Ahoy, matey! I’m back from a short vacation and ready to continue my pet project: geo-distributed messenger in Java!
If you’re interested in how my dev journey began (and is going), check out the previous articles in this series:
Articles
WordPress has made it easy for everyone to launch a blog, but even though launching a blog isn’t a difficult task any longer, driving traffic to your blog certainly is!
In this article, I’ll share some tried and tested strategies that have worked well for my clients’ blogs. You do not have to be an expert or a marketing guru to get traffic to your WordPress website. Follow the helpful tips I share in this article and watch the visitors start pouring in.
Tip 1: Use Powerful Headlines
The first thing related to your blog that a user reads in the search engine results is your article headlines. Of course, nobody wants to click on a boring article title. But a powerful headline stands out from the rest and gets you more clicks.
In most themes, your article headlines are translated into meta titles for the pages. Meta titles indicate the topic of your articles to Google and other search engines.
Tip 2: Build an Email List
Consider offering your visitors a newsletter signup form through which they can subscribe and get notified about new posts on your blog. You can offer them an incentive for free to persuade them to subscribe to your blog. It can be anything from an e-book, membership, useful templates, or an e-course.
Building an email list gives access to the inboxes of your visitors. You can share your blog content with this prospective audience every time you post a new article. This will help you get consistent traffic to your WordPress blog.
Tip 3: Use Free Giveaways and Contests
Free giveaways work as an incentive for your WordPress blog visitors. To offer an entry to your blog’s free giveaway, you can ask your visitors for an email subscription, comment on your blog posts, share it on their social media channels, and ask for other such things.
The trick is to think about the actions of your visitors that will increase traffic to your blog and provide them with one or multiple giveaway entries for such actions.
Tip 4: Optimize For Keywords
All successful bloggers optimize their content for keywords. You need to perform proper keyword research to find sentences and words that your target audience is typing in Google and other top search engines.
Instead of guessing the keywords for your articles, consider using some helpful tools like SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool and Google Ads Keyword Planner. This way, you can find the terms people are genuinely interested in and the keywords that do not have too much competition.
You must ensure to choose the keywords that have some excellent traffic volume but, at the same time, have less competition. Such keywords will help in the better ranking of each of your articles.
Tip 5: Optimize WordPress Site Speed
It has been proven that loading time is a ranking factor for SEO, as Google tends to assume that fast sites are high-quality sites.
Signing up for a hosting provider specializing in WordPress guarantees you get the best optimization features for your WordPress site. However, that alone is not enough because you need a hosting provider that can also handle a high volume of visitors.
Optimizing your WordPress website will help in the faster loading of your blog pages. Images are generally the biggest culprit in slowing down your website. So you must first optimize them through an image optimization plugin like Smush, Imagify, or Optimus.
Enabling caching on your WordPress blog will considerably improve its speed. You can store your website data locally with caching, thereby reducing your server load to a large extent. Your website will, therefore, load faster on your visitors’ end, especially when they are repeat visitors.
Tip 6: Take Advantage of Social Media
Try building your presence on some of the top platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Post multiple times a day on these websites and share your blog articles.
You must also include social sharing buttons with your blog posts to make sharing easier for your audience. It will allow your blog visitors to share your post on different social platforms. This dramatically increases the chances of your blog post going viral.
Tip 7: Internal Linking Strategy
The only key here is to link articles that are closely related to each other. Your visitors might be interested in such related content and read more of your blog posts, thereby increasing your page views. It also increases the chances of visitors sharing your blog content since they find it valuable.
Tip 8: Be a Guest Blogger
Guest blogging involves creating content for other websites for mutual benefits. It helps you establish your authority in the blogging world while attracting more visitors to your WordPress website.
Becoming a guest blogger allows you to spread the word about your blog to a new set of audiences and bring in organic traffic. It expands your work portfolio and helps build or enhance your online reputation.
Tip 9: Pay for Traffic
Consider using Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft advertising, and other top advertising platforms when paying to bring traffic to your blog. Be aware of your blog audience and use the most suitable criteria to target it.
I’d recommend setting a weekly budget for paid ads and tracking the ad performance at the end of the week.
If you are satisfied with the traffic results, use the same criteria for the next week. On the other hand, if the ad performance is not as per your expectations, try different criteria to reach your target audience.
Conclusion
Getting traffic to your WordPress blog is an incentive for all the hard work that you do in creating content and managing your website. It builds a name for your blog and improves its search engine ranking. All this leads to better user engagement and revenue.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post 9 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your WordPress Blog first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
There are a good number of articles that articulate functional differences between HashMap, Hashtable, and ConcurrentHashMap. This post compares the performance behavior of these data structures through practical examples. If you don’t have the patience to read the entire post, here is the bottom line: when you are confronted with the decision of whether to use HashMap, Hashtable, or ConcurrentHashMap, consider using ConcurrentHashMap since it’s thread-safe implementation without compromise in performance.
Performance Study
To study the performance characteristics, I have put together this sample program:
Given CockroachDB scales with vCPU, there’s a hard limit to how many active connections we can support per vCPU before a serious problem arises. PGBouncer stretches the limits a bit making it a cost-effective option. In serverless architectures, there is no client-side connection pooling, and using middleware like PGBouncer can alleviate the problem of connection storms. Please see my previous articles on the topic for more details.
Previous Articles
- Using PGBouncer with CockroachDB
- Using PGBouncer with Cockroach Cloud Free Tier
- Exploring PGBouncer auth_type(s) with CockroachDB
Motivation
We’ve covered how to deploy PGBouncer with a self-hosted CockroachDB cluster. Today, I’m going to demonstrate how to run PGBouncer along with the Cockroach Cloud free-forever tier database. The overall concepts are identical, but we will highlight some of the major differences in deploying PGBouncer with a cloud product.
Abstract
Continuing our exploration of the multi-model capabilities of SingleStore DB, we’ll discuss SingleStore DB’s support for Full-Text Index and Search in this article.
Using the example of medical journal articles from the SingleStore self-paced training course on Full-Text Index and Search, we’ll store the text from journal articles and then perform a variety of queries using the full-text capabilities of SingleStore DB.
No one likes talking about money. Most of us got into web design because we loved it. But the fact is, we’ve all got bills to pay.
If you’re a half-decent designer or a relatively competent developer, then there’s no reason you can’t make a living as a web designer. Here are six simple steps towards earning a living using the skills you already have.
Step 1. Freelance Work
Many individual bloggers and small company owners require websites to reach a larger audience. You might exploit this opportunity to begin a side business as a freelancer.
One of the most efficient ways to start is to look through employment networks and online classifieds. Eventually though, you’re going to need a portfolio. Building your freelancing company website could be your first opportunity to demonstrate your web development talents. As you embark on new projects, this website can display client testimonials that demonstrate your expertise. Ensure that it’s up to date, relevant, and follows current design trends. Also, make sure your website is linked to your social media profiles.
Even though you are responsible for finding clients, you have a great deal of flexibility: you can choose your working hours and exercise more freedom and creativity. However, you’d still be accountable for your work and have to execute assignments on time to keep your clients satisfied.
It’s also important to remember that you’ll have to keep track of your taxes and other financial paperwork. Furthermore, you would not have a standard employer who will provide you with health insurance and other perks.
Step 2. Specialize
Today’s market offers a wide choice of web design services most suited to our needs. From designing and building custom websites to creating social media websites to managing SEO and PPCs, web design services offer various services. And while it is beneficial to have a general understanding of what all these services entail, it is always good to identify and refine your expertise. Becoming proficient in one aspect of web design will give you more confidence and direction regarding the kind of work you would like to do.
Allowing yourself to land repeat clients specializing in one type of service will make it easier for you to create processes in your business to complete work accurately and quickly. These processes will also help you build a team should you need one.
Step 3. Networking Effectively
You should leverage social networking sites such as LinkedIn, practical tools for engaging with colleagues and potential customers. Ensure your profile is updated with all the services offered and all talents you deliver. Make sure you include links to any past projects you’ve worked on. There’s also a career board on LinkedIn that can help you avail yourself of many freelance projects. Registering and engaging with relevant organizations can allow you to acquire more visibility.
Freelancers are generally matched with modest design/development assignments through these websites. Although some developers heavily vouch for them, getting work from these websites when you’re just starting may be exceedingly challenging, considering most of your time will be exhausted in securing billable employment.
Step 4. Start Your Own Blog or Podcast
Blogs and podcasts are an excellent way to organically acquire fresh customers and other relevant parties. A well-written blog is a terrific source of amusement and knowledge for potential clients. Aside from showcasing your services, a blog may be used to earn money in various ways. Once the blog grows large enough, you can incorporate backlinks, ads, or author-sponsored content. Many popular blogs eventually grow into fully-fledged businesses.
When you start a blog from scratch, it can take a long time to see a return on investment. Consider producing freelance articles for a blog with a constant stream of traffic to help you get started. This will enable you to demonstrate your skills while also getting compensated for them.
Step 5. Work at a Design Agency
Working at a design agency or in-house could be an ideal option if you desire a more traditional job title. It also helps you build your portfolio with larger and more recognizable clients than those you can secure as a freelancer.
Instead of stressing about the management side of things, you can focus on serving clients and constructing websites with this approach. You wouldn’t have to look for new clients, and you’ll get all of the paid benefits that regular employees get. However, you’d have to work under strict supervision and have less creative control over your projects. There will also be harsh deadlines looming over your shoulder. And this procedure will also set a wage ceiling for you. On the other hand, obtaining employee insurance and securing a source of income can be very reassuring.
Step 6. Start Your Own Agency
Once you feel you have enough relevant experience and are confident in your abilities to perform and manage things well, you can start your own agency. It’s like freelance work, but on a much larger scale. The flexibility to employ others to do your work is the fundamental advantage of having your own agency. You can recruit additional designers and eventually recruiters to help you secure clients.
Having your own agency allows you to do the work you want and how you desire. As a general rule, start as a freelancer and gradually create the foundations for your agency as you gain expertise. You can eventually automate the entire process with hard effort and an innovative business plan.
You must actively network with other people in your business and reach out to new clients in addition to working on your skills. If you can create a solid customer base and take measured chances with your chosen projects, you can procure meatier projects and become prominent in the corporate sector.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post 6 Simple Steps to a Career in Web Design first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
In previous blog articles, we have successively introduced the deletion, bitset, and compaction functions in Milvus 2.0. To culminate this series, we would like to share the design behind load balance, a vital function in the distributed cluster of Milvus.
Usage
Milvus 2.0 supports automatic load balance by default. But you can still trigger load balance manually. Please note that only sealed segments can be transferred across query nodes.
GSSAPI authentication is becoming increasingly popular as CockroachDB starting to make inroads in Fortune 2000 customer bases and financial services segment. That said, ecosystem coverage for GSS needs to improve for parity with other authN methods. Today, we are providing a workaround and a look at the future. By the way, do you realize this is my 15th article on Kerberos and CockroachDB?
Articles Covering CockroachDB and Kerberos
I find the topic of Kerberos very interesting and my colleagues commonly refer to me for help with this complex topic. I am by no means an expert at Kerberos, I am however familiar enough with it to be dangerous. That said, I’ve written multiple articles on the topic which you may find below:
SQL is the only 22nd century tool available in 21st century
Here are the previous articles comparing architecture, database objects, data types, and data modeling of Oracle with Couchbase. This will focus on SQL support.
Oracle was the first and staunch supporter of SQL. Oracle’s SQL implementation beat IBM to market by two years. That changed the fortune of one or two people. :-) All of the modern relational databases implement SQL. So much so, the relational databases are sometimes called SQL databases, much to the chagrin of C. J. Date. Nations are known by their languages… English, French, and American(!). It’s not a stretch for a class of database systems to be known by their languages as well. SQL has been so effective, many big data and non-relational systems have picked up SQL as the lingua franca. SQL is here to stay, even for NoSQL systems.
Many people believe that UX design is all about creating slick, engaging images and top-notch user flows. While those things have their merits, UX designers do much more than that.
UX writing is an essential skill in developing an app or solving a UX problem for a client. UX writing is when we craft UI text to communicate with a product/service user. UX writing includes valuable text like instructions, buttons, menus, just-in-time warnings, etc.
This article will analyze what you need to look out for even before you start writing. After that, we will explore ten crucial tips for UX writing that every UX designer should know.
Practical Tips and Tricks to Improve Your UX Writing
As with UX design in general, UX writing is about achieving a goal. Think of a wireframe you have created: The first thing you do when designing is to identify the real problem and set out to find the right solution. The same goes for UX writing.
Accordingly, before you start writing, make sure that you:
- Have identified the UX problem;
- Understand the goals of the client’s digital product;
- Are familiar with the target audience;
- Know the style and tone of voice you should use.
Once you are familiar with all of the above, you are ready to start writing. Let us explore all the tips and tricks you can follow to improve your UX writing.
1. Be Concise
This is one of the most important tips concerning UX writing. UX designers should always seek the shortest path from point A to point B. This is not only true for UX writing.
So conciseness is all about shortening your sentences and writing only what is necessary. This way, you’ll achieve a better user experience. Remember that most people tend to quickly scan instead of actually reading.
2. Be Clear and Helpful
If you are concise, the text you write will be clear and valuable. Since our goal is a compelling user experience, you should avoid being wordy. Our text needs to be helpful to the reader. What does a user need to know about the product or service?
All you need to do is anticipate what users need and what they are concerned about. Then, by analyzing your target audience, you can easily remove unnecessary text and make your UX text clear and useful.
3. Be Positive
You want the user to have a positive feeling when they first engage with your digital product. Well, for the target audience to be positive, your writing needs to be positive as well. To achieve that, you should avoid negative statements.
Of course, this is not a rule that you must always follow. For example, using “don’t” is not always bad because you can use it for emphasis. Nevertheless, try to avoid such words when describing your product or service.
4. Be Consistent
Consistency has everything to do with sticking to the guidelines you (or a client) set at the beginning of the UX project. Your UX text must always match the style and tone you have chosen.
Try to pay attention to details. For example, when it comes to numbers, you can write 2,000 follows, 2.000 follows, and 2000 follows. It does not matter which you choose, as long as you remain consistent throughout the project.
5. Use Active Voice
Although it is not always wrong to write in the passive voice, the active voice is generally more helpful for UX writing. Your text will be more precise, tailored to your audience, and more potent with the active voice. And when your written text is clear and powerful, it is also more engaging.
6. Don’t Get Wordy
In most cases, when you are done writing, you believe that your text is clear and valuable. And that’s reasonable. However, it is wise to reread your text and delete all the filler words.
Adjectives and adverbs are usually unnecessary, and you can remove them from your UX text.
7. Choose Strong Verbs
But if you have no adjectives and adverbs, how can you emphasize and strengthen your text? All you need to do is use the correct persuasive verb. Strong verbs help you formulate compelling CTAs without being wordy.
8. Use “You” Words
Now that we have mentioned CTAs, there is nothing more convincing than the word “you.” Words and phrases like “you,” “you will,” “you are,” “you have,” “your,” “yours,” etc., are the best way to connect with your target audience and let them be the leading character on your UX Journey Map.
9. Avoid Articles and Exclamation Points
Although it may sound bizarre, the use of articles is not necessary for people to understand what you are saying. The same goes for exclamation points. Of course, you can use exclamation points for emphasis, but not always. Save them for the most exciting aspects of your project.
10. Don’t Use UX Writing to Point Out UI
This is a widespread mistake made by us UX designers. If you have to point out an interface element of your design with text, there is probably something wrong with the design.
Remember, UX text is not about explaining your user interface; it’s about providing valuable and transparent information about your digital product.
Wrap Up
You should keep in mind that the above tips are only guidelines and not strict rules. For example, there are occasions when the passive voice or an exclamation point should be used in UX writing. In any case, you will be one step closer to your goal if you make sure that your UX text is concise, clear, valuable, and consistent.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post 10 Tips for Effective UX Writing first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
