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Link Building for Dummies - Part 3: Create Your Own Backlinks

Asking others for links—the subject of our second post in this series—may well work, but it puts you at the mercy of webmasters who, frankly, may not give two hoots about your link building efforts. But there are ways where you can take matters into your own hands and do the backlinking yourself. The way to do this is to get out there on the web, creating content for other websites and then linking back, carefully and strategically, to your site. ...

Link Building for Dummies - Part 2: Natural Link Building

Sure, link building may important but that doesn’t mean it’s only for professionals. With a little time investment, you can start link building yourself. In our first post we looked at the “what” of link building; in this post we’re concentrating on the “how”. ...

Link Building for Dummies - Part 1: What is it?

So you’ve got a website—great—but how do people get there? Digital marketers Conductor recently found that, if your website is like most, close to 64% of your website visitors get there via “organic” search engine results (as opposed to paid search results). So while some people will get there by clicking on a link and others will get there by typing your web address directly into their web browser, the majority come via Google and similar sites. No surprise then that an entire indust...

How do I get a .nz domain name? Can I get a .nz domain name?

.nz domain names have just become an option in New Zealand.  Unlike .co.nz, .net.nz etc it is a shorter extension like rocketspark.nz rather than rocketspark.co.nz....

Mr Ralph - Online shop ecommerce testimonial

I needed an affordable and intuitive website solution and I found the perfect partner in Rocketspark. Rocketspark gave me amazing support and service from the very beginning, they understand the New Zealand market and can add tremendous value to your go to market strategy. The functionality of the DIY site was the easiest and most simple software to learn and I love how easy it is to update. My customers give me great feedback about how easy it is to navigate my site and about how attractive...

Rocketspark is 5 years old

Five years is a great milestone for a business.  There’s still plenty to do so we’re not getting too sentimental but we thought you may find some of our key learnings to date interesting and possibly even helpful in your own ventures. ...

Going to the Spring Gift Fair (we’re fairly excited)

We’re packing our bags and hitting the road—off to the NZ Spring Gift and Homeware Fair in Auckland. And if you’re a gifts retailer, we reckon you should come too. ...

New features: Online Shop Revamped

At Rocketspark, we love easy. Until now the online shop available to our customers has been really easy to use, but also really basic. We think it’s time we gave the shop a visual upgrade, so we’ve given the old store a major overhaul. Our design team has been hard at it, logging significant hours of research, analysing the strengths and weaknesses of literally hundreds of the web’s leading e-commerce sites. We’ve distilled all the best stuff and put it into the overhaul, transforming o...

Use a Business-Domain Email Address (Not a Generic One)

Is your email address driving away customers? It may seem innocuous and trivial but if your email address looks unprofessional, you could be losing customers. And you won’t even know it, because they won’t have contacted you in the first place. ...

Rocketspark’s hosting: how we keep your data safe

Updated Jul 2023...

Built-in SEO: How Canonical URL Helps You Rank Higher Without You Even Trying

Getting noticed in Google is tricky business. Turbo-boosting your website so that it ranks highly in search engines is called search engine optimisation (SEO), and a lot of us can find SEO pretty daunting. Ranking well in search engines takes time and effort but we aim to provide many built-in SEO features to make sure you have a great foundation for your SEO efforts. Even if you never lift a finger, at least you know that some stuff is taken care of automatically. Take, for instance, a lit...

Why Your Buttons Should Have Just One Line of Text

Read this. See? It worked. A short, snappy instruction and you followed it. You’re now reading this blog post. There are some imperatives we really want our website visitors to follow through on. For those things, we use buttons. A button isn’t just a link; it’s a flashy, shapely, alluring link that mellifluously whispers “click me”. Like this: ...

New Feature: Event Tracking in Google Analytics

Are you on board with Google Analytics yet? No? Believe us: it’s totally worth checking out. It’s a great web analytics tool. Rocketspark customers can use it to get detailed data on how visitors are using the site. To find out what you’re missing, take a gander at our introduction to Google Analytics. Yes? Good news! We’ve added event tracking to the already-impressive range of Analytics’ capabilities available to Rocketspark clients. If you’re serious about maximising conversions t...

WordPress vs. Rocketspark CMS

It’s the battle of the platforms. Two contenders will duke it out to see who reigns supreme as the best content management system (CMS). In the red corner: WordPress. In the blue corner: Rocketspark. Let’s get ready to rumble!...

Favicon: What It Is and How to Create One

Favicon. The word sounds faintly like emoticon or bestie, something from a world inhabited by giggly teenagers texting their BFFs (“u r my most favicon lol!!!! xx”). But it’s not. A favicon is actually a handy little feature for your website. And we do mean little. ...

New Feature: Lightspeed Point-of-Sale Integration

Fish & chips. Jeans & t-shirt. Kate & Wills. Some things are better together. And we think Rocketspark & Lightspeed is set to become another great combo. Our brand new integration with Lightspeed point-of-sale software allows you to combine your online and in-store sales into one streamlined system. ...

What is Google Analytics?

Ever wished you could watch over a customer’s shoulder while they use your website? Well, you can (without being creepy about it). It’s called Google Analytics, an extremely powerful tool that collects and organises statistics about visitors’ usage of your website. It’s a bit like the book/film Moneyball. It’s about how one of Major League Baseball’s dud teams became one of the best. How? Statistics. Traditionally, baseball teams relied on a lot of guesswork to make their decisions....

SEO Basics (Part 3): How to do SEO to get higher search rankings?

You’ve learnt what Rocketspark can do you for your search engine optimisation (SEO) in part 2—now it’s over to you! In this final post in our three-post blog series about SEO, we’ll be showing you how to do SEO yourself. Here’s a few tricks of the trade, so that your site ranks well in Google. ...

SEO Basics (Part 2): How Rocketspark helps you rank higher

So now that you know what search engine optimisation (SEO) is (see SEO Basics Part 1: What is SEO - can I do my own SEO), it’s time to look at the finer details of how SEO actually functions. In the second in this three-post series, we’re looking at how Rocketspark can help you with your website’s SEO. SEO can be a lot of work. But if your web platform has the right technical foundations, you have a big head start because a lot of the initial hard work has already been done for you. Just ...

SEO Basics (Part 1): What is SEO? Can I do my own SEO?

You might’ve heard of search engine optimisation (“SEO” for short)—but what is it? SEO is about getting more people to your website by being able to find you easily in search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. The aim of the game is to optimise your site so that it ranks well—ideally high up on page one—for relevant search results, so that ultimately people click through to your website.  This is part one of a three-part series of blog posts introducing the idea of SEO and explain...

Rocketspark + Vend: big business tools for small businesses

Our new integration with Vend is an exciting development—something that can help even small businesses keep up with the latest cutting-edge methods used in big business. Prior to starting Rocketspark with my co-founders, I undertook a variety of marketing roles over a 13-year period. My roles were typically in large corporates and during these years in marketing I’ve seen an interesting evolution in the role websites play in big business. ...

What web browsers are supported?

So you like vintage. Your vintage tee, vintage bike, vintage Polaroid—all very cool. But your vintage browser might just be giving you a bit too much trouble. Most web browsers will work great with your Rocketspark website, but occasionally old browsers will run into problems. (If you already know what a browser and browser compatibility is, you might like to skip down to the section, “What browsers does Rocketspark support?”) ...

Don’t buy your own domain name—get your web company to do it for you

You’re lying in bed one night when it hits you: the perfect name for your new business.* The next morning you’re up bright and early, registering your brilliant idea as a domain name...You don’t want someone else to snap it up, right?Easy, tiger.Like Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch, Romeo off-ing himself without checking Juliet’s pulse, or Mussolini trying to look tough by invading Greece (cos, hey, why not?), this is one impulsive decision that you might want to rethink. The bette...

How to get set up on Google Places for Business

Want more customers for zero dollars and just five minutes’ work? (Thought so.) Google Places for Business is an easy way to make sure your business shows up any time someone searches locally for your product or service, putting your location, phone number, and store hours right at their fingertips. Take a looksie at our new support post on how to sign up to Google Places - it’s free and fast. ...

Get ‘Em Hooked: Why and How to Promote Your Blog on Social Media

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