Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google that will alert you to new content Google finds on the web that contains keywords you specify. Google Alerts is most commonly recommended as a way to monitor your brand - and your competition's brand - online. But I also use Google Alerts as a way to …
10 Simple Ways to Make Your WordPress Site Faster
I've become obsessed with site speed over the last six months, systematically working through each of my sites to improve their speed. Supposed SEO benefits aside, the faster your site is, the better the user experience. And the better the user experience, the higher the conversion rate - sales, …
Comparing Email Subscribers Acquired from Pop-Ups vs. Other Methods
In August I published a post examining a common question in email marketing – do email subscription pop-ups work? The post detailed how I went about implementing pop-ups via OptinMonster (affiliate), as well as the results I attained in using them on two separate sites. Despite "most people" …
What Happened When I Flipped a WordPress Based Site from http to https
In mid-July of 2015, I decided to flip the Sugarrae.com site to https using SSL. In the last eighteen+ months, Google has been pushing hard to "make SSL happen." They even said it might give you a bit of a rankings boost, no doubt knowing that tons of SEOs and business owners would begin flipping …
How to Easily Optimize and Losslessly Compress your Images and Theme Files in WordPress
If you've ever run your website through the PageSpeed Insights tool to find out what you need to do to improve your page speed, you've probably gotten the following message:Optimize images Properly formatting and compressing images can save many bytes of data. Optimize the following images to …
Do Popups Work for Increasing List Sign-ups? (and an OptinMonster Review)
No matter how much people might say they hate pop-ups, they work when it comes to increasing subscribers to your newsletter. Period.Back in 2011, I began testing the use of pop-ups on various sites I owned. Everyone I knew claimed they found them annoying, but I kept hearing they had a huge …
Grammarly Review – The Blogger’s (Free) Secret Weapon
If you've been a long time reader of the Sugarrae blog, you may have noticed that my posts are better written from a grammar nazi perspective these days. The newfound clarity is because of Grammarly. What is Grammarly? Grammarly is an online grammar editor. With it, you can paste a post into it …
Affiliate Datafeeds and Duplicate Content in a Panda World
For those who aren't familiar, Panda is a Google search filter that (in part) penalizes sites that have a large amount of thin or duplicated content. Panda has been a harsh filter for those using datafeeds in general - be they a merchant or an affiliate. As affiliates, we (and every other competing …
How to Find Out Which Social Networks are Driving Your Revenue
There are tons of social networks out there and only so many that you can focus (quality) time and effort on. One of the most common questions I see asked is "what social networks should I focus on?" and the answer is always, "focus on the networks that work for you and your demographic."But the …