Author: 4GHadmin

July 6, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Learning about our competition is one of the best ways to improve what we do. It takes a sense of humility to understand that we may not be the best, most popular, or at least the most-established service yet. But we essentially have to keep an eye on our competition in the marketplace, and that is relatively easy to do through the Internet. There are various factors that will either help us advance or fall behind in market-share; so managing those factors appropriately is key to maximizing success. Pride can be a good and bad thing. It can be a rewarding feeling for a job well done, or it can blind us in turn from learning how we can further improve our business. A willingness to set pride aside, perform an analysis of your competition, and implement the better aspects of their strategies - will ensure you the greatest possible success. Humility Confidence and humility go hand-in-hand because it takes confidence to confront our shortcomings. Accepting our individual situation is the first step in properly understanding our competition. We must put our egos aside and we shouldn’t sugar-coat hard truths as doing so can defeat the purpose of the overall analysis. Where do business’ analytic results fall short from your current goals, and by how much? How far of a distance are you from meeting your goals? read_more Next let’s take a look at the competition. How do their prices compare to yours? What do they offer more or less of? How effectively are they utilizing social media? Take note of all the differences you can find between their business and marketing model and yours. Are they using marketing tricks? If so, what positive or negative impact do you think it is having for them? How does their website compare to yours? Does it use more modern design techniques? Is it simpler or more complex than your website? What kind of feeling does the competition website give to you? Mark down a list of any ideas for improvements that you think would enhance your website. One we fully understand evaluate our competition’s methods of success from an objective viewpoint, we...

June 29, 2015

Domain Related, Hosting Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

If you haven’t thought abut enhancing your website with responsive design features by now, you’re at risk for losing some business in the future. How? The reason for the huge shift is due to the way people are browsing the Internet now days. A sub-optimal design/layout experience may occur for those who browse the Internet on a smaller-screen device. By 2016, browsing by mobile device is expected to exceed desktop use; making it ever important that your website will be easily viewable on the variety of screen-sizes. The acronym “RWD” stands for Responsive Web Design RWD’s beginnings go back to mid-2010, yet it is still fairly new to the majority of business website owners. Most simply defined, it is a website design using HTML5 features that automatically adjusts your website to fit on a desktop, and tablet, or smartphone. If you ever have browsed a website on a mobile device, and it loaded the desktop version then you understand it can often be difficult to navigate, zoom in and pan around. Users probably won’t be that impressed or may choose to keep surfing. Google has the incentive to give higher rankings to responsive websites, and they are implementing such factors in their ranking algorithms. A summary of how it works: ImageAs shown above, the webpage content has been adjusted and re-sized when necessary to fit into the confines the particular screen’s resolution. The methods of RWD utilize what is termed ‘media queries’ to sense the resolution of the device the webpage is being displayed on, to subsequently scale content and images on the screen. Years ago, web designers would develop a conventional desktop site, and secondly an entirely different mobile version to try to accommodate many of the many different mobile devices. read_more Big Reasons To Utilize RWD Beyond readability on all devices, there are several other benefits, the first being: A. Google gives RWD websites some weighted preference Google has deemed RWD as a best practice for websites. A responsive website having one URL (as contrasted with m.yoursite.com or mobile.yoursite.com) and the same coded structure allows Google to fully crawl and index your website, while Google also takes note...

June 22, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Not every small business has a website; and perhaps there are some types of businesses that might not require a website, but the rule of thumb remains - if you have a business it is a good idea to have website to help potential customers learn about your business and also most easily look your business up. The internet certainly is the new ‘yellow pages’. We presume you haven’t made that mistake, lol. But beyond that... if your business does compete for attention on the web alongside other businesses, how well does your website ‘rank’ on search engines, and hold your viewer’s attention? Simply speaking many small businesses have websites that are much less effective than others. Many businesses, usually small ones, make the same mistakes. Below we list the most common mistakes; Does your website have a clearly defined call to action? Let’s review your website. If you can, pretend that you are coming to your website for the very first time. Well, that is impossible, but the point is, a new visitor will be seeing your site for the very first time, so it is important to lead them along to what you would ultimately like them to do, which is to become your customer. Many small business websites are fine with letting visitors wander around rather aimlessly perhaps until they wander away and most likely never to return. About 1/3rd of websites are designed fairly well, and the rest could use some help in this regard. read_more Keep in mind cluttered website design, or one with poor navigation, is the most effective technique to encourage your visitors to click off your website as quickly as possible. Your small business will best be served by a simple, easy to read, easy to navigate, and clean website design. It is also of high importance to guide your website visitors by expressing to them what you want them to do. Every page of your website should have a specific purpose and desired response. The layout, text, and chosen graphics should work together in synergy to produce the desired response. Work towards that goal. It is important to get opinions from...

June 15, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

What is HTML5? HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Mark-up Language. The initial standard was developed in 1990 by the World Wide Web Consortium. HTML 5 is the latest update of this specification used to build websites. Many people are still unaware of many of the benefits of HTML5, so here we will describe some of its top attributes and benefits. HTML is a form of high level programming language used for structuring and presenting content on the Web consistently, across web browsers. HTML5 has been designed to meet the increasing demands presented by today’s rich media and mobile display requirements. Likewise it makes cross-platform mobile application development possible along with new styling options available in CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets version 3). As HTML5/CSS3 it operates entirely within a web browser, as HTML5 does, it is not dependent on the underlying operating system, which frees applications from the significant development/support overhead to otherwise make it all compatible with Android, iOS, Blackberry, etc. HTML5 is already supported in the latest web browser versions on PCs and tablets; of which about a billion new compatible phone devices are being produced each year. It is quite important not to ignore the importance of HTML5 when considering your mobile site. CSS3: What is it? CSS stands for ‘Cascading Style Sheets’. It is the language of format and design of web pages. It provides website designers the power to site documents that are styled. CSS is compatible with all popular web browsers regardless of device and operating system. It separates the structure of a web page from the details of how elements are displayed. CSS can also be used to tailor a web page specific to a particular screen resolution or device/screen-size. In short, CSS is the language used for implementing front-end web design. read_more HTML5 & CSS Benefits: The most obvious benefit actually lies in its abstraction. As it is generally termed: Write once, run anywhere. HTML5 and CSS3 help businesses design and deploy web content and applications to create visually stunning and accurate web pages which operate across devices, operating systems and web browsers. Without these standards the vast variety of devices...

June 8, 2015

Domain Related, Hosting Related, SEO Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Being mobile friendly is the current ‘big thing’ going on in terms of search engine ranking for websites. If you are not just doing simple updates to your website, but rather replacing large portions of it in full, there are considerations to keep in mind. Maybe you are just handing your site redevelopment to a third party? There are several other things at play than what can be visually seen, replacing your site structure could bring down your site’s rankings causing it to drop in terms of SERPs (which are “search engine results pages”) So the following are some tips and guidelines to follow in order to keep your site safe from new Google penalties and to get your site maximum visibility in Google. Unfortunately, we all have to become Google conformists. Our society, our global culture as a whole, unfortunately believes in continuous centralization of power. Resistance is apparently futile. 1. Create a website map of your site The first step is understanding where everything is placed on your website. If you have implemented SEO methodology in the past, then most likely at least a few pages rank well SERPs, and you don’t want to lose those gains when your website structure changes. read_more Screaming Frog - http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ is a free online tool that details your current website’s map. You can then begin matching it up to your new site design. 2. Concerning Your Website’s Platform Different underlying technology for your website can have influence on your website’s ranking. Is your site straight HTML, HTML5, WordPress, or some other CMS? When you’re creating the new site, are you staying on the same platform, or are your changing it? The platform you or your web developer choose is an important consideration. SquareSpace, Wix, Weebly are easy to setup, but can be limiting for future SEO efforts. WordPress offers a full SEO experience due to the many choices of third party plugins, for example, “WordPress SEO” offered by Yoast. Most importantly, make sure your website/platform has the capability to use 301 redirects, which has the power to re-link the former page location on your old site to your new site (more...

June 2, 2015

Hosting Related, SEO Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Dear 4GoodHosting customers , As you probably are already aware of social media (ie. twitter, facebook, etc. ) is an extremely valuable tool for promoting your website content. Other associated services, like ‘addthis’ and ‘sharaholic, make it 1-click simple to share content whether it be images, articles, comments, or other activities from websites to facebook, twitter, linkedin, pinterest and many more social media outlets as well. (as pictured above) You have probably seen this in action already in many places on the internet. If you haven’t done so already, in this blog we are going to show you how to easily set up social media sharing buttons and tools on your website. By doing so you will be extending your website’s visibility and leveraging what is known as “inbound marketing”, or increasing your visibility from the inside-out (free) rather than the outside-in (paid). You already have great content on your site, so you want to leverage that fact. The following social media buttons/tools will help you fully enable that. read_more There are two choices that we wish to promote, notably “addthis(.com)” and “shareaholic(.com)’ Both services have an easy sign up process. The process ultimately gives you a snippet of code that you can inset into your web page html code next to the content that you would like to be socially promoted. Another technique, if you run a Wordpress blog or other popular CMS, is to utilize plugins that such services make available to help share your content easily. Additionally these plugins also enable you to optionally ‘monetize’ your content, if you choose to show advertisements which are typically placed at the bottom of your article/page. We did an internal review of ‘addthis’ and ‘shareaholic’ and decided that shareaolic offers the most advanced features. We subsequently added social media buttons on our company blog posting Shareaholic’s Wordpress plugin. Shareaholic states they currently socially enable over 300,000 websites of all types and sizes. Shareaholic.com guides you through how to implement the top five social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest) on your website, blog, and other content. The Difference Between Follow Buttons & Share Buttons Which of the two types...

May 26, 2015

Domain Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Click on image to see it full zize. Even before whistle blowing hero Edward Snowden revealed the deep penetration the US government has impinged on it’s citizens privacy as you use the internet, there were many reports of government institutions spying on citizens, and cellphone records have often been mentioned in those reports. In spite of this, we have as a whole ‘learned’ to accept it. Cell phone use records offer tremendous insight into any investigation, because of the sheer amount of detailed information about the individual suddenly under the microscope. Apart from basic contractual information like a subscriber’s name and address, lots of other data is also gathered and stored on file by mobile providers; such as everywhere you have been with your phone. This database of data includes who you phoned (and they have the same type of data warehoused on your friends too of course), who you received calls from, who you sms’d, what you said, who said what to you, your tweets and facebook activity, your photographs are up for grabs, videos, and again, everywhere you have been. There is not much left, as the above is already above most people’s imaginations. read_more Mobile operators also record all ip-addresses and even which websites users visited on the Internet. All this information is available to any government agent with a higher level of clearance than a police officer (or investigator). From the information which is gathered, mobile operators can apply algorithms to find out when you prefer to wake up, perhaps even how many times you tap snooze, when you went to sleep or other usage patterns. App downloading is recorded, and perhaps every-time, how often, you launch your favorite game. With the right surveillance order (or perhaps without one) a mobile operator can also relay information about who you associate with. Armed with a valid subpoena, police and other government agents can retrieve recordings of your calls and all your SMS’s; warehoused digitally for years. A 2013 CNN report exposed that US operators use this data, for marketing purposes in conjunction with third parties. While even though Americans are told that the...

May 19, 2015

Domain Related, Hosting Related, SEO Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

In this week's blog we wish to describe some marketing techniques to help you market your website for free. For free? Yes. The advent of the internet has given birth to marketing techniques now known as "inbound marketing" - that doesn't rely on funding traditional, often expensive, marketing campaigns. Inbound marketing is an overall technique that a company, or perhaps just your personal website as well, can use to market itself through blog posts, seo optimization, press releases, electronic newsletters, whitepapers, social media, article writing and other similar creative methods that you might come up with. That is a list of marketing tools that don't really require money upfront if you are willing to do the work to assemble and publish the materials. Inbound marketing is also commonly referred to as "content marketing" as well. Inbound marketing retains the benefit creating value from the very start of the interaction with prospective customers. In short, Inbound marketing is pretty much all about creating, publishing, and sharing content (also posted in a discoverable way typically through search engines) around the internet. read_more The other way to market your website is known as Outbound Marketing. Outbound marketing is basically purchasing attention for your website/business. That can include traditional print/radio advertising, telemarketing/flyers, spam (be careful though, aggressive spamming is now considered against the law in Canada), billboards, pay-per-click (PPC) search engine advertising (such as Google adwords) and perhaps even tv advertisements. In the days before the internet and search engines, outbound marketing was really the only way to bring customers in; but in today's world outbound marketing is being replaced, to ever higher degrees, with inbound methods. So inbound marketing is more preferable on tighter budgets, and can also be more effective too. If excess funds are available, a company could decide to even hire a marketing agency to do all the work for them. But inbound marketing techniques actually are lasting ways to bring more business in - as the content you produce for your website can be lastingly built into/onto your website. Inbound marketing is especially effective for small businesses that offer knowledge-based products; where prospects are prone to do prior research...

May 13, 2015

Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

This blog concerns the topic of what is known as “Ransomware”. It is becoming a ever more prevalent annoyance that has been circulating around the internet. The devilish hackers behind it are attempting to extort money from common people. Like its name implies, "Ransom-ware holds your computer hostage, subsequently demanding payment in order for the person to be able to boot or log into their computer again.", says Eric Rainbolt, 4GoodHosting’s support manager. It goes onto a victim’s computer through unpatched software vulnerabilities to silently install itself, and sometimes through social engineering tactics too. “Cryptolocker” is ransom-ware that can spread quickly through email a affects a person’s file that on drives that are mapped to a hard-drive (of SSD) using the drive letters D: , E, or F:. This can also include USB memory sticks, ext. hard drives, or from a network or cloud folder. Paying the criminals, which we don’t advise, may or may not let you access to your system or your data back, but there have been plenty of cases where the ranson-ware’s decryption key isn’t emailed or when sent doesn’t even work. Tens of thousands of machines have been affected in the past couple of years – after the ransom-ware pirates have sent millions of emails. So what can be done about ransom-ware? read_more Ransom-ware is is not only disruptive and intimidating, your subsequently encrypted files can often be considered damaged and oftentimes beyond repair. But if you have adequately safeguarded your system, then it is becomes nothing more than a nuisance. Here are some methods to negate the threat of ransom-ware. Mirror your drive to a backup drive at least once a month. Having a regularly updated backup is essential. If your computer is infected with ransom-ware it may cause you to lose work-in-progress documents. To avoid this it it better to use an external drive or backup service, particularly one that is not assigned a drive letter or is often not plugged in. Patch or Update your software Malware authors rely on people running outdated software with known vulnerabilities, which they can exploit to silently get onto their system. Updating your software often will...