SEO is an evolving science. While some of the core principles will presumably stick around forever, some of the more nuanced parts of it are subject to continuous change. As a result, many of the “proven” tactics people have used in the past — keyword stuffing, link schemes, and so on — are now the stuff of legends.

Unless your organization benefits from having a dedicated SEO person who can work on this stuff day-in and day-out, keeping up with the latest changes in the world of SEO can be a struggle. But in the end, adjusting your strategy based on search ranking algorithm updates or changes in the way search results are displayed visually can be incredibly impactful on business results.

In our new guide, 18 SEO Myths to Leave Behind in 2017, we reiterate some of the best practices that should continue to guide your strategy through 2017, while also highlighting how SEO has changed over the course of 2016.

Here’s an example of one those changes: Did you know that Google had a major Penguin algorithm update in September 2016 that made the rewarding of high-quality websites in search results part of its core algorithm? What used to be a loose guideline turned into a legitimate ranking rule in 2016. You can learn all about what that means inside the ebook.

Check out the SEO Myths guide to learn more about what changes you’ll need to make with your SEO strategy moving forward.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2015 and the offer has since been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Most ads on YouTube are something to be endured, muted, and skipped immediately after the mandatory five seconds has passed. It’s nothing personal — people just want to get to the good stuff. 

So how can advertisers create branded videos that users actually want to watch?

For an ad to be sought out and consumed willingly on YouTube, it needs to stand out as an enjoyable, compulsively shareable piece of content. It can’t just be a typical advertisement — it needs to compete for attention with viral, non-branded content.

To better understand what YouTube users want in a watchable online ad, let’s take a look back at what worked in 2016.  

Google released a list of the top 10 most watched ads on YouTube from 2016, and we’ve compiled them here to inspire your next digital ad campaign. All advertisers and marketers should be taking notes: These are the online ads people actually wanted to watch in 2016.

The 10 Most Watched YouTube Ads of 2016

1) Mobile Strike

Things escalate quickly in this extended Super Bowl spot for Mobile Strike, an online multiplayer game. Starring former California governor and beloved action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, the plot follows Schwarzenegger as he’s attacked by a slew of characters after opening up the Mobile Strike app on his phone.

A deadly fight for the phone ensues, and pretty soon there’s a military tank crashing through the walls and marines rappelling from the ceilings.

Created by San Francisco-based 215mccann, the one-minute spot was the number one watched spot on YouTube in 2016, amassing over 102 million views since its release in February.

2) Knorr

MullenLowe created this clever digital campaign for global food and beverage brand Knorr. In the three-minute ad, a group of singles are paired off based on their favorite flavor profiles (e.g., spicy, hearty, salty etc.) and then asked to feed each other a meal matching the flavor preferences they share. The results are delightfully awkward. 

It’s a weird but undeniably touching social experiment, and Ukonwa Ojo, senior global director at Knorr, insists the emotions they captured on film were completely candid. “It’s as real as I can humanly make it with cameras and equipment and people standing around,” Ojo said to Adweek.

The ad has been watched over 60 million times on YouTube since its release in April.

3) Nike Football

Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo experiences a Freaky Friday moment with a young fan in this short film from Nike and Wieden + Kennedy. After taking a tumble into the crowd during a match, Ronaldo and a young British soccer fan switch bodies

Naturally, the kid is in awe to find himself inhabiting the body of the famous footballer, but he quickly learns he’ll have to improve his soccer skills if he’s going to pass as Ronaldo. Meanwhile, the real Ronaldo — trapped in the body of a teenager — steadily rises through the ranks of youth football. Over the course of a year or so, he’s made it to the pros.

Clocking in at nearly six minutes, it’s Nike’s longest brand film ever — but it’s definitely worth sticking around for the climactic ending. It’s no surprise that it’s picked up over 58 million views on YouTube. 

4) Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge

Developed in-house at Samsung, this extended ad introduced consumers to the much-anticipated Galaxy S7 and S7 edge back in February.

The introduction video excels at condensing a lot of information into an easily digestible format, with sleek graphics and a dramatic soundtrack.  The video was watched over 46 million times.

5) Clash Royale

Leave it to creative agency Barton F. Graf to produce something zany, offbeat, and yet somehow still universally appealing enough to get almost 38 million views on YouTube.

This ad for Clash Royale, a multiplayer mobile game, stars an turtleneck-clad keyboard player exuberantly explaining “the rules of the duel” — in song, naturally. And not just any song. The whole ad is set to an altered version of “Flash” by Queen.

6) Mtn Dew Kickstart

This ad raises more questions than it answers. What the heck is that thing? How did it get into that apartment? What made those guys think following it outside would be a good idea?

The Superbowl ad for Mtn Dew’s energy beverage, produced by BBDO, rapidly gained viral attention for it’s visually unsettling main character: a Frankenstein creation with the head of an adorable pug, the torso of a monkey, and the legs of a human baby. It’s not pretty to look at, but no one can deny that puppymonkeybaby accomplished what it set out to do: Get people talking. The ad received 27 million hits on YouTube.

7) Always

Always worked with agency Leo Burnett to produce this ad focusing on female empowerment through sports. The ad, which ran during the summer Olympics, features a group of young women and girls explaining discouraging comments they’ve received about their athleticism, and encouraging all young girls to stick with sports no matter what.

The positive message propelled the ad to 27 million views. 

8) Hyundai

Hyundai’s Superbowl ad from agency INNOCEAN USA opens on a couple racing through the woods — with two vicious grizzly bears in close pursuit. Thanks to the voice activated technology on their Hyundai, they’re able to make a speedy getaway.

The grizzly bears, discouraged by their prey’s escape, plop down for an unexpectedly cartoonish conversation. “I was just gonna hug him!” one of them says. It’s an amusing example of thwarted expectations that drew in 26 million YouTube viewers.

9) Pokémon

This Superbowl ad from Los Angeles-based agency Omelet celebrates 20 years of Pokémon with cinematic flair.

Taking cues from sports advertising, the commercial follows a series of kids and young adults as they train in their respective fields, drawing inspiration from each others’ successes. In the final scene, a young boy witnesses an epic Pokémon battle on TV, and his dad declares, “You could do that.” The ad received 25 million views on YouTube.

10) Skittles

Skittles is no stranger to delightfully weird advertising, and their Superbowl commercial this year was no exception. In the DDB Chicago-produced spot, Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler is presented with a portrait of his likeness made entirely from Skittles. And it sings, of course.

24 million people tuned in to see the ad.

What ads did you watch on YouTube in 2016? Let us know in the comments.

What do you think of when you see the word “introvert”?

“Shy,” “quiet,” and even “antisocial” might be some qualities that come to mind. But we’ve got news for you: How we think of introverts is pretty misconstrued from the actual definition. An introvert, according to Dictionary.com, is “a person characterized by concern primarily with his or her own thoughts and feelings.” Let’s explore that.

Looking at that definition, introverts aren’t necessarily the timid lambs that stereotypes make them out to be. Rather, they’re introspective individuals who can still be outgoing — they just don’t crave being around other people, speaking and presenting, all the time.

That’s why it might be a bit trickier for introverts to run a meeting — not because they’re reticent, but because they take extra time to process their internal thoughts and surroundings, according to Quiet Revolution, an organization dedicated to the science of psychological introversion.

But “tricky” certainly doesn’t translate to “impossible.” So if you’re an introvert who’s been charged with a running a meeting, check out these tips.

But First, a Little More on Introversion

I’ll never forget the day I found out that I might be an introvert. I came across an article that described the characteristics of introverts, and realized that they many of my social patterns — things like enjoying quiet time to myself, or in a social situation, opting for longer conversations with fewer people (rather than small talk with tons of strangers).

But how could I be an introvert? I was a theatre minor. I used to sing with a punk band. Those were not things that introverts do, right?

Wrong. The more research I do on introversion, the more I realize that it’s a vastly misunderstood population. And it’s a big population. According to the Quiet Leadership Institute (an extension of Quiet Revolution), half of the U.S. workforce identifies as introverts.

Susan Cain, co-founder of Quiet Revolution, explored these misconceptions in her 2012 TED talk. I, like many others, had introversion confused with shyness, or maybe even stage fright — neither of which I’ve ever possessed. But introversion, she explained, is “different from being shy. Shyness is about fear of social judgment. Introversion is more about, how do you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation.”

That’s what makes us different from extroverts, who “crave large amounts of stimulation,” noted Cain. It’s not that introverts are afraid to lead meetings — or speak in public, sing with a punk band, or go to parties alone. The distinction is how we prepare for or function in those situations.

But when it comes to introverts and extroverts, one isn’t better than the other. Plus, according to Cain, the “best performing teams are a mix [of] introverts and extroverts.“

So when it comes to those meetings, here are our tips for how introverts can run them in an effective way.

The Introvert’s Guide to Running a Meeting

1) Know where you stand.

First things first: You might not even be sure where you stand on the introvert/extrovert spectrum. Guess what — Quiet Revolution has a quiz for that.

For the purposes of this post, the assessment is probably most helpful for folks who don’t think — or don’t want to accept — that they’re introverts. But a quiz like this one can help you learn a lot about your behavioral patterns, and perhaps avoid a case of mistaken identity.

Source: Quiet Revolution

For example, according to the Quiet Leadership Institute, 96% of workforce leaders identify as extroverts. That implies a staggering imbalance among management, but could that number be the result of personal misconceptions similar to my own? Perhaps these leaders identify as such because they enjoy taking charge and overseeing groups. As we covered, introverts can still possess those qualities.

You might even be an ambivert — someone who falls in the middle of the spectrum — which after taking the quiz, I learned is the bucket into which I fall. In any case, having this information can help you recognize certain habits, which in turn can help you lead more effectively.

2) Set aside (quiet) time to form an agenda.

When I asked my team for meeting leadership tips, my colleague, Janessa Lantz, made an excellent point.

“Introverts often need time to prepare thoughts,” she told me. “By sending out an agenda in advance, you’re designing a more inclusive meeting.”

But planning a meeting this way doesn’t just benefit the attendees — as considerate at that might be — it also works to your advantage. Nearly 86% of people with introverted qualities agree that they “pay a lot of attention to the meaning of [their] thoughts and actions.” And while that can lead to a more thoughtful approach to things, it also requires extra time.

That’s where being the designated leader of a meeting is a good thing. You have the luxury of time to yourself, hopefully, to plan the meeting and put the necessary consideration into it. So don’t look at the task as a setback — it’s actually an opportunity.

3) Lead with the topics you’re passionate about.

Many introverted leaders admit that while social interaction doesn’t frighten them, prolonged exposure to it can leave them feeling less energized, due to their sensitivities to stimulation. That’s why, during a panel discussion on introversion at the 2016 New Work Summit, LinkedIn Chief Human Resources Officer — and self-proclaimed introvert — Pat Wadors recommended starting the meeting off with topics you’re most passionate about.

“If there’s passion around a topic, I don’t want to be in my head worried about, ‘Will I be called on?’” Wadors explained. “I have a point of view. I will speak early. And then, my energy is spent really actively listening and being present.” Check out the full discussion:

Here’s another opportunity for you to use running a meeting to your advantage. If there’s something that you strongly feel needs to be discussed, consider proactively scheduling a meeting that will be entirely dedicated to it. That allows you to dedicate extra time to a specific topic or project that’s important to you, and thoughtfully form an agenda with points that are vital to it.

But scheduling meetings comes with its own set of parameters, which brings us to our next point.

4) Invite only those who absolutely need to be present.

As we noted earlier, introverts tend to value quality over quantity in social situations. Meetings are no different. Instead of inviting the entire team, only invite the people who absolutely need to be there, and focus on having a productive conversation with them.

That technique goes beyond introversion — after all, there’s a book out there called Meetings Suck for a reason. They’re a huge culprit when it comes to wasting time. Just look at these statistics from the Wrike Work Management Survey:

• 24% of employees cite meetings as their biggest productivity roadblock.
• 34% say that they attend six or more meetings per week.
• Only 9% of meeting attendees believe they always walk away with clear, actionable outcomes.

When you’re tasked with running a meeting, make sure it’s done efficiently, and help conserve the time of others wherever you can. Since introverts tend to thrive in situations that permit a higher-quality discussion with a fewer number of people, this approach should help make the meeting more productive and thoughtful.

5) Take your time during the meeting.

In the article “An Introvert’s Guide to Communicating With Results,” entrepreneur and CEO Caren Merrick writes, “It is perfectly acceptable to not immediately answer a question.”

As long as we’re being honest, I’ll confess that I sometimes have a bad habit of speaking up in meetings or discussions, just for the sake of looking like I’m engaged. Trust me — Don’t do that.

As per Merrick’s advice, it’s better to take your time to contribute something thoughtful to a conversation, even if you do so after the fact in a follow-up email or chat. In fact, you can even build that into your agenda, by dedicating a portion of the meeting to outlining next steps and “questions to be answered.” Then, make sure you schedule time for yourself to personally debrief what you took away from the meeting, and any further commentary you’d like to provide afterward.

That said, don’t take too long to follow up. With our growing to-do lists and shrinking attention spans, you’ll want to make sure the meeting is still somewhat fresh in your colleagues’ minds when they receive your notes.

6) Schedule time to decompress after the meeting.

In addition to setting aside post-meeting time to debrief, you might want to clear your schedule for time to decompress. Because of an introvert’s aforementioned sensitivity to stimulation, it’s often helpful to schedule a meeting and organize your day around it so that low-energy tasks follow it, or a re-charging activity, like having a quiet lunch break.

Permitting yourself that time to refuel — even if it’s the rest of the work day — will allow you to revisit items from your meeting when you’re clear-minded and energized. Chances are, your colleagues would prefer that your follow-up communication is thought-out, rather than immediate.

You’ve Got This

Now that you know what it really means to be an introvert, you might feel a little bit more empowered. With this information, not only can you go forward with a renewed sense of confidence, but also, you have a greater understanding of what helps you to be a strong leader.

And again — Maybe you’re not actually an introvert, or you’re a mix of both. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, it’s important to understand what allows you to succeed.

Understanding these work styles won’t just give you introspective insights — it can also make you a better leader with a greater comprehension of what’s best for your colleagues. As you plan and run these meetings, do so with your team in mind, and see how these approaches fit into the way they work.

So go ahead, do a little research. Next time you’re asked to run a meeting, you’ll be glad you did.

What helps you lead a meeting — especially as an introvert? Let us know in the comments.

Let’s say you’re climbing the performance chart that reflects your ad campaigns. After all that hard work and PPC strategizing you put toward improving your performance grade, how steep is the climb looking? Is it an easy or tough climb?

Some of us come off as natural all-star rock climbers, while others are left frigid, timid, and stuck to the crevices of the wall.

What’s the secret? As with most things: proper training. And if you don’t have any, don’t worry — there’s still hope.

We here at KlientBoost have partnered up with HubSpot to bring you some rock solid tactics that you can use to get a grip on the whole PPC thing.

The Iceberg Effect: Gain More Control Over Your PPC Campaign

The search terms that you end up paying for and the keywords that you’re actually targeting don’t always line up the way you want.

Too often we see the “Iceberg Effect” in action, where miscellaneous search terms below the surface are tacked onto keywords that we think are working properly in our ad campaigns. It gives us an unhealthy search to keyword ratio that might look something like this:

Not being in control of all those search terms? Not ideal. With a search term to keyword discrepancy ratio of 132:1, it can be challenging to continually improve your clickthrough rates and lower your cost-per-click averages.

How do you gain control of this icy situation? We use something called Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) to shoot for a 1:1 ratio of search terms to keywords, allowing for more control over the entire ad group.

Here’s what a non-SKAGs search term report might look like:

It’s not that any of these search terms are bad, it’s that each search term has a different conversion and sales rate. And by keeping them as search terms and not turning them into keywords, you will never be able to control them to take your PPC campaigns to the next level.

So what does a search term report look like if we use this granular PPC tactic and use SKAGs?

Everything in the search term column matches the keyword column. With the SKAGs tactic, you can get super granular and isolate one variable at a time, which means you have more control over your entire PPC account.

And with the ability to lower your search term to keyword ratio to 1:1, you can take it one step further and do the same from keyword to ad. When this happens, you’re able to increase your clickthrough rate, which in turn:

• Increases your quality score
• Decreases your cost-per-click
• Increases your impression share
• Improves your average position

Value Tracking: Keeping Tabs on Conversions vs. Sales

With your PPC tactics now upgraded, your PPC campaigns should be driving up conversion volumes and making you more money. But do you know which keywords, audiences, or placements are actually making you money?

If you don’t track the components of your campaign and attribute them to your sales, you might be missing out on where to focus your efforts. By implementing Google’s ValueTrack parameters you can automatically track data within URLs when your visitors convert.

When you tie your hidden field sales tracking back to your CRM, you can find out specific details about which leads are making you the revenue (doesn’t apply to ecommerce). Hidden form fields can reveal to you things that happen during a conversion, like which landing page URL your conversion came from, where the visitor is located, or what keyword they typed in.

You can also do this with manual UTM parameters. Here’s an example of how on the surface, you would think Keyword #1 is converting better:

Keyword #1 has a lower cost-per-conversion.

Here’s an example of what hidden field sales tracking can reveal to you on a deeper level:

Now Keyword #2 looks better, right?

Although Keyword #1 has a lower cost-per-conversion, Keyword #2 has a much higher sales rate, which is making you more money. See the benefits of tracking the sale vs. the conversion?

Knowing these types of details can help you understand where you should be crediting your sales success, so you can be more aggressive in bidding on those keywords, audiences, or placements. With this PPC tactic, you can ease up your budget on the areas that aren’t contributing to sales, and allocate to the areas that are.

The CTA Thermometer: Gauging Visitor Intent on the Temperature Scale

Not all PPC visitors come through to your landing pages with the same conversion intent.

Typically, those that come through from display tend to be colder, while visitors that come in from search tend to be warmer. Here’s a visual we’ve learned works well across the multitude of client verticals we service:

There’s a temperature scale that varies depending on visitor origin. Knowing where your visitors come from can help you immensely when it comes to matching your call-to-action with their temperature in the conversion funnel.

We recommend testing out various CTAs to match the intent temperature of your visitors — after all, a small CTA tweak could’ve made all the difference.

Here are some ideas to make your offer more relevant to your visitors:

In short: the warmer your visitor’s intent the warmer the CTA can be. Traffic that comes in from the display network will likely respond to colder CTAs, since those visitors are in the awareness stage.

Micro PPC Conversions: Breaking Down the Larger Conversion Into Smaller Pieces

As you know, the more granular and detail-oriented you can get with you PPC campaigns, the more control you can have over the success of them.

When it comes to conversions, you can break down your larger macro conversion into micro conversions to figure out where your issues are.

An effective way to figure out which part of your PPC campaign is causing the conversion bottleneck is to analyze the micro conversions. Let’s say that you’re running some new Facebook campaigns but for some reason, no one is converting. If you knew, however, that visitors spend an average of four seconds on your site/landing page, then you know that your Facebook ad targeting may be off. Instead of thinking it’s the ad or landing page that needs some tweaking, it could be your targeting instead.

Here are some common types of micro conversions we use to analyze the path towards a conversion:

What can each of these common micro conversions tell you about your landing page? Let’s break it down:

• Time On Site. How long are your visitors spending on your site? If the time is brief, the conversion issue doesn’t have to do with your landing page design. The issue is happening in an earlier stage, like in your ad campaign or your targeting options.
• Scroll Depth. How far are your visitors scrolling down your landing page? If they aren’t scrolling down very far, maybe you need to have a shorter landing page where your CTA is above the fold. If they’re scrolling pretty deep, it might be a good opportunity to include additional (super legible) offer details toward the bottom of the page.
• Form Field Completion. Are visitors abandoning your forms? If so, try testing out different formats and include a multi-step landing page with more form fields.
• Button Click. Testing out different CTA button colors and copy may be the key to your larger conversion success.

By isolating micro conversions you can zero in on where exactly the conversion friction is located, which can help you alleviate the issues quickly and reach your larger conversion goal.

Closing Thoughts

Whether it’s addressing the Iceberg Effect, tracking your sales vs. conversions, testing CTA temperatures, or analyzing your micro PPC conversions, each of these PPC tactics can have a significantly positive impact on the performance of your campaigns.

And the best part, there’s a good chance your competitors don’t even know about them.

Now it’s your turn to up your PPC performance game. With these useful PPC tactics, you’ll be climbing your performance incline to the top with utmost ease.

What are your best PPC tips? Share them in the comments below.

With the recent release of Google Home in the U.S., voice-activated devices are a big topic du jour lately. But which personal assistant tools are the most helpful? What do you need for each one? And how much do they cost?

While a simple search for “personal assistant apps” seems to yield countless results, shifting through them can be a task.

Today, consider us your digital personal assistant. We narrowed the options down to our very own top five. Read on, and discover which ones will best fit your needs.

5 Personal Assistant Tools That Actually Make Life Easier

1) Operator

• Price: Free
• Requirements: iOS

Vacations are great. Holiday parties are, too. But scheduling the former immediately after the latter? Well, it’s a prescription for stress. There are people to feed, wines to buy, and bags to pack.

But wait. There’s an app for that. With a packed work schedule, who has the time to deal with the aforementioned items, let alone to find special decorative lights? The experts at Operator — that’s who.

Once you download Operator, you’ll see a blue dialogue bubble in the lower right corner of your screen. Tap that, then choose where you need help.

From there, you’ll be asked a series of questions about what exactly you need. Here’s a chat that I had with a real person — Holly — when I needed help finding some decorative lights for that party.

Holly later went on to ask me about my price range, shipping preferences, and sent me several lighting options. And look, she even laughed at my joke.

2) Charlie

• Price: Free
• Requirements: Google Calendar, iOS

Knowing your audience is something on which we place great importance. That’s why we do things like create buyer personas and perform other user research.

That’s important in marketing — and in meetings. After all, if an important contact with whom you’re not completely familiar agrees to meet with you, it’s best to avoid walking in without any knowledge of what the person does. That’s where Charlie comes in.

Charlie connects to your calendar to see who you have meetings with over the next week. Then, it identifies the person and asks if you’d like some background information on them.

It’s not as creepy as it sounds, though. The only information it finds is what’s publicly available online, like on LinkedIn and Twitter. For example, here’s what it would look like if someone had a meeting with me:

Notice that there’s a section on “ways to start the conversation.” That contains news pieces about the person that can help you open a dialogue with the person. Plus, in case you’ve been in touch with this contact before, Charlie allows you to review any previous communication you’ve had with him or her.

3) Google Home

• Price: Allo (free), Google Home ($129)
• Requirements: Android 4.1 and higher, iOS 8 and higher (only available in English and for purchase in the U.S.)

When I asked my team for personal assistant app recommendations, HubSpot’s Web Team Tech Lead, Dmitry Shamis, immediately pointed to Google Home.

What does he love about it? Well, it does the same thing that a lot of similar devices on the market do — things like responding to hands-free voice prompts, for example — but it also incorporates many elements of Google that many we use day-to-day, including search.

“The real benefit is how it integrates into my Google life,” Shamis told me. “My trips, my calendar, my shopping list.”

Google Home is less of an app, however, and more of a device. It’s powered by Google Assistant — the technology used to answer questions in the search engine’s Allo app, which is configured to respond to search queries, set reminders, and engage in everyday chit chat. Have a look:

Imagine if I could have that entire conversation without all the typing. Sure, the Assistant technology alone is great, but the whole hands-free help thing offered by Google Home? That’s just awesome. I mean, just look at its list of features.

4) Amazon Echo

• Price: $179
• Requirements: Wi-Fi. Compatible with Fire OS, Android, and iOS devices and accessible via web browser.

Before there was Google Home, there was Amazon Echo — which Shamis tells me is what he used first. The Echo is powered by Alexa, Amazon’s voice recognition technology, which is used less for search engine capabilities, and more for instant information like sports scores, weather, and news.

Despite his happiness with Google Home, there are still some things about the Amazon Echo that Shamis misses. He’s particularly nostalgic, he told me, for the ability to quickly buy things with the Echo. For example, he told me, “Things like, ‘Alexa, buy more dog food’ were extremely helpful.”

And another key differentiator for him? Echo’s Spotify integration. “‘Alexa, play Spotify’ would pick up where I left off on my phone,” he explained. “‘Hey Google, play Spotify’ will play something completely random.”

But when I asked Shamis if he’d advise someone to get both, his answer was a resounding “no.”

“It’s one or the other,” he said, since “there’s enough overlap that you don’t need both. I think it becomes a personal preference.”

That’s not to say it’s impossible to use both, especially for one’s personal entertainment — like in this video of the two devices speaking to each other.

5) Julie Desk

• Price: Pro ($99.99 month/per user), Manager ($149.99 month/per user), Executive ($199.99 month/per user)
• Requirements: Any email client

Visit the official website for Julie Desk, and you’ll be faced with a question: “Want to get back 1 hour in your work day?”

Um, yes. That’s what Julie Desk was created to do — to save us the countless time we spent on managing our respective calendars. And admittedly, for me, that’s a lot.

But starting with that question, Julie Desk’s website is a compelling example of great user experience — which hints at its capacity to work on behalf of, well, you, the user. Have a look:

There are are few things about Julie Desk that delight us. To start, there are no downloads required, since Julie — as she’s casually called — works with your existing email client.

When you first sign up for the service, you’ll be asked for your meeting preferences, like time of day, location, and mode of transportation.

It takes about 24 hours for Julie to get you completely enrolled in the service, probably because there’s a human element — the service is constantly monitored by actual people to make sure nothing goes awry. But once you’re set up, that’s when the fun begins. Every time you receive an email requesting a meeting, just copy Julie on your reply — she’ll take it from there.

Here’s more on how it works:

Appy, Healthy, More Productive

From online human interaction, to digital voice recognition, to a virtual meeting scheduler, these apps might not cover everything, but they certainly make life easier.

Sure, it would be nice if there was a tool out there to, say, virtually clean the entire house. Until that becomes available, we’re not entirely far off. And some of these resources could at least provide information on home-cleaning-made-easy hacks — but only if you ask.

Remember when any of these tools seemed like “a thing of the future”? They’re here — and we can’t wait to see what’s next.

What are your favorite personal assistant apps? Let us know in the comments.

Did you know that the search result in #1 position on Google gets 33% of search traffic? And that page 1 search engine results resulted in 92% of all traffic, dropping off by 95% for page 2?

Numbers don’t lie. If you want to climb to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), well-written, engaging content alone won’t cut it. You also need to focus on writing SEO-driven, keyword-focused content that attracts not only website traffic, but the right kind of traffic. You might be thinking, “That sounds great, Courtney! But, how do I get started?”

We’re sharing 5 essential tips for creating SEO-friendly blog posts without sacrificing user experience and engagement, tips you can start using today: 

1) Pick highly-effective keywords

Google handles over 40,000 search queries a second. Staggering, right? If you want to cut through search result clutter and outrank your competitors, you need to target the specific keywords and phrases your potential customers are searching. How else will they find your content and website?

To identify those hot keywords, head on over to the social platforms your target audience frequents and see what’s trending. Pay close attention to the exact phrases they use and monitor popular industry terms and topics.

Google Trends can also give you a feel for what keywords are popular at any given time. If you see searches are steadily declining over time for a specific keyword, you know that’s probably not the right keyword to target for your marketing and vice versa for increasing trends.

If you’re ever running low on keyword ideas, get inspiration from your competition. Use tools to see what keywords they’re currently ranking for — if these keywords are relevant to your business, consider using them too! SEMRush lets you enter a competitor and see the keywords they’re ranking for, their position in search results, traffic received for that keyword and other key metrics.

Keep in mind that the most obvious keywords aren’t always the best keywords. Searchers tend to use very specific “long-tail” keywords, keyword phrases and questions when they’re looking for something. Long-tail keywords comprise up to 70% of all search traffic and can unlock the door to successful SEO. When WPBeginner, the largest WordPress resource site for WordPress beginners, adopted a long-tail SEO strategy, they increased their organic search traffic by 20% in just two months!

Because you face fierce competition for shorter, more general keywords, you often have a better chance of ranking in the top results for long-tail keywords. And, long-tail keywords allow you to zero in on higher quality website traffic that often knows what they’re looking for and may be farther along in the buyer’s journey.

Once you’ve done your research and built a list of what you think are the most valuable, relevant keywords, plug them into a keyword research tool like Google’s Keyword Planner, Moz’s Keyword Explorer, Ubersuggest, Keyword Tool and so on. Many keyword research tools give you the monthly volume for any given keyword. Test out different keyword tools — marketers are drawn to different ones for different reasons.   

Depending on your business or industry (or budget or bandwidth for SEO efforts), it may be important to rank for high competition, short tail keywords. Still, try to also optimize for a healthy dose of long-tail keywords that are high in search volume but low in competition. You may find it’s much easier to rank for these words.

Remember that your focus keywords will evolve over time as trends shift, terminology changes or your product/service line changes. Be sure to conduct keyword research periodically to ensure you’re still focusing on the right keywords for your target audience and not missing out on vital ranking opportunities.

2) Naturally integrate keywords throughout your posts

Once you’ve decided on a list of target keywords, it’s time to write a blog post focused on one of these keywords. Brainstorm blog topics with your team and decide on a topic that will entice and engage your target audience.

Keep your buyer personas, their motivations, challenges, interests, etc. in mind throughout the brainstorming process. Choose a topic that will emotionally resonate with your potential customers and their needs, desires or pains.

As you write your blog, your keyword and natural variations should be regularly interspersed throughout the post. Your primary keyword should appear in these key places:

• Title
• Headings and subheadings
• URL if possible
• Image alt text (search engines can’t read images)
• Meta description
• Throughout the content

Remember that you’re writing for humans, not search engines. Focus on engaging readers with a natural writing style that takes their needs and interests into account.

Be sure to avoid overusing any keyword (also known as “keyword stuffing”) at all costs. Keyword stuffing may lead to a website being penalized or banned in search engine results pages either temporarily or permanently. But even more importantly, if your keyword appears too often and feels forced, you sacrifice a reader’s experience, insult their intelligence and compromise the article’s quality. Don’t give readers any reason to hit the back button and turn to a competitor’s blog for answers.

3) Link to influencers

As you build out your blog post, don’t be afraid to link to other articles or blogs. Linking to applicable and reputable websites not only offers blog readers additional reading material to expand their knowledge, but it also shows Google and other search engines that you’ve done your research. And the blogger or writer may even return the favor and link to your site.

Nothing strengthens a blog post like hard-to-argue-with, research-backed statistics from influential websites. Compelling stats help you build a more convincing and concrete argument that will get your readers thinking (especially when they’re from trustworthy sites they know and love).

4) Aim for scannable, longer posts

In an age of short attention spans (average of 8 seconds for humans), you would think shorter blog posts are the way to go. But search engines actually prefer longer, in-depth blog posts.

The longer your blog post, the greater its chance of appearing in the top search engine results. SerpIQ found that the 10th position pages have 400 fewer words than 1st position pages. Longer posts will rank more easily for your target keyword.

Think about it: the more content on the page, the more clues search engines have to figure out what your blog is about. We recommend writing a minimum of 300 words per blog post. This length gives search engines plenty of keywords and text to crawl and helps them understand what your blog is about.

The downside to longer blogs is that they may scare off your readers. We live in a world of skimmers and scanners. In a heat map analysis, CoSchedule learned that only 10-20% of their readers were making it to the bottom of their posts. So, the million dollar question is, how can longer blog posts appeal to today’s online readers?

You can write scannable, readable blog posts that hook online readers by tightening up your sentences and paragraphs. Turn a long-winded sentence into two. Keep your paragraphs to 2-3 sentences max.

Also, take full advantage of bulleted lists and subheadings that grab reader’s attention. By following these tactics, you’ll create blogs that are easier to read (especially on a mobile device!) and less intimidating to the scanner’s eye.

5) Don’t forget internal links

Linking to other pages or blog posts on your website helps search engines crawl your website and create a more accurate sitemap. It also helps your audience discover more of your content and get to know you as a trustworthy, credible source of information. Internal links to other valuable content keep users on your site longer, reducing bounce rate and increasing your potential for a conversion (and isn’t that what it’s all about?).

When linking to any pages on your website, or even outside sources, use natural language for your anchor text. Avoid using spammy or generic text such as “top-rated cheap laptops” or “click here.” Instead, use descriptive keywords that give readers a sense of what they will find when they click on the hyperlink, such as a search engine optimization guide.

Never force feed links to your top webpages, featured products or discounted items. These types of links will only turn off readers and could lead to search engines penalizing your website.

A word of caution: don’t overdo your internal linking or any linking. We know it’s tempting to link to all of your blogs and webpages, but only choose the ones that best enhance the point or insight you’re writing about in any particular blog. Always think about whether or not these links naturally tie in with the subject matter and if they will offer significant value to your readers.

Bottom Line

If you want your blogs to rank at the top of page one (and why wouldn’t you?), your main focus should be on creating blogs that both users and search engines will love. By optimizing your blogs for both, you can earn higher rankings in SERPs, get more qualified web traffic and increase conversion rates. And wasn’t that the exact reason you started blogging to begin with?

What are your strategies for optimizing your blogs for SEO? Did we miss any? Share with us in the comments below.

Here at HubSpot, we’ve been giving a lot of thought to the concept of a growth stack — the set of tools that marketers and sales teams use to drive growth. As you might imagine, we’re working to build our products to serve as a strong foundation for your growth stack. But what does that look like?

To dig deeper into what the typical growth stack looks like, we recently partnered with Datanyze, a platform that can track a large number of technology categories. Together, we set out to determine what technologies HubSpot customers have enabled on their websites. 

In this post, we’ll break down our customer adoption, and show which of the more notable technologies are being used.

7 Key Technologies Used by HubSpot Customers

1) General Technologies

Among HubSpot customers, we saw a widespread adoption of technologies that, when it comes to marketing and sales, are pretty standard — things like analytics, email, social sharing, and CMS, to name a few.

2) Analytics Technologies

Under the analytics category, we can see that Google dominates the market, with 98% of all HubSpot customers leveraging Google Analytics — that’s great market share.

What we found to be even more interesting was the supplementary set of tools that our customers use to enhance and disseminate their content, which follow below.

(Note: The Leadin product has since been rolled into HubSpot Marketing Free.)

3) Video Platforms

Over half of our customers — 53% — have an online video platform enabled on their websites. We’ve seen from previous research that video is very popular among consumers, and demand for video-based content continues to grow. Video adoption by our customers indicates a recognition of that demand — They’re keeping up with changing content preferences.

The top-used video platform — by wide margin — is YouTube, followed by Vimeo and Wistia. Note: Many websites use multiple tools.

4) Ad Networks and Retargeting

A good number of customers — 29% — are also leveraging ad networks, and 26% are retargeting to reach a wider audience. True to our inbound philosophy, our customers are focusing mostly on unobtrusive search ads and social media ads.

Retargeting, meanwhile, allows our customers to re-engage with prospects who may have left items in a shopping cart, or viewed specific webpages. For those efforts, 71% of customers use Facebook, with Google Remarketing and Dynamic Remarketing rounding out the top three tools.

5) Support and Chat Technologies

To better serve customers and prospects, about one out of five of the websites we examined enable support and chat tools, in order to directly communicate with website visitors. There’s no obvious leader in the chat tooling space, with the majority of websites using lesser-known chat tools. In our sample, Zopim and LiveChat were the chat leaders.

We saw a more clear-cut leader in the support tool space, with 44% of customers using support technologies opting for Zendesk. As more customers expect on-demand service, businesses who hoping to leverage superior service as a differentiator will continue to invest in both support and chat technologies.

6) Payment and Ecommerce Tools

The last technologies crucial to growth are ecommerce and payment tools. Obviously, businesses and buyers alike always welcome a seamless way to collect payment.

Overall, payments and ecommerce show relatively low adoption, with just 4% and 2% of websites using each respective technologies.

For websites with payment collection capabilities, 33% use PayPal and 21% use Stripe. The rest of the market is scattered among smaller players.

WooCommerce is a leader in the ecommerce category, with 43% market share within our sample.

7) Other Observations Based on Demographics

Finally, we crunched the numbers and reviewed technology adoption based on our customer demographics. We found some interesting differences, and plan to follow this research with additional insights from our data set.

In the meantime, check out some of the more interesting figures we discovered:

• 34% of B2C companies use retargeting, compared to 24% of B2B companies — a 10% difference.
• 44% of larger companies (more than 1,000 employees) use advertising networks, versus 27% of small businesses (1 to 50 employees).
• Our customers in France have the highest use of online video platforms (49%), while Brazil had the lowest (43%).
• Brazilian customers had the highest use of retargeting software (41%). Only 12% of customer in the Netherlands had retargeting enabled.
• Companies in the software industry have the highest use of support and feedback tools (21%).
• ecommerce sites have the highest use of both retargeting tools (50%) and chat software (31%).
• Non-profit and education sites have the highest use of online video platforms (68% and 66%, respectively).

What’s in Your Growth Stack?

The technology groupings identified in this data are powerful levers for rapid growth. By examining the use of video, ad networks, retargeting, support, chat, ecommerce, and payments, you might begin to see what a growth stack could look like for your business.

Do you agree? Let us know what your growth stack looks like in the comments.

The way people interact with businesses has changed dramatically over the past few years with the rise of online media. In other words, your audience is spending a lot of time online, so you need to market to them there.

Because of these shifts in consumer behavior, digital marketing is now a crucial part of any successful company’s overall strategy. But navigating what needs to go into it is no easy task.

To help you do just that, our latest ebook — Why Digital Marketing? The Essential Guide to Marketing Your Brand Online — explores the digital marketing tactics that will help attract customers and build trust online, while guiding you through creating a digital strategy step-by-step. You’ll learn why digital marketing is crucial for growing your business and the best practices for the major pillars of digital marketing, including:

• Setting up and optimising your website
• Creating a digital content strategy
• Promoting your brand on social media
• Converting website visitors into leads
• Utilizing effective paid advertising
• Turning leads into paying customers
• Measuring and improving your marketing

Download your copy of Why Digital Marketing? The Essential Guide to Marketing Your Brand Online here.

Creating content isn’t always a walk in the park. (In fact, it can sometimes feel more like trying to swim against the current.)

While other parts of business and marketing are becoming increasingly automated, content creation is still a very manual job.

That being said, there are plenty of tools out there to make creating content much easier.

Click here to download our full collection of content creation templates for blog posts, ebooks, infographics, and more.

Below, you’ll find a list of 36 fantastic tools and resources to help you research, write, edit, and design content more easily. (You’ll notice there are a lot of design tools in here — that’s because visual content is often the part of the content creation process where people get the most nervous and frustrated. So don’t worry, we’ve got a ton in there for you.)

Let’s get started.

36 Free Tools & Resources to Make Content Creation Easier

For Researchers

1) Google Drive Research Tool

Google recently added a tool to Drive that allows you to conduct Google searches without ever leaving your Drive window. All you have to do is click “Tools” from the menu bar and choose “Research” from the dropdown menu.

2) Site:search

This is a handy Google hack I use every day. Basically, it allows you to do a Google search that’s limited to a particular website.

For example, if I wanted to search HubSpot’s blog for marketing resources so I can cite one of our old blog posts, I’d do a site:search for blog.hubspot.com with the search term marketing resources. The formula for site search is site:samplewebsite.com [search query]. So my example would be site:blog.hubspot.com marketing resources.

3) Google Webmaster Tools

Doing SEO and keyword research? Your marketing software should be able to help. But if it can’t (or you’d like to augment your data), Google’s Webmaster Tools can be a great help. You can check things like the number of indexed pages on your website, submit your site to Google so you’re getting crawled and indexed, and even disavow bad inbound links. It also can give you information on search queries that have a large volume of impressions but low clickthrough rate.

Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to “Your site on the web” and choose “Search queries.” You’ll see a table showing a search query, impressions, clicks, and clickthrough rate (CTR). Comparing this data to your other analytics data can help uncover some opportunities.

4) Percentage Change Calculator

I can’t even begin to tell you how useful this little calculator is when looking for and analyzing data. Ever want to know the percentage change of two values without having to remember the formula? Simply enter the two values into this calculator, and it’ll spit out the percentage change. Trust me, you’ll want to bookmark this one.

Here are a few other handy calculators:

• 3-Way Percentage Calculator – Calculates answers to these questions: What is X% of Y? X is what percent of Y? X is Y% of what?
• Conversion Rate Calculator – Spits out a conversion rate when you enter the total visitor count during a specific time frame and the number of times during that time frame those visitors took a specific action.
• A/B Test Calculator – Works for a basic scenario with two groups of people (A & B) who get to see one version of your website and for whom you track the number of conversions or goals (purchases, downloads, clickthroughs, etc.).
• ROI Calculator – Analyzes your website’s monthly sales and lead generation efforts to determine ways in which marketing efforts can be optimized.

5) Atlas

Atlas is Quartz‘s data center, and it’s chock-full of graphs, charts, and data visualizations. You can search for almost any topic or keyword, and Atlas will have a graphic based on recent research data for you. This is a great tool to get background information on a topic you’re researching, or to find fresh data to use in a project you’re working on. Here’s a chart based on data from early 2016:

Source: Atlas

6) Search in a Giphy

You know that coworker who always seems to find the perfect animated GIFs for your social posts or internal chat client? With the free Giphy Chrome extension, you’ll be able to find great GIFs just as quickly.

To use the tool, all you have to do is open the extension in Chrome, search, choose a GIF, and drag and drop. So far, the tool works in Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and more — and they’re constantly expanding support.

For Writers

7) Evernote

I use the free version of Evernote every single day. From to-do lists and research notes to writing entire chunks of articles, it’s proven helpful at every step of the writing and editing process.

One great feature? Its mobile, desktop, and web apps sync automatically as long as you have an internet connection. (And if you work offline, it’ll sync the next time you have internet.) Plus — and this is super important for content creators like us — it’s constantly saving and syncing your work automatically, making it a safe place to write and store ideas.

Use it to keep a running list of ideas, take notes, store inspiring articles or ebooks, or plan your editorial and social media publishing calendars.

8) Word2CleanHTML

If you like drafting blog posts in programs like Microsoft Word, Evernote, or Google Drive instead of your content management system (CMS), then this simple tool can be your best friend. Why? Because when you copy a document from Microsoft Office and paste it into your CMS, lots of little, weird formatting issues can crop up in your HTML.

Word2CleanHTML applies filters to fix all those things added into the HTML, resulting in well-formatted HTML you can paste directly into a web page CMS. Simply paste in your draft, click one button, and then copy the resulting HTML straight from the tool. When you paste that into your CMS (most will have buttons reading “HTML” or “</>” in their tool bar above your draft), it will appear nice and clean. No hair-pulling or swimming through code required.

9) WordCounter

There is no “right answer” for how long a blog post should be. As long as it serves its purpose — whether that’s thought leadership, driving leads, explaining a new concept, or something else — length doesn’t matter. But although we don’t recommend writing blog posts with a word count in mind, sometimes word count can come in handy. WordCounter works exactly the way you think it does: Paste in your content and it’ll spit out exactly how many words you have.

10) Cofftivity

According to a study out of the University of Chicago, “A moderate level of ambient noise is conducive to creative cognition.” In other words, being the tiniest bit distracted actually helps you be more creative. That’s why for many people, myself included, white noise helps promote focus.

There are a lot of white noise generators out there, but my favorite is Cofftivity. This particular one offers non-stop café background sounds at varying intensities, from “Morning Murmur” and “University Undertones” to “Lunchtime Lounge” and “Brazil Bistro.” It’s available on the web and as an app on iOS and Android.

11) & 12) Zerys & eLance

Need to start creating content but don’t have the bandwidth? We hear about this roadblock a lot. One way to get around it is by hiring freelancers from reputable marketplaces like Zerys or eLance. These resources give you access to skilled freelance writers who can write blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, and other pieces of written content for you.

13) HTML Hacks for Marketers

While this isn’t strictly a writing resource, basic coding knowledge is quickly becoming a must-have skill for the modern marketer — bloggers and written content creators included. But learning from scratch can be daunting. Where on earth do you start?

If you’re a total beginner, start with HTML Hacks for Marketers, which my colleagues at HubSpot created with Codeacademy. It’ll teach you quick but useful hacks anyone — regardless of coding knowledge — can use in their marketing. For example, you’ll learn how to make small changes to HTML like altering headers and spacing, creating text in block-quote form, and inserting social share links. My personal favorite is the hack to change font colors.

Once you’ve mastered these basic HTML skills, move on to Codeacademy’s free interactive courses. They found a way to make learning HTML and CSS actually fun — and you can go through each lesson at your own pace.

14) Blog Topic Generator

If you need to get to writing blog posts but aren’t sure of an angle or title to get your creativity moving, HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator can do the work for you. Simply enter a few keywords that your blog focuses on, and the Blog Topic Generator will produce a week’s worth of titles and topic ideas for you. It might not produce the final title of your blog post, but it helps get you thinking about creative new angles for topics you’ve written about before.

Here are the blog post titles I received when I entered “content,” “inbound marketing,” and “blogging”:

15) Blog Post Templates

All blog posts aren’t created equal, but we’ve found that there are steps you can take to make your posts comprehensive and shareable. With these blog post templates, we’ll walk you through an outline to write successful how-to, listicle, newsjack, and curation blog posts. Instead of starting from scratch, you’ll save time and, hopefully, nail your blog goals.

For Content Editors

16) Editorial Calendar Template

Creating a balanced editorial calendar can be tough, especially if you don’t have one centralized calendar that you and your team can refer to. To save you time and headache, we’ve created editorial calendar templates for Google Calendar, Google Sheets, and Excel that you can fill in and share with your team to start the next month or year off on the right foot.

17) & 18) Grammarly & Correctica

While human editors will be able to catch most grammatical errors, editing tools like Grammarly and Correctica are great tools for triple-checking before you press “publish” or “send.” Both free tools check for grammatical errors — and Grammarly even checks for plagiarism.

19) Hemingway App

Ernest Hemingway, admired for his succinct writing style, is the namesake for this handy editing app. Want to make your written content easier to read? Paste your content into this free web app, and it’ll assess your writing and identify opportunities to make it simpler.

My favorite features include identifying passive voice and hard-to-read sentences. Check out the right-hand side of the screenshot below, where the tool has summed up how readable my writing is with a grade. (Some room for improvement here.) Their suggestion to improve readability overall? Shoot for lower than a 10th grade reading level.

20) Headline Analyzer

Here’s a scary stat for you: Only 60% of people who click into an article end up reading past the headline. That makes your headline both the first and possibly the only chance for you to compel readers to keep reading — so it’s totally worth it to spend the extra few minutes coming up with a really good one.

What does a really good headline look like? The free tool Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule can tell you. It scores your headline quality and rates its ability to drive social shares, traffic, and SEO value. In my experience, its strength is helping you strengthen specific components of your title. For example, it reports on perceived sentiment and commonality of word types. It’ll even show you how it will appear in search results.

So although you should take these scores and grades with a grain of salt, you can use this to give your headlines a “once-over.” (And read this blog post to learn more about writing awesome headlines.)

For Designers

21) Nimbus Screenshot

This is another tool I use every day. Sure, you can capture a screenshot of your entire screen or part of your screen using the old keyboard shortcut method. But what if you want your screenshot to include stuff that’s not visible on your screen?

Nimbus Screenshot lets you capture the visible part of a web page, a selected area, a selected scroll (my personal favorite), the entire page, or the entire browser window — including everything below the fold.

Once you’ve taken the screenshot, you can crop, edit (like adding notes and callouts), and choose to print or save to your desktop or Google Drive.

22) Canva

If you like creating beautiful visual content in a really short amount of time, you’ll love Canva. The time and resources it takes to learn design, pay for design assets, and/or get inspired to create beauty from scratch can be really difficult when you’re staring at a long list of to-dos — but Canva offers a huge library of pre-made templates and assets that you can manipulate while also adding your own imagery.

Best of all, they have so many assets and graphics available for free that you won’t have to pay a cent if you don’t want to. If you want to use more “premium” assets and graphics found through their image search, they’ll charge you $1 for each. But there’s plenty of value for free.

Here’s an example of something you could make:

23) ThingLink

Ever wanted to make an image (or infographic) clickable? ThingLink lets you upload an image and add little icons to it that appear when a person hovers their cursor over the image. These icons allow users to visit links, watch videos, or read messages you’ve written. Plus, it’s easy to share: Users can easily embed ThingLink images. (Click here for step-by-step instructions.)

Below is part of a a clickable infographic from Thinglink my colleague Ginny Mineo created for another post:

EditTouch

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24) Skitch

Skitch is a free app by Evernote that helps you communicate more visually. It lets you mark up images, digital assets, PDFs, and other files with arrows, callout boxes, text, and more all in one place.

In the example below, I opened the program on my desktop and used the “Screen Snap” button to take a screenshot of a web page — which then opened right in Skitch for editing and exporting.

Although it’s free, it does require you to open an Evernote account — but that’s also free (see above).

25) Infogram

While similar to Canva, Infogram is a visual content tool that focuses on helping you create infographics, charts, and data visualization. If you like to create charts using Microsoft Excel, you’re in luck — it also offers compatibility with Excel through Infogram Charts. Also, their infographics are responsive with mobile devices.

26) Infographic Templates

As a content marketer, you might feel more comfortable creating written content than visual content, but that’s no excuse to exclude infographics from your strategy. Visual content is growing in demand from your audience, and infographics are particularly shareable. We’ve created the backbones of 15 different templates that you can easily play around with to customize for your content and audience — here’s a sneak peek of one template, and you can grab the rest here. 

Source: 15 Free Infographic Templates in PowerPoint

27) Google Fonts

Want to spruce up your site pages, presentations, ebooks, and other content with cool and different new fonts? Little-known fact: Google has a directory of 600 free fonts ready for you to download and use.

Simply find and select the fonts you like from their directory, then click “Use” to get the HTML code you can copy and paste onto your site. Alternatively, you can download the fonts to your desktop and use them when making new marketing content by clicking “Add to Collection.” (Click here for step-by-step instructions for doing this in the HubSpot software.)

28) Image Color Picker

Remember that time you wanted to match your call-to-action design to that color you were using on all your event swag … but the one person who would know what that color was didn’t work at your company anymore? Next time that happens, snag a picture of that swag and upload it to ImageColorPicker.com, or use any image URL to do the same thing. Select any point of the picture, and immediately see its corresponding HEX, RGB, and HSV values.

29) PowerPoint Templates

Is there anything more boring than a PowerPoint presentation featuring black text on a white background? With the help of these templates, you’ll be able to put together compelling, visually appealing presentations. Whether you’re driving lead generation or reporting on your blog’s growth to your team, keep your audience’s attention with these eye-catching presentations.

30) SlideShare Templates

SlideShare doesn’t need to be daunting. You can easily create shareable, embeddable SlideShare presentations in PowerPoint with the help of these templates — no need to start from scratch or hire a freelancer. Once you’ve created your first presentation, check out our guide to marketing SlideShares successfully.

31) Haiku Deck

If you’ve ever had to create a PowerPoint or SlideShare presentation in a pinch, you’ll wish you knew about Haiku Deck. This tool helps you quickly find simple layouts, beautiful images, and great fonts. It’s available for the web and for iPad.

Want to see what one looks like? Below’s an example I pulled from their list of featured decks. Note the simplicity of the design — if you want to create super detailed slides, this may not be the right tool for you.

Snowed In? – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

32) HubSpot’s Free Stock Photos

Searching for and buying stock imagery can be a pain in the you-know-what — especially when it comes to deciphering legalese for different use cases. I have a liberal arts degree, and Nietzsche was easier to read than whatever legalese stock imagery companies tended to give me. All I wanted to know is whether to cite or not cite a stock image of a laptop. Why was it so hard?

That’s why our team decided to create a library of 550+ free and royalty-free stock photos. Whether it’s a unique image needed for an ebook or that perfect photo you want to add to a blog post, that collection should have you covered. Here’s one of our “around the kitchen” stock photos — yum.

Source: The Free Stock Photos You’ve Been Searching For

33) PlaceIt

PlaceIt serves a very specific purpose: It allows you to upload images of your site or product into real-world environments of people holding phones, tablets, and laptops. PlaceIt will automatically alter the image to make it appear natural with the angle of the phone’s screen — which will save you time learning and/or editing in more advanced software to get the angle right.

You’ll have to pay per image to get really large or high-resolution versions, though I’ve found free images work just fine for blog posts and product page content. The paid downloads also remove that PlaceIt watermark from the bottom right.

34) LICEcap

Looking for the perfect GIF to include in your blog post? If it doesn’t already exist on Giphy, you can make one yourself using LICEcap. Film a screenshot and turn it into a GIF using this handy, free tool — we use LICEcap for our blog posts, too. 

35) & 36) The Noun Project & HubSpot’s Resizable Icons Collection

Like with stock photos, another challenge content creators face is finding elegant icons that resize without getting all fuzzy. There are a few resources out there for great, resizable icons.

The Noun Project is an extensive library of thousands of icons uploaded by contributors. With a free account, you can use icons as long as you either give credit to the creator or purchase them royalty-free for $1.99 apiece.

HubSpot has a library of resizeable icons, too, which you can download for free and without any licensing or attribution. The kit comes with a free guide for how to change the color of the icons using PowerPoint, Photoshop, and Illustrator.

To that, we say …

(From HubSpot’s Free Icon Collection.)

It’s Not the Wand, It’s the Wizard

The tools and resources listed above can help you create, but it’s ultimately up to you to control the quality of your content. You still need to know your customer incredibly well, understand what challenges they face that your product or service solves, and create content that helps them address those challenges.

The brains and heart behind the content creator trump the code behind any tools and technology — and that’s a good thing for succeeding in marketing today.

What other tools or apps do you use to create content more easily? Leave them in the comments so we can extend this list right here!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

So, you’ve developed an amazing site. You’ve put together some seriously valuable content, iterated on the design, and gathered a ton of feedback. Now, you’re finally feeling ready to share it with the world.

And as soon as you publish your new site for the world to see, all of your content will immediately start showing up in Google, right?

Well, maybe. Although, it takes a little more than just hitting the publish button. To get your site listed, you’ll need to check a few boxes first. Let’s walk through it …

How Google Finds Your Content

Google, in its own words, uses a huge set of computers to crawl billions of pages on the web. This crawler, called the Googlebot, essentially begins with a list of web page URLs generated from previous crawls and then augments those pages with sitemap data provided within Google Search Console. During the crawling process, the Googlebot looks for new sites, updates to existing pages, and any broken links.

If new pages are within your sitemap, Google will discover them and crawl the content and then potentially list the page within search results based on its evaluation of 200+ criteria.

Once the crawling process is completed all of the results are fed into Google’s index, and any new sites or updated content will be listed accordingly. During the processing of results, Google looks at information on your page such as title tags, meta description, alt tags, and more. If you have dynamic content on a page, the Googlebot may not be able to read it and will crawl the default version — it’s recommended that your default version is optimized for search.

As a result of Google’s crawling, you may never need to submit your website as it will be discovered automatically. The downside to this approach has always been that it’s reliant on Google’s timeframe to crawl and index your site content, which may not happen as quickly as you would like.

Want to check if a particular site is listed in Google? Just begin your search with “Site:Sitename.com.” For example, here’s what is displayed in Google for HubSpot.com:

If no content is indexed yet for a site, Google will let you know that your search did not match any results.

If no content is found, your next step should be to create a sitemap that can be submitted to Google.

If you want more information about how to create a sitemap, take a look at this post.

(HubSpot customers: Your sitemap is automatically generated and maintained. Simply go to http://ift.tt/NXUDQh to see it.)

How Long Does It Take to Index Content?

My colleague Casey Henry wondered this very question and ran a test to see how long it took Yahoo and Google to crawl and index content. The results? Well, they were staggering.

When publishing content without manually submitting an updated sitemap, Henry found that it took Google 1,375 minutes to crawl, while Yahoo took 1,773 minutes. To put those numbers into perspective, that’s roughly a full-day just to crawl your content.

Source: Moz

On the other hand if you are launching a new website, or adding a number of new pages, it may be worth submitting an updated sitemap. According to the same study, Henry found that after submitting an updated sitemap, the average time it took for a bot to visit the page was 14 minutes, compared to 245 minutes for Yahoo. In other words, your new page can start generating organic traffic and conversions on the same day.

Source: Moz

How Do I Submit My Site to Google?

If you have a brand new site, you should first verify you own the site within Google Search Console and then submit it here.

If you have an existing site and are launching a number of new pages, then instead you should submit an updated sitemap to ensure it gets listed as quickly as possible.

To submit an updated sitemap, log in to Google Search Console > Crawl tab > Sitemaps. Once you’re there you can submit your updated sitemap for Google so it can begin crawling it as soon as possible.

Based on the above, you may be asking if you need to submit an updated sitemap every time you publish a page. While you certainly could do so, it’s best to manually go through the submission process if you’re working with critically important content that needs to be indexed quickly. If you’re just making minor updates or corrections to pages, then it may be ok to wait until Google crawls that page and updates its index.

Do you generally submit an updated sitemap when you publish new content? Let us know what you think in the comments.