Category Archives: Domain Related

Reading Time: 9 minutes

We are all right in the midst of the early days of having artificial intelligence start to revolutionize some many aspects of our lives. We’re already seeing it in so many different facets of our digital lives, and the most visible of them for most people will be with the way their search query results are offering them more than just a list of search engine results pages. There is a growing need for websites to be maximum oriented to these AI-facilitated search results, and now you have the option to build an AI-powered WordPress website.

Not surprising at all that WordPress is taking the lead with staying ahead of the curve on this, as they’ve been arguably the gold standard for DIY website design and that grew out of their beginnings as an easy-to-use online publishing platform for blogs and the like. Our specialty here at 4GoodHosting has always been reliable Canadian web hosting, but for the folks at WordPress it’s a much wider umbrella and it’s been all about making it easy for people to be taking themselves online.

Many of the folks we’ve kept as customers for years upon years have WordPress business websites, and most will want the advantages of managed WordPress hosting for themselves. Faster website performance and better web security are just two of the many advantages of having this type of hosting for a WordPress site, and it’s not like it’s considerably more expensive too.

If you’re one of the folks who’s all ears when you hear of an AI-powered WordPress website you might want to look into moving over to Managed WordPress hosting if you haven’t already done so. We’ve talked a lot about the entirety of the advantages of doing that, but with this blog entry we’re going to lay out everything we know about the new WordPress AI websites and why you might want to be evenly doubly excited about them.

Apparently these types of sites are set to change everything, and considering nothing stays the same for long in the online world we say bring it on. We imagine you feel similarly, so let’s get right into it.

Building On It

WordPress has been the go-to platform for creating and managing websites for over 20 years now, and as of today the estimates are that it powers 43% of websites worldwide. That works out to nearly 10 times the number of any other platform, and as such it’s plain to see that WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system. That 20 years was a long time ago now, but it was only last year in 2023 that generative AI really started to become incorporated into web technologies of all sorts in a big way.

Especially with the way that OpenAI’s GPT-4 continues to push boundaries with every new release. There’s so much potential there and for many of us there’s no way to NOT be excited about what’s to come with this. Building your own with website with WordPress was never going to be beyond the scope of ability for anyone, but with AI-powered WordPress the reality is that anyone proceeding with that now is going to have it made even easier for them, plus seeing what’s possible increased in the biggest way.

Here’s what it can do for you:

Speedy and Prompt-Based Website Creation

With WordPress and AI you’ll be able to put together a custom website in minutes by simply typing in what you need and submitting replies to a few questions. AI provides the ‘smarts’ that will make the decisions the same way it would be the situation if you were laying out your wants and wishes to a web designer sitting in front of you.

So it really doesn’t matter if you’re a complete beginner and you know nothing of web hosting either. This feature is going to allow you to create high-quality websites without any coding quickly. Just explain what you’re looking for and see what the AI comes up with for smart website design. And if by any chance it’s not what you like, try explaining it again in a different way.

This type of smart interactivity really is a beautiful thing when it comes to AI.

AI Content Creator

A website without good content as a part of it is going to be coming up short, and in more ways that just having good searchability. But for some of you who want to build your own website with WordPress writing good content for the site may not be something you’re confident doing.

No problem at all when AI is involved in the website creation process. With AI WordPress you are now able to leverage the AI Content Creator for product descriptions, blog posts, and it will even suggest images based on your guidelines and the prompts you provide for it. This really isn’t unlike having your own content writer and designer on call 24/7. That’s not all you can do with this part of it either. Browse the Design library and easily drag and drop website sections like call-to-actions, hero banners, and other components that can go directly into your existing site pages.

AI WordPress Assistant

Despite the even-better simplicity that you’ll get by having AI help with web design you’re your new WordPress site, it may still be that some of the aspects of it are still a little much for you. That’s less of a problem now too, as you can taking advantage of the personal WordPress AI assistant in the dashboard to help guide you through some of the WordPress that are still somewhat complex for you.

Step where you’re told to step and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with just how quickly everything comes together. You’ll be going from zero to website in no time and getting more done in much less time, plus quite likely being entirely pleased with the results.

Creation & Management in One

Even for those relatively capable with all of this stuff there’s always been at least some level of tediousness and excess technicality to creating and managing a website. Plus it’s also true that WordPress has been known to have something of a steep learning curve. AI-powered WordPress is putting an immediate end to that, and that’s another huge plus that’s now available for new (or returning) users with this newly super intuitive website builder.

Indeed, what we have here is going to make website creation accessible to practically everyone. Stretching from small business owners to bloggers and creatives to people who more simply want a basic online front for promoting their hobby ventures or something similar. There is going to be no need for technical ability at all anymore, and AI will make it much more likely you find the version of the site that 100% meets your expectations so much faster.

You – and everyone else – can now create professional-grade websites with very little effort required of you.

This also applies for individuals with disabilities. AI is going to reach to them as well when it comes to building a WordPress website and making it doable for those who may not have all the same natural resources that the rest of us do. This will really apply for people who are blind or have dyslexia, with even better intuitive interfaces and the ability to have AI-generated content produced for you without needing to view and / or write it yourself.

It simplifies complex tasks in WordPress and underscores the importance of web accessibility in the evolution of digital technologies. Managed WordPress hosting with these sites is going to be the perfect pairing who wants the best in new and intelligent web design and optimal functionality for the site. You can all also be assured that as the AI continues to learn and evolve that further improvements and expanded ability with sophisticated and tailored website solutions will follow.

Everybody In

AI-powered WordPress web design is going to be such a great fit for all of you who have decided it’s time to create to your own website. This will apply to people with any type of interest for doing so, and also for any profession where the professional sees the need to have a good website for themselves. One good example would be a real estate agent who knows they need one for themselves but they don’t want to spend a ton to hire a web designer.

With one of these new smart WordPress sites they can have one that will set up property listings with detailed descriptions and images in no time. Or maybe it is a group of people who have a tech startup in its early stages. With the new WordPress version backed with AI they will be able to have everything done as efficiently as possible with maximum results, including the crafting of perfectly technical blogs and creation of perfect product pages too if they are needed.

How about fledgling fashion designers? If you’re someone who has created their own fashion line and is ready to launch it then AI can generate product descriptions, create blog posts, and design banners. New restauranters can do much the same, and they can create a website in less than a minute to see if interest is there or create buzz.

Everyone who elects to leverage AI capabilities this way will be best positioned to respond quickly to market opportunities, and having their content kept fresh and relevant. Plus it will significantly reduce the time and effort required for them for maintaining a dynamic online presence. Which works out to faster time-to-market, quicker adaptation to trends, and more efficient updates. This can – and likely will – lead to you having an edge over your competitors, and especially when you have your site on managed WordPress hosting.

The next thing that needs to be mentioned here is that as WordPress continues to be an open-source software the unmatched flexibility and control that has always come with that is going to be expanded upon big time with artificial intelligence now added to the mix. You can choose from thousands of plugins to customize and expand your website as you grow online.

While other website builders may restrict you by locking you in, WordPress always provides full control your data and you’re free to move your site to a different web hosting provider if that’s what you think is best. And keep in mind as well that with WordPress you immediately have a large, active community of developers and users who are providing support, sharing ideas, and offering solutions.

Affordability Too

We can assume that some will be thinking that AI-powered WordPress is going to be a good bit more pricey as compared to what the price for it was before artificial intelligence was incorporated into it. But we’re pleased to tell you here that’s not the case. Generative AI has been brought into the mix without too much being required of WordPress, and so the prices seen for these new platforms isn’t going to be dissuading anyone.

Most of them will be using GPT-4o, and another big gain with that is the way it prioritizes your privacy by ensuring that your prompts are not used for AI training purposes. Your data is going to stay confidential and secure, guaranteed. There is also the option to turn it off at any time, and that will be done by removing the AI plugin.

This will be a powerful tool for agencies too, and the decision makers at many have likely thought about to what extent AI will impact their business. With AI-powered WordPress, web and marketing agencies can now create initial website prototypes in seconds instead of weeks.

Let’s use an example here to provide clarification on this one; a client asks 2 different agencies for a custom website quote. The first one responds with a few examples and a description of the proposed outcome. The other agency is AI-enabled and offers 3 tailored, ready-made website variants that look ready-to-go. Who do you think that client is going to go with?

It’s going to be important for prospective users here to understand that you will still have the option to remove AI from any part of the WordPress website creation process. From where we’re sitting we can’t see any reason why you’d choose to do that, but we also know that for some there’s going to be an inclination to do things the old-fashioned way.

So it’s good for those folks to know that they can choose between the Classic and AI experience, or easily remove it from your WordPress site with just a few clicks. Doing so won’t impact the site and content you already have. Keep in mind, however, you’re your competitors might already be using AI to boost the speed and quality of the content they create. You may be choosing to put yourself at a disadvantage here. Just saying.

Managed WordPress Hosting is Best

Those who are starting at the start with all of this are probably wholly and entirely convinced of paying for an AI-assisted WordPress website design. We touched on why getting the matching web hosting for it earlier and provided 2 primary reasons why that’s such a good idea. But let’s wrap up this blog entry by going into much more detail on that end of it.

Managed WordPress hosting is simple and powerful, and with it you’ll have an intuitive dashboard and advanced features like site staging, GIT, WP-CLI and the brand new site performance monitoring. Our Managed hosting here at 4GoodHosting outperforms competitors’ offerings that cost several times more, and we’ve got what it takes to be able to make that claim.

Next up is reliability, and you’re going to be optimally backed by 4GoodHosting and our 99.9% uptime guarantee, plus 24/7 monitoring to ensure the site is operating optimally at all times. We have customer service reps standing by to lend a helping hand any time people need it here. We’re also big on sustainability here, and that’s a part of the advantage for managed hosting for new WordPress sites here too.

Our eco-friendly datacenters in both Vancouver and Toronto are powered by renewable energy, and a part of why we have the longstanding A record with the Better Business Bureau in both Provinces is because of this. But for most people these attributes are going to be admirable, but their priorities will be with having a smart design website that is serving their online interests best at all times.

We get that, and with AI-powered WordPress design and managed hosting you can be spinning up a new WordPress in a matter of minutes. Not the hours it would have taken you previously before artificial intelligence was incorporated into all of this. It does the heavy lifting for you via optimal configurations, so you can focus on publishing great content and running your business.

Generative AI is an incredible tool, and it is going to help those who want to work faster and more efficiently. We’re talking about how that’s going to relate to building a new WordPress website here, but we’ll conclude by saying that with AI there’s still going to be the need to learn to work with it. Understand its limitations may be equally important as knowing what is going to be increasingly possible because of it.

This technology has come an incredibly long way in such a short time, and the exciting thing is that this is just the beginning. Look for AI-powered WordPress to be available from this Canadian web hosting provider soon.

Reading Time: 11 minutes

The adage that tells us you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression doesn’t just apply to the working world or interpersonal relations of any sort. It also very much applies to the digital world and very much so for the world of online business. These days the means by which you are going to make that first impression is with your website 90+ percent of the time. So you had better have the type of landing pages that DOES make that good first impression for you and your business.

But here’s the thing; the reason that SEO services for your landing page become more important than any design or aesthetic interests related to the visuals of the page is because without SEO optimized webpages you’re not going to have the same level of opportunity to be making those good first impressions. We probably don’t need to go on at length about the point here, as most of you will be very well aware of the importance of search engine page rankings.

You’ve probably been told of how it is so massively beneficial to have your business appearing on the first page of Google search results. That’s true for any search engine really, and what makes that happen is adhering to landing page SEO best practices. If that’s beyond your capabilities then you absolutely have to pay a website SEO specialist to optimize your site. We can improve your website SEO right here at 4GoodHosting, and you can receive a free quote right now.

Plus keep in mind that you need to be revisiting your SEO at all times, as it’s not just a once-and-done thing. It needs to be an ongoing project, and it’s well worth it if you want to have maximum visibility with prospective customers for your business. And of course that IS what you want. Getting higher search engine page rankings is possible, and it is something that people with websites representing other interests are going to want to have too. Whatever it is you’re doing, you want to be at the front of the pack and being seen online.

Visibility Plus

Here in 2024 the reality is that there are so many of the same types of business fighting for the same slice of the same pie. How effective your online presence is and how it contributes to the likelihood of you getting the slice you want is in large part determined by the strength of your landing page SEO. This is why you need to know effective landing page SEO strategies.

A well-optimized landing page will boost your visibility on search engines plus enhance user engagement and conversion rates. So with this blog entry we’ll go over best practices for landing page SEO, letting you know what’s best for refining your page content, structure, and technical elements to meet both search engine guidelines and user expectations. Remember that SEO is much more than just knowing and incorporating the right keywords into page content.

You also need to have the right call-to-action (CTA) placements if you want your landing page to be serving as a powerful tool for attracting and retaining traffic. As it stands now you may not fully comprehend just how much value there is in SEO services for your landing page.

Understanding Landing Page SEO

What is always needed is a strategic approach to enhancing the visibility and effectiveness of a landing page within search engine results. Experts know how to tailor the page to meet both user needs and search engine criteria, and when that’s done right then businesses can see the results they want to have from their website – namely significantly increases their engagement and conversion rates.

Having an attractive, functional, and engaging landing page is important too and when you have that you will also have a lower landing page bounce rate – which is the rate at which people arrive at your page but then click away from it shortly thereafter. But we’re not going to talk about page design or what is or isn’t ‘attractive’ with web pages here, and as stated what we’re going to look at here is how to boost your landing page SEO today.

That is done with a careful balance of well-crafted content, technical optimization, and user experience enhancements. Integrating SEO best practices into your landing page design will revamp a page so that it attracts more of the right audience as well as delivering a compelling message that encourages action.

It may be beneficial to define what is a landing page for a website. It should be fairly self-explanatory, as when someone submits a request to the server by clicking on the link of your URL what happens when that request is answered is that their browser is redirected to your site. The landing page is what will always appear to them first. It is a standalone web page that is created specifically for marketing or advertising campaigns, and unlike general websites, landing pages are designed with a single focus or goal, known as a call to action (CTA). This focus makes landing pages the best option for increasing the conversion rates of your marketing campaigns and lowering your cost of acquiring a lead or making a sale.

You should also see your landing page as the pivotal touchpoint where visitors are converted into leads after being presented with tailored offers and clear calls to action. It’s important that they don’t have any distractions and are able to focus on one specific offer. See to that and you’ll have a landing pages that is better set to increase the chances of visitor engagement and conversion.

And you will soon start to see how they are more effective for bringing potential customers into your digital marketing funnel, furthering their interest, and making it that much more likely they make a purchase or subscribe to your service.

SEO for Landing Pages Importance

You need to be amplifying the reach and impact of your marketing efforts, and improving SEO for landing pages contributes to that. When websites have their landing page optimized for search engines they quickly come to have better visibility and that is measurable with the increased volume of traffic going to the site. What is less measurable is also a big part of why landing page SEO best practices are so advisable. Specifically, that’s with the way the elements of an SEO optimized page also contribute to engagement.

That is related to having the content of the page being increasingly relevant to your target audience, something that is crucial for attracting visitors who are most likely to eventually become customers. SEO optimization on this end of the equation involves tailoring the landing page’s content, keywords, and meta tags to align with what those potential customers are known to search for. You’ll need to know what that is, but if you don’t then again it becomes a situation where you’re highly advised to pay for the services of someone who does.

You also want to have your site being identified favorably by paid search campaigns and getting better quality scores from them. This is especially true if you have invested in PPC ads that redirect potential customers to your website. Getting that SEO makeover for your website and landing page ensures it is much more like the page is seen and also that is resonates more with those potential customers. When that happens they are more likely to engage with content and take the course of action you want them to.

SEO-Friendly Landing Page Key Elements

Continuing with our look at SEO services for your landing page, we can now pinpoint the certain components of the page that need to addressed and what’s the best means of doing that for better landing page SEO.

• Headline and Subheadings

The headline presents the initial opportunity to capture interest and improve relevancy for search engines. Effective headlines and subheadings use targeted keywords to improve the page’s SEO, while also providing clear, concise information about the benefits that will be presented in greater detail in the content below. Well-constructed headings and subheadings promote more reading and interaction, and this correlates to higher engagement and conversion rates.

• Supporting Copy and Visuals

Having a landing page’s supporting copy succinctly convey the value of your offer is hugely advantageous, and even more so when it is complemented by relevant visuals that enhance the message. Aim to have your text and images working together to form a cohesive narrative, with visuals serving to break up text and add contextual depth. That type of formatted page layout helps to retain user interest and improve page aesthetics.

• Keywords and Semantic Variations

Integrating primary keywords and their semantic variations throughout your landing page continues to be the foremost approach in effective landing page SEO strategies. Content that has the right keywords and associated keywords / phrases incorporated organically and at the right keyword density helps search engines understand the topic and context of your page. Then its visibility is boosted as a result.

And by organically it’s meant to use them naturally within the text to ensure the page remains readable and engaging for users and it doesn’t read like the keywords are just stuffed into the text and not being natural in the flow of it. This is also important for optimizing a landing page for search performance.

• Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Title tags and meta descriptions are also components you’ll want to be reviewing to see if they’re contributing favorably to your landing page’s SEO or not. You will need to be summarizing the content of the page for both search engines and potential visitors. With an optimized title tag and meta description you’ll increase the number of click-throughs you receive from search engine results pages, particularly if they’re written smartly to capture attention and highlight the key value propositions you are offering to these prospective customers.

• URL Structure

There are certain elements of better SEO approaches that most small-time webmasters are often unaware of. Some of them are not among the primary considerations with SEO services for your landing page but still have the ability to factor into your SERPs to a much greater extent than you’d imagine. The URL for your website and how it is structured is one of them.

It’s when a URL structure is clear, concise, and includes relevant keywords that it becomes super SEO-friendly and will be assisting search engines in understanding the page content. Site user experience will be improved too. A well-structured URL can convey information about the hierarchy of a website, making it better for user navigation and for search engines to index the content. Those are 2 more big gains related to search engine optimization.

• Image Optimization

When images are optimized they help speed up page load times, and faster page load speeds are seen very favorably by the search engines you’re looking to rank higher with. Compress images to reduce their file size without sacrificing quality, and use descriptive file names and alt attributes that include relevant keywords. This helps search engines index your images properly and improves accessibility for users with visual impairments.

Strategies to Enhance Landing Page Visibility

Start here by looking at your content relevance and search intent. As for having more relevant content, you need to make sure that you don’t have too much content you have on your landing page, and what you do have is not vague, indeterminate content that doesn’t speak very specifically to the nature of your business or whatever else it is you’re doing with the website.

Content must not only be compelling and informative but also specifically tailored to meet the needs and expectations of the target audience identified through search intent analysis. If the content can be even better than okay then it becomes possible to have it resonate with the audience. This will increase engagement, reducing bounce rates, and boosting the likelihood of conversion.

Next, aim to have an understanding of search intent categorization. This is not as much of clear, concrete step but you can look into it online yourself. It involves determining the informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial interest prerogatives that the average visitor to your website is going to have. When you have knowledge around why users search and what they hope to find, you are better equipped to craft content that precisely answers their questions or provides the solutions they seek. As a result of this the landing page becomes more relevant and attractive in search results.

Go with on-page SEO tactics, and with internal linking and alt text for images too. Internal linking strengthens on-page SEO by directing visitors to other relevant pages on your website. When they spend more time on your site that also contributes to better search engine rankings. Strategically placed links encourage deeper exploration of your site, and this offers the same benefits as it signals to search engines that your site provides valuable content. Internal linking spreads link equity across the site, which may also boost the SEO performance of individual pages, and including your landing page.

Alt text for images is a very integral part of SEO as it gives search engines some context as to what an image displays. Effective alt text should describe the image content with accuracy while incorporating relevant keywords. This helps with image indexing plus better accessibility for users with visual impairments – which is another consideration the search engine algorithm will be looking for in relation to how the site is ranked.

Conversion Optimization Techniques

We’ve really stressed in other blog entries here how it is so important to have a clear and emphatic CTA on your landing page and possibly on other pages of the website. The placement of it is strategic, and if it is contained in a button then where that button goes can influence the conversion rates for a landing page. What you should do for SEO is place CTAs both above and below for better visibility regardless of how much or little a visitor scrolls.

Try to personalize CTAs based on the visitor’s journey or interaction with the site. Dynamic CTAs that change based on the user’s past behavior can really bump up conversion rates when the offer or value proposition is more tailored to that user and the way they’ve shown themselves to have moved through the website.

Form optimization for lead capture is your next consideration here if there is a form to fill out when the user takes you up on your CTA. Simplify the form to include only essential fields, as each additional field means it is more likely the form is eventually left incomplete and unsubmitted. Use engaging language that resonates with the audience and really emphasize what users will receive in return for completing and submitting the form. It’s also a good idea to provide a reassurance to these prospective customers that the site is secure and their data will be kept private.

Tools & Resources

A keyword research tool is going to be part of the monthly marketing budget for any webmaster operating a website for their business. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush will give you the valuable and up-to-date keyword information you need, identifying high-potential keywords and phrases to integrate into your landing page content so that the page more aligns with what your audience is searching for.

Utilizing these tools allows marketers to discover long-tail keywords which can attract more qualified traffic and lead to higher conversion rates due to their specific nature and lower competition.

You may want to go with an SEO and Analytics Platforms too, and ones like Google Analytics and Moz provide crucial data on your landing page’s performance with traffic sources, behavior to conversion metrics, and other very valuable insights. These platforms help identify which elements of your page are doing well, and which others are not contributing as positively.

Have a look for any collection of known successful SEO-optimized site landing pages to get a good look at what are the most effective strategies and the common themes among them. You can glean a few of the SEO best practices, from keyword optimization and compelling content to technical SEO and speedier page loads, as well as the extent the experts have seen them contributing individually to higher rankings and better user engagement.

There can be pitfalls too though. The typical spots where landing page optimization goes wrong are neglecting mobile optimization, using generic instead of targeted content, and overloading the page with too many calls-to-action. These mistakes can detract from user experience and diminish conversion rates. Make sure you’re doing none of that, and again if a mobile version of your site is beyond your abilities then it may be a good idea to use our mobile website builder here at 4GoodHosting that is available for people who choose us for their affordable web hosting in Canada.

Understanding these common errors can help marketers avoid them and instead focus on creating streamlined, focused, and user-friendly landing pages that are optimized for conversions and SEO performance.

Monitoring and Improving SEO Performance

Most webmasters tasked with keeping the company’s website in good stead will be using analytics to monitor the performance of their site’s landing page. Tracking metrics such as page views, bounce rate, and conversion rate provides insights into what’s beneficial and what may be detracting from SEO value. This data is important for making informed decisions about SEO and content strategies as they aim to always be keeping the page SEO optimized. Plus analytics platforms can alert marketers to trends and patterns that may not be so easily identified and then lead to smart adjustments that make the page perform better with SERPs.

A/B testing is fairly standard too, and is especially good for weighing changes to headlines, images, or CTAs. All in all, an ongoing process of testing and optimization is vital for keeping the SEO for your landing page at its best and responsive to user behavior and search engine algorithm changes. If you feel you need to know more about effective landing page SEO strategies one of our representatives would be happy to help you with that.

Reading Time: 7 minutes

So much to be said for simplicity nearly all the time, and then with websites there’s the way that DIY is the way to go if you’re not at all keen to pay a web developer to put together a website for you. Obviously you won’t choose that if you’re making the decisions for a big and well-established business of any sort. But if you’re in business on a significantly smaller scale and it’s not so much about branding as it is providing a quality product or service at a good price then a DIY website is often a good choice. WordPress gives you that option, and what we’ll look at here is Divi vs Elementor as the best WordPress page builder.

It’s not even a choice you need to make if all you’re after is the simplest of websites, and good examples of these are ones for recreational sports teams or maybe one where a person is showcasing their music or arts or crafts. You can use WordPress as it comes out of the box to put together the entirety of the site, but for some they’ll want more functionality with how certain pages are assembled. Divi and Elementor features both line up with being able to do this, and what we’ll aim to do is determine if one is better than the other for doing that.

As you’d expect there are Elementor vs Divi pros and cons and taking all of them into account and weighing them against each other is how we’ll come to our conclusion. There’s more than a few people who will be looking for the best drag and drop page builder, and you can be sure that at any given time there’s at least a handful of people out there who are getting set to use WordPress to build a website for the first time. That means that a topic like this can always be relevant, so without going on any further let’s start our Divi vs Elementor comparison.

CMS Considerations

A content management system (CMS) is usually a must for the creation of websites, and WordPress has been the leader of the pack there for years now. Anyone hoping to create a WordPress site that looks good and functions as intended will do well if they know how to use the right tools. And that means being in the know with the array of them, plus all the plugins and builder available for making a WordPress. But not all of them work, and of the ones that do some are decidedly better than others.

We will be evaluating two tried-and-tested themes here, Divi vs Elementor. Both page builder are good enough, and it needs to be said that both will get the job done. Which is important to be assured of, because a page builder is the way to go when it comes to building a dynamic site with ease. So choosing a WordPress page builder becomes the matter, and here’s our comparison.

Divi Builder

We can start by saying that Divi, like the Pro version of Elementor, should be seen as more than a page builder. It can serve as a theme and a theme builder, making it a multi-purpose resource for anyone looking to create dynamic websites. It is also one of the most popular WordPress themes in the world. Let’s provide definitions for a few important terms here as they relate to using these themes.

A page builder is a tool for creating attractive website layouts and doing so without the need for coding. A theme is a set of files that determines the look and layout of a WordPress site. When using a theme builder you have a tool that lets you create your own WordPress theme without having to write any code. So to cover this all together briefly a page builder is used to create individual layouts, while a theme governs the overall look of the site. A theme builder offers in-depth customization of the WordPress theme as a whole.

Our focus here is going to be on the two page builders though, and not so much on WordPress site builders. With Divi vs Elementor performance it tends to be a fairly even comparison, so if there’s other differentiators then that is where we need to focus with a Divi page builder review.

We first noted that Divi has an impressively intuitive interface, and with it you can create highly dynamic pages. In addition to its extensive library of templates to help you design these pages, it’s also easy to use and has the type of drag-and-drop functionality that a lot of users will be looking for. The other pros for Divi is that it has an advanced block page customization that is very much conducive to putting together unique sites.

Other advantages for Divi is that the builder’s design options are highly flexible, and mobile compatibility is easy to set up. Divi’s front-end mode also gets high marks with the way you can see changes you’ve made in real time. Plus the integrated page templates that are available in the builder’s library make it super easy to get started. For anyone who might have more than one WordPress website for business the single license payment is a good arrangement and that factors into our WordPress page builder comparison too.

Rounding out the pros for Divi are very efficient customer support that is available 24/7 via chat and an extensive database of video tutorials.

On the flip side of all of this, Divi is certainly pricey and you’ll have to spend over $250 for the license. This is only a one-time payment, however, and once paid there is lifetime access to build as many sites as you need. Another consideration that may not be so appealing for people looking to build you own website with WordPress is that the learning curve with Divi can be steep, especially for beginners and considering there are so many customization options to potentially work with.

Customer support is only available in English, and as you’d expect nowadays some people are offended by this. There are also reports that Divi-designed sites slow down considerably in instances where there isn’t regular optimization by images and content

Elementor Builder

If there’s one most prominent page builder for WordPress, it is Elementor. Continuing with our Divi vs Elementor comparison, Elementor is renowned for its user-friendly interface and extensive customization options. It tends to be a good fit for both beginners and experts with the way it simplifies website creation and enables users to design responsive, visually appealing sites and not asking too much of them to do that.

Elementor offers an intuitive interface in the same way Divi does, earning the same points in this evaluation of the best WordPress page builder. Go with this page builder and you will also be able to create dynamic sites with supremely usable drag-and-drop functionality. Elementor also measures up with having a variety of tools to tailor sites to your needs.

The pros for Elementor include there being a free version of Elementor that will be sufficient for most people who are aiming to build a basic website. And it is also similar to Divi in that it has a Front-End mode where users are able to preview in real time how the site will appear to site visitors. Another advantage of going with Elementor is that it offers a mobile-specific editing mode where users can identity and adjust the appearance of the site and how it will display on smartphones and tablets.

You will have fewer options than Divi, but that works out to Elementor being a more intuitive choice if you’re not at all savvy with this type of stuff. And in fairness much of what comes additionally with Divi won’t really be required if you are building a basic website and using WordPress site builders for doing that. Another plus is that customer support is available by e-mail and chat 24/7, along with plenty of articles, videos and frequently asked questions that will cover a lot of the most common basic queries users will have.

Moving onto the drawbacks for Elementor, what users find is that they reach the ceiling with the free version of Elementor quite quickly. Accessing many of the advanced features will require users to pay for the much more comprehensive Pro version. That may be a good way to go, but even with the Pro version you are limited with the number of sites you can design. 25 per year for the $199 price. As with Divi, customer support is only available in English and again some people are super offended by that.

Key Features

Continuing with our WordPress page builder comparison, we need to look at the Divi Builder Elementor. It does very well for being intuitive, but there is a steep learning curve due to the complexity and diversity of its options. Alternately, Elementor’s interface is intuitive and equally suitable for beginners or more seasoned users. If we factor price into the equation Divi may be better even though there is no free version.

With the 1-time payment for lifetime free access you have more of what you need if you are planning to build your own website and build more than one of them. With Elementor there is that free version a lot of people will be pleased to have, but the tradeoff is that functionality is limited. If it is not meeting your needs with the Elementor features you have then the alternative is to move up to the paid Pro version that will give you a lot more functionality.

The next consideration will be with creative flexibility and Divi page builder reviews go on at length about the flexibility and wide-ranging design options. With this level of advanced customization, you will be entirely equipped with what you need to create a unique site. Elementor also offers great flexibility, with simplified options that will be a fit for both beginners and experienced users.

Divi is not only just a WordPress page builder, it is also a WordPress theme in itself. With it you’re able to design a site from A to Z, without adding an external theme. There’s a basic theme designed for Elementor called Hello Elementor and you can choose to start with it or go with a range of free or paid themes.

Performance will always be a consideration too with choosing a WordPress page builder. Sites designed with Divi offer stable performance, but are known to be slower. Faster loading times can be achieved by Optimizing images and content though, although that is always essential for maintaining faster loading times with any type of website. Elementor delivers solid, fast performance and even with the most advanced features.

Adaptive and responsive design features are also going to be a part of what people are looking for with the best drag and drop page builder. Divi offers adaptive design options to ensure your site is responsive across different devices. Elementor matches that here, offering similar features to optimize adaptive design and we like how users can see changes in real time.

The consensus is that they’re pretty much evenly matched with mobile compatibility, real-time site editing, block page customization, and customer support. So accordingly with Divi vs Elementor we don’t necessarily recommend one over the other. What is likely best for anyone is to try the free version of each and see if one is better for you based on what you’re aiming to do with it. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, even though the two builders are very similar.

We’ll conclude by saying there are other page builders you may want to consider. Gutenberg, Beaver Builder, and Site Origin are also good ones that have much the same levels of workability when it comes to building WordPress pages. But if you have the budget then going with Divi or Elementor is recommended.

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A relatively captive audience may have been a possibility in the early days of the Internet. Nowadays, however, there is very likely no shortage of others with the same to say as what you’ve got to add to any conversation on any subject. That doesn’t mean you’re any less of the expert on it if you genuinely are the expert, but if you have a WordPress blog or a WordPress website then there’s plenty to do to ensure your quality content is best positioned in the sea of content that exists out there. WordPress updates are needed.

The enduring popularity of this online publishing platform has endured for decades now, and it reflects the fact that WordPress is perennially usable for people who need a very basic means of publishing a blog online or having a DIY website that is good enough for their simpler aims with it. Some of you may have a blog or site that hasn’t had any changes to the web infrastructure of it since its inception, and if so and you are wondering why you are not getting the same traffic as before then we need to start looking at the benefits of updating WordPress.

The reason being that simply improving website SEO for WordPress isn’t the all-encompassing solution for increasing your blog or website’s visibility with the audience you’re aiming to have it be more visible to. There is plenty more that goes into the equation and with newest update there are so many new WordPress features that are going to appeal even if your aims are simpler and you just want to make your pages look better and promote greater interactivity with a – hopefully – growing audience.

So what we’re going to do with this blog entry is go over 6 reasons why WordPress updates are something you should be considering if what you’ve got on the web is in need of a makeover. We’ll also look briefly at ways to improve website speed for WordPress and what’s the best approach for WordPress bug fixes if you need them.

Mandatory Move

The fast-paced world of website management makes keeping your WordPress site up to a real necessity and it has become more than just a good practice. Some would even say it’s essential. Regular WordPress updates can provide you with the peace of mind that your site is set up for optimal function and also safe from malware threats or other undesirable outcomes. When you consider that is doesn’t require much of you to implement them, why wouldn’t you choose to give your WordPress site a quick and effective optimization from time?

The reason it’s needed is that WordPress is continually evolving, and with it comes new features, improvements and security patches bundled into each update. We’re more than 2/3 of the way through 2024 now, but over the entire course of 2023 over 75% of WordPress sites used version 6 of the platform. That’s a solid adoption rate, but we can say clearly that that the other 25% choosing to remain on older versions chose to be at a disadvantage too. Especially with the way they’re exposed to security risks plus missing out on new features.

It is important to secure your WordPress site. With regular updates your website stays secure, compatible with the latest web standards, and performs without any types of limitations based on not being up to date with the standards or other factors that will either benefit or impeded a website.

Right then, let’s move onto the 6 reasons you should always proceed with WordPress updated when they become available with the newest version of WordPress

Maintain website reputability

A website that remains outdated is going to be more vulnerable to infection with malware, and if that occurs then it is possible that criminals operating online may use your website as a vehicle to conduct attacks on other websites, and they generally tend to aim for bigger fish – financial institutions, streaming sites like Netflix, all sorts of spots connected to social media platforms like Facebook, and others. Before you’re even aware of what has happened your site or blog may end up being blacklisted by Google Safe Browsing via anti-virus software or by major browsers.

That’s going to be a headache on a large scale, and so it’s something you want to avoid and it is why WordPress security updates are so important. Again, this isn’t going to cost you anything and it’s quite simple to have WordPress updated, so be smart and prevent any type of infection before it even has a chance to start. There’s so many more of them out there nowadays, and any cyber security expert is going to tell you that the risk is only going to increase from here on out. We’ll add as well that going with the best managed WordPress hosting Canada here at 4GoodHosting is going to be better for built-in security too

Enhance Website Security

We’ll continue with that aspect, and say further that security is increasingly a top priority with website management, but that is even more important when you have a WordPress website for a business. When you update your WordPress you will be equipping your site with the latest security patches. Putting updated patches in place is everything when it comes to making website hacking or data breaches very unlikely.

The way WordPress is an open-source platform is a big part of why it’s been so successful and so widely used, but at the same time being open-source makes it a target for hackers. Regular updates will come with vital fixes for known vulnerabilities, and staying on top of those new and ever-changing viabilities is a big part of ensuring your site’s safety.

Instant Access to New Features

Regular updates give users access to the latest WordPress features and functionalities. The developers at WordPress are renowned for the way they continue rolling out new and innovative ways to make your WordPress site that much better, and with WordPress V6 they’ve done that yet again. These WordPress updates will enhance your website’s capabilities and provide you with a whole bunch more customization options.

Look no further than the advancements like the Gutenberg block editor and the Site Health tool. Each of these is continuously refined, and when you take advantage of them and all the other advancements you enable your WordPress site to spread its wings and operate at maximum capability. You just need to choose to go ahead and do it, and that’s why we are so big on the benefits of updating WordPress.

Boost Website Speed

We said we’d touch on ways to improve website speed for WordPress, and so here it is. Choosing to stick with an older version of WordPress is very likely going to slow it down. Each new version of WordPress brings performance improvements that enhance the speed that your website is capable of running at, and that is directly connected to user experience and how favorably your site is going to be regarded by these users.

This is even more important as page load speed is part of the criteria that search engines evaluate when it comes to page rankings. If you’re in business with a WordPress website, you had better be putting importance on that.

Consider this – there are studies that have shown that around 40% of visitors will leave a page if it takes more than 3 seconds for it to load on an e-commerce website. Faster websites not only offer a better user experience but also rank higher in search engine results. That’s the plain facts of the matter and it’s yet another reason why it is important to keep a WordPress site updated.

Resolve Bugs & Issues

Next we go to WordPress bug fixes, and that capability is another part of why these updates are so recommended. Updates are vital for fixing bugs that may occur in major releases, and when they are fixed then your site’s stability and functionality is improved. Even minor WordPress releases focus on resolving specific issues, and that is essential for a seamless user experience too.

If you’ve ever spent any time reading through WordPress forums you’ll see that getting the lates WordPress update is often what is suggested as a first step in troubleshooting bugs. Want to be as bug-free as possible for your site, and have that be the case for the long foreseeable future? Get the latest version of WordPress.

Maintain Compatibility

Regular updates of all WordPress components, including themes, plugins, and your WordPress core ensures they’re all from the same ‘generation’ and cross-compatible for your site. Updating some components and leave others as they are and you may find you now have incompatibilities that are hindering your website.

If you have a complex website that uses several plugins, it is recommended to wait a few weeks before upgrading as major upgrades may break some plugins/themes.

How to Update a WordPress Site

All of you who are now persuaded to update can do so from either your WordPress dashboard or cPanel. As we said it is a pretty straightforward process to do it yourself, and if not then you can pay a webmaster to do it for you. Talk to our customer support staff here with the best web hosting in Canada at 4GoodHosting.

The one thing you do need to do is ensure you have a working backup before making any changes. By having the backup in place you can quickly revert to your previous installation if any problems occur. We’ll recommend managed WordPress hosting here too, because with it you can create a staging site to test out the new version. This will create a copy of your live website in a separate staging environment for testing.

Considerations Before the Update

Before you go ahead and implement any of the WordPress updates it’s important to take care of a few things first so you avoid potential risks. Here’s what you need to consider before getting started.

1. Plugin/Theme Incompatibility – not all plugins or themes may be compatible with the newest WordPress update. You may have your eye on some of them and be planning to have the worked into your site following the update, but a mismatch can sometimes cause issues with your website’s functionality.
2. Bugs – unfortunately new updates may have their own set of bugs. WordPress is on top of this stuff, and they will remedy the situation quickly if so but you still need to be prepared to deal with this and if you go to WordPress support forums you may be able to be tipped off to them.
3. Importance of Backups – Again, be sure to back up your site before proceeding with any updates. You’re creating a safety net by doing so, allowing you to restore your site to its previous state if there are any problems down the road.
4. Use a Staging Site – Anyone with a more complex website with numerous plugins are advised to test their updates on a staging site first. This approach helps identify and resolve issues before they impact your site once it goes live with the update in place.

Tracking Update Availability

The official WordPress website is going to be your primary source for staying informed with new WordPress releases. You’ll have a cPanel made available to you through your Canadian web hosting provider. Go there by pressing the WP icon you see with the interface in the Admin panel. Once it opens you’ll see whether or not a new WordPress update is available.

What’s good about this is you can select to receive automatic updates for your site. Of course we think that’s your best choice, and what’s also good is that you can make customizations to your updates.

Auto-update is recommended for minor versions. The consensus is that manual testing is advisable for major versions before updating. And provided plugins are reputable and trustworthy then auto-update is good for those too. But for plugins with dependencies – including the super popular WooCommerce for WordPress that is a standard choice for eCommerce websites – it is going to best to do your updates manually. The same will go for custom themes, and especially those with child themes.

FAQs

Why should I update my WordPress site regularly?

The two primary reasons you should get regular updates for a WordPress site as soon as they become available are improved functionality and better web security. Updates will include improved structure for plugin functionality plus the latest and best patches to address bugs and / or security risks.

Will updating WordPress affect my website’s speed?

Yes, and beneficially so. WordPress updates will ensure that your pages load with as much speed as possible, and this is beneficial for both user experience and page rankings via search engines like Google and Bing. You can test your website speed after an update and it is quite likely it will be faster after the update.

Can updating WordPress resolve existing bugs on my site?

Yes. WordPress bug fixes are always a leading focus for the developers when they are putting together the most recent WordPress updates. You can expect to see existing bugs addressed along with any of them that may be the result of a previous update. This is all part of the appeal of keeping a WordPress site current with updates.

Is it safe to auto-update WordPress plugins?

Choosing auto-updates for WordPress plugins is only recommended for plugins that are known to be reputable and trustworthy, and one way to determine this is to only consider plugins that are among the most used ones through WordPress. This information as well as reviews of the security of WordPress plugins can be easily found online.

How can I backup my WordPress site before updating?

You have two options here: you can backup the website using your hosting via SiteGround, or you can do it a WordPress plugin like All in One WP Site Migration. It is important to do a site-wide backup before updating WordPress or any major plugins. It is also advisable to conduct a full when you are choosing to update any more than 6 WordPress plugins at the same time.

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There are all sorts of references in life to knowing what goes on when you’re not around, and of course there’s an entire industry built around remedying the problem and providing that insight for you. Remote cameras do work especially well for that, but when it comes to hosting a website there’s no camera or anything else of the sort that is going to make you aware of someone being unable to visit your website when you’re not monitoring it. Which is going to be upwards of 98% of the time, provided you’re a normal business owner.

And we mention the business owners rather than the hobbyist website owner or any other type here because it is people with a WordPress website serving business interests that have most to lose when WordPress web accessibility is an issue. Most big corporations are going to have websites built on platforms that are much more mammoth – and expensive – than the relative simplicity that you get with WordPress.

But there are plenty of websites serving businesses built on WordPress, and no matter what size of business you’re running it’s likely you don’t want to miss even one sale or order because you didn’t have any accessible WordPress site for whatever reason. The consensus is going to be that can’t happen, or at least everything that can be done to prevent it from happening should be done.

The first thing to that end is to make sure you have reliable web hosting, and the best Managed WordPress Hosting in Canada is recommended. But from there it becomes a matter of taking advantage of the ability to have command of your website’s performance through the control panel and elsewhere, and doing what’s needed to improve WordPress web accessibility. That’s what we’ll look at here with this week’s blog entry, and it’s a topic that people with WordPress websites for business will definitely be interested in.

All In, All the Time

It’s fair to say that few if any people have checked on their website’s accessibility level lately. But perhaps they should, as today it is very necessary for the web to be accessible to everyone. Web accessibility is an important aspect that people seem to put an insufficient amount of focus on. And to reinforce that let’s consider that there are studies showing that over 25% of Canadians aged 15 and older report have reported at least one disability.

There is lots out there emphasizing web accessibility and underscoring its importance, and there are ways you can help make your WordPress website accessible to everyone. We can start by providing a definition for what is web accessibility. Let’s try doing that with an analogy. Web accessibility is like hosting a party where everyone who’s invited can actually come and participate.

But in more realistic terms web Accessibility is the practice of ensuring websites work for everyone, and that includes people with disabilities. There needs to be a focus on designing and creating sites that can be used by anyone, and independent of how they interact with the web—like using a keyboard instead of a mouse or needing text to be read aloud because they can’t see the screen well. Barriers to anyone who wants to visit and interact with your website need to be eliminated. All of them.

Importance of Web Accessibility

It is important for ALL users be able to navigate, understand, and interact with the web, regardless of their abilities. Accessible websites also contribute to your website’s ability to enhance user experience (UX) across the board, and when that accessibility is done right with the right infrastructure and other factors you will be increasing reach and market penetration. This is what happens when you making your content available to a wider audience and adhere to the right web accessibility guidelines.

As for what else you can expect to see improvements with, the two most notable are improvements with you site’s SEO rankings as search engines prioritize accessible websites, and also with having legal risks better mitigated as you get your site more in line with the standards of the Accessible Canada Act. It can be good for you to look at WordPress web accessibility in the bigger picture too, and these are 2 ways you can do that.

Let’s now move to looking at this from the angle of how it relates to W3C and WCAG. We know the importance of making your website accessible and usable by everyone, but what about where those accessibility guidelines and standards come from and why there are implemented in the first place?

W3C stands for World Wide Web Consortium, and this organization plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of the web. This consortium gathers experts from around the world to develop protocols, standards and guidelines to ensure the web’s long-term growth. W3C is front and center in the extent to which the web is open, functional, and accessible for everyone, and this correlates to why there is such a big focus on accessible WordPress sites.

Understanding WCAG

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) was developed by W3C in 2008, and they are the cornerstone of web accessibility efforts worldwide. Functioning much like the blueprint of inclusion on the web. These guidelines have evolved through several updates to cover a wider spectrum of disabilities that may prevent certain individuals from having the extent of access to information on the web that they need to have. Access that is common and no issue for others without those disabilities.

The focus has been on measuring accessibility with 3 conformance levels – Level A deems that a website needs to meet the basic web accessibility features. Level AA represents the typical standard required by laws and regulations worldwide, stipulating a website addresses the major requirements for disability access. With level AAA you have the most stringent level of conformance, and laying out the requirement that a website meets the highest standard of web accessibility.

Ideally, this is the standard recommended for a website as per these web accessibility guidelines. The Accessible Canada Act requires all organizations under federal jurisdiction including all federal departments and agencies to make their websites and digital content accessible at a Level AA.

POUR Principles

The POUR principles are a framework created by the W3C that give a relatable example of how the infrastructure for an accessible website should work. The acronym represents 4 key aspects of web accessibility. P is for perceivable – users are able to access and understand a site’s content, and do so through sight, sound, or touch​​. Site design should include captions in videos and transcripts to audio files designed for deaf or hearing-impaired users.

Alt tags (alternative text) should be in place for all images so visually impaired users can view them. O is for operable – the accessible WordPress site should work for everyone, regardless of how they navigate it. To do this site designers need to make sure that users have multiple ways to interact with the website. An example could be using a keyboard instead of a mouse for scrolling up and down pages, and designers also need to aim to be giving clear instructions or error recovery options that can be controlled regardless of abilities. As for what not to be doing, you can skip elements that require drag-and-drop interactions unless there is an accessible alternative.

U is for understandable. The website and its content should be easy to navigate, read or understand. Everything from information to how the site works should be straightforward​. This is done through different means, including choosing a language level that’s easy to read and understand. The general part of this web accessibility guidelines is to have it at around an 8th-grade reading level if writing for the general public.

Also aim for shorter supplements of information, such as TLDR summaries or excerpts before long articles or written descriptions for charts or graphs. Functions and elements that are easy to understand are better choices too, and it is best to be consistent with font styles, colors, and sizing across all website pages. R is for robust. A site that scores high marks for accessibility should work well with different technologies, including browsers and assistive tools​​.

More specifically, the site should function equally well across many current and future devices, operating systems, and browsers. Designers should also consider supporting some outdated operating systems and browser versions given some users are less likely to have the most up-to-date versions of their browser installed or coming with their operating system.

WordPress & Web Accessibility

To tout WordPress even further, it is a top choice for building accessible websites and that is because of its flexible architecture, built-in tools that meet international standards, and team support that puts tools in place with a focus on keeping web inclusivity front and center. You can be assured that WordPress offers tools and features that help ensure your site meets accessibility standards.

If you’re starting out and building a WordPress website from scratch then one thing you can do that’s easy and will have you building right is to choose an accessibility-ready theme. Choosing the right one is always important, as it forms the foundation of the accessibility features we’ve been talking about. There is no shortage of accessibility-ready WordPress themes available through the platform, and ones built with accessibility in mind from the outset will make it significantly easier to achieve and maintain compliance with WCAG standards.

This is the way to go if you want to ensure ensuring your accessible WordPress site is just that – accessible to all users. You should also focus on leveraging accessibility plug-ins. It’s possible to enhance a website’s accessibility by using plugins designed to improve various aspects of it. You also need to put an emphasis on creating accessible content, and the best approaches for doing that are to use Alt Text for every image to describe what the image shows. With WordPress this is possible by adding them directly in the media uploader.

Then structure your content with proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3) to organize and describe the main topics of a page. Also ensure all your videos have captions and all audio content features transcripts so that users with hearing impairments are accommodated in the way they need to be.

Testing your website for web accessibility needs to be a priority and focus too. In addition to the W3C’s self-evaluation checklist for your website you can also use AI-powered tools like AccessScan, AccessBird, or AccessibilityChecker for reliable site analysis and then follow the recommendations you get from any of them. With chatGPT, Accessibility Testing GPT is a tool for scanning web pages and identifying any issues. Lastly, keep your WordPress and plugins updated as these updates will usually come with improvements in accessibility features.

Commitment to Web Accessibility

WHC is dedicated to WordPress web accessibility, and that for websites of other build types too. For many web hosting providers these guidelines are taken into account with the way website builders can be used when building a WordPress website, and the guidelines will apply to other site types as well. The focus is always going to be on meeting WCAG Level AA requirements. Do your best to meet this standard and working to ensure all parts of a website are equally accessible. We imagine that you agree every Canadian should be able to succeed online, and adherence with a site goes a long way in making that happen.

The advice is to not see accessibility as just a legal requirement. Instead see it as a promise to make the web a welcoming place for everyone. Tearing down barriers and making the web more inclusive is a worthwhile aim and an outcome that is entirely doable. Start making small improvements and work towards WordPress web accessibility.

FAQs

What is web accessibility?

Web accessibility is having a website being available for the same degree of use, interaction, and gained knowledge or usability for all users. Independent of any disabilities or barriers to usage that may exist based on these factors in comparison to what would be the case for an average user who is not incapacitated with their use of the site by any such disability.

Why is web accessibility important for my WordPress site?

Web accessibility is important for any website of any build type – including WordPress websites – because of the agreed-upon need that the information made available on the World Wide Web must be equally available and consumable by all users. This is based on the understanding that we live in a digital world and that critical information and life tools are increasingly only made immediately available through the Internet.

What are some common web accessibility features?

Common web accessibility features include ALT text for images, and proper tag headings with H1, H2, and H3 formats for headings. It is also advisable to have all your videos paired with captions and all audio content featuring transcripts for hearing impaired users who are visiting the website and interacting with it.

How can I test my website for accessibility?

There are a number of external tools that webmaster can use to determine if their site matches up to the standards for web accessibility. The most well-known ones are AI-powered tools like AccessScan, AccessBird, or AccessibilityChecker.

How often should I test my site for accessibility?

The general consensus in the industry is that webmasters should test their site and be determining if it meets web accessibility standards at least once every year. This is based on the fact that the general guidelines for web accessibility do change, but don’t do so frequently and the changes are usually very minor.

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It is always going to be case that the economies of certain countries are stronger than those of others, and without going to far into International economics this is the reason why the currency of one country is unlikely to be ‘on par’ with that of another. The dollar of one is going to have more value than the dollar of another, and here in Canada it’s been a long, long time since the Canadian dollars was even close to being equal with the US dollar. It did come close once, but that was over 20 years ago.

In the current economic forecast that is very unlikely to ever happen again, but of course none of this has anything to do with a Canada-based web hosting provider or anything that we’d be discussing here with our weekly blog entries. But the discrepancies in value between one currency and another is very much of ongoing interest to anyone who is a Forex trader. Forex stands for foreign exchange, and if you’re asking what is Forex trading it is the trading of one currency for another.

With a layperson’s understanding it might seem simple and straightforward given the currency that is worth more will have more value, but the key to effective Forex trading is understanding the quantity of currency to be exchanged and then pairing this with future projection for value – less or more of it. It’s not simple at all, but people who trade in foreign exchanges are willing to take risks and some people do get darn good at it. Those doing it on a bigger scale may be doing it ongoingly through the means of website for Forex trading.

If you’re the person behind that website there is a lot to be said for the best VPS hosting for small businesses in Canada, and that includes virtual private servers for Forex traders. So what we’re going to look at with this week’s entry is why VPS servers are best for sites that are designed for Forex trading online and what webmasters can pass along to interested individuals in promoting their site as a better a choice for Forex traders.

Technology Match

Forex trading is known to be very rewarding side hustle, and for some it may even be a full-time career. Forex traders are also known to need certain attributes if they want to be successful with Forex trading. The best ones are supremely confident, highly analytical, and have the ability to remain calm under pressure. You won’t necessarily find those same attributes in those who make the technology needed for Forex trading available, but if it’s in any for-profit situation then there becomes a focus on the best VPS hosting for small businesses in Canada.

The technology used for the trading also needs to have the most relevant features, with focuses on security, stability, and speed. The hardware and software of your VPS provider is going to be a part of that, and there are some tech-stack tweaks that are smarter than others when a trader needs is focused on making profits.

VPS Hosting for Forex

The advantage of a cloud VPS server is your dedicated space on a physical server that is split into isolated, high-performance sections. What results from this is a more stable and secure space to make trades, and one where there is less chance of the site being compromised or experiencing downtime. Something which could be very problematic if users are in the process of making trades and / or monitoring currency exchange information in advance of making them.

A VPS is the best hosting environment for Forex trading because your trades won’t be disrupted if your home Wi-Fi goes down, or in the even of a computer crash either. Overall A Forex VPS is going to be the best fit for traders because of its super-fast connectivity, better reliability, and enhanced security. The reliability part of that is big for Forex traders who rely on low latency and having their proximity to their broker’s servers reducing the risk of slippage and requotes.

Slippage is especially unacceptable, and it results from slow processing times caused by a gap between a trade’s expected price and the price that exists when the trade goes through. A requote is a request to accept a new price before execution, and in either scenario delays and missed opportunities resulting from the tech being used can be very costly. Having that part of your working environment being consistently and reliably functional can make all the difference.

VPS Server Basics

The performance of A VPS is determined by 4 main resources: CPU (processing power), memory (RAM), storage space, and network bandwidth. The CPU is the central processing unit and it is the brain of the server that works to handle core functions like calculations and data processing. The ability to handle a handle a heavy load if needed is always going to be a requirement for Forex trading platforms.

RAM is random access memory, and what it does is serve as your VPS’s short-term memory and storing frequently accessed data. Sufficient RAM ensures smooth operation of your trading applications, and then what’s needed to go along with it is storage space as for trading platform installations with historical data and configuration files your VPS holds all data in storage.

If we’re going to be equivocal about this the storage space isn’t as essential for VPS server performance as part of the best VPS hosting for small businesses in Canada, but when used efficiently it can prevent the buildup of unnecessary clutter which may incrementally slow server performance – something that Forex traders won’t want to see to any extent.

Network bandwidth is a factor to consider with VPS servers for Forex trading too. The bandwidth determines the speed and volume of data transfer between your VPS and the internet. Low latency (minimal delay) in data transfer is something that’s required if prompt execution of trades can be relied upon.

Maximum Trading Efficiency via VPS Servers

Outdated software or firmware results in lagging, crashing, and overall a lot of frustration for platform users of any type. The same thing can apply with Forex trading software, and especially when it’s used through sites hosted on more conventional shared servers. We can look directly at those using an old version of MetaTrader or haven’t updated their charts in forever. It’s quite likely they’re experiencing bugs, glitches, and compatibility issues.

Fine-tuning parameters within any Forex platform is also a requirement for maximizing VPS performance. It may require you to be calibrating refresh rates, limiting the number of visible charts, or reducing the amount of historical data loaded. However, if you’re using the latest versions of VPS trading platforms then it’s quite likely your settings will already be optimized for best performance.

There will always be hardware considerations too, and this is something consumers can also be evaluating with Canada-based web hosting providers as long as they know what they’re looking for. With relation to VPS for Forex trading the primary consideration is going to be CPU usage. You don’t want Forex trading apps being bogged down by other programs that take up processing power. Same goes for unnecessary services – things like cloud backup syncing, software updates, etc.

RAM allocation is another area where you need to have certain minimums. Having enough memory is needed for online Forex trading platforms if they are to operate smoothly and seamlessly. The right RAM allowance will keep you moving along with the seamlessness and speed you’re looking for while trading.

Users might want to think about optimizing their storage setup too, especially as solid-state drives are faster than traditional hard drives. A blazing-fast and low-latency network connection is always going to be critical for Forex traders, and even more so when even a delay of even a few seconds can be the difference between trades that are profitable and ones that are the furthest thing from it.

Software Interests

It likely won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that AI is now involved in Forex Trading and related to the use of a VPS server in doing that. Traders may already have AI robots enhancing their VPS server’s performance and promoting maximum performance from hardware and resources. Continuing with our look at Canada-based web hosting providers we’ll share 3 apps that are good choices for Forex traders using platforms hosted on VPS servers.

Memcached – This is a distributed in-memory caching system that is excellent for reducing latency for data retrieval. In high-frequency Forex trading this is something that is very important. Memcached can provide much faster response times compared to directly querying a database, and does it by caching frequently accessed data in memory,

NGINX – a particularly good open-source web server known for its speed, stability, and low resource consumption. With Forex trading NGINX works as a load balancer, distributing incoming trading connections across multiple servers so you can enjoy high availability during periods of high trading volume.

Zabbix – traders also benefit from server monitoring software like Zabbix that monitors the health and performance of their VPS servers, with focuses on CPU usage, memory utilization, disk space, network traffic, and more.

A VPS server that is fully optimized for online Forex trading can significantly improve your trading performance. Ours here at 4GoodHosting have our 99% uptime guarantee, superior security features, and the flexibility needed for scaling memory, storage, and processors up or down as needed.

FAQs

1. Are there any time limitations with Forex trading online?

No, Forex trading is possible at any time of the day and from any location in the world if you are Forex trading online. The FX market is the only truly continuous, 24-hour trading market in the world and this is a big part of what makes it advantageous for traders online who may be outside of the time zone for markets in the way that might be the case for other types of exchanges online.

2. What makes a VPS Server superior for online Forex Trading platforms?

A virtual private server has more in the way of security and stability for online trading platforms, along with the resources needed to promote higher-speed performance so that trading can be conducted in absolute real time with none of the delays or lags that might come if the platform is on shared hosting.

3. What market is best for someone who is new to Forex trading online?

The consensus has always been that the Spot Market is the best place for beginner Forex trading. This is because currencies are bought and sold based on their trading price, with prices determined by supply and demand and reactions to specific factors. Trades take only 2 days to settle and are settled in cash.

4. What are other VPS server benefits for trading online?

Users will also benefit from any-location accessibility, the ability to run automated trading systems 24/7, independence from local internet shortcomings, the ability to run multiple trading platforms and accounts, and much better scalability when they choose to go with a VPS server. All of which can be obtained with the best VPS hosting for small businesses in Canada.

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Those who are taking a small business, venture, or personal interest / hobby online will often be the furthest thing from webmasters. This means simplicity will be a priority when it comes to operating a website and that’s where a WordPress site will get the highest marks for these people. Not only is putting together a WordPress website especially straightforward, but there’s also next to nothing required of you to have it hosted when you have Managed WordPress hosting Canada.

Managed is the key word there, because it means that every aspect of having the site hosted and optimally serviced for you is taken care of by the web hosting provider. Of course there’s an increased cost for that, but if you want be entirely hands-off for your website and instead focus only on creating content and the like then it is something you will want to consider. Also keep in mind that when you have Managed WordPress hosting in Canada you will have better SEO for your website included.

That is going to be a big part of the appeal if your WordPress website needs to be more visible, whether that’s for business interests or more simply because the reason you created the site is you want to be more competitive with whatever it is you’re doing. Most web hosting providers in Canada provide uptime guarantees for websites hosted through them, and this is another part of the advantages that come with managed WordPress hosting.

You can also expect to have a faster and better performing site, better website security, quicker access to WordPress development tools if you do decide to be proactive in site management along with one-click staging sites and local environments. There is much more to the advantages of Managed WordPress hosting Canada and one of the ways a user can improve their website if they do decide to be involved with it is make more efficient use of their disk space.

That’s what we’ll look at with this blog entry, so let’s get right to it.

Be Selective With Space

Effective management of disk space goes a long way towards the optimal functioning of a WordPress website. Envision how a tidy workspace enhances productivity, and figuratively what works much the same way with how organizing and optimizing storage space increases the likelihood that your WordPress website operates smoothly and delivers an exceptional user experience.

Our focus here is going to be on cleaning up and organizing the storage space on your WordPress website. There are simple and effective ways to free up space so your website can perform optimally and we’ll lay out all of them for you here. Take our advice and you’ll have a faster website that is also easier to manage. The overarching focus is going to be on maximizing the efficiency of your WordPress website’s storage capacity. This is a critical aspect of ensuring optimal performance and streamlined operations.

Here’s what you can do to start at the start and begin moving through this checklist of sorts that will contribute to be utilization of disk storage space with Managed WordPress hosting Canada.

• Assessing Disk Space Usage

Disk space usage in WordPress hosting involves the amount of storage that is taken up by various site components – databases, media files, plugins, and themes. Each element will have value but you need to be taking a critical overview of how much disk space they’re taking up. This is because the extent of that for each will be impacting the website’s efficiency of performance.

A more solid understanding of how these components utilize disk space means website administrators can effectively manage and optimize storage resources. This leads to tools and methods to accurately measure disk space usage, something that is essential for identifying areas of inefficiency and potential optimization.

It’s common for WordPress hosting platforms to provide built-in tools for monitoring disk space usage, and with them you have insights into which components are heaviest with storage consumption. Plus you have 3rd-party plugins and server management tools that can provide more detailed analytics and recommendations for optimizing disk space usage.

• Focus on Areas of High Disk Space Consumption

What needs to happen with this part of it is analyzing the storage usage of different components within your WordPress website. Often some of the biggest culprits when it comes to disk space consumption are media files like images, videos, and particularly if they are not optimized or ‘pruned’ from time to time so that unused extensions and other functionals are cut loose so that they don’t continue to take up space and resources.

You may also have plugins and themes accumulating over time, and these will also be taking up available disk space despite not being actively used. When you can identify and make determinations about these areas of high consumption it becomes easier for website administrators to prioritize optimization efforts to free up valuable disk space and give the website more of what it needs to perform at its best.

• Optimize Media Files

You can reduce the size of media files without sacrificing visual quality with image optimization. By using image compression tools or plugins, it is very possible to decrease the file size of images uploaded to a WordPress site and this can drastically reduce the amount of disk space that is taken up. You will be both conserving disk space as well as improving website loading times.

This enhances user experience in a big way, and if you can strike a balance between file size reduction and image quality you will do well to ensure that visuals stay crisp and engaging while not having them hoarding disk space.

• Deleting Unused Media Files and Attachments

It is common for WordPress websites to accumulate unused media files and attachments over time, and they then contribute to unnecessary disk space consumption. Regularly auditing and deleting unused media files goes a long way to freeing up valuable storage space.

A good place to start is by utilizing the media library in WordPress to identify and remove redundant files so that only essential media assets are retained. Another smart move is to use plugins or scripts to automate the process of cleaning up unused media files, streamlining maintenance efforts.

• Utilizing External Storage Solutions for Media Files

Cloud storage services or content delivery networks (CDNs) are hugely valuable as external storage solutions. They can take a lot of the pressure off your WordPress VPS hosting server and make it so that much less disk space is used. This is primarily done by offloading media files to external storage platforms, and when that happens website administrators are better set to scale their storage capacity without increasing hosting costs.

Content delivery networks are excellent for distributing media files across multiple servers worldwide, and this is entirely in line with website performance and reliability. Integrating external storage solutions with WordPress is not a complicated process to begin with, and the many plugins and services make it even easier plus bringing seamless integration options to you too.

• Cleaning Up Plugins and Themes

Occupying disk space is the biggest issue with inactive plugins and themes, but they also pose security risks and may be decreasing the operating speed of a WordPress website. Regular audits of your installed plugins and themes and remove any that are no longer in use are recommended. The WordPress dashboard is a part of Managed WordPress hosting Canada and makes it easy for you to deactivate and delete plugins and themes that may have been contributing to your website’s functionality at one time, but aren’t anymore.

When you eliminate unnecessary plugins and themes valuable disk space is freed up and this makes for a leaner, more secure website environment.

• Identifying & Replacing Resource-Heavy Plugins

Resource-intensive plugins will be consuming disproportionate amounts of disk space, CPU, and memory resources. It is always best if you’re able to identify these resource-heavy plugins, and then removing them is advisable if you’re aiming to optimize your WordPress website’s performance and efficiency. Monitoring tools and performance analytics can help identify plugins that are behind performance bottlenecks or resulting in too much disk space being used.

Once they’ve been dispatched you may want to seek alternative plugins with a similar degree of functionality but less in the way of resource requirements. Conducting thorough research and testing ensures that replacements meet your website’s needs while minimizing resource consumption.

• Reduce Disk Space Usage with Streamlining Themes

WordPress themes will usually have a variety of features and functionalities, but it may be that your website simply doesn’t need them. By streamlining theme usage and opting for lightweight, minimalist themes, you can reduce disk space usage and improve website performance. You need to be determining which components are essential and which ones are not.

It may be a good idea to use a more streamlined theme or customizing your existing theme to remove unnecessary elements. Regularly updating themes ensures that you benefit from performance optimizations and security enhancements, and this promotes even better efficiency with disk space utilization.

• Addressing Database Bloat

A WordPress database can accumulate unnecessary data over time, and this promotes database bloat and increased disk space usage. It’s advisavle to regularly clean up the database to remove redundant data and optimize its performance. WordPress provides built-in tools and plugins that enable administrators to perform database maintenance tasks efficiently. Tasks that may include deleting spam comments, post revisions, transient data, and other unused or outdated records. Regular database cleanups help improve website performance, reduce server load, and freeing up valuable disk space.

• Reducing Overhead by Optimizing Database Tables

Becoming fragmented and inefficient over time is pretty common with database tables, and this usually means increased overhead and reduced performance. Optimizing database tables is best done by organizing and optimizing data storage to minimize overhead and improve query performance. WordPress plugins and database management tools offer features for optimizing database tables automatically. With them you’re able to analyze database structure and usage patterns to identify and address inefficiencies. Most users end up finding fragmented indexes or unused space.

• Plugins for Automated Database Maintenance

Another advantage with Managed WordPress hosting Canada is the array of plugins available for automated database maintenance tasks. They speed up the process of database cleanup, optimization, and maintenance, and with them you’re able to schedule routine tasks and automate tedious processes. Popular database maintenance plugins offer features like scheduled cleanups, optimization routines, database backups, and performance monitoring.

This is what you should be looking for with them, and administrators can configure these plugins to run at specified intervals, ensuring that database maintenance tasks are performed regularly without manual intervention.

• Integrating WordPress Content Delivery Networks For Efficient Content Delivery

Integrating a CDN with WordPress is done easily by configuring the CDN settings within your WordPress dashboard or using a CDN plugin. It is fairly standard for CDN providers offer dedicated plugins or integration guides tailored specifically for WordPress users. Once integrated, they will proceed to cache and deliver static content automatically. This applies to images, CSS files, and scripts, from CDN servers, and with this function you then have improved website performance and reduced server load. some CDN providers also offer advanced features like image optimization and lazy loading. Using one you will also be optimizing content delivery and reducing bandwidth consumption.

When selecting a CDN for your WordPress website you need to consider factors such as performance, reliability, ease of integration, and cost. Different CDN providers can be weighed based on their network coverage, server locations, caching capabilities, and pricing plans. Your website will have specific requirements with its traffic volume, geographic distribution of visitors, and content delivery needs and certain CDNs will be a better fit based on these requirements.

You will also want to look for CDN providers that have robust security features withDDoS protection and SSL/TLS encryption to protect your website from cyber threats.

• Utilizing Caching Mechanisms

Caching is a crucial technique for optimizing website performance and reducing disk space usage. It’s something that will be included with Managed WordPress hosting Canada in most instances, and here is what it involves.. When a user visits a website various elements are retrieved by their browser. These will be images, CSS files, and JavaScript provided from the server hosting the website.

Caching allows these elements to be temporarily stored (or cached) on the user’s device or in intermediary servers, such as CDN edge servers. This means that subsequent visits to the same website can load these elements more quickly because they are retrieved from the cache and not from the originating server.

• Installing Caching Plugins for Efficient Serving of Cached Content

WordPress has an impressive assortment of caching plugins that automate the caching process and serve cached content efficiently to website visitors. These plugins generate static HTML versions of dynamic web pages and store them in the cache. When a user requests a cached page, the plugin retrieves the HTML version from the cache instead of generating it from the server. This creates faster page load times and the amount of load placed on the server is reduced considerably.

Configuring caching settings involves fine-tuning caching parameters to achieve optimal performance and disk space savings. Caching plugins will come with configuration options – cache expiration times, cache storage locations, and exclusion rules for dynamic content. Website administrators can evaluate the website’s specific requirements and traffic patterns and customize settings accordingly. It is also good to configuring cache storage locations to utilize server-side caching or CDN caching as this optimize performance and reduces server load even more.

Conclusion

Any webmaster will be compromising the power and efficiency of a WordPress website if they’re not involved with disk space management and it’s a primary reason why Managed WordPress hosting in Canada makes a lot of sense for those who don’t have the savvy needed to do that well on their own. We have gone over strategies and best practices for optimizing disk space usage in detail here. It should involve cleaning up media files to implementing advanced caching mechanisms and leveraging content delivery networks (CDNs).

Done correctly it is possible to streamline storage resources, improve website performance, and enhance overall user experience.

FAQs

What makes disk space management so important for Managed WordPress Hosting in Canada?

With efficient disk space management you’ll be more likely to have smooth website operation, faster page loading times, and providing a site user experience that is more seamless. Optimizing disk space enhances performance, reduces server load, and improves overall reliability.

How is disk space management on a WordPress website best assessed?

You will usually do just fine by using tools provided by your hosting provider or WordPress plugins to evaluate disk space usage and make decision regarding how that space is allocated. These tools offer insights into storage consumption by media files, plugins, themes, and database tables.

How can we best optimize media files on a WordPress website?

Standard approaches here are compressing images, deleting unused files, and utilizing external storage solutions like CDNs for having media content offloaded anytime the nature of the content and the way it is presented allows for that.

How do caching mechanisms work to optimize disk space usage?

Caching mechanisms provide a temporary storage option for static content that allows it to be more efficiently served to website visitors. This decreases the server load and also conserves disk space.

What should I consider when choosing a Content Delivery network for a WordPress site?

When selecting a CDN provider your primary considerations should be performance, reliability, ease of integration, and your end-user costs.

Reading Time: 9 minutes

WordPress may have got its start as an online content publishing platform, but since then it’s become the quick and easy means of creating a basic functional website. That ease of construction and the appeal of having something that’s still reasonably attractive despite not asking much of your time is the reason WordPress grew in popularity for blogging in the first place. Fast forward to today and it is a CMS that is the foundation for upwards of 800 million websites around the world. This has many people looking for the best WordPress hosting Canada.

It’s almost always going to be the right fit for anyone who doesn’t need the snazziest of sites, and wouldn’t be inclined to take on the cost that comes with them even if they did. You can build a WordPress website on your own, or at least the majority of people will be able to. And if all that’s needed to promote yourself is something basic then you can’t go wrong going with one, and again especially considering it will cost you next to nothing to put one together and WordPress always has so many free plug-ins that will allow you to customize and achieve optimal WordPress performance.

Among the types of people that will be just fine with a WordPress website are going to be small business owners and artists who need a simple website to promote themselves and their art. These types of sites are going to be the logical choice for advocacy groups too, and the same will go for service providers of any sort that only operate locally in a specific city or town in Canada.

Secure WordPress Hosting

All the bells and whistles may be needed for bigtime business players and others who need a ‘superb’ site, but if that’s not you and you know you can get by with something that’s simple yet functional and reasonably attractive then you’re going to be just fine with a WordPress website. But there’s another aspect of making that happen and taking yourself and your interests online, and that’s having secure WordPress hosting that ensures your site will always be accessible for the visitors who’ll be coming to it.

This is important for obvious reasons, and that is still true even if your website isn’t a part of making your business visible to prospective customers. You’re going to want to make sure it’s never ‘down’, and at the same time you’ll want to make sure there’s nothing that would be causing a visitor to decide they won’t be coming to the site again. But before we go off on any one tangent specifically let’s start at the start with this WordPress hosting guide.

What you may want to do is conceptualize your website as a house, and the hosting provider is the foundation. There is going to be a need for everything to work smoothly. Here at 4GoodHosting we are keen to help you choose the right hosting provider for your website, and we have seen how so many people are best off with Managed WordPress hosting in Canada. Remember that your hosting provider affects how fast your site loads, how secure it is, and if it is always accessible online.

So what will follow here is a roadmap of sorts for understanding all the things you need to think about when choosing Canada web hosting services, and one that has the best of what your WordPress website will need. We’re going to look at the features are important, what to look out for, and help you make a choice that fits your website’s needs.

Less Complexity to WordPress Hosting Needs

There are key considerations, but before you apply them to your site you should weight what makes your website unique. Is it a personal blog, a small business site, or maybe an e-commerce platform? You will be envisioning the blueprint of your digital space when you are evaluating the nature and purpose of your website. For a simple but regularly published blog your hosting you will have different needs than an ecommerce site that sees a lot of traffic.

When you are able to recognize the primary function and goals of your site this can start laying out what will be the best WordPress hosting in Canada. You will be in the process of discovery that lays the groundwork for choosing a Canadian web hosting provider that has what you need and has a solid reputation for providing it to other WordPress websites too.

There are 3 primary interest points that anyone will be taking into consideration first – traffic, resources, and scalability. Having a good understanding of your traffic volume helps determine the hosting capacity needed to keep things running smoothly. And all websites are going to require certain resources more than others.

Considerations might be if you have a lot of media, or if the website is a text-heavy space. You need to be entirely aware of your resource needs when you evaluate whether or not a hosting plan can support your content. Thinking about what you site might need in the long foreseeable future is going to be important too. Often sites need room to grow, and this leads us to consider scalability as part of performance-oriented WordPress solutions.

To define it, scalability is the ability to expand seamlessly as the site evolves, and often with the primary consideration being the ability to accommodate more visitor traffic. You will do well if you are able to have an informed outlook on how these specific requirements exist for you, and how there might be more of them in the future. From there you’ll be in a better position to choose a hosting provider that meets your current and has what you’re looking for with optimal WordPress performance.

WordPress Hosting Provider Checklist

Performance and Speed

Many of us have visited a website and then had it take forever to load. It certainly can be frustrating, and if that happens with your WordPress website then those visitors are likely going to feel the same way. Fast-loading times represent an express lane for your website, ensuring that people coming into the site doesn’t lose interest while waiting for content to appear.

Speed isn’t just about site visitor contentment, as page load speed is a fairly big factor for search engines like Google. Speedy websites rank higher in SERPs because the speed enhances the overall user experience and naturally that is going to be seen favorably. When choosing Managed WordPress hosting Canada you can see speed as the VIP pass to a smoother, more enjoyable online journey for people who choose to come to your website.

If they experience it then that will be a boost to your website’s search engine rankings.

Reliability and Uptime

Anyone who has their WordPress website serving as an ecommerce store for their business is going to 100% need it to be up and open for visitors 24/7. They should be able to shop while you’re sleeping, and any other time of the day considering that for most people their business likely now has a global client base a lot of the time. Uptime is the measure of how often your website is up and running and available for visitors. High uptime is of critical importance when you are evaluating the best WordPress hosting Canada because the website should be readily accessible whenever someone wants to enter it and see what you have to offer.

When a site experiences downtime for any period of time more than an hour or so it is like hanging a ‘closed’ sign on that virtual door because visitors can’t enter, browse, or make purchases. But we can tell you right now that high uptime isn’t just a matter of visitor convenience and instead it directly reflects the reliability of web hosting and will factor into the level of trust your prospective customers are going to have with you.

When you are choosing Canada web hosting services you will do well to prioritize those with a proven track record for uptime guarantees, and here at 4GoodHosting this is a part of what makes us the best Canadian web hosting provider as we stand behind our ability to offer you better than 99% website uptime guarantee.

Security Measures

Security is everything for any website serving business or ecommerce interests, and it’s so important that your customers know they are in a safe online environment when visiting your WordPress website. The first thing that you’ll need to do here is have SSL certificates in place for your website.

They are like encrypted passcodes for your website, and work to ensure that data exchanged between visitors and the site are secure and never made available to anyone else. Having firewalls in place is recommended too. These are virtual protectors that that shield the site from malware and monitor and filter out potential threats before they can harm your website.

Make it so that you have routine backups too, as they can be lifesavers in the event that something goes wrong. This could be with accidental data loss, a cyber-attack, or any unforeseen mishap, but if the data has been backed up this ensures that you can restore your site to its previous state and things don’t automatically become much worse. When selecting Managed WordPress hosting in Canada, you should really dig as deep as necessary to confirm that the host has the security measures you need.

These days almost all of them will, because the simple truth is you won’t last long as a web host in Canada if customers begin to review your service negatively because of security breaches occurring with their website.

Customer Support

Customer support functions as a safety net for web hosting clients, and it is one that is used regularly with these types of clients because often the person who chooses to go with a WordPress website is going to be less tech savvy than someone who goes the build your own website route and has some experience working as a webmaster for their own site.

Good customer support is important when technical glitches or questions arise. A hosting provider with excellent customer support acts as a go-to guide, promptly addressing any concerns and ensuring that the website is always up and running smoothly. Web hosting clients always like the peace of mind in knowing that expert assistance is always readily available for them.

Availability & Response Time

There almost always will be bumps in the road with a website, and there’s nothing to like about being stuck in a maze of automated responses or not having the online help you need come a long time after you’ve asked for it. When you are weighing the best WordPress hosting in Canada you will also be wise to look for available support channels and what sort of response times offered by your hosting provider.

You can look for live chat, email, or phone support options, and ideally you see that all of them have been provided in a timely manner. Faster response times mean quicker issue resolution, minimizing any potential downtime for your website. In your process of choosing a WordPress web hosting provider, consider customer support as a very important component.

Migration & Set-Up Tips

It’s not uncommon for a WordPress site to be built in advance of it being moved onto a new Canadian dedicated. That’s something we make fairly simple here at 4GoodHosting and also with website migration if you’re moving your site over to us from another WordPress web hosting provider in Canada. You can and should be involved in the process to, and you can start by creating a backup of your current website. This ensures you have a copy of all your files and data.

From there you’ll want to choose a convenient time for the migration as this will minimize potential disruptions. Inform visitors in advance, and it may be an idea to temporarily put your site in maintenance mode. Next you should verify the success of the migration by thoroughly testing your site on the new host before moving over. A Canadian VPS is a good choice for optimal WordPress performance as it ensures audiences experience minimal downtime and continues enjoying content uninterrupted.

By this point you’ll be three quarters of the way through everything you’ll need to in finding the best web hosting for a WordPress website. You’ll have been convinced that setting up WordPress on your new hosting provider is the first step in establishing a strong online presence, and you’ll be ready to move over to the control panel side of your server. Taking advantage of tools like cPanel or Plesk is hugely conducive to performance-oriented WordPress solutions too.

Many hosting providers offer one-click installations for WordPress, and this goes even further in simplifying the process. With a WordPress installation wizard you can input essential details like your site’s name, description, and administrative credentials. Once installation is complete you can then customize your website by choosing a theme that aligns with your brand and the choose plugins that will improve and enhance functionality. Permalinks and time zones also help to optimize the user experience.

We’ll conclude this look at best WordPress hosting Canada by again stressing the value of knowing your website’s needs, ensuring you have good page load speeds based on your host’s web hosting OS, and then the reliability, security, and the value of good customer support.

FAQs

Can You Tell Me Why Your Canadian Website’s Uptime is So Important?

Having an uptime guarantee through your Canadian web hosting provider is important because having a site experience downtime can mean losing prospective customers as well as having your website be seen more negatively by search engines like Google and Bing. This can result in lower search engine rankings and less visibility for your website with those prospective customers.

When Choosing a Hosting Provider, What Security Features Should I Look For?

There are many possible answers to this question, but first and foremost here should be SSL certificates for secure data exchanges, firewalls for protection against threats, and regular backups to make sure content is kept safe at all times.

How Important Is It to Choose the Right Hosting Provider?

The reason choosing the right Canadian web hosting provider is so important is because the nature and quality of the web hosting servers they have will have a direct correlation to how well and how optimally your site is able to function. That choice may also be a factor in whether or not you’re able to get the customer support you need if you have issues with the site or need to make changes to it.

What Are Some Signs That a Hosting Provider is Reliable?

Favorable online reviews is the best way go gauge whether or not a web hosting provider is reliable or not. You may also want to look for them focusing on the extensive benefits that come with higher business or advanced web hosting plans that come at a higher cost but are popular with customers because the added security, uptime guarantees, and more are worth the added cost for their ecommerce website.

Reading Time: 12 minutes

In the early days of the Internet the information superhighway was more of a street, and the world wide web wasn’t catering to business interests to nearly the same extent that it does now. That was to be expected, but the extent to which it’s become necessary for even smaller businesses and ventures to have at least some type of online presence wasn’t. Part of the reason all of them do now is because it’s easy and those folks are just as increasingly digital as you are.

It may also be surprising to find out just how many others are in the same business you are, and here in North America that’s a reflection of popular growth and what would ideally be a more stimulated economy. Prospective customers find your business online, but they can find your competitors just as easily and that’s true for web hosting or website design or anything else where someone’s online store or portal is a primary means of doing business. That’s the basic premise of why search engine optimization is as important as it is for an ecommerce website now.

Website optimization can be a very broad term, but if you’re looking at it strictly from having solid SERPs and site visitor retention then everything that comes with standard SEO is also influenced significantly by website performance and site speed. Remember that it’s been established that it should never take more than 2 seconds for a page loading and more than 3 is when you have them entering bounce rate territory.

There’s a lot more that goes into site performance too, and with cPanel here at 4GoodHosting you can manage your website with Toronto website design as an alternative for a more detailed and dynamic site if having one suits your business well. 4GoodHosting has the best VPS hosting rates in Canada for sites that are expecting to see traffic spikes, and of course you want to see large numbers of people visiting your site.

So what we’ll do with this entry here is talk about how those three interests come together as the place where the primary focus should be for anyone who is working to improve their SEO plus do what it takes to have improved functionality and performance for the site.

Up Page Speed, Up SEO

Website speed has a considerable sway on user experience. Apparently 47% of consumers expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less, and that for every second of delay beyond that, there is a 16% drop in page views. Slow websites also have a negative impact on SEO and site speed is well known to be one of the factors that go into how websites ranking in search engine results pages. A slow loading site will frustrate users and when they ‘bounce’ often your rankings are going to suffer.

Website optimization then becomes an essential practice for enhancing the speed, performance, and SEO of your website. With an optimized website you improve user experience, increase search engine rankings, and enjoy having more traffic driven to your site and then enjoying the benefits of solid website design that’s delivered a website that is optimized for user experience.

Defining Website Optimization

Website optimization involves making necessary adjustments and improvements to various aspects of your website to ensure best performance. This optimization process includes enhancing website speed, improving performance, and implementing SEO best practices. An optimized website provides a seamless user experience, attracts visitors, and promotes better visibility in search engine results.

It’s a good idea to analyze your website speed using tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix. These tools provide valuable insights into the factors that affect your website’s loading time and give recommendations on how to improve them.

Another important point is to be minimizing the number of HTTP requests that are made by the website. This is done by reducing the number of files your site loads and most commonly done by combining and minifying CSS and JavaScript files, and removing unnecessary plugins or scripts that contribute to excessive requests.

Compression and caching is important too, and it’s especially good to enable gzip compression, which compresses your website files in advance of being sent to the user’s browser so that file sizes are greatly reduce and loading speeds are improved. It’s also standard to implement caching mechanisms to store static files on the user’s device, bypassing the need to fetch them from the server upon each visit.

Optimizing Site Structure

It’s also very beneficial to see to it your website has a clear and logical structure, as this makes it easy for users and search engines to navigate. Use descriptive and SEO-friendly URLs, organize content into relevant categories and subcategories, and put breadcrumbs in place for easier navigation. Next up is to minimize the number of broken links and redirects that you have, as they can negatively impact speed and user experience. Regularly check for and fix broken links to prevent users from getting a 404 errors message display and here’s what else you need to do:

1. Implement 301 Redirects -It’s important to properly redirect the old URLs to the new ones when you make changes to your website structure or URLs. Use 301 redirects to ensure search engines and users are directed to the new location seamlessly. Be sure to update any internal links or external resources pointing to the old URLs as well.
2. Monitor Broken Links – Even after fixing broken links, it’s essential to monitor your website regularly for any new broken links. Regularly crawl your website and set up automated alerts or notifications to quickly identify and rectify any broken links that may occur. This proactive approach will help maintain a smooth user experience and prevent any negative impact on your SEO.

By minimizing redirects and fixing broken links, you improve website performance, provide a better user experience, and enhance your SEO efforts.

You can audit your website for any unnecessary redirects by identifying any redirect chains or multiple redirects that can be consolidated into a single redirect. By removing unnecessary redirects, you can take the loading speed and efficiency of your website and make it a lot better.

You’ll also want to optimize your images as large image files can substantially slow down your website. Optimize your images by compressing them without compromising quality. And formats like JPEG or WEBP tend to be better than PNGs. Another thing you can do is called ‘lazy loading’. Lazy loading ensures that images are only loaded when the user scrolls to their view, reducing the initial page load time.

This technique is especially useful for websites with multiple images, image galleries, or long-scrolling pages.

Then when this is paired with Gzip compression that greatly reduces the size of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, you will have faster page load times plus improved general site performance. Then with browser caching enabled repeat visitors will load your website faster due to having stored certain resources on their devices.

Optimizing your website for speed is crucial for providing a seamless user experience and improving your search engine rankings. By analyzing speed performance, optimizing images, reducing HTTP requests, and utilizing compression and caching techniques, you can significantly enhance your website’s loading time and overall performance.

Downing HTTP Requests

Fortunately it’s pretty straightforward to reduce HTTP requests. Here’s how:

1. Combine and Minify Files – Combining multiple CSS or JavaScript files into one reduces the number of requests and then by minifying these files and removing unnecessary characters and comments to further reduce file size you get faster page loading times.
2. CSS Sprites – CSS sprites involve combining multiple images into a single image file and utilizing CSS background positions to display specific parts. This reduces the number of image requests and improves page load speed.
3. Inline Small Resources – For small CSS or JavaScript files, it may be beneficial to line them up directly into the HTML code. This eliminates the need for an additional HTTP request and that means a faster rendering time.
4. Implement Caching – Setting up browser caching to instruct browsers to store static resources, like images or CSS files, locally is also smart. It makes it so that subsequent visits to the website can be faster since the browser doesn’t have to request those resources again.
5. Content Delivery Network – Leveraging a CDN distributes your website’s static files across multiple servers worldwide, reducing the distance traveled between the user and the server. Plus with fewer requests made to the origin server.

Website Speed – Web Hosting

Analyzing your overall website speed is also a focus when you look to optimize your website for better performance. It helps you identify areas where your site might be lacking and provides insights into how overall site speed might be improved. We’ve talked about utilizing online tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom to evaluate your website’s current speed performance, and the importance of measuring full page load times.

The standard approaches to getting speed up are to optimize elements like large images, bulky scripts, and excessive plugins that could be factoring into slower page loading times. Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is highly advisable to as you can distribute your website’s assets across multiple servers globally. Lower latency and improved load times for visitors in different geographical locations results from this.

This then connects to the strength and integrity of the servers of your Canadian web hosting provider and these days they are plenty of providers who have the resources and infrastructure to provide fast web hosting if and when a website is optimized in the right way to take advantage of it. You may want to consider upgrading to a dedicated or virtual private server (VPS) if you’re experiencing slow speeds due to shared web hosting Canada limitations or because of shortcomings with website design Toronto.

Mobile optimization is pretty darn important nowadays too. Evaluate your website’s mobile performance separately since mobile users will often have varying internet connection speeds, and another good test resource is Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test that analyzes the site’s mobile speed and responsiveness. With the increasing use of mobile devices, it’s essential to ensure that your website is responsive and adapts well to different screen sizes. Test your website on various devices and screen resolutions to ensure a seamless experience for your users.

Another top takeaways will be to eliminate, minimize or defer render-blocking resources like CSS and JavaScript files so that the rendering of visible content is prioritized. This helps streamline the loading process and improve overall speed.

Other Considerations

1. Compress and Resize: Before uploading images to your website, make sure to compress them without compromising on quality. Utilize image compression tools or plugins to reduce the file size without affecting the visual aesthetics. It’s also good to resize images to the exact dimensions required by your website because larger images take longer to load. These are solid guidelines for website design at any time
2. Choose Correct File Format: Selecting the appropriate file format for your images is essential for optimization. Generally, JPEG is best for photographs and complex images, while PNG is best for graphics, logos, and images where the background is transparent. Avoid using GIFs for large images, as they are bulky and can slow down your website.
3. Implement Responsive Design: Ensure your website is responsive and displays images correctly across different devices and screen sizes. This is crucial for providing an optimal user experience, as improperly scaled images can lead to slow loading times and distorted visuals.
4. Use Descriptive File Names and Alt Tags: Assign descriptive file names to your images that accurately represent their content. Place add alt tags to provide alternative text descriptions for visually impaired users and improve accessibility. Alt tags also contribute to SEO by providing keyword-rich descriptions that search engines will likely to encounter when your site is crawled.

Optimizing your images is a must for having your website function properly a lot of the time. Compressing, resizing, choosing the right format, implementing lazy loading, and using descriptive file names and alt tags are essential practices to speed up your website and enhance user experience.

Use Descriptive File Names: When saving your image files, use descriptive and relevant names that include keywords related to the image. For example, instead of a generic name like “IMG_4321.jpg,” go with a specific name like “blue-dong-product.jpg.” This makes search engines more likely to understand what the image is about and improves its chances of ranking in relevant search results.

With the right compression techniques you can reduce the size of your website files, making them faster to load. Caching, on the other hand, involves storing static versions of your web pages on the user’s browser or the server, allowing for quicker access upon subsequent visits. All of this can be possible with website design Toronto.

Effective compression is going to be when the tool compresses files before they are sent to the user’s browser. This significantly reduces the time it takes to transfer the files, resulting in quicker load times. Additionally, you can minify your CSS and JavaScript files by removing unnecessary spaces, comments, and line breaks, further optimizing their size for faster loading.

Caching works differently. It allows you to store commonly accessed resources like images, CSS, and JavaScript files, on the user’s browser or the server and again this works the same way with cached resources being there already so that page load times are improved and there’s less load on the server. You may also want to leverage content delivery networks (CDNs) to have static resources stored across multiple servers worldwide. CDNs enable your website visitors to access these resources from the server closest to their location and this is very helpful for having latency minimized.

User-Friendly Navigation Needed

Website design pros always need to evaluate the navigation structure of a website to make it user-friendly and intuitive. You need to make sure menus are easy to navigate, and important pages are easily accessible. A well-organized website structure will enhance user experience and encourage them to stay longer on your site. Broken links are going to be a problem in all of that, but with good error handling you can check for any broken links

Performance testing is going to involve regular performance testing to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Examples can be load testing, stress testing, and overall performance monitoring. By identifying performance issues proactively, you can optimize your website’s performance and provide a better user experience and when a site is structured properly search engines can crawl and index your pages more efficiently.

This means better visibility in search results.

Organize content into relevant sections or categories so that it is easier for users to find what they’re looking for. Use subheadings and bullet points to break down information and improve readability. Pages should have a logical hierarchy too, with homepage at the top, followed by main sections, and then individual pages or blog posts nested within those sections. Users and search engines will find it easier to determine the relationship between different pages.

Streamlining navigation is a way site navigation can become intuitive and user-friendly. Include a clear and consistent menu that is accessible from every page. Use descriptive labels for your navigation links, and search bars to enable easy exploration are good choice too. We mentioned breadcrumbs earlier and you can drop breadcrumbs into your site design to provide users with a visual trail of their path through your website. Breadcrumbs not only aid navigation but also help search engines recognize and value the hierarchy and structure of your website.

You should also optimize your URL structure by creating descriptive and user-friendly URLs for your pages. Keep it short and try to work in concise and relevant keywords to describe the content of each page. Internal linking between relevant pages within your website helps search engines discover and index your content.

It also gives users additional pathways to explore related topics, and when you can include inbound links naturally within your content to enhance the overall user experience and improve SEO.

Optimizing for SEO

Optimizing for SEO is a crucial aspect of website optimization and increasingly an expectation for people who are paying for website design Toronto. By implementing effective SEO strategies, you can improve your website’s visibility, organic traffic, and rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). There’s different opinions about how to best do that, but what everyone will do is start with optimizing titles and meta descriptions.

You should craft unique and compelling titles that accurately reflect the content of each page, and include relevant keywords strategically within your titles. Try to write persuasive meta descriptions that entice users to click on your search results and optimize content by conducting keyword research to identify relevant and high-performing keywords. Make sure you use descriptive alt tags for your images to improve accessibility and provide additional context for search engines.

The next consideration will be optimizing your internal link structure, as this allows you to create a clear and logical internal linking structure for easy navigation. Include relevant anchor text that describes the linked page and ensure that all internal links are working correctly and not leading to broken or dead-end pages.

Optimizing images for SEO follows the same guidelines for website speed but the biggest one here is to implement image sitemaps to help search engines understand and index your images.

Content SEO Optimization is something that can be an extension of website design that the users can take on themselves as it’s not difficult to do. Content optimization involves various strategies and techniques to ensure that your website’s content is not only relevant and valuable to your audience but also optimized for search engines.

Keyword research is going to involve identifying relevant keywords and key phrases that are commonly used by your target audience when searching for information related to your niche. Use keyword research tools to explore popular search terms and incorporate them strategically throughout your content.

Then the content you create should focus on creating informative, engaging, and well-structured content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. Make sure your content is comprehensive, original, and provides good insights and solutions.

When title tags and meta descriptions are optimized it can promote users clicking on your website from search engine results pages (SERPs). Craft compelling titles and meta descriptions that accurately reflect the content of each page and include relevant keywords.

Utilizing H1, H2, H3 as headline tags to structure your content and make it more readable for both users and search engines. Include your target keywords in heading tags where appropriate to signal the importance of specific sections or topics, and again make sure you optimize Alt Text images to enhance the visual appeal of your website and add SEO benefits to that too. Use descriptive alt text that includes relevant keywords to help search engines understand the context and relevance of your images.

We’ll wrap it up here with website design Toronto by talking about some things that can be to done to improve internal link structure:

Create a hierarchical structure where you organize your website’s pages in a logical hierarchy, with your homepage at the top and subsequent pages stemming from the homepage. This helps search engines and visitors understand the relationships between different sections of your site. Now use descriptive anchor text to accurately represent the content of the destination page. This not only helps with SEO but also provides clarity to users about where the link will lead them.

And it is best to have a link to pages that are relevant to the current topic or content. This helps search engines understand the context and relevance of each page and them meaning more visibility in search results. Then Breadcrumb navigation provides a clear path from the current page to the homepage.

Implementing this navigational feature helps both users and search engines understand the page’s position within the overall structure of your website. Website optimization has the potential to be everything when the aim is to improve your website’s speed, performance, and SEO.

Gains in these 3 factors can have a significant impact on your website’s overall ranking and the amount of increasing traffic it sees. As we’ve talked about here the three main factors that you need to optimize for are speed, performance, and SEO. Speed is important because it impacts user experience and rankings. Poorly performing pages can slow down your website’s loading time and cause users to leave, which then detracts from your SEO and something you want to be acutely aware of when considering website design.

Performance is important because it affects how your website handles requests and how users are able to interact with it. A website that is slow to load or fails to respond quickly can frustrate users and damage your brand reputation. SEO is important because it can help your website rank higher in search engines. Higher rankings can lead to more traffic and conversion rates, and if you’re in ecommerce that is exactly what you want to hear.

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We are going to go ahead and assume that you all know that SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization. These days, though, if you have a website that is serving an integral role in your business’ eCommerce success you had better have an equally solid understanding of the functioning of SEO. And especially with how in many ways it’s a make-or-break factor as it relates to having the stream of new customers that any business will both want and need. We’ll explain why that is with our entry here, but suffice to say SEO services for small businesses in Canada are absolutely huge.

Most Canadian web hosting providers are going to offer an eCommerce SEO service to their customers, and unless that site’s webmaster is super SEO-savvy it is a resource that you should be taking advantage of. And definitely if you are new to whatever business you’re in and are hoping to make inroads into a client base as quickly as possible. Often it is best if this aim can be undertaken with a local focus, and here at 4GoodHosting we are among a number of web hosting providers with affordable local SEO services in Canada.

We’ll get into the meat of this subject matter shortly here, but before we do we should offer the one warning that absolutely needs to be heeded if you’re a DIY-er who thinks they can improve the SEO of their website themselves. If you are considering trying this then you may well have sufficient knowledge of how to accomplish search engine optimization, but if you think it’s as simple as incorporating lots of the ‘right’ keywords you’re going to quickly find you have probably done more harm than good.

On / Off / Technical

SEO services are search engine optimization services offered by an agency, freelancer, or consultant, and working to optimize your site for search engine optimization so it becomes increasingly possible to gain more traffic – and thus revenue – from search. Most affordable SEO services for small businesses will include on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. From there depending on the extent of the service you’ve paid for you may also have them focusing on specific areas, like off-page SEO.

And it’s a smart move to invest in SEO services for nearly every eCommerce site, because 99% of the time the individual is NOT as knowledgeable about SEO as they might fancy themselves being. The benefits of an eCommerce SEO services are immense nearly all the time, and if your site is not coming back in SERPS (search engine results pages) on pages one or two, then you can be totally assured that you need the service just as much as many of your competitors do.

Investing in SEO services does provide a number of tangible benefits, although as you’d guess they are not ones that you should expect to see instantly. There may also be instances where a webmaster doesn’t have the time or inclination to put the time into optimizing a website’s SEO, and in any such case it’s a wise move to spend some money hiring an SEO professional in Canada. We won’t claim to the best of them, but we’re also just as capable of any when it comes to improving SEO for client websites.

Develop Strategies, Extensive Ones

The basics of SEO, including keyword research, content creation, and link building, aren’t especially complicated although the goalposts do tend to be moved from time to time as the search engine algorithms constantly reinvent themselves out of necessity. Let’s take keywords, for example, as they’ve always been seen as the most prominent contributing factor in SEO.

And they were just that for a long time, but every SEO expert will tell you that nowadays it’s not all about keywords to the same extent anymore. Look no further than how a 1-2% keyword density was an inflexible aspect of having good SEO. That’s not the case anymore, as the algorithm has evolved and is instead looking for a more natural and organic mix of keywords and then words / terms that are frequently seen in similar searches or content related to the subject matter.

Overall, services from an SEO agency help you put into place (and maintain) an SEO strategy that is conducive to the growth and profitability of your business, and based around the understanding that to an ever-greater extent your website is the means by which you garner new business and grow a client base. You can also count on them monitoring and submitting feedback on your organic search performance plus providing you with more time to focus on the projects that need your expertise.

Cost for SEO Services

We can’t recommend affordable SEO services for small businesses highly enough, but at the same time we realize that people’s definitions of affordable are going to vary. What fits suitably well into the budget one may not fit well at all for another. So how much do SEO services cost? That will depend on factors like the individual’s goals, timeliness they have for meeting them, scopes of projects, the size of the business and more.

The average for monthly SEO plans is upwards of $3000 CDN a month, and may be higher depending on all that you are asking the SEO professional to do.

Types of SEO Services

If you are operating a type of business where the nature of what you do means most of your clientele will be living nearby to you then Affordable local SEO services in Canada are going to be at the top of your priority list because the approach taken for this SEO is markedly different. We won’t get into the specifics of just one type of SEO here, but with local SEO it is all about optimizing your website and local listings for local searches.

Next up will be eCommerce SEO services, and the approach to SEO here it totally different as the focus in optimizing the website for online shopping. And be aware that the path you take with your SEO doesn’t mean it’s the one you continue you on for the long foreseeable future. For example, if your eCommerce site has a lot of people conducting voice searches then you may alter your course to be more focused on Voie SEO services so that your website is optimized for voice searches.

Dissatisfied with your SEO? That’s certainly possible, and as is the case with anything it takes time to build whatever it is into whatever you want it to be. If your dissatisfaction continues it may be a good idea to have SEO audit services to identify what site shortcomings are hurting your SEO. However, for the vast majority of small to mid-sized ecommerce sites a traditional SEO plan is quite likely to provide the results they are looking for – namely higher rankings in SERPs.

Focus-Specific Options

There will be times that search engine optimization services will focus on specific areas of SEO, and this usually happens when a site owners has been hiring the services of an SEO website professional for some time already. If any particular part of the infrastructure is deemed to be the failing point causing decreased SEO rankings then it may be best to switch lanes and focus on that one point with more exclusivity.

There are 3 main types of focus-specific approaches to SEO that you will see in relation to affordable SEO services for small businesses:

1. On-page SEO – focusing on optimizations for the website, and most commonly with title tags, content, and more
2. Off-page SEO – focusing on optimizations based on the nature and orientation of your online presence, and specifically with choices of website’s backlinks
3. Technical SEO – focusing on optimizations that are determined by the website’s backend, with standard focuses on page speed, site architecture, and more

It’s important that you understand that all 3 of these must be in place and working in unison in order to achieve maximum search engine optimization, and that’s why it is uncommon for companies to invest in these individual services. Most will choose full-service SEO plans, which include on-page, off-page, and technical SEO, and they do so because these plans deliver all-in-one solutions to search engine optimization.

Ranking Factors

Your SEO plan will determine the ranking factors targeted by the SEO services provider you choose to go with. A full-service plan will optimize for on-page, off-page, and technical SEO, while an off-page SEO plan will optimize for off-page SEO. Be aware that search engines like Google use more than 200 ranking factors, and among the ones that are the most prominent in how sites are evaluated and then ranked for SERPS are your backlink profile, your content, and what’s seen to be user experience for your site.

Your backlink profile will be focusing on the quality and quantity of external sites that have outbound links going to your site. Content will be evaluated with regards to keyword targeting, keyword integration, content usefulness, and more. As for users experience factors, the biggest ones are what they’ve enjoyed with page speed, usability, and the site’s overall mobile friendliness (the way it displays for a mobile device as compared to a desktop one

Let’s no turn to move in the direction of discussing what types of expectations you can have when you start to work with a provider who is able to offer affordable local SEO services in Canada. It’s better for you to know which deliverables should be forthcoming as you start to work with your SEO pro in Canada.

A Custom Strategy

This strategy needs to become the core component of the definition of SEO services. When you have an approach personalized to your business, you can maximize your return on investment (ROI) from SEO. This should results in calls, orders, and visits to your company originating from a visit to your website. It is okay to be demanding and say this is something you want to see because many SEO companies – especially those promoting ‘discount’ SEO plans – will then proceed to offer cookie-cutter or copy-and-paste strategies.

What will happen here in most cases is that you will fail to appear on the first page of search results with these kinds of strategies, and that stands to handicap your business as research has indicated that only 25% of users go beyond the first page of search results.

Audiences are always different, and you will not benefit if you have the same SEO strategy as someone who’s business is entirely different from yours. Different websites are always going to required customized SEO strategies, and when we work with our customers we have this understanding front and center at all times.

Think about it this way: If you owned a medical practice, would you want to use the same SEO strategy as a retail store? Of course not! Your audience is different, and how you reach them through search (and bring them to your practice) is different too.

SEO audit

Every SEO company’s services should have an SEO audit to have an in-depth look at current strategies plus getting an idea of current SEO performance and issues that may be preventing your site from ranking the way you’d assume it would. Affordable SEO services for small businesses will always be appealing to cost-sensitive webmasters, but many times you’ll be back at or near square one if you don’t have the ability to have an SEO audit conducted as part of your services.

Yes, there are free SEO audit tools you can use but often they don’t provide the same degree of insight that you would receive from experienced SEO specialists. A missing SEO audit may suggest you don’t see the need for a custom strategy for your business either.

Off-page optimization

When you invest in SEO services, your eCommerce SEO services package should include off-page optimization. In SEO, off-page optimization involves optimizing factors outside your website that may be factoring into the strength or weakness of your site’s ranking in SERP pages. Consider as well how a backlink profile can shape your ranking in search results, especially with how good service and / or products can an immediate and powerful means of benefitting from backlinks when others see you and your business favorably.

Most SEO companies will provide the following for off-page SEO:

1. Promotion of your website content to bloggers and webmasters
2. Development of shareable content for your site’s blog
3. Monitoring your company’s mentions across social media by users and influencers
4. Optimization of your Google My Business profile

If you’re inclined you can ask any affordable SEO services for small businesses provider about what their SEO marketing services include, along with anything you want to know about specific deliverables. This makes you more capable of making an informed decisions.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is also an integral component of SEO services. On-Page optimization involves focusing on optimizing the features of your website for search engines like Google.

Standard on-page deliverables:

1. Updated title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags for Search
2. Audit of your website’s information architecture, redirects, and internal linking structure
3. Creation of a sitemap
4. Optimization of your site images according to best practices
5. Researching and optimizing your website with valuable and relevant keywords
6. Production of new, SEO-friendly content for your site
7. Analysis of the usability, speed, and design of your site

In most cases, on-page optimization makes up a significant portion of your SEO package. That’s why if an SEO company doesn’t offer on-page SEO, they aren’t providing search engine optimization services, which means your team needs to find another agency.

Ongoing Optimization

SEO strategy is ongoing and evolving at all times, explaining why the definition of SEO services will involve emphasizing the partnership that your business forms with your SEO agency. Alternately, SEO consulting services focus on short-term assistance, like with a website redesign project for example. The best SEO pros in Canada will have you collaborating with them constantly, and especially as you start to see gains from your improved search engine visibility and increased revenue from search.

Their services include progressive (continuous) optimization as well, as it fosters ongoing and constant improvements to your site’s SEO. Even after your site meets SEO standards, they persist in finding ways to improve and enhance your SEO strategy, resulting in more earned traffic, leads, and sales from SEO.

This discovery will often the lead into new content, which may then create links between bloggers and webmasters in your industry. No matter how advanced or successful your SEO strategy becomes, an eCommerce SEO service can likely make it that much better.

Monthly Reports

You won’t need to be reminded that it’s important to track progress and measure your results, and seeing both those positively goes a long way in seeing affordable local SEO services in Canada as something you can trust in and be assured that it is increasing the visibility of your business online.

This is why SEO reports are important, as with them your business can receive immediate insight into the results of your SEO strategy.

Common focuses here are on:

1. Organic traffic
2. Leads generated
3. Sales generated
4. Rankings

And more

A small amount of time with your dedicated account manager each month may be a good idea too. Routine meetings help you and your team stay on the same page as your SEO agency.

ROI Tracking

Return-on-investment tracking is something you probably already do with other expenditure points when it comes to running your business. It can be a part of how you evaluate your SEO services too. Google Analytics can support ecommerce businesses, but lead-based businesses will require a better ROI tracking solution.

An SEO service provider that includes return on investment tracking is always going to be best. And here’s what you should be looking at:

1. Number of leads generated from SEO
2. Number of sales closed from SEO
3. Total sale value from SEO-generated leads
4. Average sale value from SEO-generated leads

1st-party Data Activation

Search engine optimization is a fantastic way to generate first-party data, which is a powerful tool for ad campaigns, email marketing initiatives, and other digital marketing strategies. SEO packages from the top providers almost always include 1st-party data activation, and you can look to verify they include

1. A customer data platform (CDP)
2. Personalization platform
3. Landing page builder
4. Email marketing software

Tools like these ones make re-purposing SEO-generated data for other marketing initiatives possible, and there’s a lot to like about doing that. For your company, that means reaching users at the right time with the right message, whether in their inbox, browsing their favorite site, or re-visiting your website to learn more.

Choosing an SEO service provider can take months, but if you invest the time you can find one you’ll partner with for years and to that end we’re going to conclude this blog entry here by providing a top-10 list of what you should be aiming to have with a website SEO improvement provider.

10 Tips for Choosing SEO Plans

1. Determine your budget, requirements, and goals
2. Request references from your network
3. Search online to find potential SEO companies
4. Review the agencies’ reviews and case studies
5. Check each agency’s SEO deliverables
6. Meet with prospectives to learn about their process, specializations, and capabilities
7. Ask for custom pricing plus if they can provide a list of deliverables
8. Check for any fine print, like for additional charges or fees
9. Inquire about timeframes and what resources the agency will require from your team
10. Gain an understanding of how the SEO service provider measures success

Paying for SEO Services – Is It Worth It?

Everyone’s budget will be different, and in instances where some have less to spend o website SEO improvement those people will have more long and hard thinking to do about whether paying for and SEO audit and then site revamping is going to be worth what they’ll have to pay for it.

This is really going to depend on the individual or group, but we can start by providing a ballpark figure to work with; if you can’t spend more than $500 on your SEO per month then you may be pricing yourself out of the better SEO providers and questioning whether or not it’s worth it then becomes a very real question.

Department resources will factor into this too, and If your organization doesn’t have the resources — time, tools, or skills — to work on SEO, then it makes paying high prices for SEO optimization to be a much more palatable option. Especially if your site serves to facilitate sales more than anything else.

AOV is average order value, and this can be a part of it too. Those who have a lower average order value will often struggle to see a return on investment from SEO packages. That’s because your SEO agency will need to drive hundreds of monthly sales to deliver ROI. Affordable local SEO services in Canada are always going to be available to people based on how pivotal websites are to online sales and serving as the virtual storefront where those sales occur and contribute to the profitability – and viability – of an online business.