3 Guaranteed Effective SEO Booster Moves

4GHadmin | 23 September 2019

There’s a whole spectrum of people who have to have at least some level of familiarity with search engine optimization. Those that have SEO anywhere in their job title are a given, but there’s a number of other people who need to be catering to SEO realities with their work. Those of us who create content are a good example, but there’s others too.

Even if you’re an absolute lay person when it comes to this stuff, you’ve probably heard how Google and other search engine powerhouses prevent people from becoming complacent with all this by constantly changing the algorithms that determine the value of SEO.

Here at 4GoodHosting, as a top Canadian web hosting provider this stuff is very much front and centre for us nearly all the time. We know it has some serious importance for a good number of you too. Page rankings are serious stuff if you need to have your business as visible as possible online, and as such many people make an effort to really stay on top of best SEO practices.

Now we don’t claim to be the best of experts, but here are 3 guaranteed effective SEO enhancing moves you can make to help your website climb to higher spots in SERPS (search engine result pages)

Move 1: Publish Better Long-Form Content More Frequently

You’ve probably already heard the expression ‘content is king’, and likely more than a few times too. Fact is it’s as true as can be. Google rewards quality long-form content provided it is written in ways which benefits the users of the site. To ensure this, you need to review your service pages and give them priority. With a top-to-bottom, most important to least approach. you can identify spots where you can add informative sections of FAQ to expand the value of upon page.

Why FAQs though, you may be asking. They are an excellent means of naturally working in keywords – and especially for FAQ questions that you can foresee being made with voice searches more frequently.

Testimonials are another useful resource for this that many people won’t be aware of, and working with the same principles. Search engines increasingly regard the highest-quality content to be that which is useful for the visitors of the site, and they also have more and more of the AI to accurately identify this type of content.

Longer more-detail and ^useful^ blog posts are good too, and it may be that one longer and more developed post once a month may be better than 3-4 shorter pieces published during that same time frame. Another option is to include the posts of long-form along with short ones that you’ve written to create long-form posts that go once or twice a month.

Other tips? Quotes from the experts, with relevant images that are ideally original and also about the how-to videos with some of the additional resources for the readers are known to be effective SEO boosters as well.

Move 2: Beneficial Link Building

Link building is well understood and a widely-embraced component of content marketing. The key is in creating linkable content assets and then knowing how to market them to the types of people who will find it informative and valuable enough that they consider sharing it.

The general rule of thumb for content marketing has been that you should direct half of your resources to developing content, and the other half goes towards marketing those assets. The smart shift for SEO today is to tilt that in favor of creating strategic content, and even to as much as a 70/30, or 80/20 extent.

Start by analyzing to what extent you have developed relationships with those you consider to be reliable sources of backlinking. If you’re fairly well established in that regard then you might be able to spend about 80 percent of the content marketing and link building time for creating linkable content assets.

If not, you then need to alter the ratio to spend more time working towards marketing your link assets more effectively.

Move 3: Earning Quality Online Reviews Consistently

For a good long time it’s been the case that doing what it took to receive a regular supply of Google Reviews was all the thought you needed to give to getting quality online reviews for your business. Nowadays, however, it’s just not enough because – as mentioned – Google is now just that much more developed and sophisticated when it comes to analyzing the real values out there in the digital world; they have means of determining that which indicates that customers genuinely appreciate companies.

No real ‘trick’ of any sort to relate here – good old fashioned ‘quality products and / or services and putting the customer first’ sort of stuff that’s very necessary for ensuring your business is review favourably online nearly all the time.

It is also now understood that Google will reward sites with reviews that are much more diverse than Google and Yelp.

Get Help if You Need It

It’s likely quite fair to say that well more than half of the people who’ll say they know SEO ‘enough’ really don’t and are likely putting their web presence and online identity at a disadvantage because of it. It’s perfectly fine to admit this, and we’re happy to help any of our customers who are finding their website isn’t where it needs to be as it relates to ranking for keywords.

 

 

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New Malware Campaign Targeting 11 WordPress Plugins

4GHadmin | 17 September 2019

If you were to take a poll of everyone who has their own personal website for ‘self’ ventures – whether that’s a blog, a forum for ideology, or anything else ‘self’-oriented in a similar way – you’d find that the majority of those sites were built on WordPress. Despite the fact that it’s as old as one can imagine in the world of web publications resources, it’s still as present as ever in the online world.

This makes it so that it’s worthy of mention anytime an external force threatens the well being of websites built on WordPress. This isn’t the first time the software suite has been the target of hackers, and it very likely won’t be the last.

Here at 4GoodHosting, we think part of being a leading Canadian web hosting provider is keeping our valued customers up to date on developments that may influential to their online well being. Considering we can go ahead and assume that a good many of the sites hosted through us are WordPress sites, we’ll dedicate today’s blog to making those of you aware of this new risk.

The Skinny

These new serious vulnerabilities in at least 11 plugins for WordPress started to be seen last month, and it appears they are currently being used in an ongoing malware campaign. This was reported on in the circles where it needed to be, but what’s new with all of this is that that the hackers appear to have changed their tactics over the course of the last two weeks.

The first instance of this featured malicious code being injected into sites to prompt them to show pop-up advertisements, or – worse – redirect the visitor to rogue websites.

Then about 3 weeks ago, on the 20th of last month, the hackers changed their code and it is now also able to determine if a visitor has the rights to create user accounts on the site. Should someone with admin rights log in, the malicious code then is able to created a new admin account that won’t be noticed the principal authorized user.

To catch this, be on the lookout for email addresses reading as wpservices@yandex.com, along with the password w0rdpr3ss.

What the hackers do in this instance is use this admin account as a back door to enter at a later date when – ideally – suspicion of anything being amiss is at its lowest.

The Eleven Plug-Ins Affected

At this point the hackers focus is on old vulnerabilities with 11 plugins. First to be identified as at-risk and insecure several weeks ago were Yuzo Related Posts and WP Live Chat Support. They’ve been joined by 9 others that have since then also been identified as potentially at risk:

  • Bold Page Builder
  • Blog Designer
  • Live Chat with Facebook Messenger
  • Visual CSS Style Editor
  • Form Lightbox
  • Hybrid Composer
  • All former NicDark plugins (including nd-booking, nd-travel and nd-learning)

Update and Security Precaution Information

It needs mentioning as well that the plugin developers have since released patches that repair the vulnerabilities. That’s great, but the problem of course is going to be that there are users who do not use that plug-in’s latest version. A lot of them too.

Updating plugins to the most recent version is recommended, but even still admins should check the user accounts on their website. If unknown admin accounts are found, deleting them immediately is important. It is subsequently also important to verify the files to ensure that there are no ‘back doors’ where the malware can gain re-entry if it needs too. If you are unsure, restoring a backup is your best bet.

For Non-technical users who uncover unauthorized access to their website, it may make sense to hire a security consultant who can assist with the disinfecting of your WordPress website if it’s an expense you can assume. It’s likely not as expensive as you think, and it should provide you with greater peace of mind.

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No Go: Reviewing Parental Control Software for Smartphones

4GHadmin | 09 September 2019

Fair to say that these days – more than ever before – it’s necessary for parents to establish some boundaries as to where their children are able to go on the Internet. We imagine that’s fairly apparent, even for those who aren’t parents. Impressionable minds do need to be kept safe from bad influences, and accordingly more and more Moms and Dads are actively seeking ways to restrict their children’s use of their mobile devices and where they ‘go’ with them.

Many of us here at 4GoodHosting are similarly minded, and as a Canadian web hosting provider we know it’s safe to assume that this is a priority for a good many of our customers too. For this reason we’re choosing to make a review of the best parental internet browser controls our topic for the blog today. And considering most parents are extremely busy people who’d prefer to spend as little time as possible on any one task, we imagine this review will be well received.

The Pocket Problem

It’s easier to keep tabs on your children’s browsing habits when you’re at home, and parental controls for desktop and notebook computers are much more commonplace and understood. When it comes to putting constraints on what they can do with their smartphones, however, it’s much more of a grey area and more challenging as a result. It’s something of a pocket problem, because they can be accessing data or finding a Wi-Fi connection pretty much anywhere, and not only are you not around to oversee them, but you may have thought there’s nothing you can do to their device to put restrictions on it.

Fortunately, that’s not the case. There are good smartphone parental controls out there, and so let’s not waste any more time in getting to discussing which ones are best. The best parental control apps offer ways to limit time spent on devices, track usage and location, and block apps or games. There are some free parental controls built into most devices nowadays, so you may not need to pay for a third-party app at all. There’s Google’s Family Link, Amazon’s parental controls are excellent, and Apple offers some parental controls too.

Alright, here’s our list:

  1. FamilyTime (Android and iOS)

This parental control app does everything, allowing you to explicitly customize what content your young ones will have access to, set time limits, track location, and more. Tool let your incorporate homework and bedtime limits, or create overall time limits. You can also get geofencing support that sends alerts when that phone enters or leaves a specific area, plus location tracking that allows you to see where your child is. You can also block or control on an app-by-app basis, place internet filters, monitor calls and texts, and overviews contact lists on the device.

There is a free version of this one, but you only receive a small subset of features. Premium ones for FamilyTime come with different plans available. $27 per year will set you up in full for one device, and $69 per year will do the same for up to 5 devices.

  1. Qustodio (Android, iOS, Kindle, Nook)

Qustodio gets high marks for user-friendliness and efficiency, and is a very good choice for parents for whom time is a scarce commodity. Its dashboard is particularly impressive, showing you all recent mobile activity for any of the connected devices. Reports include time spent on specific services like Instagram or Twitter, and you can set time limits, track texts, filter out sites you deem inappropriate, as well as block games or apps.

Add a host of customization options and it’s a great parental control app to use when managing devices for kids of multiple ages. Lastly, it works on Kindle or Nook devices, and is one of the only ones that does.

Qustodio costs $55 annually for the five-device plan. However, there is a free version with limited controls that you can use on just 1 device.

  1. ESET Parental Control (Android)

ESET is quite a good parental control app, but it’s limitation is that it’s only for Android devices. The free version lets you engage in app blocking, time limits on games, and basic reporting. The premium version allows website blocking, tracking location, parental messaging, and more detailed reports about what the smartphone user is doing.

ESET does have one especially smart feature – the parental message feature. It allows you to send out a message that your child must respond, otherwise they will not be able to continue using the phone. There’s a free 30-day trial for premium features, but following that it costs $30 per year, per device.

  1. Web Watcher (Android and iOS)

Web Watcher may be the best choice for those of you who see keeping tabs on your child’s text messaging as a priority. You’ll see all of them, including deleted texts, as well as photos, web browsing, call log, and location. Web Watcher also lets you oversee their activity on certain apps, including Tinder, WhatsApp, Kik, and Viber. Setting time limits and even capturing screenshots of your kid’s phone screen are also possible.

One of the things about Web Watcher is that because it’s essentially spyware, with a stealth mode, it has to be installed outside of the official app store. Be aware that serious security permissions are required, and it’s very invasive. However, it’s true that that is what some parents are after. It’s also far from cheap – it starts at $130 per year per device.

  1. Norton Family Premier (Android and iOS)

Norton is the premier name in antivirus software, and Norton Family Premier is a smartly designed program for restricting and monitoring what children do online. Family Premier offers parents a variety of features that are easily managed with the clean interface. Number 1 among its useful features is its robust web supervision; you can block sites entirely, or keep a general log of sites visited. You can make it so that warnings will be issued for sites that you choose not to ban outright, but where you would prefer your kids to proceed with caution.

You’re also able to set time limits, prevent device operation during specific hours of the day or night, and of course block apps too. The cost is $50 per year, but there’s no limits to the amount of devices you can use it with.

  1. Net Nanny (Android and iOS)

This feature-packed parental control allows you to track location, block apps, set time limits, and get a real-time feed of your child’s activity. You also have powerful web filtering controls for cutting out pornography, weapons, drugs and other content that is indisputably inappropriate for young people. Net Nanny does not allow for call or text snooping or monitoring of messenger apps, but you can see when they’re using them plus review their web searches.

Net Nanny costs $55 per year for up to five device pass, and can be used for non-mobile internet browsing devices too. There’s also a 20-device pass for $90 per year.

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We’ll conclude here today with some helpful tips – When picking a parental control app, writing down your password or login information isn’t advisable, no matter how well you think you can hide it. Creating a news alert for the software you choose to help keep an eye out for any new vulnerabilities or workarounds is also wise. Keep in mind that some software can be bypassed with phone resets, customer service requests, and other tricks. There’s plenty of information online regarding this.

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SSL Certs: Which One is the Best Fit for You?

4GHadmin | 03 September 2019

Shopping online is pretty much a ubiquitous activity for people all over the world these days, and – not surprisingly – so much so that it’s now the preferred means of shopping for many people. Especially for certain goods, and not only do these people want selection, good prices, and the like, but they also want to be able to enter their credit card information and not have to worry about it being exposed.

Offering that peace of mind is absolutely essential if you’re in the e-commerce world, and nothing is more important in this regard as having your online transactions guarded by an SSL certificate. Even if you may not know exactly what these are, you’ve probably seen the ’##-Bit Encryption’ tag prominently on display once you get to the checkout when you’re shopping online.

Here at 4GoodHosting, not only do we offer very competitive prices on highest-quality SSL Certificates but like any good Canadian web hosting provider we have plenty of customers who are trusting our web hosting to ensure they’re ‘open’ for business 24/7 and all day, everyday.

Probably safe to say that there’s few if any of those folks who don’t already have their SSL Certs in place, but for those of you who are new to your business online then we thought we’d dedicate one post here to discussing SSL certificates and what you need to know to choose one for yourself.

Overview

There is a plethora of certificate types, and several categories and plenty of CAs. In advance of highlighting the different SSL certificates and how to choose the right one, we’ll first discuss why an SSL certificate is so important nowadays.

The reach and strength of cyber crimes has grown rapidly over recent years. So much so in fact that cybersecurity has become the #1 concern issue for both web users and website admins. The truth of it all is that cybercriminals can cost online businesses millions. The worldwide economy loses unimaginable amounts of money every year due to cybercriminal activity.

What SSL certificates do to protect agains this is that they enforce a secure connection between a server and its web users. They don’t only protect the sensitive information that is transmitted between a web user and a web server, but also boost ranking, improves brand credibility and go along way to boosting conversion rates.

Choosing the Best SSL Certificate

Knowing what SSL will be best for your online storefront can be a challenge. They’re generally categorized according to their validation level, warranty, technical support and domains support.

So what factors do you need to consider? These ones:

  1. Validation Level

Nearly all SSL certificates provide data encryption and session security services for websites. The validation level of each is where the primary differences between them are established. The validation level will determine how much information about a company will be shown in browsers or to the web users. The three main levels of validation are Low / Medium / High

Domain Validation (DV) SSL certificate – Low

These ones are also referred to as a low assurance, and are commonly used to protect standard websites, single domains, and blogs. The simplest form of validation is done where the website registration and administration approval are confirmed to issue the certificate. Processing time is anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.

These certificates are suitable for low traffic websites or informative sites where financial transactions are not conducted. If you’re selling online, this type of cert will be insufficient for you.

Organization Validation (OV) SSL certificate – Medium

With medium certificate validation, an authorized agent verifies the domain ownership and company’s identity. This includes verifying the company name, city, state, and country. Web owners must submit some additional business-related documents for verification. As you’d expect, there’s more of a delay to all of this compared to a domain certificate.

Medium certificates provide appropriate security for medium-sized businesses that conduct standard (-$500 o/a) financial transactions and wants to provide assurances for customers that they can shop entirely safely within the site.

Extended Validation (EV) – High

These ones offer the highest level of security for websites, with a more rigorous validation process that verifies the ownership of the server and the legitimacy of its owner. Generally, the CA verifies the legal, physical and operational existence of the company, official government records, and databases, and confirms that only the genuine company is authorized to be in ownership of the extended-validation SSL certificate.

What you’ll see with these ones is the browser will show a green address bar with a verified name of the organization. The EV certificate is used by major players, like Amazon and Flipkart for example

Further, having an EV SSL really legitimizes the domain name.

  1. Domain Support

Next up you’ll want to determine how many domains you want covered with a single certificate. There’s three categories here:

Single Domain Certificates
Fine for protecting a single domain with its all subpages. Example:

www.mydomain.com/

www.mydomain.com/register

www.mydomain.com/about

www.mydomain.com/contactus

mydomain.com

Wildcard Certificates

The wildcard certificate allows its users to protect all the first level of sub-domains under an FQDN. It supports only DV or OV. The best instances are:

www.mydomain.com

info.mydomain.com

mail.mydomain.com

payment.mydomain.com

Multi-Domain Certificates
Also referred to as SAN or UCC certificates. They allow users to protect multiple FQDN domains along with multiple sub-domains. This choice will be ideal for you if you’re running multiple websites with single or multiple company names. All DV, OV, EV support this category.

www.mydomain.com

info.mydomain.co.uk

payment.mydomain.co.ru

  1. Warranty

The warranty attached to your SSL certificate should also be a consideration – it shows your customers how serious you are about protecting customer information. An EV Cert provides a a more extensive and better warranty, with coverage between $1,0000-$1,000,000 being possible within the warranty.

  1. Technical Support

The more expensive the Cert, the more technical support you will receive from an SSL provider. Free certificates generally never have technical support. However, with an EV or OV technical support is provided while installing and validating the certificate. Make sure the support is available via different sources like email, live chat, contact us page, phone, social media resources, etc.

  1. Price

It’s not uncommon for web admins to think they should invest big bucks even with the option to get a free certificate – the ‘you get what you pay for mentality’. That’s solid thinking most of the time. Free certificates are valid only for a few days, and then after that you must renew them. If not, the browser will show your users that the website is insecure. The price of paid SSL certificates start at $10 and can go up to $350, depending on the type of SSL certificate.

  1. Vendor

Different vendors provide different price ranges and security elements for each certificate. Before choosing any SSL vendor you should verify that they have a good reputation. Do that by watching their reviews and consumer’s feedback on their website.

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