April 21st – Another Big Google Ranking Change (for mobile equipped sites)

4GHadmin | 09 March 2015
Reading Time: 2 minutes

mobile in hands, mouse and keyboardApril 21st is another ‘big SEO day’ around the world from a google ranking index perspective. Why a month and two weeks from the date of this article? Well, that is when Google will be changing the technique that they use to rank websites (with a higher high ranking factor given to websites that are also mobile friendly).

Google started highlighting ‘mobile friendly sites’ in results last year. Google states that their April 21st update will have ”significant impact” on all mobile-based searches from all around the world. Google justifies the change in saying that searchers will see better search results.

Details on how ranking will effect desktop searches is yet to be seen; but it is anticipated that websites that are also mobile friendly will be given extra elevation by Google’s new algorithm.

These changes are good news for mobile webmasters. Also, it should help motivate webmasters and designers that still don’t have a mobile website deployed to create one.

Since the middle of this past year – mobile internet users started outnumbering those who surf the web with a desktop computer (or laptop). Today’s mobile users certainly expect that websites will display most effectively on their choice of device. Webmasters who want to test their website’s ‘mobile compatibility’ can use Google’s tools for detailed information.

Overall the change means that owners of websites that are not ‘mobile-friendly’ as of April 21st, 2015 can now expect to see their search rankings and traffic take a significant downward hit.

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SEO, the past, the present, and your website’s future…

4GHadmin | 16 February 2015
Reading Time: 4 minutes

The-Future-of-SEO

This is a primer for most of you who are interested in but maybe still unfamiliar of what is meant by the the three letter acronym, SEO, which is short for “Search Engine Optimization”; its history and current day evolution.

Over the past 25 years, the way we live and work has been utterly transformed by the creation and evolution of the world wide web or “internet”. As the volume of online content has soared, search engines have become central and essential and critical to an infinite number of our online “web surfing” searches & experiences.

SEO is an Internet marketing strategy, and takes into account how search engines are programmed (and updated) to function, what people are most likely to search for, the actual search phrases or keywords entered into search engines – and specific for each target audience.

So let’s quickly travel back a quarter-of-a-century to a time before tags, keywords, “backlinks”. clickthrus, and content optimization – to explore how SEO has changed and developed over time -> and what those changes now appear to tell us about the future!

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Canadian VPS Hosting: What’s It All About?

4GHadmin | 13 January 2015
Reading Time: 6 minutes

4goodhosting_canadianvps

If you’ve been on the hunt for a web hosting company, you’ve probably heard the term “virtual private server.” A VPS is similar to a dedicated server in look and feel as a web host customer, but essentially they are a different service.

Canadian web hosts offer fast broadband speeds, good technical support, and friendly service. Canada’s infrastructure and Internet backbone are among the world’s top 10 services. You won’t find better service in North America, but what type of service should you get?

Why Move On from Shared Hosting?

If you currently use shared hosting, these plans are great for simple blogs or websites that don’t get much traffic, but there are some disadvantages with shared hosting. First, you share the same servers with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other customers and their sites. Shared hosting is inherently slower, because you have hundreds of other sites using the server’s resources. If one site gets hacked, your site could be vulnerable if the site left a security hole on the server as a whole. Basically, you are at the mercy of several other site owners, and you have no options.

Next, you can’t customize your server’s settings. Maybe you have a custom API, maybe you have specific site settings, or maybe you just want to set up multiple sites on one account. All of these aren’t possible with shared hosting. VPS gives you these options.

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Canada Places Sixteenth in the Latest Web Index

4GHadmin | 22 December 2014
Reading Time: 4 minutes

4goodhosting-building-canada

With the release of the Web Index Rankings, that measure economic, social and political benefits from countries across the world on December 11, there are some interesting results. The United Kingdom, as well as the Scandinavian countries continue to lead the index, and Canada ranks sixteenth.

The World Wide Web Foundation began to produce this index in 2012. The Foundation utilizes a wide variety of data that measure the web’s contribution to the world in the areas of social, political and economic progress.

The report furthers that the web has allowed a level-playing field with unprecedented access to information as allowed by Sir Time Berners-Lee and CERN when they choose not to patent the creation of the web. The report states, “Today, armed with little more than a smart phone, anyone– regardless of where they were born and or how much they earn– can start a business, record a music video, crowd fund an invention, take courses with Nobel Prize- winning professors, or even launch a successful campaign for office.”

In this new index, some chilling statistics have come back to the Foundation. Up thirty two percent from last years numbers, political censorship has increased to forty percent. This included the blocking of political or socially sensitive content. In the news lately has been the issue of net neutrality both here in Canada and the United States, and there is a lack of net neutrality in seventy four percent of countries. It should be noted that according to the Sunlight Foundation, only one percent of the US public is opposed to net neutrality, and this is after a plea from late night show host John Oliver on Last Week Tonight. Even with an estimated 1.8 billion internet users still with little to no right for privacy nor freedom of expression, the governmental control of the web continues to this day.

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Penguin 3.0 Google ‘refresh’ update and free backlink checking tools:

28 October 20144GHadmin Image
Reading Time: < 1 minute

4GoodHosting to the rescue
Hi Folks. Have you checked your website rankings in google this week? The recent ‘Penguin 3.0’ update, also called a refresh, has just been completed. Supposedly only 1% or so of search queries are affected by this recent Google search index update. Simply, Google support ( support.google.com ) recommends avoiding the following linking techniques:

Excessive link exchanges

  • Buying or selling links
  • Using automation to create links
  • Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
  • Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature
  • Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases
  • Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites

So if you haven’t participated in ‘link spamming’, you should not need to worry, but it is always good to verify anyways, and perform any cleanup that may be necessary to improve your website’s search ranking.

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We recommend the following free online tools to help diagnose your website’s relation to Google’s new update and guidelines.

http://www.analyzebacklinks.com/

http://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar

http://www.ahrefs.com

http://www.backlinkwatch.com/

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/

&

http://www.traffictravis.com/

From our review of these tools, we recommend you try Traffic Travis first.

Traffic Travis offers:

  • Keyword Tracking
  • Backlink checker for individual pages
  • Competition Analysis
  • Find Keyword ranking based on different geo specific search engine
  • Page rank checker for Individual pages
  • Sitemap Support
  • Domain name research
  • SEO warning for individual pages
  • Filters to refine your report
  • Adsense finder
  • Keyword research

We’re always interested in hearing about your experiences with various tools and strategies employed in your search engine optimization efforts. Whether you’ve encountered challenges or celebrated victories, your insights are valuable to us.

If you find yourself seeking professional guidance or are overwhelmed with the SEO landscape, we’re here to assist. We offer affordable SEO link building services tailored to enhance your website’s authority and visibility effectively. Our experienced team employs innovative strategies, ensuring quality backlinks that boost your site’s ranking and traffic.

Moreover, we pride ourselves on offering the best white hat SEO services in Canada. We adhere to ethical and effective SEO practices, ensuring that your website not only ascends in rankings but maintains its position, offering long-term benefits.

Feel free to reach out to us for personalized advice, or explore the opportunity to hire our skilled team to elevate your search engine rankings. We’re committed to delivering exceptional results that align with your business goals. Contact us anytime at support@4goodhosting.com, and one of our friendly agents will promptly respond to address your needs and queries.

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MarketGoo is a slick and powerful solution to optimize your website for search engines

4GHadmin | 30 September 2014
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Dear 4GoodHosting customers and visitors ,

 

We have replaced the “Attracta” search engine optimization tool with a more modern and effective “seo” optimizer for your website. With this new included tool, MarketGoo, you will be able to get your website ranked faster and higher; helping you with your overall website marketing.

marketgoo-logo

We hope that you decide to take advantage of the new service. As with most new services we offer, this one comes with your hosting package at no additional charge.

How does the Marketgoo application work?

MarketGoo’s unique toolset will analyze your website regularly. It will suggest from an assortment of about 200 actions and recommendations; which will be tailored specific to your website and industry. So every single task that you complete while using MarketGoo will be driving your website closer to online success.

Where will you be able to find it?

If you remember seeing the “Attracta” icon, you will now see “MarketGoo” there instead, in the “Marketing tools” section.

How can it benefit you / your website?

The Marketgoo application helps you market your website and enables you to improve your website ranking in google and other search engines by “optimizing” your website’s Search Engine Visibility, Link Building, and Social Media marketing; and it also benchmarks your site against your competitors. It will help you perfect your website’s structure and content and to help you with promoting the relevant keywords associated to your business.

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Internal links: How they can either degrade or improve your website ranking on Google and other engines

4GHadmin | 16 September 2014
Reading Time: 3 minutes

InternalLinks

Most of us already know about backlinks, or links from other websites, and how google currently assigns a quality score to different backlinks. For instance if Google thinks many of your site’s backlinks are “spammy” – or not high quality, then they will lower the pagerank score for your whole website. However, if most, or all, your backlinks have good ‘link juice’, or Google interprets most of them as high quality backlinks – especially from other well known or well trusted websites, then you ranking will improve more than significantly.

Internal linking is another subject area. Your internal, or intra-site, links also play a role in how search engines determine the quality of your website, and give a ranking boost to those that follow the below guidelines.

Tip A: Internally link your blog content (you really should have a regularly updated blog for many seo benefits) to your service and/or product pages or category pages.

Essentially if you publish a new blog article that has something to do with a service or product that you are offering (on the same website; as we are focusing on internal links on your website), then definitely link to the relevant page from your article. This applies to category pages as well.

The best method to get higher rankings for certain keywords or phrases is to optimized your link’s anchor text for the correct category or product/service page. So, for example, if you offer ‘solar shingles’ as a product, and you are based in Vancouver, then linking from your article or press release to your product page with the link ‘Vancouver solar shingle sales’ or ‘Vancouver solar shingle installation’ will get your product or service page highly ranked for those keywords. When doing so, also try to make it look natural and smooth within the context of your sentence in your article.

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Close variant keyword matching – the cost just went up for pay-per-click advertising

4GHadmin | 02 September 2014
Reading Time: 3 minutes

One effective, yet costly, way to help drive traffic to a website is through the use of PPC (pay per click; google-adwords) advertisements. Yet google has found a way and, by the end of the this month, are enforcing us all to use the new adwords policy termed “Close variant keyword matching”. But what does this really mean?

This article is not authored by google, therefore we will skim over the positive spin that they would automatically inject into their new campaigns, but rather focus on some potential drawbacks.

If you read google’s articles about it, it sounds like a good thing; and google plays it up that advertisers already using the new close variant method claim to see an increase in traffic. That may be true: but what is the cost of all the extra ad-impressions being served out?; and perhaps also errant click-thrus by people searching for something ‘slightly different ‘.

So say that you have been used to paying google to advertise your site for keywords ” women’s floral skirts “. So, under the new policy, on he default close-variant matching option “Broad match”, web searchers typing in “women’s floral shirts ” or even “colorful female shirts ” might be presented with your ad. Google might *think* there is a possibility that perhaps a typographical error happened when a person typed in ‘shirts’ and your ad for ‘skirts’ might pop up. This is just one tiny example, as the total domain of possibilities is immense. Perhaps you can quickly think of your own example(s) too.

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Maybe a mobile website addition to your standard website is just what your business needs?

4GHadmin | 26 August 2014
Reading Time: 3 minutes

mobile website builder
The advantages of attaching mobile website to your existing website can be highly advantageous in today’s mobile-equipped world population. When people are out and about, and certainly at times when someone’s home internet service is interrupted, people look up information through their Android smartphones or iPhones. When our friends, family, and neighbors are commuting in their cars or on a train or just walking around downtown – they after often web searching for local, national, or even global businesses.

Every day, the number of mobile devices (especially smartphones, android tablets, i-pads) grow rapidly. Literally hundreds of thousands more worldwide are upgrading from old-style cell phones to larger screen smartphones. Most everyone eventually will choose to have the internet in their pocket. And already today every other person doesn’t leave home without his/her cell phone, especially teenagers; as everyone knows.

Mobile websites are really new marketplaces, like desktop/laptop websites have created; and are always winning new customers to a greater degree each new day.

Start here: mobile website builder

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Google: Backlinks Still Crucial for Rankings

4GHadmin | 17 June 2014
Reading Time: 3 minutes

With Google’s recent algorithm updates, webmasters have started believing that links no longer work and it does not matter to Google anymore. But the truth is, links are the most crucial element in Google’s ranking algorithm and it is really important to have the right links if you want your website to rank high and attract more visitors. Google’s Matt Cutts has also stated that links are very essential if you want to rank high.


From transcript:
“Backlinks are a really, really big win in terms of quality for search results [… ] backlink relevance still really helps in making sure we return the best, most relevant, most topical set of search results.” This was confirmed by Matt Cutts in another video:

 

Last month, Matt Cutts confirmed this in another video:

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