Category: Domain Related

September 14, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Blogging is the best way to regularly create new content on your website. But as it looks, most people set-up their website, and leave it as it is for years. A big percentage of people procrastinate content creation, not really having an understanding or care about the benefits of blogging to promote their business. Google has published the following stats: * About 50% of consumers who search on a mobile device visited that type store or business that same day *About 20% of consumers who perform a search for a local business make a purchase within a day So, business owners should be doing everything it takes to rank higher in internet search results. Some of the most important other strategies include being active on social media and getting listed on local review sites. The most important strategy it turns out is blogging for your business. People are looking for business that appear to be currently active, and who provide informative content concerning what they are interested in. Plus Google and perhaps other search engines too will likely give your web ranking results a boost due to providing fresh, relevant content. This article will go into details about the various blogging techniques used to rank higher in search results. read_more A. Host your article blog on your business’ main domain For optimal SEO benefits place your blog on your business’ domain. (such as “www.mywebsite.com/blog” or “blog.mywebsite.com”). Then if you are lucky enough to acquire inbound links to your blog, you gain links to your business’s main site. Since inbound links are a high ranking factor for websites, increasing the potential for inbound link activity is a good thing indeed. As your blog’s ranking increases, so does the overall net visibility of your website. B. Use keywords, topics targeting your target audience Keyword phrases have been, and will likely always be important for use, for each of your different website pages. But given the rise in usage of mobile phones, tablets and voice recognition technology, this type of technique is increasingly losing its touch. Consumers are likely going to be using natural language via their smart-phones more and more (think Cortana...

September 8, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Connecting with your target audience has always been important. Consumers have come to expect to see businesses on social media platforms... and if you are not e-socializing, then you are already trailing behind. However YouTube has not been the ”go-to” platform to boost business visibility, but trends have changed. YouTube has become increasingly popular for marketers focusing their social media energy. About 70% of business are using You Tube for informational, instructional, or basically marketing purposes. A. Starting a YouTube channel Before creating your channel, first think about your goals and what the purpose of your channel will be. Will it be for promoting your products? Help videos and tutorials? Entertainment or all of the above? Once you determine the best angle to take, then you are ready to start to create a You Tube account and set-up your channel. B. Create a YouTube Account To set up a YouTube channel, you will need to sign up for a Google Account. On Google click “Sign in” then “Create an account”. After that, you are good to go, time to start building your channel. C. The Name of Your Channel The name of your channel can determine whether your channel soars or barely gets aloft. It is usually a good idea to keep it simple and self-title it. Then, you can choose to add suffixes such as -TV and -vision to your name to ensure it stands out as a content-producing channel, for example Vancouver Landscaping TV. read_more D. Channel Description You will want to tell viewers what your channel is all about. The key is to create compelling content is to help your channel stand out from the million other channels. The first 100 characters or so of your description will be displayed on your YouTube, and in search engine results. Create a simplified description that highlights your key content first. F. Add Your Website Links In order for people to find your business, include web links. To link a website on your account, you will need to verify your account first. To do this, you’ll need to go to your Channel Settings and click on the “Verify” button. A...

August 17, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Brand Branding Marketing Commercial Name Concept Branding is an important concept in marketing. It is a persistent form of advertisement and valuable for the continued success of your business. In this article we are going to explore it in depth. Most every company has a brand whether the owners or operators of it are aware of it or not. However, not every business has a brand that matters significantly. So what makes a brand “matter”? What qualities make a brand appear boring, and what makes some brands appear outstanding? Let’s examine what makes brands matter and how to possibly transform your brand from boring to brilliant. Understanding“Brand” Your company’s brand extends beyond a logo and what the colors and design of your website. Branding is what kind of feelings are invoked in the minds of people, the known reputation of your company; their positive, neutral, or negative thoughts are the backbone of your brand. So branding is a complex and difficult thing to measure. Apple Computer is of the best example of brand, so we’ll use it here again. When you think of Apple, you mostly like thing about modern, sleek, thin, elegant, and generally beautiful design. What does the Apple brand make you feel? In other words, think of your brand as the experience you deliver to your users. Brand is built on every aspect from looks to customer service to reliability. Increase your Branding How do you develop a brand that grabs people’s interest? It does take more than a fancy website and fancy logo. It takes asking the right questions. read_more A. Why is your business different? People have more choices than ever. Differentiating your brand is good idea. By catering to every type of customer you wind up strongly appealing to no one. But by taking a unique stand about what you believe is best, you can create a brand that others believe in as well. Think about it: Why would a customer choose you over the competition? B. Additional Value Statement(s) Your personal values likely are the core reasons for doing business in the first place. Why are you doing what...

August 10, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Need some starter help sorting through over 40,000 WordPress plugins? That’s a lot of functionality, and most of it is free. You could spend hours just learning about the basics. This article is here to help save you time. Here are some popular ones that we thought you should consider. 1. Google Analytics Google Analytics (sometimes annotated “GA”) is a valuable tool for measuring and optimizing the performance of your website. In particular the Google Analytics plugin (by Yoast) makes it quite simple to install GA on into your WordPress installation. This plugins delivers all of the benefits of GA. It is being utilized on more than 1,000,000 sites. 2. WordPress SEO WordPress is a great content management platform for search engine optimization. The Yoast SEO plugin for SEO builds upon WordPress’s SEO features. SEO optimization methods are always changing adapting to Google’s ranking algorithm updates, but what will ease the pain is this plugin. It is updated regularly every couple of months to stay updated with current SEO best practices. 3. Intuitive Custom Post Order Intuitive Custom Post Order is a plugin to help you easily re-order the way WordPress displays your posts. This should really be a feature built-in to WordPress. Otherwise without a re-ordering plugin, you will not be able to easily re-arrange the ordering of your blog posts as you see fit. read_more 4. WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart allows you to add an 'Add to Cart' button for your product on any posts or pages. This simple shopping cart plugin lets you sell products and services directly from your own WordPress site and turns your WP blog into an ecommerce site. It also allows you to add/display the shopping cart on any post, page or sidebar easily. The shopping cart shows the user what they currently have in the cart and will allow them to change quantity or remove the items. 5. No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA Simple plugin for adding the new No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA by Google to WordPress login, registration and comment system to protect against spam. Features: * Option to activate CAPTCHA in either login, registration, comment or combination...

August 3, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Summary: "All your data belongs to us." ‘Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don’t know.’ – Steve Wozniak, Apple Founder There are many reasons why Microsoft is offering Windows 10 for free... People like free things and the whole Windows 10 roll-out implies revenue comes from harvesting data and providing it to advertisers, and other agencies, who’s non-productive "peeping-tom" jobs train them to want to know exactly what we are all up to; analyzing every nook and cranny of our otherwise private lives; such as our conversations with our spouses. The core of the Windows 10 issue regarding privacy seems to be right there. People want things "for free" and companies are more than happy to oblige, since people don't mind paying with their privacy. Windows 10 has all sorts of user spying and profiling baked right in. Also, it might be logically stated that you, or a class action suit regarding everyone’s privacy, can’t be eventually thrown at Microsoft because this operating was given out "optionally" and "for free". All of Windows 10’s features that could be considered invasions of privacy are enabled by default. Sign into Windows with your Microsoft account and the operating system immediately synchronizes settings and data to the Microsoft’s servers. That includes your browsing history, saved favorites, and the websites you currently have open - in real-time - as well as saved application states, website and Wi-Fi network names, passwords and any mobile hotspot passwords. Signing in with your Microsoft email, Live or Outlook, account means Windows has access to your emails, contacts, and calendar data. The new Edge browser serves its users personalized ads. Even the Solitaire game is also tied into the mix and now comes with targetted ads. We are stunned that the settings, in fact, all default to “incredibly intrusive”. From experience, we know that almost for certain most average people will just accept the defaults despite any realization of any degree of risk and have no idea how much personal, business, and otherwise private information they are unwittingly and automatically giving away. read_more 1....

July 27, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission helps sustain competition in broadband market The CRTC’s services framework sets out the terms & conditions and rates whereby telecommunications providers are required to partition a percentage of their networks over to their competitors. “As Canadians participate more actively in the digital economy, they will need access to higher Internet speeds to power their broadband homes and businesses. By continuing to mandate certain wholesale services, and including access to fibre facilities, we are continuing our work to drive competition so Canadians have access to more choice, innovative services and reasonable prices. At the same time, we fully expect that companies will continue to invest in their networks, including in fibre technology, to meet the growing needs of consumers.” - Jean-Pierre Blais, CRTC Chairman On July 22nd, the CRTC announced measures to facilitate competition between companies that offer broadband Internet. These measures are intended to provide Canadians with more choices, foster innovation, and provide services at reasonable prices. After conducting an extensive review, the CRTC found that large broadband companies continue to possess leveraged market dominance and anti-competition provisions of high-speed access services and the CRTC is requiring that they make wholesale access to these services available to competitors. * The CRTC will continue to take action to ensure that Canadians have more choices for high-speed Internet services. * The CRTC will continue to mandate access to wholesale services, including high-speed access services, to encourage competition in the broadband Internet market. * Additionally, the CRTC is requiring that competitors have access to wholesale high-speed services of the large established companies that use optical fibre facilities. * The CRTC is encouraging further investment in high-quality networks. read_more The big telecommunications companies of Canada will be required to open up their highest-speed fibre lines to smaller competitors who want to offer broadband services to consumers. The smaller competitor companies currently own only about 10% of the Canadian home internet market, with the other 90% controlled by the big phone and cable companies. Telecom and cable providers are already required to share their copper and coaxial cables with smaller competitors such as TekSavvy, Distributel, and Primus, and will also...

July 20, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

If you send an email to a friend who has a Gmail address, then according to Google’s own admission, “You have No Legitimate Expectation Of Privacy”, as brazenly announced by Google in August 2013. blackmail[blak-meyl] noun 1. Any payment extorted by intimidation, as by threats of injurious revelations or accusations. Would you be surprised to find out that Gmail actually modifies the text of personal emails if either the sender and/or the recipient of the email are using Gmail? You can conduct a test of your own to verify. Just send a Youtube link to or from a Gmail server. You will see that it has automatically replaced the Youtube link with a hyper-linked Title of the Youtube Video! Test it out. Send an email with a Youtube link (such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–qp1hzsDCM ) to your Gmail account. It will show up with the Title of the Youtube video as shown on Youtube itself, instead. This clearly shows that all of our emails are scanned. Did you know that Gmail launched officially over 11 years ago on April 1st, 2004? April Fool’s day. A bit of foreshadowing perhaps? Although the majority of the public has held Google in high esteem, revering them as good “corporate citizens”, past performance has not always been a guarantee of future behavior. In other words, we should not go to sleep, and should remain vigilant to report any malicious activity on their part. Google contends that they have an obligation to report on Gmail users who break various rules outlined in their exhaustive privacy policy. Needless to say most people who sign up for Gmail simply do not take an hour to read over Gmail’s lengthy privacy policy. Also, as stated: it is subject to change at any time! Gmail might not ultimately fit into the above definition of blackmail, however the payment being extorted doesn’t necessarily have to be a payment in “money”. In today’s world, “information” is a form of currency, which can be traded with a 4th party for real money or other favors, which can be secretly transacted under contract. In such a potential situation the recipient Gmail user would...

July 13, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Have you had an idea to create an online, or e-commerce store? It is certainly possible to sell products over internet the if you have the proper resources, passion, time, and dedication. No doubt there is plenty of competition out there, but building and managing an ecommerce website has at least become easier and more affordable then ever before, especially with 4GoodHosting’s services. What is needed? There are many free applications available, so setting up a store does not require a large outlay of money to get started. We offer many e-commerce shopping cart selections to choose from - installation is straightforward and easy with our Softaculous application installer. OS Commerce, PrestShop, ZenCart, Magento are some of the popular choices, but there are about about 14 different choices within our installer. These solutions have been built to help get your shop online as quickly and effortlessly as possible. All of them offered for free, at no additional charge with your hosting account. You can read about them and compare their capabilities and test-drive a demonstration within the Softaculous installer. These solutions may not possess the custom perfection of an in-house solution, but showcasing your products on the Internet sooner rather than later is a clear advantage. With a working ecommerce store in place under the domain name of your choice, decorated with the theme of your choice, and populated with your product line its important next to be able to facilitate transactions. Customers are likely only going purchase your products if there are many payment options available that they trust. PayPal typically offers the easiest integration, although their 2.9% surcharge + $0.30 fee per transaction can add up quickly. Once you have made some sales, there is no better solution than setting up merchant accounts with card vendors to enable credit card transactions. read_more Basics About the Look & Feel of your E-commerce store website If you already have an existing business website, and you are expanding to offering a e-store, then your online store should blend in with the theme of your website as much as possible. Doing so adds a proper touch of professionalism that people have come...

July 6, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

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