No one’s reading your content.

That’s exactly what you’re thinking because it’s been a week and no one’s visiting your blog, sharing it or commenting on it.

And it’s not like you’re still trying to work out how to get your post to line up with your social media followers.

You know what they like, you know what they share, but do you know why no one’s reading your content?

It’s your headline.

And no matter how many hours you take crafting the perfect headline, you have no idea how to make it more powerful to entice readers.

Even if your headline isn’t attention-grabbing, there are hacks that’ll help you get around this.

Why all the fuss over a headline?

Because your headline is that important in your content marketing strategy.

Headlines Capture Your Readers

Most people will never read your post.

Up to 80% of people will take one look at the headline and if it doesn’t capture them, there’s no way they’ll stay to read the rest of what you have to say.

Your headlines must:

• Cut through the social media noise
• Pique a reader’s curiosity
• Leave them wanting more

And what happens if the stars align and you have the perfect headline?

It can make up to a 500% difference in your traffic.

Yes, headlines can make your post go viral.

So, how can you capture your readers with a tantalizing and attention-grabbing headline?

The One Thing You Need for Headlines

Let’s not overcomplicate this.

First, your headline is only one piece of your content.

Whether it’s a landing page, blog post, opt-in incentive or your email subject line, there’s just one thing you need to know to write your headline:

People are seekers.

They come online to learn something or try to solve a problem.

Your headline must fulfill that curiosity.

If you can do that, then people will click through and see what you have to say.

But, knowing that it only takes one thing doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Here are four ways you can create powerful headlines that get read.

1. Use Negative Superlatives

How come your partner can tell you you’re great every day, but the one time they mention an imperfection you’re all over them?

For some reason, our brains hold onto and remember all the negative things instead of the positives.

Our brains just process and analyze negative experiences longer than positive ones.

And this is no different online.

If you position your headline with negative superlatives – won’t, avoid, worst – you can attract 63% more readers.

Looking on BuzzSumo, you can see that using the word avoid in headlines can bring a lot of shares.

2. Use Numbers in Your Headline

A number in a headline makes it final.

It creates a box around the idea and attracts people who want to open the box.

15 Unique Ways to Crack An Egg

Makes you want to see what those fifteen ways are, right?

What’s great about creating a listicle type post is that it will get shared more often than a non-numbered headline post.

What else does a number do to a reader?

• It makes it specific – People like to read something specific and that has boundaries. So, if the headline promises 53 ways, they have an idea of the length and what they’re getting into with the post.
• It allows for scanning – Believe it or not, people don’t read word for word; they scan content looking for the important things. And numbers create signposts that help them navigate and find the valuable content in your post.
• Our brains enjoy numbers – That’s right. We are genuinely attracted to numbers. It acts as an organizational system, and we all know people love lists.

But, does any number work for your headline?

Not really.

The best numbers to use are odd numbers.

It’s been shown that odd numbers hold your reader’s attention more.

Steve Davis of Baker Marketing has a headline formula using odd numbers:

(odd number) (adjective) (mistakes/tips/insights/shortcuts) for (achieving/avoiding) (desired outcome/disaster)

As an example, 3 Ridiculous Mistakes People Make When Using Social Media.

3. Make a Promise

Remember, people are online to solve a problem or learn something new.

Your headline can help them to their goal – if it makes a promise.

You can even make an almost crazy promise to your readers.

You want your headline to shock your reader.

For example, marketer Neil Patel has an evergreen webinar and his promise is audacious and bold:

His headline is implying that you have the same tools as Neil had to create a multimillion-dollar company.

You see these promise-type headlines a lot on sales pages and landing pages.

You only have a few seconds to get your visitor’s attention and entice them to follow your call to action.

And this is no different with your blog post headline.

Jeff Goins also has a headline formula you can use:

Number or Trigger word + Adjective + Keyword + Promise

For example: 23 Unlikely Methods You Can Use to Find Clients on Instagram

4. Get Help From a Headline Generator Tool

We all know that crafting your own headlines is ultimately the best way, but if you’re struggling or have a bad case of writer’s block, there are headline generator tools and analyzers to help you out.

Let’s look at three of the most popular ones.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

The CoSchedule Headline Analyzer takes your headline and gives it several ratings and scores.

While this tool doesn’t generate a headline for you, it does help you create a converting headline that will entice readers and make them invest in your content.

Let’s look at a Snaptactix headline: 10 Surprising Ways to Boost Website Traffic.

This headline gets an A+ because of its use of uncommon words, emotional words and power words.

CoSchedule also likes that this post is a list post and that the character and word count are a good length.

If you receive a low score, you can find out what metric is scoring poorly.

For example, you may lack emotional type words and may need to increase those words in your headline.

Tweak Your Biz Title Generator

Do you want hundreds of titles based on a keyword?

Well, the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator will give you over a hundred titles based on several categories.

Here’s what I get when I use the keyword work at home:

Not every result will make sense, but there are a lot of headlines that totally work and can inspire you towards a usable and engaging headline.

You can take an example – 8 Facts Everyone Should Know About Working From Home and modify it by:

• Using an odd number
• Using a powerful adjective
• Having a desirable promise

Based on those criteria, your new headline can be:

9 Overlooked – But Extremely Important – Facts You Need to Know Before Working From Home

Advanced Marketing Institute’s Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer looks at the impact your headline will have on your readers.

Paste your headline into the box, select a category and submit for analysis.

Looking at the headline we used for the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer, the results from this tool gives us some different ideas about the headline.

This headline is more suitable for health food markets than content marketing businesses for some reason.

But, that doesn’t mean your headline isn’t effective.

It will still resonate on social media, according to CoSchedule’s ratings.

Make it Easy on Yourself

While your headline is important, so is the content.

And, as you know, you should spend 80% promoting what you created and 20% creating it.

So, if you’re fretting over the state of your headline, you can use our free headline tool that will help you out in a pinch.

Just enter your name and email address to get instant access to 8,834 proven and tested headlines:

Or, use a tool like the Tweak Your Biz Blog Title Generator to see hundreds of potential headlines quickly.

You can also dive deep and analyze a headline with the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer or the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer.

Or, if a formula is something you enjoy using more, take a look at the two formulas in this post to help you craft that perfect headline.

And no matter if you use a headline formula, tool or template, understand that creating a headline is important, but it shouldn’t take up all of your time.

Over to you – tell us what is your favorite method for creating engaging and powerful headlines?

The post 4 Proven Ways to Create Powerful Headlines appeared first on Snaptactix.

Do you have trouble getting your content shared?

Boy – are you not alone.

There have been several studies lately that paint a downright depressing picture about how much content gets shared.

The good news is this doesn’t have to be you.

And given how low the bar is for getting shares, the tips I’ve outlined below can give you a serious edge.

Why?

Because so many marketers are so bad at getting their content shared, if you can become even decent at it, you’ll have a huge advantage.

The sad state of content shares

One of the biggest studies of content shares comes from BuzzSumo and Moz.

They found that half of all the content published gets eight shares or less.

Eight!

Guys – you can beat that just with your own social media sharing.

All that would take is:

• 1 Facebook share
• 1 LinkedIn share
• 1 Google+ share
• 5 tweets

That’s not hard to do.

But it appears a lot of people just aren’t doing it.

In another study of blogging, CoSchedule found that 77% of the bloggers they surveyed share their blog posts three times or less on social media.

Ugh!

Now you see how bad it is.

But again, this doesn’t have to be you.

Just add a few simple things to your pre-publishing checklist, and you can crush those averages.

Here’s how:

1. Re-share your own content

In my example list from earlier, the eight shares I counted mostly included sharing content just once on each platform (except for the tweets, of course).

That’s a good start, but you don’t have to stop there.

Re-share your content.

Even a month after it’s been published.

This is especially important to do if the post did well from the start.

Tools like Meet Edgar or Buffer can make re-sharing very easy.

Re-sharing also makes it easy to save time managing your social media accounts.

Don’t worry about boring your audience.

On average barely 5% of your audience sees any of your posts.

So re-sharing them – even multiple times – just means more of your audience will see them for the first time.

If you are still on the fence about this approach, read our article on How You Can Reuse Your Content in 7 Ways to learn some best practices!

2. Send emails with your content to your list

It’s wild how few people do this.

According to a survey by Scoop.It, only about 30% of marketers send their content via email frequently enough to make it matter.

Even though email marketing consistently outperforms social media.

So send a newsletter with links to your latest, greatest content!

Say you wrote a lengthy blog post, created a hilarious meme, and are launching a new contest in the same week – all of that is content worth sharing.

Write up an email and send it along so your subscribers so they are in-the-know.

As long as the content is worthwhile (I’m sure it is, right?) your loyal following will be happy to hear about it.

Bonus: Add social sharing buttons and pre-formatted retweets to your emails, too. Just like you would with blog posts or other content on your site.

3. Add social sharing buttons – with counters – to every page

If you want people to share your content, you have to make it easy for them to share.

Otherwise they won’t do anything.

So if you’re one of the few blogs that doesn’t already have social sharing buttons setup, go tie that down.

There are a ton of WordPress plugins and other tools and apps that let you set up social sharing buttons.

Social Warfare is a great choice.

So are Shareaholic, AddThis, and SumoMe’s social sharing app.

Once you’ve got those buttons set up, make sure they show the share counts to your site visitors.

Setting them up to show those counts will demonstrate to your visitors that other people liked your content enough to share it.

Of course, we still don’t have our Twitter share counts back. (Grrrr…)

But there are ways around that.

4. Embed “tweet this” call to actions

A tweet this CTA is another spin on “make your content easy to share.”

This time it’s for pre-formatted tweets.

There’s a bunch of free plugins that let you do this easily.

My favorite is Click To Tweet.

Here’s what one looks like on the Convince and Convert blog:

5. Add a nice header image that will show up when people share something

You know that content with images gets like twice the shares and re-shares, right?

If there’s no nice header image, people know they’re less likely to get their post re-shared.

There’s a simple solution: Add a nice header image for everything you publish.

Ends up, this has some SEO benefits, too.

6. Set up open graph tags

These are basically like meta tags, but for social media platforms.

There are plugins that make setting them up far easier, including the widely-used SEO plugin Yoast.

Here’s a tutorial for how to do the open graph setup here.

7. Create a really basic “infographic”

A basic “infographic” type graphic is great for visual sharing sites like Pinterest or Instagram

The more you can distill a post or other content into a simple visual, the more it will get shares.

Especially if you make it as useful as possible.

Take note: I’m not saying you need a full-blown infographic.

Those can be time-consuming and expensive to create.

Just a simple graphic will do.

Like this:

Not sure how to make even a simple image?

Check out Canva.

It’s designed for nondesigners.

8. Don’t turn off the comments on your blog

A lot of sites do this because they don’t want to manage comments.

If you’ve made that decision, please reconsider.

Comments are valuable – you want people to be leaving their feedback.

When people leave a comment they also tend to share the content they commented on.

And you get some nice SEO benefits.

Worried about spam comments?

I hear you – some sites get over a hundred of them a day.

But stop fretting and just install Akismet.

It’s a free WordPress plugin that will tame the tidal wave of spam comments.

9. Create content worth sharing

This may be hard for some of you to hear, but I gotta tell it to you straight: Even if you do all of the above, but you’ve got weak content… you still may not get any shares.

So please – only publish stuff that’s actually worth sharing and reading.

Not sure your content clears that hurdle?

Ask yourself: If you came across the content on your site, and you had no affiliation with it, would you share it?

If the answer is no, then you need to be publishing better stuff.

10. Consider some paid promotion services

There’s advertising, of course.

That’s one way to get your content out there.

But also co-sharing platforms like Co-Promote, JustRetweet, and Triberr.

Often you can get your content shared on these platforms for just pennies a share.

Content sharing takeaway

Far too many bloggers and marketers are giving their content promotion short shrift.

And it’s costing them – twice.

First, all that work to create their content is lost, because so few people see it.

Then all those readers – and customers – they could have gotten by sharing their content aren’t ever reached.

So that business is lost.

The solution?

Try to spend at least as much time promoting your content as you did creating it.

Even if it means you have to publish a bit less often.

Over to you!

Did any of these content sharing strategies jump out at you?

Which one are you going to implement today?

Let us know in the comments below & be sure to share with a friend or colleague who might need some pointers for sharing!

The post How to Make Your Content Easy to Share appeared first on Snaptactix.

Heeeeey everyone! Long time no “see!”

I wanted to update you all on some things since it’s been a while since I’ve posted.

The number one email I’ve received in the last few months has been regarding my 2Create courses. You may have noticed that most of them have been set to “private.”

After my dad got sick in March, I knew I wasn’t going to have time to focus on supporting students for two websites. PSP was my main focus, and I also have a private student group to support.

So I decided to set the 2Create courses to “private” to prevent new students from enrolling.

Then once things returned to normal in my personal life, I had to be honest with myself.

I wasn’t doing much with website building or marketing, other than passively using my podcast to promote PSP courses.

I’m making waaaaay more money selling my T-shirt designs than I am with the actual courses that teach what I’m doing. 

I’ve had about 500 students enroll in my PSP courses. While that’s not bad, it could have been so much better if I did more marketing.

I’ve never been comfortable or efficient with marketing my products. It intimidates me. That’s one business hump I’ve never been able to get over.

I admire people who are diligent with tracking email campaigns and conversions. It all just makes my head spin.

I’d rather make a T-shirt.

Why The T-Shirt Biz is So Rewarding to Me

For a long time, affiliate marketing and AdSense were my favorite and most rewarding ways to earn online.

However, POD now holds that top spot.

I don’t come from a design background so I’ve had to learn a lot.

When I worked as an HTML Analyst for American Airlines over 10 years ago, my team lead forced us to use Photoshop, but the company provided us ZERO training.

I remember staring at the blank Photoshop interface wondering what the heck I was supposed to do with all those tools and buttons as they stared back at me.

I never actually learned much about Photoshop until I quit my full-time job in 2006 to work on this site.

Fast forward 12 years later, I’m now using Photoshop and Illustrator to create some very detailed art that I never thought I would be able to do.

To see how far I’ve come, and then to have people buy my designs by the thousands, is incredibly rewarding and slightly addictive.

It also goes to show anyone can do this regardless of your design background.

I have one T-shirt that has netted over $20,000 in royalties.  Yes, from ONE T-shirt design!

Think Before You Leap

With all the income potential, print on Demand is not for everyone. Just like anything else, don’t get into this just because you are in desperate need of money.

You need the desire to learn the POD business and even something about software if you want to scale your income.

And for long-term success, you should be thinking of building a brand instead of relying on passive traffic and income like I’ve been.

Even if you’re a talented designer, you will quickly learn that’s just the beginning. You also have to understand keywords and find niches to design for.

It’s getting very competitive, so make sure you jump in for the right reasons.

If I’m honest, I was drawn to this venture for the money, but I’ve STAYED because of my love for the work.

When my dad was sick, I was super stressed. I found the creation process to be therapeutic.

A lot of my success has come because of creative ideas that just haven’t been done, and the creative work is what makes this fun for me.

On the flip side, you also have to be prepared for theft. That’s been the biggest disappointment of this whole experience. It’s why I use an alias for my POD accounts, and don’t share much of my work.

As a result of Amazon and other PODs not protecting our work with a wrinkle or watermark, my images have been stolen and re-uploaded to numerous sites.

Things have gotten a little better since using watermarks, wrinkles, etc., but you’re never going to be able to fully protect your work. As long as it’s online, someone will find a way to grab it if they want it.

I Enrolled in An Art Class

One of my goals for POD is to scan hand-drawn work. Then I could “ink it” (color it) after importing it into Illustrator, but I had to learn to draw first. LOL

Up until now, most of my designs have been created through shapes in software. Believe me. You can do a lot with this. That’s what I teach in my PSP Photoshop course.

Now I’m doing this more with Illustrator as I improve.

However, I wanted to learn how to draw free hand. So I enrolled in an art class.

We’re learning some basic drawing principles and how to shade using graphite, charcoal, and colored pencils.

Here are some cherries I drew with colored pencils. I was pretty proud of this because I was struggling with shading earlier in the semester.

I’m too embarrassed to show my first shading attempt. It was absolutely awful. LOL

So as you can see, I am now knee-deep in learning about drawing and T-shirt design. It has been a nice change of pace.

That’s All For Now

Anywho, I know most of you did not subscribe for all this print on demand stuff.

That’s why I haven’t been blogging much. I didn’t have anything noteworthy to share in this space. However, I wanted to update you on why I took down my 2Create courses since many have asked.

Those who have enrolled can still access them, but I have no plans to enable them for new students any time soon.

I DO plan to make updates for the existing students, however.

By the way, my dad is doing great!

He is walking again, and his ankles are doing well considering how severely he injured them.

Other than some initial stiffness when he first stands up, he’s walking well now! We feel so blessed and lucky he came through all that.

Thanks to all who reached out to inquire about his health. I really appreciate it!

Hope you’re doing well! Drop me a line below and let me know what’s up with you!

Whew!

Life took an unexpected turn in early March, and my focus went from being a full-time entrepreneur to a full-time caretaker.

My dad, who has lived a life with near perfect health, got very sick, very quickly.

He went from being in perfect health on a Friday, March 2nd, to being near death the following Tuesday evening, thanks to a severe kidney infection.

He thought he had the flu. Unfortunately, it was much worse than that.

The infection got into his bloodstream and his body went into septic shock, and every single organ began shutting down one by one.

Before he knew he had the infection, he got dizzy and fell in the bathroom and broke BOTH of his ankles.

Yes… both!

So he cannot put any weight on either leg and is in a wheelchair.

He’s been this way for nearly two months because he had to get clearance for ankle surgery by several different doctors.

As you can imagine, for a man who was very active, this is driving him nuts having to sit all day and be so dependent on family.

He was finally approved for surgery this Wednesday. So hopefully the therapy will begin a few weeks after that and he can get back to walking.

Nevertheless, it all could have been so much worse. I’m just so grateful he is alive and his health is good!

Thank Goodness For The Biz!

In the meantime, I feel very lucky and blessed to have this online business… especially when I’ve needed “time off.”

Most of March was a wash in terms of getting anything done for the biz.

In spite of all that’s been going on, this is shaping up to be one of my best years in some time.

In February, I had a $10K revenue month with Merch By Amazon and over $13K in total print on demand revenue (Amazon, Etsy, RedBubble, Spreadshirt, Zazzle, etc.)

That was the first time my print on demand income surpassed my largest affiliate income source (GoDaddy’s reseller program).

As great as those numbers look, you have to know that Merch By Amazon is far from being a sure thing. I have invested an insane amount of time on this in the last year, and income is up and down like a roller coaster.

So please do not join Merch expecting your income to grow every month. Mine sure hasn’t. As one of my students said, you have to treat Merch as your vacation money and never rely on it! Nevertheless, I’m completely obsessed with this opportunity!

I also just had another record month with my PSP courses.

As you may remember, my main method for promoting my courses is through podcasting.

For the longest time, affiliate income was my primary focus. Now it’s taking a backseat to course income, and this has been a long-time business goal of mine.

For too many years I was relying very heavily on affiliate income, and I wanted to see a shift.

Just Launched a Course? You’re Not Done!

One thing I’ve learned from my students on Passive Shirt Profits is that your work does not end when you launch your courses.

How many of you have ever thought, “If I can just get my course launched then the hardest part will be over.”

WRONG!!!!

That’s actually when the real work begins.

Creating the course videos was the easy part for me.  The bigger and ongoing challenge has been making sure students can execute!

Just because your course is live doesn’t mean it’s optimized for the best learning experience.

Some people get stuck in areas you might breeze through, or we assume certain things are clearer than they truly are.

Typically your first version of the course is going to be your worst, but your student feedback and questions should help you improve it.

Staying In Touch With Students

I tried something new this year with my Merch Course, and it’s really helped myself as a teacher and several students.

I began sending out weekly strategy tips to students, and many of the tips are very personal to my ongoing experiences with Merch By Amazon.

At first I worried about sending too many emails, but the responses have been awesome!

Students who weren’t selling anything are starting to see sales. I started receiving more “success” emails, and a few even began posting testimonials in my private group!

(I blurred out the name since it’s a private group and I didn’t get permission to share the name.)

Then I woke up to this today….

I eventually want to do one-on-one coaching/training for Merch due to requests, but I’m not ready yet.

However, this feedback and ongoing correspondence with students is prepping me for that when the time is right.

I may experiment with that once things settle down with my dad.

I Took a Marketing DNA Test

If you’ve ever struggled with how you should be marketing your business or even what kind of work you should be doing online, I’d highly recommend The Marketing DNA Test by Perry Marshall (I am NOT an affiliate.)

It revealed a lot about myself as an entrepreneur AND an online teacher.

It was recommended by one of my followers. (Shout out to Mitch!) I thought it would be fun to take.

Based on how you answer 15-20 questions, the test gives you guidance on the best methods to market your site.

It also gives you insight into the kind of work you should be doing based on your strengths and weaknesses.

I’ve always known that I’m doing the kind of work that fits me, but I wanted to see if the results aligned with what I believe about myself.

The results revealed that I excel more with right-brained, creative work and I connect with people best through video.




It also said I have a way of getting inside my visitor’s heads that is almost “psychic and sometimes a little bit scary.”




However, I’m NOT so great at analytical work that requires a lot of attention to detail.

I’m also not good with thinking on the spot. I need time to gather my thoughts.

That explains why I fall in love with work like writing/blogging, video and T-shirt design creation, but hate overly analytical work.

That also must be why I abandoned my Accounting major in college.

With SEO, I wonder if that’s why I’d always start off using keyword research software but abandon it after I found a niche.

I could never make myself use it to research every keyword I wanted to write about. I always wanted to follow my gut and common sense.

With Amazon, I have my process I use to find a niche/keywords for Merch. But I spend waaaaaaay more time coming up with my actual shirt ideas and working in Photoshop than I do obsessing over research.

The other reason why these Marketing DNA results were so interesting to me is it made me realize the disconnect that exists between how I learn and operate versus some of my students.

Right-brained people learn differently than left-brained people.

Left brained/analytical people prefer structure when learning. They take notes, like to plan everything out, and need to have all their ducks in a row before uploading/launching anything.

I’m the complete opposite.

I don’t like to do extensive planning and preparation. I’m not a note taker and prefer to jump in and figure it out as I go — even if I know everything is not perfect.

I rely on my gut with a lot of decisions I make, whereas left-brained people use more logic and research before they are comfortable moving forward.

One way is not better than the other, and they both have their pros and cons.

However, as a course creator, I’ve had to learn to focus more on the details and methodical steps for people who prefer that type of learning.

I wouldn’t have been able to improve on that if I hadn’t stayed in touch with my students.

So remember, your course is never, ever complete. It should continue to evolve based on the feedback from your students.

I’ve been selling courses for nearly four years and I’m STILL learning.

Anywho, just thought I’d update you all on what’s going on with me. It’s been an up and down year for sure, but I’m taking it one day at a time.

I hope life is treating you well!

If you don’t want the Chrome browser scaring your visitors away, here’s what you need to know…

Pages with any kind of form field on them should start with https:// instead of http://.

The “s” stands for secure and encrypts any data submitted through your website’s forms.

If you aren’t using encryption on those pages, starting in October 2017, Google Chrome users visiting your website will see an intimidating “NOT SECURE” message.

Yes, that means your email opt-in forms will trigger this warning too. That’s what makes this relevant to so many site owners.

If your page is encrypted, Chrome will display a padlock and the word “Secure” next to your website URL in the address bar.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

Let me start by saying this.

If all this techy stuff makes you nervous, please call your host and ask for help. They may have even better suggestions than I do.

I’ll be mentioning that a lot in this post, so please take my advice if you feel uncomfortable with any of these steps.

I’m doing a lot of disclaiming here because this post is more about a heads-up than a tutorial. Where you host your site will largely determine your steps.

Did You Receive This Email?

If you have a Google Webmaster account and your site is not yet secure, you might have received an email like this…

It lists all the pages that will show a “NOT SECURE” warning in October. The page you see listed above has an email opt-in form on it.

Most of you do not need this to encrypt credit card purchases on your domain. You’re probably using a 3rd party that has encryption already.

You are doing this to prevent annoying Chrome warnings on opt-in and form pages.

That’s why this announcement impacts so many people. I mean, who doesn’t have at least one page on their site with some kind of form?

How to Get Free Encryption

I have dedicated hosting for my most profitable websites through LiquidWeb (affiliate link).

Many hosting plans (especially high-end plans like VPS and dedicated) offer free AutoSSL. See if your host has this.

It took all of 3 minutes for the tech guy to set it up on my server.

Next, I installed the Real Simple SSL WordPress plugin to instantly redirect all my pages from http:// to https.

If you’d rather not use a plugin for redirects, you can manually set this up with your .htaccess file. Call your host and have them set it up.

To verify that SSL is working, I went here to validate it.

Also, I’m not by any means saying this is the best way. It’s just the way I chose to do it, and it also seems to be a very popular and fast option for WordPress users.

If Your Host Doesn’t Have AutoSSL Yet…

I don’t think most of you need to switch hosts or upgrade your plans — especially if you only have a few pages with opt-in boxes and other simple forms.

The video below also shows another FREE way of encrypting your website without buying an SSL certificate.

It’s called Let’s Encrypt, and here are the hosts that support it.

Don’t forget to PLEASE backup your site and database before making any of these changes.

To those of you using Website Palace (GoDaddy), I did call support yesterday because I also have a few sites hosted there on my reseller store as well. We can use Let’s Encrypt (above) but it’s a manual install. The bottom line is, call support and have them walk you through if you choose to install it. I may not even bother since mine are smaller, less significant sites.

Why Doesn’t Everyone Support Let’s Encrypt?

Honestly, hosting companies want you to buy an SSL certificate. So it comes down to money at the end of the day. But I don’t think most of you need to do this.

Thankfully AutoSSL and Let’s Encrypt are slowly rolling out to more and more hosts.

Free AutoSSL vs. Paid SSL Certificate

I won’t even pretend to fully understand all the technical differences between the free AutoSSL and a paid SSL certificate that you purchase from your host.

So anyone who is a pro at this techy stuff, feel free to fill me in.

As long as the web browser shows my site is secure and it validates, then I see no need to buy a traditional SSL certificate.

My web host agreed.

Plus, I’m not taking orders from any of my websites directly. I’m using 3rd party sites, and they already have SSL.

Again, I’m mainly doing this to prevent those Chrome warnings on form (opt-in) pages.

Do You Really Need Encryption?

Yes and no.

If you are taking payments directly from your domain then YES!

If you are not taking payments or collecting sensitive data directly from your domain, you don’t need it from a customer data protection perspective.

But…

That’s not going to stop Chrome from displaying the “NOT SECURE” message on opt-in pages and any other pages that include form fields.

Also, in 2014 Google introduced SSL as a “weak ranking signal.” Well, now it’s a stronger signal. See this article.

So if your site’s reputation with Google is something that concerns you, that’s another reason to look into this.

What About Notifying Google of The Change?

Did you register your website with Google Webmaster Tools?

Hope so!

This is where you verify all the sites you own with Google.

In a Q&A last year, John Mueller of Google confirmed that the engine is smart enough to figure out the change from http to https (provided nothing else changes in your URL).

However, he said you should still add the https version of your site as a new “property” in your Google Webmaster Tools account since it is seen as a separate site.

Also, I use the Google XML Sitemap plugin, and thankfully all my canonical URLs in my post/page headers and sitemap automatically updated to https.

If all this tech talk confuses you, once again, I recommend calling your host. This switch to https has been a VERY standard procedure lately so they should be able to guide you.

Let’s Sum Up Your Options (For WordPress)…

1. If you collect sensitive data directly on your domain (credit cards, addresses, etc.) then you should definitely encrypt your pages. You can use AutoSSL or the Let’s Encrypt option in this video.
2. If you still need to redirect your pages from http to https, use the Really Simple SSL WordPress plugin to redirect your pages from http to https. Easy breezy!
3. If you do not collect sensitive data, then you can wait for your host to get AutoSSL, Let’s Encrypt or do nothing. Just remember, Chrome will warn your visitors on your pages with form fields.
4. If you take orders via a 3rd party site instead of your domain, just ensure the order page starts with https:// or customers will be warned. Most 3rd party sites have taken care of this already.
5. You should only consider buying an SSL certificate if none of the free options work and you collect orders directly from your domain.
6.  After your site has been encrypted with AutoSSL or Let’s Encrypt, validate your site here.

How Important Is This Really?

This is definitely something you should not ignore, but don’t lose sleep over it either.

Google warned us that using https would become a stronger ranking factor over time. Does that mean they will just drop all sites that don’t?

I doubt it, but you might move down a few spots for certain keywords — especially on pages with forms.

It’s really hard to know, and I’d be lying if I said I knew for sure. I just don’t keep up with SEO the way I used to.

If you are one of those people who follows everything Google says to the letter and you are very concerned about your rankings, then you should act on this sooner than later.

I’m actually more concerned about the Chrome warnings scaring people away.

Just remember, if you have opt-in boxes on every page, that means they will all will trigger a “NOT SECURE” message in Chrome starting in October.

Not a good look.

Suggestions Are Welcomed and Encouraged

If anyone would like to offer additional suggestions and advice on SSL/encryption, please feel free to leave comments below.

I have not used Let’s Encrypt yet (the option in the video), so if anyone wants to share their experience with this, feel free to do so.

If your host offers AutoSSL or Let’s Encrypt, feel free to share the name of the company below.

Just remember, you have until October when Chrome will start warning your visitors that your form field pages are not secure.

If you could do me a big favor and tweet about this blog post using the link below, I’d appreciate it.

[clickToTweet tweet=”On 10/1, Chrome will label your website ‘Not Secure.’ Here’s the scoop!” quote=”On 10/1, Chrome will label your website ‘Not Secure.’ Here’s the scoop!”]

I received an alarming DM from one of my e-buddies, Darren of Small Biz Geek.

This is what it said…

Say whaaaaaaaaat?

Now, I will say this…

I know not to ever use “admin” for my username, and I’m aware of the nickname issue.

What’s the nickname issue, you ask?

Always change your admin nickname to something else, otherwise the name shown with your comments will be your username.

Go into Users from your dashboard, and edit your Admin user account. Make sure you change your nickname to something other than your username.

But I had already done that, so I wasn’t aware of any other username vulnerabilities.

Well there’s another one, and it’s a biggy!

The Byline Might Be Exposing Your Username

Darren figured out my login username for my new site, and he didn’t have to hack the database or go to great lengths to figure it out.

All he did was hover over a link in my author byline.

You might have the same vulnerability on your WordPress site, and there’s a very easy fix.

If you have “By [Name]” in your byline that usually shows up underneath your WordPress title, you might be exposing your admin username.

So I wouldn’t risk exposing anyone’s site that was vulnerable, the byline in the above example is not even hyperlinked, but I just wanted to show an example of what it would look like since I ended up removing my byline altogether.

Anywho…

Hover over that name in your byline. (Not all themes show the byline.)

You will notice it goes to http://yoursite.com/author/[name] 

Whatever you see in the [name] is your login username.

How crazy is it that WordPress has not addressed this yet???? As if WordPress is not vulnerable enough!

And since most of us post using our Admin accounts, this is dangerous. You are basically telling the hackers of the world what your WordPress admin login username is.

So all they have to do is run their script to figure out your password. And if it’s super simple then it’s not hard for them to crack into your account.

For the record, hackers easily crack some passwords by running scripts that attempt to figure them out. They typically start alphabetically and go down the list.

a… aa… aaa… aaab… aaabbb and then they had numbers to the end.

Sounds tedious, right? But here’s the deal…

This is happening at a rate of million of attempts per second because it’s a script, so they can go through the millions of combinations VERY quickly.

It’s not like John (or Jane) is sitting at your login screen manually entering each option. This process is totally automated!

Many WP blogs get hacked because they use “admin” as the username and then a super simple password.  That’s why you should always use lowercase, numbers, uppercase and symbols.

If you’re using a password like happy123, then you’re begging to get hacked — especially if your username is exposed in the byline.

For the record, words that can be found in the dictionary are a big no-no — even if you add numbers at the end.

How to Hide Your Username In The Byline

This may seem intimidating at first, but it’s super easy and should only take you about 3-5 minutes.

Darren created a video that explains all this and shows you how to fix the problem. There are also text instructions below.

I would highly recommend you backup your database before making any changes. Pleeeeease!

Text Instructions

If you prefer text instructions, here ya go…

1. Login to your cpanel or hosting account control panel.

2. Go to PHPMyAdmin or whatever database software your host uses. It might just say “Databases.”

Your interface may also look slightly different. I’m on dedicated hosting, and my cpanel just got upgraded. The point is to find phpMyAdmin or your database icon.

You will see your WordPress database name(s) and any other databases you have setup. It should look similar to the image below.

3. Click the name of your database (or the plus sign next to it), and it will expand a list of all the tables inside that database.

4. Look for a table called wp_users (or something similar) and click it. This is where all your blog’s users are stored.

This will bring up a table of all the users in your WordPress database.

5. Find your username for your admin account and click Edit.

You should see a field called user_nicename and it will be the same as your login.

This is the culprit and what you should change IMMEDIATELY! Change it to “webmaster” or anything other than your login username.

6. Click “Go” or “Save” and that should be it.

Now if you use the byline on your posts, your username will no longer be displayed in the hyperlink.

It will show the name you just changed it to, which is OK because it’s not tied to any of your login details.

What Is The Purpose of The User_Nicename Field?

In case you’re worried about breaking something with this change, here’s some reassurance.

The user_nicename field was only created to simplify the URL of the author archives.

It’s a slug to make the author post archive link appear “nicer”, hence the name.

So if your username is something funky with symbols and hyphens, then the user_nicename will simplify the author post archive link (URL).

If you change the user_nicename, you are changing the URL of the author’s archives.

The good news is WordPress will automatically make this change dynamically so you won’t have broken links in your bylines.

But if you happen to manually link to all your author posts somewhere else on your site (rare), then you will have to change those links to the new one.

There really is no need for a byline when you have a single-author blog anyway.  If you use Genesis themes like me, you can easily get rid of it by installing The Simple Edits plugin.

What If Your Theme Doesn’t Have a Byline?

This is pretty common today. A byline might not be coded into your particular theme.

However, even if the byline is not displayed, the author URL still exists because it’s part of WordPress’ dynamic code.

So you can still go to http://yoursite.com/author/[admin_username]. But if your theme doesn’t link to your author archives, then it would be nearly impossible to find.

Nevertheless, it still exists if you go to it manually. So I’ll leave that up to you to decide if you are going to change it or not.

—————-

Thank you, Darren for alerting me of this! This is such an important issue so I want to spread the word as you have done on your blog.

I can’t believe I’ve used WordPress all these years and have never come across this info!

Look-a-here, ladies and gents! All WordPress users need to know about this. Please spread the word by tweeting the link below, especially if you have a website that targets bloggers.

[clickToTweet tweet=”WordPress is exposing your admin username! Here’s how to fix it!” quote=”WordPress is exposing your admin username! Here’s how to fix it.”]