search Console. Open it, click on “links,” and choose “Top linked pages — internally.”

After you add all this information, you may find certain content that doesn’t cater to any purpose. For instance, you may get to know that there are different pages that are telling the same story. You may also find pages over-optimized to the point where people can barely read them!

Step 3: Determining Your Content’s Fate

In this step, you need to mark all the content in a spreadsheet that:

• Isn’t getting any organic traffic
• Offers old information
• Is cannibalizing other content
• Shows poor social media performance
• Has thin content
• Isn’t getting any traffic in general
• Has few external and internal links

You can call all of the above “potential pruning candidates.” But instead of going ahead and removing this kind of content, you can also consider making it non-indexable or improving it.

Improving the Content

Check which content you can get back in shape by carrying out some basic on-page SEO. See if you can rework the title, headings, and/or meta descriptions. Also check if you can get rid of outdated sections and add a few sections that are based on recent developments.

Trimming, Updating, and Moving the Content

You can also think about repurposing certain content. All you need to do is trim it, update it, and move it to an FAQ section, for example. Also, if you have a lot of weak pages on the same topic, you can merge their content to make a single, strong page.

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Note: In case you have outdated content that you think will still be useful, you can do the following:

• Ensure you let the visitors know the date on which it was last updated.
• Include links of any up-to-date resources you may have.
• Add a disclaimer stating that it may contain outdated information.

Making Content Non-Indexable

There can be cases where the content is useful for visitors, but not for search engines. For example blog tags. When used the right way, they are helpful for visitors to navigate around a site. But the pages themselves offer zero value from an SEO point of view.

Removing Content

A word of caution here. When you decide to get rid of low-performing content, your organic traffic can get impacted. Also, when you disavow links, we recommend that you don’t remove all of them at once.

Wrapping It Up

All set and done, you are now in a more informed position to do content pruning. Carefully follow the steps we listed above (creating a content inventory list, conducting a content audit, and deciding your content’s fate and what to do with it) and you are set to reap the benefits of content pruning!

Content pruning is a process that helps maintain your website and boosts the overall quality of your content. It not only improves user experience but also speeds up the indexing of your best content. Ensure you don’t keep putting it off for later as it can negatively impact your SEO strategy’s success.

A word of advice: Always think ahead and carefully plan your content marketing efforts. This will help limit the need for content pruning.

Building a positive brand image is at the core of every business's success. It is crucial as it heavily impacts a customer's buying decision.

Most of the marketing and branding happen online, so customer reviews on Google and social media take center stage when building your brand image. Reading an average of ten reviews is what it takes for a customer to trust a local business. It has also become commonplace because of the increasing marketing noise.

Since it is strongly linked to your sales, you should religiously monitor your online reputation. It is easier said than done because much of it is out of your control. However, there are specific tools to make your life easier while managing your reputation and protecting your brand online.

This article discusses DashClicks' reputation management tool and how you can use this tool to protect your brand.

What Is Brand Reputation Management?

Customers' perception is so crucial to your brand's success that we need an entire process and a strategic action plan to manage it, and that is called brand reputation management. Its objective is to improve your brand image, primarily focusing on social listening, customer reviews, and brand mentions on Google and social media.

It is a continuous process; you need to work on it to know the market pulse and identify the scope of improvement in your products and services. A strong brand image leads to customer loyalty, a highly desired business metric, as it's directly linked with repeat sales, revenue, word-of-mouth publicity, and growth. Damage control, firefighting, and maintaining communications with your customers are some critical activities you need to perform to protect your brand.

What's Brand Safety?

Brand safety is mainly concerned with the appropriateness of content distributed by the brand, including advertisements, marketing messages, and all other types of content shared by brands.

Brands should exercise caution while creating content and choosing where it is being shared, such as ad space. You must ensure that the content or its placement is not associated with any negative consumer opinion. Brand safety is similar to reputation management and is its subset. So, brand safety is a broader part of brand reputation management.

How Does DashClicks' Reputation Management App Work?

Managing brand reputation across different channels can be a daunting task. DashClicks' reputation management app helps you in different ways.

A. Manage Your Reviews

First, it compiles all your business reviews and brings them to a single dashboard so you can effortlessly manage them. You can also track your ratings and publish replies using just one platform.

B. Manage Your Review Page

DashClicks' app also allows you to share your public review page with other customers across the globe. This, in turn, will bring more feedback and reviews.

C. Reputation Reporting

You can track your best review sources, average rating, and peak performance months anytime-anywhere with DashClicks' reporting dashboard.

Watch this video to know more about this feature.

D. Reply to Reviews From the Same Dashboard

DashClicks lets you communicate with customers from every review source, such as Google and social media, and leave replies. It's suitable for instant damage control, explanations, and customer retention efforts.

E. Invite Customers to Leave Reviews

With DashClicks' reputation management app, you can invite customers to leave business reviews by sending carefully designed emails and SMS messages with one button. It will help you boost your reputation.

Watch this video to know more.

How to Manage Your Reputation With DashClicks' Reputation Management App?

The reputation management app manages online reviews from different third-party sources. Online reviews form a significant part of online reputation management.

At present, DashClicks deals with Google My Business reviews and Facebook reviews.

Once you add your Google My Business and Facebook account to your DashClicks app, you can track your metrics from within the reputation app, leave replies, and like reviews. Usually, businesses have to log into different platforms to manage their reviews, which makes it quite hectic.

How to Access the Reputation App?

Open the app drawer on the top right corner in your DashClicks Dashboard and click on the Reputation App.

Watch this video to know more.

How to Navigate the Reputation App?

As you open the Reputation App, you can easily find a tab, My Reviews. Since you are using the app for the first time, you'll be prompted to connect your first review source.

Once you successfully add the source, the app will start checking your reviews.

It will look something like this:

My Reviews

Here, you can see the reviews just like you see them on Amazon, etc. These reviews will be in chronological order with the following information.

• The profile picture of the person
• Name
• The date of the review
• The actual review and
• Your reply, if any

This information is sufficient for you to manage your reviews.

However, you can't retrieve the usernames or profile pictures for any of the reviews on Facebook due to Facebook's Privacy Policy. They will display as "Facebook User" along with a generic icon.

You can see that the user's actual name and profile picture will appear in this place for all the reviews from a platform other than Facebook.

How to Reply to a Review?

Locate the empty text box available for you to write your reply to the review. Press the Reply button, and your response will be automatically posted to the platform. If you want to spot the reviews that haven't received replies, look for the red Pending Response text.

Flag reviews as positive/negative within the reputation app, with a green or red highlight running along the left side of the review box.

Use the options available in the left column to sort the reviews.

Go to Status>> Sort your reviews by clicking Needs Response. This feature helps you in locating reviews that require a reply.

Identify the Poor Ratings

Look for the rating in the above screenshot. Here you can sort by star ratings or like/dislike. Most platforms utilize star ratings, while Facebook uses thumbs up and thumbs down.

You can also filter your reviews by source.

To know more, watch this video.

Watch this video to integrate Facebook reviews.

Here is all the information summarised in an infographic -

Final Thoughts

Managing reviews and online reputation is no easy feat. It involves tedious monitoring, tracking, and damage control. DashClicks' reputation management app is designed to address these woes of marketers.

You can quickly deploy the app through DashClicks Dashboard. You can also enjoy its fantastic reporting features. Most online reviews are posted on Google and Facebook, and DashClicks' App is designed to manage all the reviews on these platforms from a single dashboard.