Category: Domain Related

May 28, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

It’s really all too easy to assume that you need to have some type of special savvy mixed with a whole lot of know-how to get your newly-formed website ranking sufficiently. Truth is that’s not the case. You WILL get your money’s worth if you hire an SEO expert to optimize your site, but for many of you money may be a little tight and budget constraints are what they are. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like any other good Canadian web hosting provider in that we like to see our newbies be successful, and out of the gate as much as possible. SEO isn’t the be-all end-all of making that happen, but it factors in quite considerably. There are quite a few things you can do to speed up this process, helping your site get better search engine rankings and more traffic much sooner than you’d expect. Here are 10 SEO tips specifically chosen with new websites in mind, and ones that are decidedly doable for even those of you with very little in the way of established SEO application knowledge. Start be targeting low competition keywords at the outset When a site is first launched, it will have a very low authority with Google. This means it will rank worse than established competitors for high competition keywords. You’re perfectly free to target those keywords, but the speediest way to generate new traffic to your site is to target keywords that are less competitive. You can determine how competitive a keyword is by using Google’s Keyword Planner. This will show you whether competition for a term is high, medium or low. Finding keywords which are less competitive gives you increased chances of ranking for them and receiving the traffic which they send. Choose to target highly competitive keywords only and you may not rank at all,meaning no organic traffic in the early days. This method is a good technique while you slowly establish your site authority. Locate your main keyword in the page’s title tag Search engines use title tags and other meta information to determine the subject matter of each page or post on your website. This is very...

May 21, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Mobile has revolutionized the entirety of how people peruse the online world, search for consumer goods and contents, engage with social media, and much more. Mobile has been a dominating trend since 2016, when mobile traffic outdistanced desktop traffic for the first time. A few months back saw Google announce that their search engine indexing would be reoriented to be mobile-first. Since then testing has been underway, and now we have their mobile-first indexing rollout. Over the next few years we can expect to see desktop websites being pushed back in the rankings, putting mobile and responsive sites first. As a top Canadian web hosting provider, there is great relevance to all of this for both us and our clients. Some of you may have less of an understanding of what mobile-first indexing actually is, so let’s spend a short period of time discussing it here today. Defining Mobile- First Indexing It shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that most people use mobile devices when visiting the mobile versions of websites. When the site’s indexing system follows the desktop version of a site first for making assessments about both the quality and relevance of a page in response to that user’s query, a diminished user experience can be the result. Most problematic in this scenario is the possibility that the mobile user will abandon the platform, and that happens quite frequently. This new mobile-first index is how Google will attempt to discover, crawl, and understand web pages and documents for indexing and ranking them - from a mobile-first perspective. So, from here on out Google will primarily crawl and first index the mobile-friendly version of your website with the smartphone agent, rather than indexing the desktop version as it would have previously. However, it’s important to understand that Google will continue to show the URL that is the most appropriate to users - desktop or mobile URL - in the returned search results. So yes, there’s no need to be overly concerned that your rankings and traffic will disappear overnight. But be very clear, this change in Google’s indexing priorities means you have to make mobile SEO a top...

May 15, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Internet of Things, or IoT as it’s handily abbreviated, has been the foremost development in the Web world in recent years. The promise it holds for expanding upon the way we use the World Wide Web for our benefit is quite considerable, and it would appear that the world’s premier technology company is as receptive to this as you’d imagine they’d be. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re as much of a fan of Android operating systems as anyone and like any Canadian web hosting provider we understand that a good many of you will be in either the iOS or Android camps when it comes to your OS of choice. Each have their benefits, but it would now seem that Google has beaten Apple to the punch when it comes to introducing an OS that’s tailored to the IoT. Google has announced the general release of Android Things (1.0), a managed operating system that lets users build and maintain internet of things (IoT) devices at scale. With this new operating system developers can build smart and connected devices for multiple purposes. Consumer, retail and industrial applications to name a few. All while able to use existing Android development tools, APIs and resources to develop these new apps for specific devices. Android Things is classified as an embedded operating system that supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy and the Weave protocol. With it you’ll be able to promote multiple ways of communication between devices. Developers can now leverage Google’s Android partner ecosystem, machine learning capabilities, as well as Google Assistant. It will be worth noting as well that Android Things also offers software development kits (SDKs), designed to help developers when building an array of IoT devices. Google has stated it intends to partner with hardware manufacturers to provide more SDKs. Front and centre with this new OS is the Android Things Console. Developers can use it to download and install the latest system images, as well as manage and share OEM application across products and owners, monitor informative analytics, and have over-the-air updates ‘pushed’ as necessary. Since it was previewed in December 2016, over 10,000 developers have provided feedback about Android...

May 7, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

A.I. is definitely one acronym that needs no explanation, and particularly if you’re deeply immersed in the modern digital world. Artificial Intelligence is the great new frontier, and while we all know well of Siri and Alexa, etc. etc., there’s really so much more to the trend and what it will mean for us in the not so distant future. It’s now clear that A.I. is being implemented practically, and for a premier Canadian web hosting provider like ourselves that’s really exactly what we were hoping to hear. We can now expect that AI will not only revolutionize the mobile industry, but also greatly influence the way mobile apps are marketed in the coming years. A.I. employs machine learning to analyze data and differentiate that data into accurate or inaccurate based on specific ‘truth tables’ and calculations made. The result is a more thorough approach to decisions in all domains, and the marketing of mobile apps is included in that. The strategy for mobile app marketers then becomes whether they should incorporate the vast potential of AI to qualify user behaviour automatically, predict buying behaviours, offer recommendations to users by taking previous purchase data into account, and making tthe app’s content more engaging. Mobile app advertisers can clearly see the immense potential and need for AI in mobile app marketing, and ways they can deploy it for best results. Here’s how: Automated reasoning ability of A.I. A.I. has now empowered apps to engage in independent deductive reasoning. Paired with machine learning, it holds the promise of enabling new apps that possess a human-like ability to judge themselves, completely independent of human input and instead based in computer science and mathematical logic. This is artificial intelligence at its most powerful, as it helps the user to achieve their goal in a much easier and speedy way. Programming these apps using A.I. allows them to analyze the actions of the users while they engage with the app, and then providing them with smart directions based on the analysis of any number of relevant factors. Users then benefit from a more customized and personalized experience, rather than any standard one-for-all solution. One example...

May 1, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Even the least tech-savvy individuals will likely have heard of firewalls, and understand the purpose they serve in keeping computers safe from becoming attacked or debilitated by external sources. For a long period of time, firewalls tended to be pleasantly reliable for the most part, and would defend against the entry of malicious threats to the unit itself or the network it was a part of. Like any solid Canadian web hosting provider, those of us here at 4GoodHosting don’t need to be convinced of the need for these safeguards. However, given the nature of our business we’re also front and center for seeing how firewalls aren’t the far-reaching and reliable solution they once were. A new report called the Dirty Secrets of Network Firewalls has found that one-in-four IT managers could not identify around 70% of network traffic, and that on average 45% of network traffic goes unidentified. The most crucial finding of the survey, however, was that most firewalls were failing to do their job adequately. Along with this ever-growing lack of visibility into network traffic comes a more threatening reality of these individuals not being able to control what they can’t see. 84% of the IT professionals who responded admitted to having real concerns about security due to lack of visibility into network traffic. A similar percentage of those same respondents agreed that lack of application visibility was a serious security concern for businesses and could impact effective network management. The results of such looseness? Ransomware, malware, data breaches and other advanced threats for starters. Reasons for Less Reliability Major increases in the use of encryption, browser emulation, and advanced evasion techniques are the primary factors that detract from a network firewall’s ability to provide a sufficient amount of visibility when it comes to application traffic. The report also states that organizations spend an average of seven working days remediating infected machines each month. Even small-sized enterprises spent an average of five working days on average doing the same thing. Larger ones? Try an average of ten working days to remediate 20 machines per month. That’s a sign of both ineffectiveness and forced inefficiency, to say nothing...

April 23, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

These days most of us won’t pay much attention to a collection of seemingly random letter and numbers with dashes, but when it comes to this one - CVE 2018-0950 - anyone using Microsoft Outlook email may want to pay a little more of it. CVE 2018-0950 is the name that’s been given to an information disclosure vulnerability of Outlook, and Microsoft released a vulnerability patch this month. Every quality Canadian web hosting provider takes the initiative to keep their customers informed in these scenarios, and we’re no different here at 4GoodHosting. This one in fact is particularly noteworthy with the fact that Outlook is one of the most popular and common email applications. Given the nature of this flaw and the reality that much personal information can be contained in email communications, this one isn’t one to be taken lightly The release of the patch mentioned above, however, came nearly more than 18 months after receiving the report that disclosed the bug, courtesy of one Will Dormann, a software vulnerability analyst with Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute’s CERT Coordination Center. This vulnerability can make it so that sensitive information is then disclosed to a malicious site. Obviously, Microsoft Outlook users need to be aware of this vulnerability and what safeguards are best to neutralize the risk. Leak Bug Threat Analysis CVE2018-0950 affects Microsoft Outlook software, and specifically by rendering Rich Text Format (RTF) email messages that contain remotely hosted OLE objects hosted on SMB (Server Message Block) server (under the control of attackers). The situation is that when other Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint encounter remotely hosted OLE objects, the user is notified as a security caution before thos messages are rendered. Here though, Outlook took no such action and allowed attackers to have an easy access to the user’s system when they opened or previewed such mails. The resultant vulnerability makes it possible for hackers to steal sensitive information. Windows login credentials or hashed passwords are at risk of being revealed, and done by sending an RTF-formatted email to a victim and convincing the recipient to preview or open that email with Microsoft Outlook. It’s...

April 17, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Voice recognition in smartphones isn’t exactly new, but pairing it with AI and this level of functionality is. Here at 4GoodHosting, part of what makes one of the best Canadian web hosting providers is the way we don’t need to be coaxed to keep up on developments in the digital world. We realize the immediate relevance all of these mobile trends that keep coming fast and furious have for both us and our customers who are in business on the web. Nearly every business or company has been working to optimize their local SEO, and now voice search optimization has become more of a priority as well. Given the increasing predominate of searches and queries submitted by voice and process by digital assistants like those mentioned above, there’s good reason for that. Here’s what we know about the best ways to optimize pages and content for voice search. Ensure Good Page Speeds Siri has made quite a name when it comes to helping people get the information they need without having to enter anything manually, and they don’t have to follow any set method or tradition for conducting their search. They’re free to use the feature in whatever manner they want. But if a page doesn’t load quickly, they’re going to move on. Voice search engine optimization is important, and let’s note that page speed plays a major role in voice search SEO. The average voice search result page loads in 4.6 seconds, which is 52% faster than the average page. This definitely raises the bar of what’s ‘acceptable’ and you need to make sure you’re in line with it. HTTPS is Better That extra character at the end of your URL prefix makes all the difference in the world now. HTTPS websites dominate Google’s voice search results, and more standard HTTP sites lag far behind in popularity with voice-based search results. Take note again that 70.4% of Google Home result pages are secured with HTTPS. Voice search results are significantly more likely to use HTTPS than other websites ranking on Google’s first page. As a result, implementing HTTPS may improve your chances of appearing as a voice search result....

April 10, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The continuing boom in digital technologies - and in particular for mobile video streaming and online gaming - now has mobile devices making up nearly 60 percent of the entirety of data traffic. Come 2020 that’s expected to rise to 80 percent and it’s an indication of how totally wired we’ll all look to be in the not so distant future. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re in a spot like any other Canadian web hosting provider where we see the incredible benefits this type of mobile connectivity is going to provide for us, but we’re also obviously aware of the operation challenges that these data demands are going to put on data centers across Canada. Every online activity involves massive amounts of data that’s stored in different data centers, and while there’s many different sizes of them it is the large data centers that may overheat on account of the billions of gigabytes of data being created and used all around the world. Data centers and their IT equipment – servers, networking and storage equipment - consume mammoth amounts of energy to run AND work to cool the heat which emanates from the IT equipment going at or near capacity much of the time. In fact, cooling is far and away the biggest consumer of electrical power in nearly all data center, and sometimes they may take up to 40 or 50 percent of all the power being used in certain ones. Here’s something else to consider; this round-the-clock global data center energy consumption eats up roughly 3% of all globally generated power, and makes up 4% of greenhouse gas emissions. That puts the ICT industry at par with the airline industry in as far as those emissions, but it’s the data centers that are said to have the fastest growing carbon footprint among the entire ICT sector - to the tune of almost 1/4 of global carbon dioxide emissions from ICT. There have been energy efficiency improvements, but it’s predicted that data center energy use will grow by 4% between 2014 and 2020. Technological Advances in Cooling The biggest change from recent years is that demand for data centers among...

April 2, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

When you set out to build a website and - in the bigger picture of things - an online identity you are probably going to focus most on layout, graphics, content, SEO, marketing, and advertising. These are all vital components of a good website, but it turns out that where you choose to host your website also factors in as well. Here at 4GoodHosting, so much has gone into making us a top Canadian web hosting provider, but without a doubt seeing to it that our clients and their websites are optimally located and enabled has always been a priority. We definitely understand that before you choose your website’s design or content, you need to choose a good web host who’s got the infrastructure in place to protect your rankings. One of the factors Google and other search engines look for when indexing web pages is how fast they load. Now while it’s true that a good Canadian web host won’t necessarily get your website listed on Google’s first page, it is true that a lesser host will ruin your credit with Google and other search engines. Between a provider’s server type, location, speed, and uptime there can be an affect on your website’s relevance with search engines. It’s definitely something to consider. Here are five web host traits that search engines that Google will see unfavourably for search engine rankings. Slow Speeds This one’s probably fairly obvious. A website that is clocked to load slowly will be disadvantaged. Search engines aren’t going to rank your website high in the search results when it’s too slow, and that’s in the interest of keeping visitors on a page. Most site visitors will click off a website if the page is too slow to load. Between 7 and 10 milliseconds is considered to be the optimal speed, but anything over 100 milliseconds isn’t good. Your homepage should load in under 1 second, and there are many ways to test this. Google ‘free website speed checker’ and you should be able to find them easily. Excess Downtime Even the fastest loading website is going to be disadvantageous if it’s down too often. When...