I also understand that custom shots aren’t always in your budget when you’re first starting out. So…below you’ll find a list of my favorite websites to get free photos for commercial purposes.

Just know that when using photos from these places, there are hundreds of other websites using the same photos.

PS: many photographers put their photos on these sites for the publicity. If you have the opportunity to link to them in your caption, it sure is appreciated!

Free Commercial Stock Photography

https://unsplash.com/ by far my favorite!

pexels.com

kaboompics.com

https://pixabay.com/

https://stocksnap.io/

https://creativemarket.com/ great variety of paid images BUT if you sign up for an account, they send free images to your inbox every now and then

If you haven’t tried Canva for editing your images, they also have an amazing collection of stock photography. I have a Pro license that’s totally worth it for the images alone!

Free Illustrations

https://undraw.co/illustrations

Here’s an example:

As you can see, two of the items are not aligned.

Here’s the solution I found on a WPML forum after lots of searches:

I went into the Elementor page settings (bottom left gear sign in Elementor view) and selected Additional CSS.

You can just copy this:

.elementor-item.has-submenu { padding-top: 5px !important; }

You’ll be able to see a difference immediately, although you may have to adjust the padding to match. For example, I had to use 9 px. instead of 5px.

Here’s what it looks like now:

It’s easy enough to get notifications on your phone, but if you’re on desktop, you may want all your email in the same inbox so you can properly organize and prioritize it.

The setup can be a little confusing, but it just takes two main steps:

1. Step One: Set up POP so you can receive email to your main Gmail account
2. Step Two: Set Gmail up so you can send mail as your secondary account.

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll refer to your main account and your secondary account. The main account will be where your email from all accounts will be handled. The secondary account is the account that you’re adding.

Step One: Set up POP so you can receive email to your main Gmail account

Some website recommend forwarding mail from your secondary account to your main account. This method does have faster setup. The email also appears in the main account faster when you receive it.

When testing this method, an email appeared in the secondary account a few minutes before it appeared in the main account.

However, when you reply to messages that have been forwarded, the recipient can see the the message went from the secondary account, to your main account, and back to them. For the sake of professionalism, I want it to appear that I’m using one account for the entire process. POP makes this possible.

Step 1A- Enable POP in secondary account

Log into your secondary account and access the Settings gear in the upper right corner. Then select See All Settings.

Navigate to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.

Under the POP Download section, click the button beside Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on.

Under When messages are accessed with POP: leave it so that your secondary mail is kept in the inbox.

Hit Save Changes at the bottom.

Step 1B- Receive mail in main account

Log into your main account and access the Settings gear in the upper right corner. Then select See All Settings.

Navigate to the Accounts tab.

Beside Check Mail from Other Accounts, select Add a Mail Account.

On the next screen, type the email address of your secondary email account, and select Next.

To avoid en error message like “We were unable to locate the other domain. Please contact your other provider” when setting up POP in your Gmail, be sure to follow these next steps very carefully.

1. Your username should be pre-populated, but you’ll need to type the part of the your secondary email address after the “@” sign. This field should contain the ENTIRE secondary email address you want to access.
2. Enter the password of your secondary email address.
3. The POP Server field should be pre-populated as “mail.[second-part-of-secondary-email-address]. You’ll need to replace this with exactly: “pop.gmail.com”- without the quotes.
4. Choose the Port- 995
5. Do not select “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.” You’ll get en error message if you do. You’ll still have a copy in the secondary account because you chose “Leave a copy of [business name] mail in the inbox in the first step.
6. I also select “Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail.”
7. I select “Label Incoming Messages”, then click the box, scroll to the bottom, and select New Label.

8. From there, a dialog box pops up and I type in the name of the secondary business. Once I hit Okay, the secondary business name is selected in the Label box.

9. I choose “Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)” because I’m going to set up Multiple Inboxes so all my secondary email messages will be in one place in my inbox. If you aren’t going to do this, you probably don’t want your messages archived. They won’t show up in your inbox.

10. Select Add Account. The window should disappear, and you’ll see the secondary address listed in your Check Mail From Other Accounts section.

Dealing with errors during Gmail POP setup

If you get an error message that says you need to enable less secure apps, go to https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps and make sure you’re logged in as your secondary email. If not, just select it in the right corner where your profile photo is. Once you arrive, flip the switch to “On”, you’ll be able to proceed.

If your account uses two step verification (which it absolutely should- usually), you won’t be able to enable less secure apps without a workaround. You can leave two-step verification on your primary account, and leave it off on your secondary account. Don’t ever send passwords or personal information over email to reduce your risk.

Test POP email setup

Use a personal email address and send an email to your secondary email account. I like to put “Test1” in the subject line and message. If it doesn’t go through and I have to send another test email, I’ll know which one I received.

Now, go check your primary email to see if the test email came through. If you selected “Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)”, be sure to check the folder you sent the messages to.

Once you see the message arrive, you can move to the next step. Don’t delete it- we’ll be doing one more test with it later.

Step Two: Set Gmail up so you can send mail as your secondary account.

Again, this just enhances your professional appearance when sending emails. It could look a little fishy if a potential client emails one email address and gets a reply from a different one.

Log into your main account and access the Settings gear in the upper right corner. Then select See All Settings.

Under the Accounts tab, you’ll see a section titled Send mail as. Click the blue text beside it that says Add another email address.

A new window will open entitled Add another email address you own.

Enter the name you want used on outgoing mail and the email address of your secondary account.

I keep “Treat as an alias” selected.

Click Next Step. If you get an error, keep reading. If not, skip this next section.

Dealing with Errors:

You may run into an error that says: You must send through theexample.com SMTP servers when you send as name@theexample.com. However, this functionality is not available for your account. Please contact your domain administrator for more information.

If this is the case, log into admin.google.com and make sure you’re using your secondary email account. Search for and select “End User Access” in the top search bar.

When the End User Access window opens, select Allow per-user outbound gateways.

Then click the box that says Allow users to send mail through an external SMTP server… and click Save at the bottom.

Wait a few minutes, then try again. It took mine about 10 minutes before I could move on.

Setting up your SMTP Server

The next step will appear entitled Send mail through your SMTP server. This is another tricky step, so follow along closely.

SMTP Server- this may be auto populated to include your mail URL and we need to change it. Replace it with “smtp.gmail.com” without the quotes.

Username- enter the entire email address for your secondary gmail account

Password- enter the password of your secondary gmail account.

Select Secured connection using TLS.

Set the Port to 587.

Click Add Account.

You’ll end up on a screen asking for a verification code.

Check your secondary email account (or your primary account since you’ll see secondary emails there too now). Grab the verification code and paste it into this box.

Once you’ve hit verify, the window closes. You’ll be able to see your secondary email address in the list of “Send Mail As” addresses in your primary Gmail settings.

Test “Send Mail As” Setup

Go back to your primary inbox and find the test email you sent earlier.

Open it and hit Reply.

The compose box will open. Click on the “To” field, and the “From” field will appear beneath it. You’ll see that the From field has your secondary email in it. Type a quick test message, like “Test Reply1” and make sure it gets delivered back to your personal email address.

Congrats…you now have a more streamlined work email system in place!

It took me 2 minutes on the website to realize that my new client had been getting screwed. We’re talking mid-5-figures each year for several years.

First of all, this is infuriating! Search Engine Optimization can be difficult to understand, even if you know that your business needs it to rank in Google without ads. This makes it easy for anyone with sales skills to charge business owners who are ready to prioritize SEO.

Secondly, it does take up to a year or longer for some pages to rank in Google. This means you won’t be seeing any measurable results (like leads) until it could be too late.

Thirdly, how could my client have known? He had no interest in learning another niche like SEO. He specifically hired someone so he wouldn’t have to. He was trusting.

If you’re in my client’s boat and aren’t sure what your SEO company is doing, you’re in the right place. You won’t have to learn about SEO- I promise. Here are 5 tips to help you trust- but verify (before you even see any results).

1. There is no scope of work

A scope of work is simply a plan that states what they will and won’t provide. Some SEO activities can include:

• Improving website speed
• Brushing up your service pages
• Writing new articles or pages to rank for certain keywords
• Creating a customer journey and planning pages for each phase
• Finding backlinks

There are lots of other ways to increase SEO, but my point is that your agency should give you at least a broad idea of what they’ll be working on. There can be a feeling of “secret sauce” in SEO, but if they can’t give you a few broad projects or tasks, take note. Transparency is so important.

2. They didn’t set up reports

You’ll need to be able to measure how effective this expensive service is over time. Your agency should set up some sort of reporting system so you can see how well your site is performing. This can depend on your goals, but could include clicks, impressions, and/or leads.

I set my SEO clients up with Google Analytics on their site to pull in the data. Then I create a filterable report so they can see their monthly stats, but also see how their clicks have increased over months and years.

The good news is that you don’t have to wait years to look at the data and see if your SEO activities are paying off (though this is important too). If your agency has no intention to even measure their success in the first place, they must not have much to offer.

3. The agency didn’t request access to any measuring tools

If your web developer set things up correctly, you probably have Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, or Google Search Console hooked up to your site. (There are third party tools as well, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t have these exact tools.) Your SEO agency should have asked for access to these when they started.

Here’s why- making a strategy for SEO work should take historical website data into consideration. Maybe you’re close to ranking high for one of your services, but people just aren’t clicking. This tells your agency you need work done on meta descriptions or service page content. 

You could also be ranking for a weird keyword, giving you insight into a new customer group. For example, if you provide residential painting, your agency could find that you’re getting tons of visitors for the search “cabinet painting”. This means that you should create a page specifically for cabinet painting so those visitors know they can trust you to do the job well.

4. Your “articles” are short and read like garbage

Pumping out five pointless 250-word articles per month won’t do much for your SEO. The thing to understand about website content is that it needs to please both Google and your visitors. Google isn’t perfect, but it’s actually trying to measure how well your website answers questions when searchers ask them.

Your articles should be treasure-troves of information on a topic. They should also be fairly long if possible. When a user lands on your site, are they learning everything they can about what they asked? You should be the last stop on their search!

Custom graphics are a great way to get your information across. Whether it’s a chart, infographic, funny image, or map, don’t forget the visuals. It’s an awesome way to get other sites to link to your site as well!

5. You don’t own your accounts

Whether it’s Google Ads, Analytics, or other software, your business should own the accounts set up in its name. If your SEO agency doesn’t want to give you access or hand it over at the end of a contract, it’s a bad sign.

Your accounts contain a wealth of information that can help you going forward. It does take awhile to get search ads optimized, and if you have to start from scratch, there will be some wasted time in there. Any ethical company will allow you access to your accounts. Check your contract to see what it says.

BONUS: Does your agency offer to discuss your business practices?

Having a professional look at your website data can be a gold mine for how people perceive and choose your business. I get it- you may not want to make any changes in your business if you’re scaling quickly and have good processes down.

However, most business people want to know where there are bottlenecks or things can be improved. Your website should be your hardest-working employee. By tightly integrating it with your business flow, you’re making your life easier and your business more profitable.

Here are some common ways your website and SEO can serve your business better:

• Better qualifying leads so your sales team isn’t overwhelmed by tire-kickers
• Explaining your process so your customers know what to expect when working with you
• Letting you know when it may be time to expand to another geographic area if your site is showing up for searches there
• Your site can be a resource for current clients as well. By creating a page that expands on a physical brochure or follow-up, you can point leads to your site to get informed and see more about your business.

If you had a look at this list and are rethinking your SEO agency, I may be able to help. 

What do I do?

I write SEO articles and website content to show up in search and help move leads through your funnel.

It’s an awesome feeling when companies start to work with me after a situation like this. Even before we’re ranking, I sense surprise and delight that I’m actually communicating about the process and going through the work of truly understanding their business model.

If you’re ready to work with a company that’s on your side (not just collecting a check every month), I’d be glad to talk.

Schedule a free SEO Analysis

I’ll take a look at your site before our meeting and let you know if your SEO agency is doing you right- I can usually tell after a quick glance at your website. If there’s room for improvement, I’ll take up to 30 minutes to describe how you can make it better.

Schedule Now

Let’s get your site working to its full potential!

Success Stories: Read About My Previous SEO Projects

Multilingual Landing Pages for MultiOne

Content Writing Portfolio- Jahana Uchtman

Lead Generation with Digital Ads for MultiOne America

Influencer Marketing for MultiOne America

Website Re-Design & SEO for 417Medicare.com

Integrated Marketing- Email Campaign & In-Person Visits

Project Management for lakeoftheozarks.com

1. Make sure section is stretched

Do this for every section on the troublesome page.

2. Add this CSS

Add this CSS under the Advanced tab

html,
body{
width:100%;
overflow-x:hidden;
}

3. Fixed!

Update your page, then try to view it again on mobile. You should be good to go!

If the horizontal scrolling isn’t fixed, try doing this on your Theme Builder templates like Header, Footer, or any popups.

Delivery and curbside pickup are a couple ways to get through the quarantine, but these local shops have taken it one step further. Here are my favorites:

SOAP Refill Station

SOAP Refill Station sits in downtown Springfield and their original business model required that people bring in their own reusable containers to fill with soap, cleaning supplies, and other household products. It’s a great model for reducing plastics and offering great prices on your most often-used soaps.

But what happens when people have to stay home? They are still open for customers (as of April 15) following safety protocol, but they’ve added curbside and drop-off services. My favorite change they’ve made is offering delivery with a twist. Since they’re all about reusing the plastic bottles and containers that would normally go in the trash or recycling, they had to find a way to close this loop. Enter delivery “just like the milkman!” You set out your used bottles to be refilled and they pick them up when delivering your new order.

Why is this awesome?

1. People from all walks of life are embracing more eco-friendly purchasing habits. SOAP offers an easy way to get on board with products you already use.
2. They give you a reason to shop local. Soap products are easily picked up at Walmart or ordered at Amazon, but by making it easy and fast to receive your order, there’s no reason not to support a local business.
3. With social distancing in effect, they’ve offered a way to skip an aisle at the grocery store, or maybe even visit all together if you ran out of one product. Your item shows up at your doorstep!

SOAP offers everything from laundry and dishwashing soap to hand soap, floor cleaner, lotion, and shampoo. You can also pick up eco-friendly household items like safety razors, menstrual cups, utensil kits, and bamboo toothbrushes.

Restaurants Offer Family-Style Takeout

The Springfield community has come together to support local restaurants, but restaurants also recognize that their customers may be looking for budget-friendly options to choose from. Enter the family-style meal! There’s no argument about who is ordering what, just pick up the box and dig in.

Here are a few restaurants offering family meals:

Civil Kitchen

Bambinos

Farmers Gastropub

The Merry Moore

Clothing boutique The Merry Moore has temporarily closed its brick and mortar store during the stay-at-home order. To compensate, owner Hayley has shifted back to her roots of online only sales. The minimum order for free shipping has been reduced to encourage sales. She has also added a fun product that’s perfect during these times of physical distancing- care packages.

Care packages are the perfect gift to send to the people you can’t see in person. They say “I miss you,” while bringing a smile to the recipient’s face and undoubtedly brightening their day. Normally, you could put your own care package together, but Hayley has made it simple so you don’t have to pick up each item them go to the post office during a pandemic.

The small care package includes a specialty keychain, candle, hair tie, and card. The large care package includes everything from the small care package, plus a bag, and your choice of sandal or clothing item. Getting one of these in the mail would sure make my day.

By creating a specialty product that brings people together, The Merry Moore has made spending money at their shop easy- while spreading joy in uncertain times.

_____________________

What’s your favorite Springfield business pivot? Send it to me and I just might add it to the post.