September 10, 2024

Domain Related

Reading Time: 20 minutes

Welcome to Edmonton, a vibrant city in the heart of Alberta! As long as you live in this area, you've probably heard about how it is known for its buzzing arts scene, breathtakingly beautiful river valley, and annual Fringe Theatre Festival. Well, the city is not only exciting but also alluring for business. But in today's world of computers and the internet, great products and services are just not enough. You want to hit the right customers, at the right time, and most importantly, in the right place. And that's where Local SEO comes into play. How to make a difference for your business online, particularly in this great city of Edmonton, is what you've been thinking. Whether you are in Edmonton or focusing on mastering SEO for pet services in Saskatchewan to boost your local business online, well, look no further. This in-depth guide will take you through all you need to know to give your business the extra boost it needs with SEO for Edmonton businesses. And we promise to make it as fun as possible because who said SEO needed to be boring? What is Local SEO? Local SEO is the digital marketing way of optimizing your online presence to gain more business through relevant local searches. Different from traditional SEO, which targets global rankings, Local SEO narrows down to location-based searches. For example, if one searches Google for "best Thai restaurant near me," he is in need of local results. In other words, Local SEO helps prospective customers locate your business at the very instant that they need a product or service that you have on offer. This is very important for these businesses whose target lies within their immediate geographic vicinity. Why is Local SEO Important for Edmonton Businesses? As the local culture and engagement with the community grow in cities such as Edmonton, local search optimization can no longer be considered optional. Here are a few reasons you should start paying more attention to Local SEO immediately : Receive Targeted Traffic: It’s more advantageous for businesses that are nearer to the place. In other words, it most likely ensures a greater likelihood of conversion...

September 10, 2024

Domain Related

Reading Time: 11 minutes

There can be plenty of instances where something is made easy for you but choosing to go ahead with it isn’t wholeheartedly in your best interests. What may be ideal for some may be only passable for others, and if what’s made easy is only passably beneficial for you then you might not opt to proceed with it. Even if doing so requires little to nothing of you. If you’re one of the thousands of people with a WordPress website though, providing your site with the most recent WordPress updates is both easy and darn-near universally beneficial. Each time one of them is rolled out and made available you can be sure that the WordPress update benefits you’re going to receive from installing the update are going to give your site more of the resources it needs for optimal functionality. That’s always the aim for the software pros that put these updates together, and if they didn’t make each of them better than the last they wouldn’t continue sitting in that chair for long. The same can be said for any software update put together for any web publishing platform. WordPress speed improvements are always a focus and that’s because faster page load speeds is always a high priority for every DIY webmaster who is focused on good SEO for their website. Page load speeds factor into how well a site will rank with search engines, although it’s only one of many factors that go into that. But it definitely has sway, and installing a WordPress update will almost certainly mean your website becomes faster. The need for better speed is one reality, and another ongoing one that seems to be more important all the time is website security. There are more threats to a site now than ever before, and if your site becomes a source of malware infection or something similar for visitors it can spell real trouble. Especially if you have a WordPress business website. Fortunately WordPress security updates are also a part of every newest offering. It's also a huge plus that these updates will often featuring security patches that are designed to address specific known...

September 3, 2024

Domain Related

Reading Time: 14 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...

August 27, 2024

Hosting Related, SEO Related, WordPress Hosting

Reading Time: 11 minutes

For a good long time after the Internet got its start the only type of domain extension that was available for websites was a .com extension. It’s still the most ubiquitous and popular among them, but nowadays there are all sorts of domain extensions and the most notable ones are all the ones that are country specific. While the .org and .biz types have 3 letters to them just like the .com extension, all of the country ones will just be two letters after the dot. A .ca extension is advisable for businesses in Canada, and we encourage you to discover the benefits of a .ca domain today. This is part of the broader topic we’re going to look at with this week’s blog entry here, and it will be more about Canadian business marketing tips online. No one is going to need to be made aware of how essential it is to have a strong online presence for a business nowadays, and here at 4GoodHosting that’s the reason we have many of the Canadian web hosting clients that we do. You need to have quality website for your business, and it needs to have reliable web hosting behind it so that it is available to prospective customers 24 hours a day. This is because what would be considered local businesses are only local in the physical sense of the term – they’re often taking orders or however else it is they do business from all across the country and possibly even outside of it. Local business growth strategies are going to be built on the idea that not much is explicitly local anymore when it comes to all of this. One of the things that the nature of our business provides for us is a lot of insight into what works well and what doesn’t with local SEO strategies in Canada. We say that fully aware of the fact that what defines ‘good’ SEO is changing all the time, and in fairness that’s the way it should be. If you’re looking for a provider you want the ones you see on page 1 of SERPS to be legitimately good...

August 20, 2024

Domain Related

Reading Time: 16 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...

August 13, 2024

Domain Related

Reading Time: 11 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...

August 5, 2024

Domain Related

Reading Time: 13 minutes

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...

July 30, 2024

SEO Related, WordPress Hosting

Reading Time: 13 minutes

Long gone are the days when a storefront had to be at least a 3-walled location and with a shopkeeper behind a counter in front of one of them. That was the only means you have of selling products up until nearly 30 years ago, but since then the advent of the Internet has given us eCommerce. You can do all of that selling online now if that’s what you choose to do. For many people it’s exactly what they choose to do, because it’s a more cost-efficient means of doing business and it means expanding your customer base in a way that is simply unmatchable by any other means. What we’re going to do here with this entry is compare WordPress vs Shopify for anyone who is set to take their store online, and is trying to decide on the best platform for an online store. We’ll be right up front and say for us it is WordPress, and there’s plenty of reasons why that’s the way we feel. The aim here will be to have you thinking similarly once you’ve read through the entirety of this blog, because there are Shopify alternatives. If you are willing to put in just a bit of work to optimize your WordPress site you’ll be amazed at how it can be just a conducive to selling a lot of whatever it is you’re bringing to the online market. One thing is not debatable is that you will be taking on much less monthly operating costs when you do business online with a WordPress site rather than getting Shopify’s services. But cost savings are just the smallest part of the advantage here with WordPress for eCommerce. The newest version of WordPress is even more user-friendly and intuitive for users as well as putting much more capability in their hands. That applies to WordPress sites for online stores too, and the value in going this route is even more pronounced for smaller businesses and especially ones for people who are running a small business entirely on their own and selling what they make online. You can optimize your store with WordPress, and if you’re...

July 22, 2024

WordPress Hosting

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Anyone who simply browses the Internet and / or peruses what it has to offer and doesn’t have a website on the Information superhighway is going to have a different prerogative with using the web. At least compared to those who do have a website and especially if that site is giving online visibility to their business as well as a means for customers to make purchases without visiting a brick & mortar storefront of any sort. If that’s the scenario for you and you website you’re not going to need to have the acronym SERPs explained to you, or why there is an ongoing need to improve website SEO. But maybe you’re not familiar with that grouping of characters, and if so we’ll explain; SERP stands for search engine results page. Let’s make an example. Someone who has a business selling custom sports team jerseys is going to know it’s important that their website is on the first page of SERP pages every time someone searches custom sports team jerseys *city name*. And preferably high up on that page, and ideally in the first spot. SEO optimization for a website is the determinant for whether or not that happens. You either have it, or you don’t. And if you don’t then your site isn’t going to be on that all-important first pages of SERPs, and definitely not at the top of it. For our example business owner that means it is VERY unlikely anyone is going to be ordering their custom sports team jerseys from the owner’s business. Being maximum visible online is of paramount importance for any business these days, because 9-plus times out of 10 that is where customers find their provider. This is how it is in the 21st century, and it’s going to be this way from now on. This is why WordPress SEO optimization is so important if you have a WordPress website for your business, and if so we highly recommend looking through a Yoast SEO guide. Yoast is definitely the best plugin for improving search engine rankings for a WordPress website, and that’s what we’re going to look at here with this...