Month: November 2015

November 23, 2015

Hosting Related, SEO Related

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A representative from Google tweeted out something many Webmasters and SEO-minded people have usually presumed there was no issue with. However, in the case of having your page content indexed by the Google search engine, for best results your content should be plainly visible on the page as it loads, instead of being hidden in on-screen widgets that are typically programmed in Javascript. The representative, Gary Illyes, said in his tweet that Google doesn’t consider (or ‘index’ in search engine lingo) content that is programmed into Javascript. So, basically if important parts of your content are embedded in Javascript code, then you may want to reconsider the design of your website. This doesn’t imply that Javascript functionality isn’t ‘worth it’. It most likely is. Only if say 20% of your content is hidden by it until the viewer clicks “see more” or “expand”, then it might be worth trying another design technique. Google “won’t see the content behind tabs if the content under the tab is dynamically generated.” What did Google precisely admit in their most recent statement? Gary Illyes of Google said on Twitter: “ If you put content in a Javascript array and only expand them when you click e.g. ‘…’, those contents won’t be indexed by Google.” Here is a snapshot of his November 4th tweet: How can you check if Google is indexing your web pages? If Google cannot index your web pages fully or correctly, your web pages probably won’t rank as high as they probably would rank otherwise. It is a good idea to check if Google, and other search engines, are indexing your pages in full - and that your pages contain everything that the various search engine robots expect or require when spidering over your website. If you’d like help with your SEO efforts, please write us at support (at) 4goodhosting.com and we’d gladly consult and provide a quote to you for SEO optimization for your website.

November 16, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

WordPress is a great CMS (Content Management System). Sometimes though, if the proper precautions are not taken into account or if not used in the most optimized way, you could ultimately end up with a slow loading site. For repeat visitors, that could be a major turn off - and by that fact alone, could cause you to lose subscribers and customers. Also slow loading sites, in Google’s eyes, do receive a negative ranking factor. This article could go on for pages, but the point will be to cover the top dozen ways that have been discovered to visibly tune up and speed up WordPress. Speed Is Important in several ways When a visitor opens your site for the 1st time, there is really only a few seconds to capture their attention and convince them to continue navigating the site. Microsoft’s Bing conducted a survey regarding this. The report found that a “two second” extra delay in page loading and response diminished visitor satisfaction by 4%, with as estimated lost revenue per visitor of 4.3%, and a inhibited page clicks by about 5%. If your site just takes “too long” to load, most people will just click off or back to the rest of their search results; before your website even had a chance with them. It is worth repeating that Google now includes site speed as a significant factor in its ranking algorithms. Therefore a websites’ speed has an effect on SEO. So a slow site is reducing your business in two major ways. If you have a Wordpress site, how can we fix it? How can you tune-up WordPress? The following tips are not listed in order of speed or importance. I guarantee that using even a few will help speed up your site. A. Choose 4GoodHosting to make sure you are on a fast underutilized server When just getting your feet wet, a shared host with overloaded servers might seem like a bargain. It comes at another cost: painfully slow site speed and all too frequent down time.. Periodic stress of having your site frequently slowing or going down is enough to create a some more gray...

November 9, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Recently thought up a brilliant idea for a new website and/or product? Maybe you have already brainstormed a fantastic new website name, come up with a clever slogan, and dreamed up the website design... Then the moment of truth, after typing it into a “whois” search, you find out that the domain is “already taken” or “unavailable”. Generic domain names are often held by domain brokers, or individual domain holders, so many of the best names are either already being used, or are sold at a premium price for thousands of dollars. This is amazingly all too common. Despite all the doom & gloom, stories like these can have happy endings. Rather than having to make your choices from a limited selection of generic domains, now you can choose from other domain extensions, known as TLD (top level domains). By thinking outside the box, you can choose a domain name that you like and serves the full purpose of your website. For example, maybe your passion in life is playing folk music on acoustic guitar and making the world a better place through your music. You dream up the perfect domain name and it is meandmyguitar.com, but when you go to register it you find out that is already ‘taken’. Oh no! Now you are faced with a number of options.... Solution #1 Add hyphens, numbers, or any 1 character of difference so you can register something similar to your intended domain. For example, me-and-my-guitar.com or perhaps myguitarandme.com. However these URLs are slightly more difficult to remember and users might have a hard time navigating to your website; unless they are looking you up through a search engine like google. Solution #2 Add 1 or a couple more words to your desired domain until you find one that is available. After some experimentation you’ll find that, and meandmytrustyguitar.com or justmeandmyguitar.com are both possibilities. However, short domain names are best of course; a domain name that is too long can be difficult for some people to type in correctly. read_more Solution #3 Chose a domain extension that is also relevant to your website. With just a passing glance at the search...

November 2, 2015

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Do you already have a blog? If so, you might have a potential money-maker on your hands. When you find yourself investing your time & energy into something like a blog, it’s only natural that you eventually get paid for it, not only to help sustain yourself, but to also be able to push yourself further to offer more. A blog by itself meets all the criteria of a full website, and therefore it is possible to use it to create a small business. By posting interesting, high-quality content, and by adding in the right measures for optimizing SEO (Search Engine) exposure, you can gain hundreds if not thousands of visitors. If you have a stream of visitors, you can you convert that into a revenue stream. So how do you go about making money with blogs? Here we list the most popular advertising techniques that paid bloggers utilize daily: The quality of your content should never be compromised for the sake of advertising revenue. If your content becomes overpopulated with advertising techniques then it will only corrupt the flow of your content, it will seem too commercialized and you will surely lose readers over it. 1. Create or Promote a Product A great way to earn money is to produce and ship a product and make some extra money from that. It can be a digital (downloadable) product too; such as e-book or even an online course. Creating your own digital or physical product as a blogger should be an exciting path to online success. Types of products a blogger might create and sell: Retail (or wholesale) merchandise Ebooks, Webinars, Online Courses Software, Plugins, Apps Video, Audio, DVD Reports Note: a successful product launch also begins with great timing. You probably will feel a sense of urgency in introducing your service or product, but rushing could also foil your ambitions. If after second thought, postponing your product launch until everything is perfectly in place could mean the difference between experiencing no traction or receiving glowing reviews. 2. Use of Affiliate Marketing What is affiliate marketing? It’s very likely that you’ve heard it before. Affiliate marketing is the process of...