Category: Domain Related

October 3, 2016

Domain Related, Hosting Related, SEO Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

On the internet, email is the standard communication medium. It’s the go-to communication for brands. Email is the most direct channel, it boasts a higher ROI than any other channel and it helps build loyalty and relationships on a much deeper level than any other channel. Right now, more than half the world is connected to an email account. By the end of 2017, email addresses are expected to increase, to about 5 billion accounts worldwide. When sending emails to your small business customers, you need an effective strategy. 1. Welcome Email First impressions are everything. And a welcome email sets the tone for the relationship. So, roll out the red carpet for your customer. According to Experian, welcome emails generate 4x the open rates and 5x the click rates compared to other bulk promotions. Moreover, studies found that subscribers who receive a welcome email increase their long-term engagement with a brand by 33%. Therefore, greet your new customers. Let readers know more about your small business. And tell them what type of emails they will receive in the future. Write in a conversational tone. A welcome email is like a virtual handshake that accepts a new member to your group. It should be inviting and warm. Also, consider the timing of your welcome email. It shouldn’t be two weeks after the customer bought your product or signed up for your newsletter. 2. Adoption Email An adoption email is designed to keep your customers engaged with your products. Once they make a purchase, you want them to actually use it. Adoption emails can be distributed in a timed sequence or to correspond with specific behaviors or actions taken. Like a good concierge, adoption emails acknowledge where recipients are in a progression, offer suggested solutions, and reaffirm motivations for the original purchase decision. These type of email campaigns lead to faster adoption of the products or services being offered, greater incremental revenue, and increased customer loyalty. So, start sending emails with links to video tutorials and how-to guides. And urge customers to contact you if they have any questions or concerns. 3. Thank You Email Build rapport with your customers. Your...

September 26, 2016

Domain Related, Hosting Related, Security

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The name of the organization with seen to remain the same, “ICANN”, but the people is power over the organization is about to shift, without your vote, Oct 1st to an assemblage of the world body politic, mostly compose of despots and dictators. The effect of this is still yet to be seen, but one key person involved in today’s political fray, presidential candidate Donald Trump, opposed the lackluster plan. Basically, the current domain name system as you have grown to know, and trust, is about to go under changes that could easily lead to intimidation and censorship against free speech. Protection of grassroots political speech is also at risk. The world can go on with less adult websites, but the world simply won’t be as good or nice of a place without freedom of speech in other regards. The founders of America frequently stated that the citizenry must always be vigilant and jealously guard their rights and freedoms. This is the attitude now on the podium of Donald Trump; the only candidate opposed to the plan to hand over control of the internet to a conflicted party of those seeking ever more power in the world. U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is currently conducting verbal opposition to the semi-secretively planned transition of oversight of the internet's domain name system (DNS) management from the US-based governance to the UN, a global organization of political stakeholders from around the world; which could abrogate and hand-over control of the internet itself to authoritarian regimes such as China and Saudi Arabia and others; foreseeably threatening online freedom. Internet DNS is basically a directory for internet-connected devices that helps translate domain names to numerical IP addresses. He strongly contends that the US Congress should act swiftly block the handover, scheduled to occur next week on Oct. 1 2016, or as his campaign policy director Stephen Miller stated "internet freedom will be lost for good, since there will be no way to make it great again once it is lost." The ‘handover’ of the internet DNS was proposed in March 2014, implying the transfer of oversight from the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names...

September 19, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Currently, the European Union has some of the worst copyright laws in the world. If left unopposed, this could quickly leak over into Canada too. The new proposals include the unprecedented new “Link Tax” for publishing giants, allowing them to charge fees for reposting links that contain 100 character snippets of “copyrighted” text. On September 14th, 2016 the EU Commission presented these new rule proposals to the European Parliament. Earlier leaks hinted the rules were worse than originally feared, and the recent announcement proved it. Not only Europeans, but everyone simply has to help stop this now. Despite online opposition leading up to this point from over 100,000 Internet users, and many dozens of civil society groups, the EU Commission has charged full force ahead with its’ abusive anti-free-speech and anti-free-association plan. We must demand that our so called “decision-makers” and the entirety of the government absolutely reject such crazy Link Tax proposals, along with any other forthcoming disastrous copyright measures. We must all speak out now or the internet as we know it will be much more corporate and state, rather than grassroots controlled. In addition, the EU Commission’s new rule proposals include invasive and expensive methods for 1) monitoring and 2) “filtering” user content. In other words, the censoring of content and creativity online. In more detail: The “Court of [In]Justice” of the European Union has ruled that it can now be illegal for websites merely to *link* to copyrighted content - such as news articles. Again, we are talking about the “mere act of linking” (or perhaps even just printing a link) to copyrighted content can in and of itself be a breach of copyright. Today’s decision went against the previously published advice of the CJEU’s own Advocate General, who stated earlier this year that the simple act of linking should never be made illegal. Although the CJEU created a narrow exception where links are not posted for profit, the sweeping ruling will affect any commercial enterprise, even news startups and small-audience hobby bloggers, that share links with their readers, especially those who monetize their websites by selling advertisements. The ruling will be directly binding on the...

September 12, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Twitter is now adding ‘read receipts’, typing indicators, and automatic web-link previews to its “direct messages” giving it chat-like functionality. These new dynamic Twitter Direct Messages allow you to see who is reading and responding to your messages. Below is a recent tweet from Twitter itself: New! Direct Messages are more dynamic than ever with read receipts, typing indicators, and web link previews. pic.twitter.com/VEU92V5Gqj — Twitter (@twitter) September 8, 2016 Over the years that Twitter has been mainstream, the “tweet” has morphed from a simple 140-character text message now beholden to more creative expression featuring: hashtags, images/photos, videos, vines, and now more. Twitter has added the ability to poll your community, react quickly and cleverly with GIFs, and share and enjoy Periscope broadcasts in Tweets. You can now do a lot in a Tweet. In the coming months Twitter will be making changes to simplify tweets including what counts towards the 140 character limit. For example, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, videos, & polls) will no longer use up valuable characters. Here’s a summary of planned changes: · Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group. · Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words! · Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed. · Goodbye”.@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Re-tweet it to signal that...

August 22, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Mobile advertisements are the new big market arena and will likely stay that way for a long time. That is, perhaps until we become telepathic? Mobile ad spending will account for more than 60% percent of the industry by 2017. Smartphones, tablets,even watches are already what today’s shopper uses to discover products and services across the internet. Perpetually siphoning in endless content and digital social venues. Shopkeepers and service providers have already smelled the blood. Nowhere is this shift to mobile more noticeable than with Facebook. Facebook interaction is also mostly happening over mobile devices; more than a billion daily active users/losers. Over 80% percent of ad revenue on Facebook revenue is mobile. If you are hoping to rope in conversions/customers from FB advertising, the double your mobile. First, beware of the common FB advertising money-pit-falls. Don’t Ignore call conversions As people are naturally staring at their phone in hand whenever noticing an interesting digital advertisement, they usually prefer to call rather than type. The number of mobile advertisement call conversion to businesses is expected again to triple over 35 billion inquiries by 2019. Call conversions are not something most digital marketers have given much attention to - yet click-to-call and ‘whatsapp’-type free-voip functionality is heavily re-landscaping the marketplace. Today’s supercomputer phones are still phones. Even better, click-to-call is therefore the easiest conversion path for consumers considering a purchase. Motto of this paragraph is to make sure to optimize your FB ad campaigns for call conversions. · Include an easily-readable phone number or call button on every ad or banner on your website. · Test your ad’s “call now” button; your ad’s main call to action. · Do your best to accurately measure “cost per lead” to prove and/or improve ROI, return on your “advertisement” read_more Location, ditto, ditto Somebody close to your store or business is going to most likely be a higher-quality lead; rather than someone at a different state, or country. (chuckle) So FB now offers “geo-targeting” options to help you get your advertisement into the eyes of the most lucrative prospects, and even at the right time. For example, you can aim your ads to consumers...

August 15, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Tim Berners-Lee is a famous name on the internet. Back in the early 1900’s Tim was the programmer, at the right place at the right time, who first successfully served a webpage from a web server to a client computer through the newly invented “http” (“Hyerptrext Transport Protocol”). The web was initially dreamed to be a decentralized democracy, enabling free speech forum of all networked computers around the world. However, in recent years, the attraction to big brand services, such as Google, Youtube, Facebook, Yahoo, you name it - has caused a ‘centralization of the internet” - making it ever more easy for those corporations, and America’s “NSA” to spy on the bulk of your online activity. Now Tim is again wishing to help restore the web to a decentrailized, more open, more free, more private internet. He is spearheading a project named “Solid”. The goal of it is to let you solely “own” your personal data. Digital Trends recently reported this in detail. With “Solid”, you store your data in “pods” (personal online data stores) that are hosted wherever you would like. But Solid isn’t just a storage system: It lets other applications ask for data. If Solid authenticates the apps and — important — if you’ve given permission for them to access that data, Solid delivers it. The paragraphs below offer a quick summarization: Solid’s name is derived from the phrase “social linked data” and it stores your data in personal online data stores, or pods. You can then choose which applications have access to your data and how much of it they can see. According to the website for Solid, the system is "modular and extensible"; and relies as much as possible on existing W3C standards & protocols. Development of the project is taking place at MIT and the Qatar Computing Research Institute. Solid has similarities to ”Diaspora”, a social network that was built on a decentralized architecture, but which failed to become the “Facebook killer” data ownership and privacy advocates were hoping for. Thank you for reading the weekly 4GoodHosting.com blog.

August 8, 2016

Domain Related, Hosting Related, Security, Security Related, SEO Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

You may have heard of the 3 more popular content management applications: Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla - but you are not sure which one is best for your needs. Perhaps you remain curious; so we will focus the the two ‘other’ choices besides Wordpress: Drupal & Joomla. Each particular CMS will provide the basic functions of: adding, deleting, and publishing various types of content. Each program has different strong points (and weaknesses) which should be considered whole-cloth, prior to making your ultimate decision. First write down your business’ objectives and goals. This should be is the first step in selecting the best CMS application suited for your particular business needs. Ultimately, optimally serving your business’ unique target audience. Choosing the right CMS (by the way, easily confused with CNS (Central Nervous System)), is the backbone for your project it will save you a great deal of headaches later. A reliable web host, with super customer support, also saves you from initial and future headaches. With 4GoodHosting.ca you can get both ultra-reliable hosting and the CMS of your choice for free: Joomla, Drupal, or of course; Wordpress - or any of the 200+ free scripts we offer you with any of our hosting package. Drupal: In 2016, there is an estimated 1 million+ websites built atop the Drupal CMS. Drupal is common to government offices, universities and colleges, Non-government Organization, Canadian & otherwise global enterprises. America’s White House website is taking advantage of Drupal’s strong website security features. Drupal is a comprehensive, expandable, powerful content management framework suitable to be the foundation of virtually any type of website. Drupal’s Advantages: * Tested Enterprise-level security; advanced control over URL structure * Lots of functionality - including advanced menu management, graphics modification utilities, poll management, and administration/users management * Built for high performance; pages load fast because of its defaulting caching features * Ability to handle large amounts of content & data * Extensive selection of themes, modules & extensions * Ideal for community platform sites (requiring multiple users - admin, editors, logged in users requiring customized content, private groups, etc.) * Large robust community generally responsive to inquiries and concerns. * Good SEO...

July 25, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

For company names- how much “creativity” is just too much? Google is undoubtedly the most recognized domain name the whole world round. More people have typed in g o o g l e . com than any other domain; Youtube, Amazon, you name it. These are 10/10 (perfect) domain names. Here we will contrast and compare to less easily memorable domain names. A lot of companies with good plans, and good service or products have failed at their current choice of business/domain/brand names. It’s never too late to change your company/domain name. The proliferation of domain-name squatting has led online start-ups to resort to increasingly ridiculous branding. So many companies, especially technology companies, have and still are making quite a mockery (some would argue an ‘evolution’) of the English language. The saddest part is that it is often not their business model or core company’s fault that their start-up business has flopped over time. Reviewing failed start-ups in the past couple of years, it has become obvious that about 9 out of 10 companies that have gone downhill over time - have had domain names that made it quite difficult to tell what they did (by looking at the name of the company/domain ). In contrast, if you look at the companies in the Fortune 100, you can pretty much figure out what they do - Shell Oil, International Business Machines, United Parcel Service, Microsoft, etc... Most of the successful company's have names that match what they do - making it pretty clear upfront. Fledgling companies, that have had to spend more than a minute, teaching each consumer ‘what it is they do’ have inadvertently positioned themselves to swim against the tide from day one. It takes a lot of skill with the English language - to think up the best names and brands that are catchy to consumers within a particular service or product-line. But there is the additional modern problem of coming up with a domain name that isn’t already taken or “squatted”-upon. For example: think up a dozen-or-so names for a new business and then look them up to see if those domain names are available. read_more...

July 18, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Question: Does your business (or personal) site also have a blog on it? Have you considered adding a blog but aren’t sure about the return on your time investment? Adding a blog is free (Wordpress, etc.) but we are not talking a standalone blog which “is” the website. (Standalone blogs are typically created around an interest or hobby, a cause, usually as a way to attract web surfers - in order to generate advertising income for the blogger.) In this article we will review the top reasons for making the decision to add a blog to your website. TOP 3 reasons to add a blog to a business website: * 1st - search engines eat them up and keep coming back for more. Blogs are particularly savory to the appetite of Google’s stomach (and the other various search portal out there). * 2nd -it a marvelous way to provide current, or chronological information, to educate and entertain your visitors about your: industry, products, services, etc. * 3rd - a blog gives a more ‘human’ face to your website - making it potentially more appealing than your competitor’s sites. 1) Blogging SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits Every webmaster, that is paying attention, would like for their website to appear on the “first page” of the search engines for particular keyword searches. Considering the bigger picture, the reality is there are a lot of other sites (and webmasters/marketing agents) striving for the same high ranking spots. Search engines wisely don’t reveal the secrets they use to determine or program which sites will display above others, for a given keyword search. However, we all can agree that search engines rank higher for fresh, relevant, high-quality content. Google (and others) have the same goal as webmasters: they want their visitors to keep coming back. So logically they need to make sure the most relevant, high quality, (and often fresh/recently-updated) links are returned for searches. A problem many small to medium sized businesses currently face is that their websites lack extra text content. The typical site contains 1-2 dozen pages of static page content. Also it is not uncommon for the pages to *not contain*...