How to Build an Email List on Your Blog

Blogging is arguably the best content creation strategy for promoting your website.

Publishing blogs on a regular basis boosts your site traffic, adds SEO value, generates leads, helps you build backlinks, and increases your internal linking opportunities. Blogging gives your website visitors a reason to keep coming back to your site and stay on your pages for longer periods of time.

Furthermore, blogs are highly shareable. It’s a great way to increase your exposure on other platforms.

The list goes on and on. I could sit here all day and talk about the benefits of blogging. That’s why I publish so many blogs on a regular basis and have done so for years.

So for those of you who already have an active blog, that’s great news. You’re already on the right track.

But now it’s time to take your blog to the next level. You can use this part of your website as a lead generation tool. The best way to do that is by building an email list.

It doesn’t matter what type of website you have; this strategy can be applied. Some of you might have an ecommerce site with a blog as a supplemental page. Others may have a website that’s strictly dedicated to blogging. The rest of you probably fall somewhere in between.

Regardless of your unique situation, you need to use your blog to get email subscribers. Here’s why.

Email marketing yields a massive ROI. Studies show that marketers average a $44 return for every $1 they spend on email campaigns. That’s a 4,400% return!

People on your email subscriber list will spend more money than your other customers.

Plus, seemingly everyone on the planet uses email. Well, at least everyone who is landing on your blog pages.

According to Statista, there will be roughly 5.6 billion active email accounts worldwide by the end of 2019. In the United States, 91% of all Internet users have an email account.

Here’s something else to consider. 99% of people with email account check their messages on a daily basis. 73% of Millennials say that email is their preferred method of communication from businesses.

Simply put, email marketing works.

But before you can benefit from these campaigns, you need to build your list. That’s what inspired me to write this guide. I’ll show you how to turn your blog into an email opt-in machine.

Choose an email marketing service

Before you can collect emails, you need to be signed up for an email marketing service.

You won’t be sending out individual messages or bulk emails manually—that’s just crazy talk. Email software makes it easy for you to collect, manage, and contact your subscribers.

Plus, you’ll gain valuable insight on the success of your campaigns. Email marketing services will tell you things like:

• Open rates
• Bounce rates
• Spam rates
• CTR
• Unsubscribes

For those of you who already have email marketing software, you can skip over this part; unless of course, you want to switch providers. These are some of the top email marketing options on the market right now:

• Constant Contact
• MailChimp
• ActiveCampaign
• GetResponse
• AWeber

There are dozens of other legitimate email marketing services out there for you to consider, but they are all extremely similar.

Pricing is typically based on the number of subscribers that you have on your list. As the list grows, the price increases as well. Don’t worry; this is a good thing. You want to have a huge email list. Plus, as we said earlier, you can expect a high ROI from your email marketing campaigns.

Choosing your email software is based on personal preference. You might want to consider a free trial to test out the navigation, user experience, and features before you finalize your decision.

But for the most part, you really can’t go wrong if you choose one of the options that I listed above.

Create an opt-in form

Now that you’ve signed up for a service, you need to create an opt-in form to place on your website.

You should definitely have a dedicated landing page on your website for email sign-ups. But you’ll also want to have sign-up forms on other pages of your site as well, including your blog main page, and every blog that you publish.

You can create these forms through your email software. Again, the instructions and wording will vary slightly depending on which service you’re using. But it should be very straightforward and easy to find.

Then just generate a shortcode of the form to embed on your website. You’ll probably create several of these, which we’ll talk about in greater detail shortly.

Here’s a basic example from Search Engine Land of what the final version of these opt-in forms will look like on your blog.

This screenshot is from the blog homepage.

It’s very simple. On the right side of the screen, there’s an option for visitors to sign up for their newsletter.

The only piece of information required to join this mailing list is an email address. Short opt-in forms increase the chances that more people will sign up.

If your forms require a first name, last name, email address, phone number, zip code, favorite color, and mother’s maiden name, it feels like you’re one step away from asking for the person’s social security number. That’s overkill.

Think about it. All you really need is their email address.

Other information makes it easier for you to personalize the customer experience, but you can worry about that down the road by asking them to create a user profile or account. For now, just focus on getting them to subscribe.

Search Engine Land continues to apply this strategy on all of their blogs.

Here’s what it looks like when you click on an individual blog post.

Before the title, they give you another chance to opt-in through a simple form. As you can see, it’s not quite the same as the first form, but it’s very similar.

They don’t stop here either. There is another opt-in form at the bottom of each blog post as well.

By putting these opt-in forms all over the blog, it increases the chances that people will sign up.

Notice what all of these forms have in common. None of them are obtrusive.

Website visitors can still navigate and read without having to deal with any pop-up windows, sliders, or anything else that could ruin their experience.

As I said earlier, you’ll want to create multiple versions of your opt-in form so it’s easier for you to track. Eventually, you’ll run tests to see which ones are performing the best. But I’ll talk about those tests later on.

Add an incentive

Why should someone sign up to get emails from you?

It’s a fair question. Sure, you want their email address so you can monetize them, but what are they actually getting in return?

If you don’t give people a reason to sign up, they probably aren’t going to.

Think about how many emails you get on a daily basis. If it’s anything like me, you’re getting hundreds. In fact, the average office employee receives 121 emails each day!

Not everyone will be so willing to just subscribe to every opt-in form they see without thinking twice about it. But by adding an incentive, it can dramatically improve your chances.

Here’s a great example from the Conversion XL blog.

This simple sign-up form is similar to the examples we saw before.

However, this one is pitching the website visitor from a different angle. Rather than just saying “subscribe for weekly updates” or something along those lines, they are offering a free ebook.

As you can see, the book is about mastering conversion optimization. In order to get the free ebook, the person has to provide their email address. There is a box below that line saying the user will also be getting updates via email.

There are tons of ways for you to employ this strategy on your blog as well.

For example, let’s say you operate an ecommerce site. On your blog posts, you can pitch a discount code for joining an email list. Offer a dollar amount or percent discount off of the visitor’s next purchase.

Just think of something that goes beyond “sign up.” Learn how to craft the perfect value proposition and add it to your opt-in forms.

Use a sticky bar

If you don’t want an opt-in form in the sidebar or within the content itself, like the previous examples we looked at, you can always use a sticky bar as an alternative.

As the user scrolls through your blog, the sticky bar will remain in place at the top of the page.

This is another non-obtrusive way to collect email addresses with your blog. Here’s an example of how HubSpot uses this strategy.

The “subscribe” button is at the top of every blog post.

So this will always be in view as people read through the blog. If you click on this button, you’ll see the following options:

Subscribe via email is the top option.

Once someone clicks on this, they’ll be provided with an opt-in form similar to the ones we saw earlier.

Keep in mind, these added steps may not generate as many subscribers as other methods. But with that said, website visitors who go through this process will be more qualified leads. You know that they’re interested in getting emails if they complete the extra steps.

Check out my guide on creating a double opt-in landing page as a way to qualify your leads as well.

This type of sticky bar is just another approach for you to consider.

Create a visual CTA

Instead of a traditional opt-in form, you could try making something that’s a little bit more inviting to draw attention to your email list.

In this case, a custom visual image with a CTA should do the trick. You can put this at the top or bottom of your blog posts.

Here’s what this looks like on the IMPACT blog.

Notice how this looks different from the other examples we’ve looked at so far.

The entire visual is dedicated to getting subscribers. It includes a photo, value proposition, and CTA button. IMPACT is enticing readers to sign up by power in numbers.

Psychologically, if 50,000+ people are doing something it must be good, right? That’s the idea behind this strategy.

I also like how the image shows the newsletter on a mobile device. It’s very relatable to the audience. This tells the story of someone who can get updates to their phone, which is super convenient.

Since 61% of all emails are opened on mobile devices, this makes a ton of sense. Overall, this is a creative way to draw attention to an email list on a blog post.

Run A/B tests

Every element of the email opt-in forms on your blog should be tested.

• Size
• Color
• Position
• Wording
• Font

Start with one idea, then move on to the other. The idea behind A/B testing is that everything can always be improved. You might think you have the perfect opt-in strategy, but that’s not always the case.

Some of you will be surprised to learn that a subtle change can drastically increase your sign up conversion rates.

Let me take a moment to circle back to what we discussed earlier in terms of creating multiple opt-in forms. This makes it easier for you to test out different elements and variations.

For those of you who plan to take an approach like Search Engine Land and place forms in multiple areas throughout the blog, you can figure out which one is performing the highest. You may ultimately decide that one of them can be eliminated.

Then you can continue A/B testing the most popular forms to ensure that it converts at the highest possible rate.

Conclusion

You’re not getting the most out of your blog until you start using it as a tool for building an email list.

The first step to implementing this strategy is choosing an email marketing software. Then you’ll use that software to create opt-in forms to place on your blog.

From here, it’s just a matter of figuring out how you’re going to present that form to your website visitors. Adding an incentive, using a sticky bar, or creating a visual CTA are just three ways to drive conversions.

You’ll ultimately want to test out all of your strategies make sure that your blog is performing at the highest possible level.

Source Quick Sprout http://bit.ly/2XfVr7k

How to Get More Conversions From AdWords Using Remarketing

In a perfect world, all of your website traffic would be organic. That’s the most ideal scenario for everyone.

But sometimes it can take 6, 12, or even 18 months for you to really notice the benefits from your organic search strategies. That’s not to discourage you. While you should stay the course and continue to prioritize SEO best practices, you can always use paid ads for the time being to drive more traffic to your site.

So for those of you who have available funds in your marketing budget, I’d definitely recommend that you give PPC campaigns a try.

The best way to run paid ads is with Google AdWords.

Google does an amazing job of giving you the tools to ensure that your ads are viewed by people who are most interested in your business. One of the most effective campaign approaches is remarketing.

What is remarketing?

It’s a way to expose your ads to people who have previously viewed your website in the past. Since these visitors are already familiar with your brand, it’s more likely that they’ll convert when they see your ad in SERPs or on a Google partner site.

Getting traffic to your website is obviously great. Who doesn’t want more traffic? But if those visitors aren’t converting, you’re not going to see a high ROI on those paid ads.

That’s where remarketing comes into play. Here’s a simple visual representation to show you exactly how remarketing works.

It’s a very easy concept to understand.

Basically, your website visitors will be tracked based on their behavior. Then your ad will appear when they’re browsing on another site in the future.

I’m sure this has happened to you before.

You search for something like “hotels in Miami” and then later that day you see an ad for a hotel website that you were browsing earlier. That’s a remarketing campaign.

For those of you who have never used this strategy, I’ll explain every step you need to take to set this up with Google AdWords. Implementing a remarketing strategy will boost your conversion rates and generate a higher ROI for your ad spending.

Generate the remarketing code

The first thing you need to do is generate a remarketing code from your Google AdWords account. Then you’ll eventually add this code to your website so Google can track visitors and ultimately apply this strategy via partner sites.

I’m going to assume that you already have a Google Ads account.

If not, take a moment to set that up. It’s a quick process and free to do so. You won’t pay anything until you actually start running ads.

Once you’re signed in to Google AdWords, click on the “tools” icon at the top of your dashboard to expand the menu.

Then navigate to the “shared library” column and select “audience manager,” as pictured above.

When you land on this page, you’ll see that you’re already in a remarketing section. On the left side of the screen, click on “audience sources” to continue.

When you get to this page you’ll see five different options:

• Google Ads Tag
• Google Analytics
• App Analytics
• Google Play
• YouTube

These are all ways that you can track customers for remarketing campaigns. But for our purposes today, you’re going to select “set up tag” from the “Google Ads tag” box.

Now you need to determine the type of remarketing campaign that you want to run. You’ll be presented with two options.

The first choice is very straightforward; collect general data about website visitors.

Basically, this means that if someone lands on your site, they will be a candidate for your remarketing campaigns.

But just because someone visits your site, it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re interested in what you’re offering. Sometimes people will land on your site by mistake. Or maybe they realized that what you’re offering isn’t actually what they need. It’s possible that your products are out of their price range. There are tons of different factors at play here.

So remarketing to everyone and anyone isn’t always the most effective way to drive conversions. That’s why you should consider the second option.

Google lets you collect data based on specific visitor actions to show more personalized ads to people. For example, you could target only people who added something to their shopping cart but didn’t convert.

After you pick the type of remarketing strategy you want to pursue, Google will automatically generate a code for you.

Add the tag to your website

Once the remarketing code has been generated, you need to install the tag on your website.

For those of you who choose the second option involving specific visitor actions, you’ll see that two codes have been generated.

• Global site tag
• Event snippet

The global site tag should be added to every page on your site. This will be installed in the <head> section of your page HTML.

Here’s an example of what it looks like when the tag gets generated for you on AdWords.

The event snippet tags are a little bit more complex.

You cannot just install the code on your site as it reads in the auto-generation box. There are placeholders in the code that need to be updated based on the type of event you’re tracking for remarketing.

Remember, the whole purpose of this strategy is to find people who are most likely to covert.

So the snippets won’t go on every page of your site. Instead, they’ll only be added to pages where those certain actions take place, such as an add-to-cart page or a product page.

Here’s an example of an event snippet code with those placeholders.

As you can see from what I’ve pointed out above, there are parts of the tag that need to be replaced with a value for tracking purposes.

Let’s break this down even further.

From the top, you can see that this snippet is measuring page views by default. But other examples of events include things like:

• view_search_results
• view_item_list
• view_item
• add_to_cart
• purchase

Once you set an event, you need to change the value items, and ID parameters to correspond with your remarketing campaigns.

This all depends on your business and the type of website you have.

These choices are extremely versatile. Google gives you the option to be very specific within your business vertical.

Recently, Google updated the code for their tags. So for those of you who previously installed a remarketing tag on your site in the past, you should update those old tags. Google says that the old ones will still work, but they recommend generating new global tags and event snippets for future use.

There are three ways to install these tags on your website.

• Install it yourself
• Email the tag to your webmaster
• Use the Google tag manager

Every option is pretty self-explanatory. Google will walk you through the process each step of the way. If you decide to do this on your own, just make sure you realize that the placeholders need to be changed. Otherwise, the campaigns won’t work.

Item parameters

As I explained before, you need to update the placeholders in the event snippet code to track specific actions by visitors on your website. The item parameters will vary based on the type of business vertical that you choose.

These are the categories:

• Retail
• Education
• Flights
• Hotels and rentals
• Jobs
• Local deals
• Real estate
• Travel
• Custom

So if you have a retail site, the ID could represent something like a unique product.

Here’s another example using a different vertical. If you have an airline or operate a website that sells flights, your event snippet tag could look something like this:

This event is specifically tracking people who purchased a flight from London to LAX.

So one of their remarketing campaigns could be an ad for upgrading their seat, getting a hotel, or renting a car when they arrive at their destination.

To view the full list of requirements and examples of item parameters in your industry, check out this resource from Google. I’d also recommend reading this Google support page that discusses custom rules for remarketing campaigns.

Update your privacy policy

Once you have all of this set up and the code is installed on your site, you need to make some additional changes to your website as well.

Your privacy policy needs to be updated to tell your site visitors exactly what you’re doing.

According to Google, these are the requirements for what your updated privacy policy needs to cover:

• Describe how you’re using remarketing to advertise on the web.
• Explain how Google and other third-party sites are showing ads from your website all over the Internet.
• Explain how Google and other sites use cookies as well as other device identifiers to display ads based on user behavior on your site.
• Give instructions for how website visitors can opt-out of cookies and device identifiers.

Don’t skip this step. It’s unethical to deceive your website visitors. Plus, Google states that you need to disclose all of this information if you’re using AdWords for remarketing.

Create custom audience lists

Now it’s time to customize exactly who you’ll be targeting with remarketing.

Go back to the “audience manager” page on your AdWords dashboard. Then navigate to the “audience lists” tab and click on the plus (+) sign to add a new audience.

Next, you’ll be presented with different options for where this list will come from.

• Website visitors
• App users
• YouTube users
• Customer list
• Custom combination

For our purposes today, go ahead and select the “website visitors” option.

Next, you can add more information about this list by naming it and changing the settings. Here’s what that page looks like:

First, you should name your audience.

Be specific so you’ll be able to distinguish it from other lists. You’ll be able to select this audience later on when you run your ads.

Next, you can update custom information about their behavior and actions on your site. Here are your options:

• Visitors who landed on a specific landing page
• Visitors who landed on a specific page and another specific page
• Visitors who landed on one page but did not land on another specific page
• Visitors who landed on a page during specific dates
• Visitors who landed on a page with certain tags

For example, maybe you want to target website visitors who landed on your “about us” page but didn’t visit your product page. Or maybe you want to target people who visited a product page and a shopping cart page.

Depending on the options you choose, you’ll add those specific URLs as well.

Then it’s time for you to determine how long you want this audience list to be kept on file. By default, this is set to 30 days, but it can be as long as 540 days.

Depending on the page and campaign, you’ll want to adjust this accordingly. If you’re promoting impulse buy products, you’d probably want it set significantly lower. Or if you’re promoting a specific landing page for a holiday sale, you’ll want to make sure the ads don’t run past that holiday.

For the most part, 30 days should be fine. You can always experiment with other periods of time when you create new audience lists.

Launch your remarketing campaign

After your settings are in place, it’s time for you to put all of this to the test. You need to create and run your ads.

Go back to the AdWords dashboard. Find “campaigns” on the left side of the screen.

Click on one of the plus signs to start a new campaign.

Next, you’ll be prompted to choose your goal from one of the following options:

• Sales
• Leads
• Website traffic
• Brand awareness and reach
• Product and brand consideration
• App promotion

You can pick whatever you want from this list. But for conversions, you’ll probably want to choose sales, leads, or product consideration.

Next, you’ll decide on the campaign type. For remarketing, select the “display” option.

This is your chance to customize all of the settings and parameters for your ad. You’ll set things like:

• Campaign name
• Locations you want to target
• Languages
• Bid settings
• Budget

After you finalize all of this, scroll until you see the “audiences” section.

Click on the “browse” tab in the middle of the “edit targeted audiences” window.

Navigate to the third option, as I highlighted in the screenshot above. This will allow you to pick how certain audiences have interacted with your business.

From here, you can choose a list from the custom audiences that we created in the previous step. You could also choose all audiences or audiences that have been optimized by AdWords.

Then it’s just a matter of creating your ads and launching the campaign.

Your ad creation process will vary based on your remarketing campaign. For example, if someone viewed a specific product and already purchased it, then it wouldn’t make sense to show them an ad for that same product. Whereas if they added an item to their cart but never finalized the purchase process, showing them that same product again would entice them to buy.

Conclusion

If you’re going to spend money on PPC campaigns with AdWords, I strongly recommend you run remarketing ads.

With remarketing, you have the ability to target qualified leads. These are people who have already been to your website and completed some type of action that was close to converting.

Since they’re already familiar with your brand, website, products or services, getting those visitors to finalize the conversion will be much easier than advertising to someone who has never heard of you.

Track your conversions. See which types of ads, actions, and custom audience lists are driving the best results and highest ROI. Then you can double down on those campaigns and make changes to ones that aren’t performing as well.

That’s how you drive conversions with Google AdWords using remarketing campaigns.

Source Quick Sprout http://bit.ly/2VYae4Z

How to Craft Meta Tags for SEO and CTR

Creating content is hard work.

It takes time, effort, and resources to make landing pages, write blogs, build custom infographics, and create videos for your website. But all of that hard work will go to waste if people aren’t navigating to your site.

Creating the content itself is only half of the battle. Now you need to make sure that it’s optimized for search engines so you can drive organic traffic to your pages.

That’s why you need to understand the importance of meta tags.

Once you learn how meta tags work, you can optimize them to boost your Google search ranking. The higher you rank, the more clicks you’ll get; it’s really that simple.

In fact, 75% of all clicks go to the first page of Google search results.

The top result of any given search gets roughly 33% of clicks. While positions two and three get 15% of clicks and 9% of clicks, respectively.

What happens if your site is on page two of Google? That’s close enough, right? Wrong.

According to Forbes, the second page of search results only gets 6% of all clicks—and that’s distributed throughout the entire page.

We’ve reached a point in the world of SEO where websites can no longer afford to ignore meta tags. I’ll explain everything you need to know about crafting title tags and description tags that will maximize your SEO value and boost your click-through rates.

What are meta tags?

Let’s start with the basics.

Meta tags are basically just HTML text that describes the content on a particular page. However, you won’t see the tags on the front-end site of any web page.

Instead, these tags are written on a page’s code.

The purpose of a meta tag is to give search engines additional information for what the page is all about. Crawlers will be able to get a good idea of what type of content is on your page by the text and heading tags. But the meta tags give these crawlers even more to work with.

Furthermore, your meta tags can appear in the SERPs, even though they aren’t actually part of the page. Let me show you an example so you can see what I’m referring to.

We’ll keep things simple here.

If you search for Quick Sprout on Google, our homepage will be the top result. I took a screenshot so you can verify this.

But instead of the search engine just providing a link to our site, there is some additional text underneath the URL in the search results.

This is the meta description of our homepage.

Now, let’s navigate to the page itself. If you land on the Quick Sprout homepage, you’ll see that the text in the SERPs is nowhere to be found on the page.

Look what happens when I search for that text. There are zero results.

How is this possible?

That’s because the meta description is in the code. Anyone can look at the code of a page to see if it has meta tags. You just need to know where to look.

So if we right click on the Quick Sprout homepage (or any page on any website) you can click “view page source” to see the code.

You’ll be redirected to a new window where you’ll see a bunch of syntaxes that can tough to decipher.

Rather than looking for those tags manually, you can use the “Command + F” search function to your advantage.

This time when you search for that exact text, you can see that it’s on the page. I highlighted this meta description tag in the screenshot above so it’s easier for you to see.

If you click closely, you’ll see other meta tags in this code as well. We’ll discuss some of these other tags in greater detail as we continue through this guide.

Types of meta tags

As I just said, there are several different types of meta tags that can appear in the code of a web page.According to Google, there are actually nine meta tags and related items that their search engine recognizes.

With that said, some of these are pretty technical. I don’t want to spend time diving deep into all of them. So instead, we’re going to focus on the most important meta tags that have the biggest impact on SEO and CTR.

Title tags

Technically, title tags are not actually meta tags. But they’re treated the same way and recognized by Google, just like a meta tag.

Your title tag will still appear in the <head> of your HTML code, along with the rest of the meta tags on that page.

Title tags are usually used jointly with a description to provide a high SEO value for a web page.

Here’s something else that you need to understand about a title tag. This is not the same as the header of a page or the title of a post.

In fact, the two can be completely different from each other. Here’s an example so you can see exactly what I mean.

This is a screenshot of search results for a page on Search Engine Land.

I highlighted the title tag, which is how it looks on search engines. Here is that same title tag, except written in the code of that page.

As I knew it would, this title tag in the page source matches exactly how it’s displayed in the Google results.

This is very easy to follow so far.

But now let’s take a look at the page itself.

The heading on this page doesn’t match the search title, nor does it match the code.

Simply put, the title tag and headline does not need to be the same. You can use alternative title tags for SEO value.

In this case, “SEO Guide” will have a much better SEO value than “Chapter 1” for searches. I’m sure that’s why Search Engine Land made the change for their title tag.

You need to realize that the title tag will be the first thing that people see in the search results. That’s why it needs to be a clear indication of what that landing page will be about.

Title tags should be crafted in a way that can be understood by real people, while still speaking to search engines.

Meta description

We talked about meta descriptions earlier when I showed you the example from Quick Sprout.

These snippets are meant to tell crawlers, as well as humans, what they can expect to see on a page. Again, this won’t appear on the page itself, but it will show up in the SERPs.

Here’s the thing. Technically, your meta description won’t automatically be the snippet shown in the search results.

According to Google, there are two ways that these snippets are determined.

• Rich results
• Meta description tags

Google “sometimes uses meta tags to generate snippets.” This is the exact wording from Google a webmasters support page.

But in my experience, if your page has a meta tag, that’s what will be used in the SERPs. This is a great way to control how your site appears in search engines, in addition to showing crawlers what your page is about.

Use your meta description as a way to differentiate your page from other websites in the results. Explain why your website is offering exactly what the user is looking for, based on their particular search.

Robots meta tags

Robots tags are a little bit more technical, so I don’t want to spend a ton of time on them. But these tags are definitely worth bringing up since they have an impact on both SEO and CTR.

Examples of the type of controls used with robots meta tags include:

• noindex
• nofollow
• nosnippet
• noarchive
• unavailable_after
• noimageindex

For those of you who want a more advanced way of improving your site’s technical SEO value, review my guide on how to optimize your robots.txt file.

Meta tags best practices

As I said before, you’re going to want to focus primarily on title tags and meta descriptions.

So use this as a checklist, guide, or reference to make sure you’re optimizing these two tags the right way for SEO and CTR.

Don’t use keyword tags

If you look at other online guides about meta tags, you’ll see that some “experts” will tell you to include keyword tags. That’s a waste of time.

Keyword tags are an outdated SEO tactic. In fact, it’s been nearly a decade since Google announced that they don’t use keyword tags as a factor for rankings.

You can even refer back to the page I referenced earlier about the types of tags that Google recognizes. Keywords aren’t on the list.

That’s because their crawlers are so advanced that they can extract keywords from the content without needing those tags. Plus, it prevents people from adding irrelevant keywords to their HTML code just for the sake of ranking.

With that said, you’ll still want to use keywords in your title tag, meta description, and heading tags. But having separate keyword tags won’t give you any added SEO benefit.

Avoid duplicate descriptions

Every page on your website should have a meta description.

But if you’re using the same meta description (or slightly different versions of the same meta description) on more than one page, it won’t be helpful when those pages appear next to each other in the search results.

Here’s an example.

Users won’t know what to click here.

The meta descriptions don’t add any value, so they’ll probably just skip over the results and move on to another option. This would definitely damage your CTR.

Plus, Google always tries to prioritize the user experience. So if they notice duplicate or similar descriptions on your website, they may just eliminate those snippets from the search results altogether when your site is being indexed, which would be another harmful scenario for your CTR.

Meta descriptions are so valuable to users when they’re making a decision of what site to click on in a list of search results.

For those of you who are using duplicate descriptions as a shortcut since you’re strapped for time and don’t want to create one for every page, you need to learn how to prioritize.

At the very least, have unique descriptions for the most important pages on your site. Eliminate weak meta descriptions and just rely on rich snippets to appear in the SERPs.

Be descriptive

It may sound redundant for a meta description to be descriptive, but you’d be surprised how often I see people make this mistake.

This is not an opportunity for you to just blindly stuff as many keywords as possible into your page code. The meta description needs to make sense.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that it always has to be in a complete sentence format. But with that said, it has to add value to real people, as well as crawlers. Keyword stuffing for bots can result in Google removing your snippet from the search results.

Prioritize quality.

Give people a glimpse at something that isn’t displayed on your pages. Don’t just take the shortcut and make your meta description the same as your subheader. That’s not the best way to maximize SEO value.

Don’t use quotation marks

Remember, your meta description is going to be in your HTML code. So certain characters will impact the way it’s displayed.

Whenever a double quotation mark is added to a meta description, the remaining text that appears after the quotation mark will be cut off when it appears in the search results.

So just be aware of this when you’re writing a description. It’s probably in your best interest to avoid special characters and just stick to plain text.

Conclusion

Great content alone won’t maximize your SEO value. There are lots of other factors at play when it comes to your search ranking and CTR metrics.

You need to learn how to use meta tags to your advantage. The three meta tags that have the biggest impact on SEO and CTR are:

• Title tags
• Meta description
• Robots meta tags

For the most part, you’ll want to prioritize title tags and meta descriptions. You can move on to robots.txt files when you’re ready for a more advanced strategy.

Use this guide of best practices for crafting title tags and meta descriptions that will positively impact your SEO ranking.

Source Quick Sprout http://bit.ly/2HZp3z6

Will my house value drop if I replace my draughty Victorian sash windows with double glazing?

Question

I live in a Victorian house where the original sash windows are rotten and the windows themselves are draughty. Some friends have suggested that I replace the windows at the front of the house with double glazing, while others have advised me to hire a specialist sash window company to repair them. I’m worried that replacement windows will devalue the house when I come to sell. Or is being more energy efficient just as important? Any advice?

With period properties, when you come to sell, the original features are often the most eye-catching to potential buyers: the wooden floorboards, the tiled fireplaces and the sash windows. 

Replacement windows could devalue your house if not done properly, but so will rotten windows. I asked Jane Robathan at London estate agency Roy Brooks, and she agreed: “People look for reasons to make lower offers and surveyors look for reasons to down-value homes, so rotten windows will almost certainly impact the value of your home.”  

So what next? Repair or replace? And what with? The decision will no doubt be determined by your budget but here are some things to consider.

Salvage what you’ve got 

There are specialist companies that deal with sash window repairs, fixing rotten sections and improving the fit to address the draughts.You can find sash window installation firms on the HomeOwners Alliance (HOA) website. Simply enter 'Wooden Sash Window Repair' into HOA's Checkatrade search box for a list of local trades. It’s also a good idea to ask friends and neighbours for recommendations. 

Many of these firms will also be able to quote to add double glazing to your sash windows too. This would give you the best of both worlds, allowing you to retain character while improving energy efficiency. 

The Energy Saving Trust found fitting new double glazing could reduce energy bills by up to £110 a year and increase your property's value by up to 10%. So it’s worth looking into.

Replacing old windows with new 

As well as looking at repair and enhancement of your existing windows, get quotes for replacing them.

The average cost of new double glazing is between £400 and £600 per window. So generally it will cost around £2,000 to install four double-glazed windows in a flat and between £4,800 and £7,200 for a standard UK home. 

But prices vary according to size and type of window you choose. Double-glazed sash replacements - as opposed to casement windows, for example - will be more expensive, while wooden replacement sash windows will be more expensive than uPVC.

But think carefully before replacing your original sash windows with uPVC alternatives. It could decrease its appeal and the amount people are willing to pay for your home. The ideal would be to replace original sash windows with like fo like, at least at the front of the house. 

Tips for finding the right windows firm

First, there’s no short cut to finding the right firm to repair or replace your windows. Shop around, get quotes and make sure you are comparing like for like. Look at independent review sites. 

Remember that window repairs and replacement quotes for wooden windows often don’t include the cost of decorating. So you’ll need to get a quote for that too. 

If you’re looking for new double glazed windows, never feel pressured by the old sales tactic of signing up now for new windows before the discounted period ends - there are always discounts. 

Replacement windows will need to be compliant with building regulations. In England and Wales it’s a legal requirement for replacement windows and doors to be registered with your local authority or through a competent person scheme such as FENSA. Failure to do so can cause problems for the future, not least when it comes to selling your home. 

Your new window supplier should arrange compliance giving you a copy of the Building Regulation sign off or a FENSA certificate for your records. There is an overview of Building Regulations you need to take into account with any renovation work on the HOA website.

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Home & mortgage Selling Improvements

Free Tag

property

Ask Experts Blurb Top

This article was written in response to a reader’s question. If you have a financial or work/career question that has left you scratching your head ask our panel of experts who will aim to shine some light on the matter.

Source Moneywise http://bit.ly/2K9HLHa

Do I need to tell insurers that I’ve been bankrupt?

Question

I am an avid follower of your website, but I am looking for some specific help. I read something recently that implied that if you have ever been declared bankrupt, then you have to inform your insurers – be it contents or car. I was bankrupt more than 15 years ago and I was discharged within months of being declared bankrupt.

If this is the case, could you please point me towards which companies offer insurance cover for those who have been bankrupt?

From

SC/via email

Bankruptcy generally won’t affect your car insurance, nor is it a question asked by most car insurers. While a policy may be stopped at the point of bankruptcy, it is not a factor that will impact your access to cover.

However, this is not the case when it comes to your home insurance. Many providers will actually decline to offer a policy to those who have been declared bankrupt in the past. While some insurers may still provide cover, your options will be limited.

You will need to shop around for an insurer in the normal way, checking comparison sites.

However, once you have found a policy that you want to buy, in your case it would be wise to talk to the insurer over the phone and tell them your situation. This will avoid problems should you ever need to claim on the policy.

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Insurance Other insurance

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insurance bankrupt

Ask Experts Blurb Top

This article was written in response to a reader’s question. If you have a financial or work/career question that has left you scratching your head ask our panel of experts who will aim to shine some light on the matter.

Source Moneywise http://bit.ly/2JMqa8T

Ten Simple Yet Life-Changing Personal Finance Strategies

In past years, I gave a series of personal finance talks for local organizations. As my kids got older, I stepped back from doing this, but I still keep my deck of slides fresh with content that lines up with everything I’ve learned about personal finances.

Most of my slides are just pictures of my family or of friends or of my home. They feature one, two, or three bolded words on them. I want people to listen to what I’m saying, not reading the words off of a slide and drowning me out. The only slide I use that has more than three words on it is an early slide that says “SPEND LESS THAN YOU EARN” on it, and the title slide that’s on the screen at the start.

One of my favorite segments in the talk is when I start talking about spending less, a segment that’s centered around “ten simple but life-changing personal finance strategies.” Again, these are all slides of something from my life with just a few big bolded words on them, usually along the bottom or top.

As I was updating my slides for a potential talk at a library in the near future, it occurred to me that those ten slides would make for a pretty strong article for The Simple Dollar. So, here they are – my ten simple but life changing personal finance strategies, along with the one or two or three bold words that appear on those slides.

DON’T SHOP

Simply minimize the amount of time you spend in places with cash registers or online shopping carts. That’s it. If you don’t have to be at such a place for a planned purchase, don’t go there. If you do need something and have a reason to go, make a list first and know what you’re getting before you go so you can minimize your time spent there.

The more time you spend in stores or restaurants or on e-commerce sites, the more likely it is that you’re going to spend money without intention. It’s easy to solve this problem: just don’t go to such places without specific intention. If you don’t have a specific purchase in mind, don’t head to a place where you buy stuff.

Why is this true? Stores are designed to talk us into spending money. That’s what they’re there for. They don’t exist if people don’t go in there and exchange their money for goods and services. If you’re in there, that’s what the business wants you to do. So, if you want to minimize the amount of money that exits your pocket, spend as little time as possible in places that are designed to make money exit your pocket.

LIVE SMALL

Live in the smallest home that’s still comfortable for you. Any space beyond that minimum essentially equates to paying for space to store more and more and more stuff. That stuff costs money, as does the housing expense for storing it, and the more stuff you have, the less time you actually have to use the stuff.

A smaller living area solves all of this at once. A small home is less expensive in terms of rent or mortgage. It has much lower utility bills because there’s a lot fewer cubic feet to heat and cool and a lot less space that needs lighting. It also saves on insurance.

Perhaps just as importantly, a smaller home puts an upper limit on how much stuff you can actually possess. There’s an upper limit on how much stuff that you can actually use with any sort of regularity and most large homes allow people to far exceed that limit, storing stuff away that they don’t touch for years and usually forget about. This means you’re less prone to buying stuff that will just fill your closet. This also means it’s a lot less expensive and a lot easier to move.

The savings for this one are enormous over a period of years, often measuring in the tens of thousands and even adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in many cases. Get the smallest living quarters you think you can handle and stick with it. Your financial future will be thrilled with the choice.

REFRESH BILLS

Once every few years, it’s a great idea to go through every single one of your recurring bills, re-evaluate whether you need them at all, and shop around for better deals and/or renegotiate the ones you decide to keep.

A great place to start is with your entertainment subscriptions. Netflix. Hulu. Amazon Prime. Spotify. Daily Burn. Your cable or satellite subscription. Your magazine subscriptions. Blue Apron (yeah, I think of this as entertainment). Hello Fresh. You get the idea.

For each of those things, ask yourself if you really need it. Are you getting enough value out of the service? Are you drowning in so many options that you’re missing out on a lot of the stuff? If so, it’s probably time to chop out a few services for a while, focus on what’s available on a smaller set of services, and then maybe change things around in the future.

You can do the same thing, more or less, with your other bills. Utilities. Insurance. Internet. Cellular service. Garbage collection. Your rent or mortgage. You get the idea.

Go through each and every one of those bills. See if there are charges on them that you don’t understand and ask to have them removed. If you have other options for that particular service, shop around a little and get some quotes, then use those fresh quotes to negotiate a better deal with your current provider (if you’re happy with them otherwise) or jump ship to a new provider.

This doesn’t have to be done all at once, nor does it need to be done on a regular basis. Just plow through everything once every few years and you’ll almost always end up chopping a lot of money out of your regular bills.

FIND YOUR FRIENDS

This one’s easy: find friends that care about doing things you’re interested in doing without spending money. You should never have to spend money just to impress your friends, nor should you have to spend money just to hang out with them if it’s not something you specifically want to do. If you find that keeping up with your social circle requires such expenses on any sort of frequent basis, then it’s time to think seriously about rebooting your social circle.

Start with the things you’re actually interested in without the influence of your current friends. What do you like to do when you’re alone? What hobbies do you have that you often shove on the back burner because they’re not approved of by your social circle? Let those things grow and blossom in your life, and then seek out people who share those interests.

Maybe you really like to hike but your social circle doesn’t really enjoy the outdoors. Seek out an outdoor club in your area, maybe by checking Meetup, and get involved with them. You don’t have to completely switch friends; just give yourself a social outlet for something you like to do with people who happen to also like the same thing.

Maybe you like to play long strategic board games but many of the people in your life aren’t into that so much (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything). Rather than abandoning what you’re interested in and then spending time and money on things you’re not interested in just to maintain a social circle, find people who like those long strategic board games and make room in your life to spend time with those people.

I find that when I’m in situations where I’m most accepted for who I am and what I’m interested in, I’m far less prone to spend money just to keep up with others. I feel far less self-conscious and much happier just doing things I enjoy, not buying things.

AUTOMATE

Automate as much of your savings and financial progress as you can so that you’re not you’re not faced with constant choices between your short term desires and your long term goals. By automating such things, you essentially make the choice in advance – you’re choosing your long-term life, not your short term pleasure.

The first and easiest step for many people is to just sign up for your workplace retirement plan. Many employers offer a 401(k), 403(b), TSP, or similar plan; just sign up and start contributing. Don’t worry about making a “perfect” investment choice when signing up – the perfect is the enemy of the good. Just choose one that’s recommended or that makes sense to you.

Another great step, one I strongly recommend for people, is to start automatically transferring a small amount from your checking to your savings each week. That money in your savings serves as an emergency fund, the money you tap when your car breaks down or something else goes haywire in your life. You are far better off turning to cash in hand in those situations than turning to a credit card – not only is the cash more reliable, it doesn’t come with finance charges that will further bring down your financial state.

You can actually automate many things. You can automate an extra debt payment each month either through online bill pay with your bank or with the lender themselves – that extra payment is just slurped out of your checking account. You can automate saving for a down payment using much the same method as the emergency fund strategy above, just bumping up the amount a lot.

The overall goal here is to make it so that you’re not tempted to spend your retirement savings or your down payment savings or your kid’s college savings in an impulsive moment. That money’s automatically stripped away and used for responsible things.

COOK

Make as many meals as you possibly can for yourself. The more meals you prepare for yourself at home, the better.

This isn’t just because preparing meals at home is vastly cheaper than eating out – that’s true, of course – but because the more you prepare meals at home, the more skilled you become at meal preparation, the easier it seems, and the more compelling it seems compared to eating out constantly.

Just cook at home. Start with simple stuff like scrambled eggs or a grilled cheese sandwich. Make a really simple salad – lettuce with some dressing you like and a few toppings on top. Make a soup – it’s mostly just adding ingredients to water and letting it cook for a while. Make spaghetti.

Along the way, learn how to pack a lunch for yourself and make that a routine. Start taking lunch to work each day, whether it’s leftovers or a sandwich or a thermos with soup in it.

Learn how to use a slow cooker so you have a warm meal ready when you walk in the door after a long day. Learn how to do meal prep so that you always have meals ready to go in the freezer that you made yourself.

This is all about learning and getting more comfortable with the kitchen. It’s going to be hard at first and it’ll feel like individual meals aren’t worth it – all of this work to save $5? The thing is, with each meal you make, every bit of it gets easier. The preparation. The actual cooking. The cleanup. It all gets easier and easier and more and more routine until you start to wonder why you would eat out most of the time.

There’s nothing wrong with eating out when it’s a special occasion – friends are in town or you’re celebrating a real achievement or something. However, your default strategy should be to eat relatively low cost meals prepared at home. They should be the backbone of your diet, both for short term cost and long term health reasons. The way to get there, to make it all efficient and not seem like a troublesome task, is to practice, and you practice by making lots of meals, even when it seems like more work than you want.

BUY USED

When at all possible, buy used versions of items. Make secondhand stores your first stop when buying things like dishes, photo frames, clothes, small kitchen appliances, musical instruments, tools, sporting goods, and so on. Buy them used, make sure you’re actually going to use the item a lot and can actually understand what a new version would give you in terms of benefits, and only upgrade if you need to. 95% of the time, you won’t use the item nearly enough to warrant an upgrade or replacement – the contents of your closet are proof positive of that.

This extends to bigger purchases, too, such as an automobile. You should always aim for buying used cars unless you happen to be in such strong financial shape that writing a check for a new car isn’t causing your financial situation to skip a beat. If that doesn’t sound like you, aim for late model used and plan in advance to be able to pay cash so that, again, you’re avoiding having to pay interest on another debt.

Most of the time with a used purchase, you’re paying 20% of the new cost (or thereabouts) and getting 80% of the value out of the item (or thereabouts). Used items are just tremendous bargains. Sure, you might get a slightly shorter lifespan, but for many items we buy, that’s not going to make a significant difference, particularly when you’re buying it for a fraction of the new price.

WEAR IT OUT

Once you do buy something, keep using it until it’s genuinely worn out and doesn’t function well. Even as it starts to reach that point, learn how to fix minor issues – a broken wheel on a lawnmower, for example, is not a reason to junk it and get a replacement.

This applies to almost all of the stuff people buy, from small things like cars and t-shirts to more expensive things like cell phones and computers to truly pricy things like cars. It’s simple: keep using things until they no longer serve the function you need from them.

Of course, part of the success of this rule comes down to maintaining your stuff. Keep up with the maintenance schedule on your car. Follow whatever’s recommended for maintenance on whatever items you buy, whether it’s changing the oil on your mower or washing your shirt on a delicate cycle. Taking a few seconds or a few minutes to do this will greatly extend the life of your stuff and keep money in your pocket where it belongs.

You should also make an effort to repair items that are no longer working. Don’t toss a toaster just because the lever doesn’t work; take a few moments to peek inside and see if it’s a simple fix. If it is, you’ve just saved some cash. (If not, head to the secondhand store.) Many things that “break” often have really simple fixes that get them right back in working order, so check and make sure that none of those simple fixes work before tossing the item out and buying a new one.

BUY STORE BRANDS

If you’re buying inexpensive items, like nonperishable foods and toiletries and the like, stick exclusively with store brand items unless there’s a specific reason not to do so because the store brand item has failed you in the past.

The prices on store brand items are almost always significantly cheaper than the name brands and are often the same exact item in different packaging with a lower price. The only difference is you’re not paying for the marketing and advertisements of the more expensive version.

Some people seem to worry a lot about having name brand products in their house instead of store brands. Quite honestly, almost no one cares about this, and the few that do aren’t worth wasting your money on to chase their opinions because they’re very likely to find some other fault in what you do.

Store brands are a bargain. Make that bargain a consistent part of your shopping experience.

BUY RELIABLE THINGS

When you’re buying something more expensive – a cell phone or a computer or a car, for example – spend the time to carefully research those purchases and aim for reliability, core functionality, and bang for the buck.

You want reliable items that will keep doing the job for many, many years. You want to focus on core functionality rather than lots of features you won’t use because that means there are fewer avenues for failure. Beyond that, you’ll want to strongly consider bang for the buck, where you’re getting most of the reliability at a much lower price.

My own default is to simply check Consumer Reports when buying a more expensive item. I tend to trust their Best Buy selections in terms of reliability and bang for the buck for most purchases and I’ll often end up buying their lowest priced recommendation.

Even if you spend a little bit more to get a reliable item, it will pay for itself in that you won’t have to replace it for a very long time. I’d far rather spend $20 on a pair of socks that will last ten years than $3 on a pair of socks that wear out in a year, for example.

Final Thoughts

Most of the core principles of personal finance are so simple that they can be broken down into just a few words. Beyond that, it’s just details and how to implement that principle.

Even better, most of those core principles are timeless. Most of these same principles worked just as well twenty years ago as they do now, and they’ll still work well in twenty years. The details and specific implementations might change, but the core idea remains the same.

The part that makes personal finance hard is that it relies on commitment and effort from you. Translating the clear principle into consistent action is the big challenge.

Are you up for that challenge?

Good luck!

The post Ten Simple Yet Life-Changing Personal Finance Strategies appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar http://bit.ly/2WamPHd

5 Side Gigs That’ll Let You Get Paid to Help People or Animals

This App Helps You Avoid Overdraft Fees by Advancing You up to $250

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So many of us live paycheck-to-paycheck, with no margin for error. We know what it’s like to see your checking account balance drop closer and closer to $0.

If you’re in this boat, we found a service that can help you avoid two of The Penny Hoarder’s pet peeves: overdraft fees and payday loans.

It’s an innovative app called Brigit, and more than a quarter of a million people are already using it.

It’s designed to protect you from paying expensive overdraft fees or taking out shady payday loans. If you’re in danger of overdrafting your bank account, Brigit will quickly loan you up to $250 — just like that.

You can request an advance anytime you have an unexpected expense, and Brigit will instantly deposit the money into your account. It’s not complicated — you just open the app and tap on your phone.

Or, like a lot of Brigit’s users, you can authorize the app to keep an eye on your bank account for you, and to automatically deposit a cash advance if you’re running low. That way, you can spend less time and stress worrying about overdrafts. You’ve got an automatic safety cushion now.

There are no late fees or interest charges. Instead, Brigit is a subscription-based service with a monthly membership fee — normally $9.99, but Penny Hoarders get a special rate of $7.99.

Imagine how much it could save you. If you overdraft your account by a measly $5 or $10, most banks retaliate by charging you a fee of $35 or so. Banks make a lot of their money this way.

Here’s How This App Has Your Back

If you have an emergency and need cash fast — or if you’re on the verge of overdrafting — Brigit can put money in your account quickly. It takes only one or two business days.

This is a cash advance, a short-term loan, and you pay Brigit back when you get paid. The app deducts your repayment from your bank account on payday, and it notifies you 24 hours in advance that it’s going to do that.

But if it turns out you need some extra time, Brigit’s got your back. If you’re still running low on cash, it allows you to extend your due date without paying any late fees. You can push back your due date up to three times.

Also, you can only get one cash advance at a time. You qualify for another advance as soon as you pay Brigit back.

According to the reviews, a lot of users like the option of having Brigit automatically help them avoid overdraft fees if their bank account is running low.

More than 250,000 people are using the app now, and it’s getting good reviews and has higher than a 4-star rating in both the iPhone’s App Store and on Google Play. (As of May 17, 2019.)

A Smart Payday Solution

You don’t need to have good credit to qualify for Brigit, although you do need a steady job. You’ll need to be able to show that you get recurring direct deposits from an employer.

Short-term loans aren’t necessarily meant to be a long-term solution to your financial needs. Ultimately, to avoid the trap of overdraft fees and payday loans, you’ll want to put yourself in a position where you’re earning more, spending less or both.

In the meantime, Brigit makes for a useful safety net for a lot of people.

Did you know that more than 10% of consumers ages 18 to 25 incur more than 10 overdraft fees per year, according to CNN Money? At the $33 average reported by Bankrate, that’s nearly $350!

And payday loans, instead of being a quick fix, can suck you into a cycle of debt with interest rates of more than 300%.

Almost 70% of payday loan borrowers take out a second payday loan within a month. This cycle can turn a short-term loan of a few hundred dollars into a growing mountain of debt totaling thousands of dollars.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the average repeat borrower pays more than $450 in fees on top of their principal over the course of a year.

Given all that, Brigit might be a smarter choice for you if — like so many of us — you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck and you’re operating on a thin margin.

If you’re stressed about overdrafting, it can offer you peace of mind.

Mike Brassfield (mike@thepennyhoarder.com) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He knows all about living paycheck-to-paycheck.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

source The Penny Hoarder http://bit.ly/2Wg7THO

3 Cool Charities Looking for Knitters

Do you yarn to help others with your crafty skills? If so check out some great charities looking for some knitting assistance.

Source Business & Money | HowStuffWorks http://bit.ly/2Xbodpk

3 Cool Charities Looking for Knitters

Do you yarn to help others with your crafty skills? If so check out some great charities looking for some knitting assistance.

Source Business & Money | HowStuffWorks http://bit.ly/2Xbodpk

Beware - Big Tech is watching you

Who wants a know-all around the house all the time? Apparently, we do. According to Argos, one in 10 households in the UK has a smart speaker – more than the number of UK households with a pet rabbit, which should give us all paws for thought (sorry).

In fact, Argos says that general smart-home product sales have gone up by 161% in the past year – and they should know. The Internet of Things (IoT or smart technology) has been creeping into our lives for years. At least that’s the way it feels. Actually, it was just 2015 – barely four years ago – when the first Amazon Echo hit the market.

Smart products will only become more popular in the UK as the year moves on. We will soon be able to interact with the most surprising of items.

For a start, who hasn’t at some point wished that they could interact more fully with their toilet? Well, now you can because US toilet maker Kohler has shoved an Alexa into its new loo. Yes, you can now install the Numi 2.0 intelligent toilet in your home. It promises a ‘fully immersive experience’ and includes interactive lighting (whatever that is), built-in speakers and voice control, all for a mere $7,000.

It’s just typical, though, isn’t it? All this technology and there’s still the need for paperwork!

Before you rush out excitedly to buy one of these ‘must-haves’, pause for a moment and consider the fact that that smart toilet is doing more than simply obeying your commands. It can also record you. It could even play it back to you. Delightful.

Because that’s what these IoT products do. They’re like News of the World reporters sitting in the corner of your room, making detailed notes of your every spit and cough and reporting it to the Cloud. Even your little Roomba vacuum cleaning robot is mapping out your home.

Who hasn’t wished they could interract with a toilet?

These too-clever-by-half little sneaks come across as fun, handy and even money-saving but, long-term, they may cost us big time if we don’t get wise now. Our so-called smart technology is too smart for us right now. There are suspicions that these devices are snooping on us day and night. And the biggest search engine on the planet knows where we are much of the time, what we’re searching for and what we’re saying to people in emails.

We’re also giving away health data. Last year a stake in the ancestry and DNA company 23andMe was sold to GlaxoSmithKline for $300 million. Why? Because most of their customers who paid to find out if they had a bit of Eskimo in their background also let them keep all of their (incredibly valuable) health data.

Over eight years or so, the company amassed a treasure trove of data – entirely or free – which was valuable enough for a massive corporate name like Glaxo to scoop up. Did any of their former clients see any of that cash? You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?

Earlier this year Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff published a ground-breaking book called The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (and, at 704 pages, it is literally ground-breaking – you could use it to break up clods of soil in the garden). It’s worth a read if you have the time (or just watch video interviews with her if you’re too busy gardening).

Professor Zuboff explains, in frightening detail, how much of our personal data Big Tech companies have already gathered for free, and in secret, and how it’s already affecting what we buy and do and can seriously affect our ability to get various insurances, loans and jobs later on.

So what should you do with your smart technology? Stamp on it. Drown it in the bath. Melt down the nasty little chip and when that’s done, stick the whole lot in the bin (providing you’re sure there’s none of your data on it). Don’t wear a health monitor, and find out if your email provider is reading your messages.

Or, if you’d like to hang on to these gadgets, get in touch with the companies that make them and demand payment for your data – particularly your health information. A few grand a year should cover it, with a written undertaking that your health and life insurance will not be denied based on data harvested from your smart tech.

Obviously, they will say no, but it should wipe the smile off their faces, just for a moment.

Jasmine Birtles gives talks on investing and technology.
Her latest speech is called ‘The Future of Technology: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?’

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Source Moneywise http://bit.ly/2QsEyDE