September 2, 2014

Hosting Related, Security, SEO Related

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. read_more For a detailed description of the new policy, you can go to these two links that google has presented to the public on this important new topic: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2497836 http://adwords.blogspot.de/2014/08/close-variant-matching-for-all-exact.html ... together with the following exhausting, potentially headache inducing, document that google has published named "Keywords to the Wise-Cultivating Demand with Keyword Strategies": http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google-keywords-to-the-wise.pdf 4GoogHosting does not always endorse Google's ranking algorithm adjustments, strategies, and new procedures that we are all occasionally compelled (by Google) to follow. A computer program that google frequently internally hacks on and tweaks is the new judge, jury, and ranking executioner for all of us. The topic...

August 26, 2014

Hosting Related, SEO Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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 read_more 68% of private-smartphone users have already purchased products or services (like eBay, Amazon, hotel bookings, AppStore, etc.) with their mobile device. {source, Spiegel Online} From the same poll, 70% - about just as many, of all smartphone users expects a simplified mobile website, or app, when visiting a online business. Nobody really prefers to pinch & zoom, especially when filling out information forms online; when a fingertip can hardly find the submit button. Recently published studies still conclude that current mobile Web user experiences are generally still awkward and governed by small display sizes and the poor design of companies' web sites. You or I, or us, really cannot do much about the physical design of today's smartphones, but small businesses can improve the effectiveness of web sites. The aim must be to design mobile websites to enhance, rather than detract from, the small screen size smartphone experience. Our 4GoodHosting mobile website builder solves all these issues for you in one simplified editor/publisher. You will be able to keep you existing big-screen website, but when someone looks up your site on a mobile device, the mobile website will be displayed automatically....

August 11, 2014

Domain Related

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Dear 4GoodHosting customer, now google is suggesting that everyone buy a SSL certificate for their website; in yet another way they are declaring it will soon give websites a small boost in rankings. They are using this with the excuse that such websites are less vulnerable to giving up site passwords via unencrypted network traffic that your website generates as pages traverse across the internet. We are not excited nor promoting this; hoping that we sell more SSL certificates to our customers. We generally think google has too much power already to be calling such absurd shots anyhow. And we barely make any profit on our SSLs, as they are already priced quite near rock bottom. http://4goodhosting.com/sslcertificates.html We however, just want to express on our blog, not only this 'insight' into google's next ranking algorithm, but we just want to show you a sampling of how a lot of people out there feel about this 'non-content'-related google search engine ranking factor: List of some intelligent and eloquent tweets on the topic: The information on my site wouldn’t change if it were switched to https, so should https really be a ranking signal? — Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski) I wonder how many people at Google today are laughing at everyone ready to jump through hoops again. Next “Now we want floating snowflakes.” — Melissa Fach (@SEOAware) Google launches domain registrar. Google encourages use of SSL for SEO that are a massive pain to buy. Next, Google starts selling SSL… — Ben Hall (@Ben_Hall) read_more Should have invested in the SSL company instead of sinking all my money into that lousy Google authorship photo service. — Cyrus Shepard (@CyrusShepard) I suspect it won’t be long before we start seeing secure certificate ads with “Get your Google ranking boost with our SSL certs!” — Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) Today is a day I wish I was in the SSL Certificate business. — lorenbaker (@lorenbaker) Wonder what graph of SSL certificate sales will look like June-Sep for providers — Chris Gilchrist (@hitreach) @RavenJon if G was really that behind SSL, they’d allow us to switch our sites without it being considered a site “move” #justsayin —...

July 28, 2014

Domain Related, Hosting Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The time has come. You decide to redesign one of your website’s pages or just a part of a page or three. Now do you want to spend unknown number of hours writing new code? Most likely not. That is why a hosted website builder application is a good tool for anybody who has a website and and need to make occasional changes. If you want to move one of your website's page objects, such as an image or a video, using a 'sitebuilder' you simply drag it to its new spot and drop it into place. This does not require any coding knowledge and takes just a few seconds. Having a website is one of the first steps towards business growth and success. It is pretty much imperative for most every business to have an attractive and easy to use website to promote their services and products. However, developing a website from scratch is a time-consuming task. No need to feel bad. Most people lack basic knowledge of web designing and all the various commercial or shareware utilities and tools with which a website is created. Even less people have code programming and editing skills. But if you want to have a professional looking website for your business without spending a week or three learning HTML and/or PHP, etc., then an online website builder can quickly come to your project's rescue. The clear advantages of working with an Hosted Website Builder ( link: 4GH Website Builder ) 4GoodHosting is one such host that offers a website builder with 100+ business templates pre-populated with relevant text, images and navigation; and each one displays on-screen ready to edit. Small businesses can realize their vision and complete their website quickly. Intuitive WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editing and drag-and-drop design modules help enable success for people of all skill levels. read_more The first step is to select a template, typically from the categorized listing of templates by business type. Next is to insert your custom content in it, text, images, videos, slideshows, music, etc. The next step is to 'publish' your changes after your updates. No FTP program is...

July 15, 2014

Domain Related, Hosting Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

There are various reasons and benefits that your website will get when you get a hosting service from Canada when compared other countries, especially the United States. The first and foremost reason is that, as a Canadian, choosing a service from Canada, you keep your dollars in Canada. This amount is small but the act shows you are loyal to your country. Yet there are some other points that you need to consider. One of the top most reasons that come to many people around the world as an effect of Snowden NSA-leaks is data and personal privacy. Hence, 80% of Internet traffic is routed through US servers and 8/10 of the Internet fiber optic bone links flow in and out of US. It is difficult to have the data and usage guarded totally by NSA surveillance as of today. However, having your website files stored within Canada, and the ability to directly connected to your local Canadian webserver., reduces the chance that your personal information has been read and/or stored by state-actor spies or otherwise malicious entities. Today, many Asian, American, European and Middle-Eastern companies are looking for Canadian web hosting service providers for hosting their business applications and mission-critical websites. The reasons vary across companies, but since 2012 and 2013 4GoodHosting is consistently signing up more customers from US and other countries and it's only been speeding up. read_more 4GoodHosting is completely operated and owned by Canadian citizens. Two of the data centers are situated in Toronto and Vancouver. Canada is a politically stable country and has not seen any majorly damaging earthquakes over 300 years. It has rarely seen power outages and high energy costs as are in California and in other states of the United States. When we consider world wide, Canada is a well-known leader in complex Internet technology and tele-communication. Clients of Canada web hosting companies can have significant advantages like faster loading times, which is a direct result of utilizing a web hosting provider from Canada. Though it is hard to resist the US and other overseas companies with their bait of rock-bottom prices offered, don't overlook Canadian hosting option as Canadian companies...

July 1, 2014

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 2 minutes

On modern websites, information is often stored within databases (db's) instead of directories on a web server. Therefore, simply storing your website's files into directories of your website won't deliver all the data your website application presents and also needs to operate. So you should occasionally carry out a database backup. If you utilize a MySQL database, you should use phpMyAdmin to backup your database from inside its graphical interface. To backup your MySQL database with phpMyAdmin, try this procedure: 1. Login to phpMyAdmin. It is possible to find it via your hosting control panel, such as cPanel. 2. Click the database name for the left column in the page. 3. Click on the Export tab at the top of the phpmyadmin page. read_more 4. Select either "quick" to show minimal options or "custom" to display all of the options. 5. In case you chose custom, choose the tables you would like to backup and set the other available choices. Otherwise, proceed to step 6 6. Find the output format. The default is SQL and sufficient for most backups. 7. Click "Go" 8. Save the SQL file into the folder of your choice. The advantage of this method of backup are that you get instant access to your SQL data right on your pc. The disadvantage is also that it's on your computer. Ideally, you should have critical data backed up in a safe location. You can transfer your backups into an external device or use some sort of remote backup system to copy the backup data straight from your server.

June 24, 2014

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Overall, the benefits of VPS hosting can easily be summarized as affordability, guaranteed resources, full control, better performance, and security & reliability. Let's learn about them at length. 1. Guaranteed Server Resources Different from shared environment which share precisely the same server resources, VPS offers guaranteed resources to every virtual server. Each vps possesses its own storage, data transfer usage, CPU, RAM, IP, and other resources. Even if the neighbored vps consumes too many resources, it cannot influence your site resources and performance. So you don’t need to worry about your site affected by the malicious websites on the same server. 2. Full Control VPS hosting offer full control and root usage of users. As a result, it is possible to setup the OS as you want, install your preferred control panel and software, and do anything you like to handle and configure your server without restrictions. You can tweak the server to enhance the server performance and install custom applications and scripts to run unique websites; which is not accessible in the shared environment. read_more 3. Better Performance In the shared hosting environment, users always share exactly the same available resources of a server, which results in the hosting performance decreasing. However, with guaranteed resources, VPS hosting has better performance than shared web hosting. The websites are powered by sufficient disk space and CPU resources to enable them to run well all the times. Besides, with the complete root access, users can customize the server to boost hosting performance. 4. Better Security and Reliability VPS hosting is alot more secure than hosting that is shared given it is able to install custom and strict firewalls. On the other hand, shared hosting features a big risk on security due to the neighbored websites. If one person's web site is hit hard, all other websites on a single server get their processing threads influenced. However VPS hosting eliminates this risk. It enables users to test their code strictly and configure custom rules to filter the traffic which which prevents the site being affected by the neighbor attacks or hacks. 5. Affordability A dedicated server boasts the above mentioned advantages, except affordability....

June 17, 2014

Hosting Related, SEO Related

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: read_more From transcript: “Backlinks still have many, many years left in them [...] for the next few years, will continue to use links in order to assess the basic reputation of pages and websites.” Link building can be difficult, but it is required. If you do not do it the way it has to be done, then link building can get you penalized. It is important to know, in and out about link building if you are looking for success. Better not use spam automated link building tools and services that can create backlinks in abundance. It will not do good for you. Link building and link spamming are different from each other. With link spamming your website is likely to get penalized and link building will get your website on top of Google’s search results. Though having great content in your website is important, but if the web page does not have good backlinks, your web page will not be noticed. How to get these good links? Good links attract targeted visitors to your website. Links that are of value will not only increase engine rankings, but will automatically attract real visitors. Though, link building is time-consumptive, it is worth it. The journey through the intricate world of backlinks reveals one undeniable truth: backlinks are still a vital part of SEO. From their historical significance to their evolving...

June 10, 2014

Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

It has been roughly a year back the truth that US national security agency NSA has been accumulating huge amounts of personal data on American and other international citizens secretly. This year, a year after Edward Snowden leaked the documents on how and to what extent government has collected huge amounts of personal data, he has become an icon of the movement that demands more transparency from government agencies when they are using Internet technologies for the purpose of surveillance. However, transparency is just a one-way street in that regard to this heavily corrupted and non-constitutional government. They want to know everything you are doing but they want you not to know how they are spying on you, and are secretive in dozens if not hundreds of other ways. Dauntless and strident calls for reforms in government government surveillance are coming from the companies that hold large amount of customer and client data on the Web. The compulsions come in the form of threats of prosecution through court orders issued by the Foreign International Surveillance Court. The orders seek the information without intimation of such a move to the customer. This sounds like the Nazi era during World War II. The companies who are responsible for personal data are working over strengthening their security backbone through encryption of customer's data at least at some key junctions. The move came after NSA managed to intercept customer data flowing between various private data centers of Google. read_more Tech companies are of the view that government can take considerable steps to safeguard the consumer's data and protect them from unreasonable access to government agencies. But in contrast, government seems to be working in violating the 4th amendment rather than protecting it. An interest group named Reform Government surveillance is working to bring together the large hitech companies like Google, Yahoo, Apple, Dropbox, Microsoft and others to address the government to help them in bringing back the lost faith in their Internet user community. They believe that the surveillance of the government should be constricted by clearly demarcated by laws and the laws should be transparent. They should be proportional to the risks and...