Cheap Windows Hosting – Tips to Protect your Ecommerce Site from Cyber Criminals
CheapWindowsHosting.com | With the festive season fast approaching, online retailers everywhere will be busily preparing themselves to meet the bulk demands of customers but another community is also waiting in the wings. The festive season is a primetime for nefarious cyber criminals or hackers looking to steal important data of your customers. With passage of time, hackers are improving their skills and are founding quite innovative ways to trace online behavior and steal credentials of the customers.
From stealing debit/credit card information to attacking privacy and poaching ecommerce data, this online nuisance has many shapes and names. But, with the right security approach you can save your e-commerce website from these cyber criminals. In this article, you can read some effective ways to protect your Ecommerce site from these cyber criminals. Let’s start.
1. Choose ecommerce web hosting service provider wisely
People often think that the e-commerce site security is mainly based on the software they write. Although the web application itself must also be secure, the other chief factor is the Web Hosting being used. Between shared and dedicated hosting, dedicated is more secure and ideal for ecommerce business. Shared hosting has multiple users all are accessing the same server: running under the same operating system, using the same resources, etc. Dedicated hosting plan, whether it be a co-located server, a dedicated server, or a VPS, only a single user is using the server (or in the VPS case, the virtual server).
Having multiple users on the same server (shared hosting) is dangerous in two ways. First, if any of the shared users has wrong intentions, he could exploit what your site has to offer. For example, if your site has a world-writeable directory, that directory is writable by some other users on the server (unless extra steps are taken). Second, if any of the shared users has right intentions, but is running a website or software that has security flaws, your website is also vulnerable to the threats. Therefore, it is recommended to choose dedicated VPS hosting providers. In addition to this, you must know how to secure virtual private server so that no hacker can break into it.
While selecting good web hosting service providers, you should also check out the type of software and hardware that they use. Those hosting service providers which use advanced and updated software should be your prime choice because this software is not easy to hack and comprise all essential security features. Similarly, you should be well aware of your web host’s hardware. Web hosting hardware requirements include storage and it is imperative to know what kind of storage hardware your service provider is offering. If you are planning for e-commerce website, then hardware plays a crucial role in it.
2. Keep Data Encrypted
All the data that flows between the web server of company and the website of customers should have encryption in order to stay away from eavesdropping or a phishing attack. SSL authentication is a must-have for e-commerce sites from small as well as large retailers. SSL effectively protects sensitive data that travels across the web and encrypts sensitive information such as credit card details and passwords. The SSL certificate makes these important data unreadable to everyone apart from the intended recipient, protecting it from cyber criminals and hackers.
3. Be PCI Compliant
In addition to using SSL protection, it is recommended to ensure that your ecommerce website is PCI compliant. Any merchant who accepts debit/credit cards, both offline and online, must be compliant with the PCI Security Standards Council and meet all the regulations in order to ensure they are keeping the payment data of customers secure. Merchants who are not in compliance with PCI Security Standards Council face tough penalties.
4. No Need to Store Sensitive Data
It is quite risky to keep confidential information, such as credit and debit card details,of your customer on your server because it can possibly entice an attacker to steal such sensitive information. Further, in accordance to PCI Standards it is forbidden to store such sensitive data. You should keep only the minimal amount of data to complete refunds and charge backs, and clear out stores regularly so as to comply with the PCI Standards and to give identity thieves nothing to steal. You can also prevent online fraud by verifying addresses and CVV2 codes for all the online transactions.
5. Insist on Strong Passwords
Many people fail to create a strong password that is designed to protect. As an online retailer it is your responsibility to insist on strong passwords when your customers set up accounts on your site. It’ll not only protect all the sensitive information retained at the back end of your ecommerce website, but also minimize site breaches. A strong password has a minimum amount of characters and contains a mixture of symbols, letters and numbers.
6. Penetration testing
Penetration testing or ethical hacking is a necessary step in ensuring your ecommerce site is inaccessible to the hackers and fraudsters. There are many penetration testing companies out there offering the services you need to put protection and customer privacy at the top of your agenda as a retailer. The ethical hackers will attack on your server with the intention of finding security weaknesses. After the penetration testing, they will make a report to enlist all the weakness in your security threats. This report helps to make your website completely secure and keep your web assets safe.
Cheap Windows Hosting – Tips to make ASP.NET MVC application SEO friendly
CheapWindowsHosting.com |One of the big benefits of using an existing system such as WordPress or Magento, is many things simply come out of the box. One of these things is being “SEO – friendly”: being optimized for the search engines.
Note: While not all WordPress installations are perfect for SEO, it’s usually really good compared to custom installations.
When you’re working in ASP.NET MVC, chances are you’re dealing with a custom solution. That is great; it just means we have to do a lot of things on our own. In this post I will go through the most important elements. However, SEO changes all the time and we don’t really know what triggers Google – so it’s worth continuing your research afterwards to find out if there are things that are forgotten.
I decided to split the changes into “Required”, “Important” and “Nice to have”. What category I placed them in is a bit random and based on my own experiences and what I’ve read – but use it more as a general guideline.
Required on-site SEO optimisations for ASP.NET sites
Make site is indexable
This has less to do with ASP.NET MVC than it has to do with JavaScript frameworks such as Angular. While there is a lot of discussion about whether Google reads these JavaScript MVC sites correctly or not, there is an important point to make:
All your content should be served from the server at the point of load. Yes, it’s nice to load it dynamically using a JavaScript framework or jQuery call, but that can and will hurt SEO. Make sure to always load it when you serve the view from the controller.
Note: If you Google “Angular SEO friendly” you will get plenty of methods on how to do this in practice.
Unique title tags for each view
One of the most important ranking factors is the <title> tag in the header. Make sure to set a unique one for each view in your application – also small pages such as contact and about.
For dynamic pages this is the most important, as you would often have your main content there.
Important on-site SEO optimisations for ASP.NET sites
Sitemap in ASP.NET MVC
Sitemaps are important to tell the search engines exactly what pages you have. Unfortunately you have to make them yourself.
- For smaller sites, it’s quite simple. Either you do it manually (which works if you don’t have any dynamic content) or automatically (more on that in a second). You simply make a controller called Sitemap, and makes sure your site responds to calls such as /sitemap and /sitemap.xml .
- For bigger sites it’s challenge. If you have a million pages which a previous customer of ours did, you need to run an underlying console job that generates the sitemap.
- To help you build it there are a couple of Github projects to help you, and here is an example:
https://github.com/maartenba/MvcSiteMapProvider
Only one <h1> on each page
Each page, when fully rendered, should only have a <h1> tag. The <h1> tag is what the page is about, and should be the main headline.
Canonical URL on pages
It’s in general a very good idea to put a canonical URL on most views. The idea is you tell Google what the real version of the URL is.
A typical example is you have the same page that gets indexed with unique query strings:
- ?tracking=qwerty
- ?ref=query
The idea is you then make a canonical URL and refer to itself. So if your view is placed on http://domain.com/page, and you have a version such as http://domain.com/page?ref=query, you should have a canonical URL that is http://domain.com/page.
Remove /home/ from URL in ASP.NET MVC
In a lot of ASP.NET MVC projects, many pages end up having a /home/ url. An example could be /home/contact. The shorter and more clear URLs, the better. And this is just a quick small thing to update inside the route file.
Prev and next on paginated listings
When you have a paginated result, it’s worth implementing the “prev” and “next”. It’s a way of telling the search engines you are on a paginated result, and what the next and previous pages are.
Cheap Windows Hosting – Tips to Manage Your Social Media Marketing
CheapWindowsHosting.com | Today I will share my article about how to manage your social media marketing. The number of recommended actions and suggested tasks that social media managers must engage in can seem downright overwhelming. Not only are you supposed to update dozens of different profiles every day, you have to connect with potential new followers and monitor your company’s branded keywords in order to manage any negative mentions you encounter. And more.
To prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed and unable to get anything done at all, refocus your efforts on the following daily social media habits made up of tasks you know you can complete. Doing so should help you to form positive brand recognition and responsive follower bases — without driving yourself crazy over everything you could be doing.
Tips to Manage Your Social Media Marketing
Create Your Plan
If you have no execution strategy, your content is likely going to fall through the cracks. Set a limit on how many tweets you have to publish per day. This number can be adjusted as needed, but having a number you have to hit, even something as small as four tweets per day, gives you a benchmark and a goal at the very least.
TIP: Investigate how often your competitors are posting and conduct industry research to see the ideal amount of content to publish per day on each channel. You want to be active, but not overly active.
Knowing Your Customer’s Social Media
Each social channel needs to be treated as a separate entity. There can be content that is spread across all channels – for example if your business was recently acquired by a global company, this is likely news you want to share across the board, but you should adjust your strategy depending on the audience for that channel.
For example, LinkedIn tends to have a more business-focused audience looking for in-depth, educational content, compared to Instagram, which is likely to have an audience looking for engaging visual content. Pay attention to your follower demographic on each channel to publish content that appeals to them.
Be Active in Customer Service
If a visitor tweets at your handle or posts on your Facebook page and never receives a response, trust is lost. Due to your lack of communication, the dissatisfied potential lead is now turning to your competitors to seek answers to their questions. On the other hand, when you deliver a thoughtful response in a timely manner that visitor is flattered and intrigued by your brand. It’s humanizing to take the time respond to a personal inquiry, and it builds your authority.
Don’t Forget Google+
Many of you may be raising an eyebrow, but Google+, often viewed as the Facebook wannabe, is not going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s only becoming more and more important for businesses to actively engage and grow their circles on this platform. When you search on Google you will notice that Google+ is everywhere. If your business is actively posting on Google+, you will receive essentially free ad space when users search for you on Google.
According to a Moz.com survey, leading marketers believe the number of Google +1’s plays the second largest part in determining search engine rankings. This isn’t proven to be true, but clearly marketers are seeing that Google+ is affecting the visibility of their content on Google.
Google+ is also integrated with YouTube, so users are unable to comment on the platform without being opted into Google+. Essentially Google is making having a Google+ account pretty much essential.
Cheap Windows Hosting Tutorial – How to Migrate an OSCommerce Store to a New Server / Web Host
CheapWindowsHosting.com | This article covers how to move an existing OSCommerce shop from one web host or server to a new web host or server. Use this guide to help you.
1) Download ALL files from server.
Connect to the old server and download all files for exact copies.
2) Create backup of Database through MYphpAdmin
Log into MYphpAdmin and export the store database, uncompressed to a location on your PC. Also log into the OSCommerce store admin area, click tools and create a backup of the database to also save to your PC. The database created through MYphpAdmin will probably be called localhost.sql
3) FTP files to NEW SERVER
Log onto your new web server via ftp and upload all store files in binary. Note the includes/configure.php file may re-write its permissions which will need to be corrected later.
You may need to correct permissions on other oscommerce files and folders as per the oscommerce installation guide.
Files and folders include; catalog/images to 777, catalog/includes/configuration.php to 644 (444 on some servers) catalog/admin/includes/configuration.php to 644 (444 on some servers), catalog/admin/backups to 777 and catalog/admin/images/graphs to 777. See OSCommerce installation manual for correct permission settings on this file.
If you use the HeaderTags SEO contribution you may need to change the file permission for catalog/includes/header_tags.php to 755 (or 777). See documentation for Header Tags SEO.
4) Install Database on NEW SERVER through MYphpAdmin
Log onto your MYphpAdmin and create a NEW DATABASE, this will be your new database for your oscommerce store, you can use the same name as your old database if possible as this will make things easier.
Assign a user to the database, again if you can use the same user as your old database it will keep things simpler.
We now need to edit the exported database of your old store. We’ll be using the localhost.sql file generated by MYphpAdmin previously.
Open this file in notepad, dreamweaver or your preferred html/code editing application and find the following entries.
- Find the entry on line 19: ” — Database: `database_name` ” and change to the correct name of your NEW DATABASE you created earlier. eg: `newdatabase_name`
- Then find the entry on line 21: ” CREATE DATABASE `database_name` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci; ” and change to the correct name of your NEW DATABASE. eg: `newdatabase_name`
- Then find the entry on line 22: ” USE `olddatabase_name`; ” and change to the correct name of your NEW DATABASE you created earlier. eg: `newdatabase_name`
- Lastly find line 21 & 22 where it says ” CREATE DATABASE `database_name` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci;
USE `database_name`; “
Delete these two lines. This prevents MYphpAdmin creating the database again.
Note: If you have ever restored your OScommerce database you will find entries of this in the sql file as well. Just search for your database_name within the sql file to find all entries. Dreamweaver’s search results feature is good for this.
Note2: It’s probably possible to create the new database using the localhost.sql file and not deleting the entry on line 21 & 22 as described above. This was merely the procedure we took and have explained here.
5) Change variables in 2 configure.php files
In includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php you need to change some variables to make the store re-install work. Open these files in notepad, dreamweaver or your preferred html/code editing application.
If your store is going to be installed in the root on your new server you only need to edit a few values. These would include DB_DATABASE, DB_SERVER_PASSWORD, DB_DATABASE_USERNAME, DIR_FS_CATALOG, HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN, HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN, HTTPS_SERVER, HTTP_SERVER.
If you want to install your OSCommerce store into a DIRECTORY on your NEW SERVER and previously it was installed in the ROOT of your OLD SERVER then do the following.
- If you are uploading the copied site to a Directory you need to specify this in the following files: includes/configure.php – admin/includes/configure.php.
### includes/configure.php ###
[where ‘store’ is the new directory name. where ‘user’ is your server account address. where ‘yourdomainname.co.uk’ is the web domain of your new website.]
<?php
define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://yourdomainname.co.uk');
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'http://yourdomainname.co.uk');
define('ENABLE_SSL', false);
define('HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'yourdomainname.co.uk');
define('HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'yourdomainname.co.uk');
define('HTTP_COOKIE_PATH', '/store/');
define('HTTPS_COOKIE_PATH', '/store/');
define('DIR_WS_HTTP_CATALOG', '/store/');
define('DIR_WS_HTTPS_CATALOG', '/store/');
define('DIR_WS_IMAGES', 'images/');
define('DIR_WS_ICONS', DIR_WS_IMAGES . 'icons/');
define('DIR_WS_INCLUDES', 'includes/');
define('DIR_WS_BOXES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'boxes/');
define('DIR_WS_FUNCTIONS', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'functions/');
define('DIR_WS_CLASSES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'classes/');
define('DIR_WS_MODULES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'modules/');
define('DIR_WS_LANGUAGES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'languages/');
define('DIR_WS_DOWNLOAD_PUBLIC', 'pub/');
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG', '/home/user/public_html/store');
define('DIR_FS_DOWNLOAD', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'download/');
define('DIR_FS_DOWNLOAD_PUBLIC', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'pub/');
define('DB_SERVER', 'localhost');
define('DB_SERVER_USERNAME', 'database_user');
define('DB_SERVER_PASSWORD', 'userpa33word');
define('DB_DATABASE', 'database_name');
define('USE_PCONNECT', 'false');
define('STORE_SESSIONS', 'mysql');
?> ### admin/includes/configure.php ###
[where ‘store’ is the new directory name. where ‘user’ is your server account address. where ‘yourdomainname.co.uk’ is the web domain of your new website.]
<?php
define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://yourdomainname.co.uk/store');
define('HTTP_CATALOG_SERVER', 'http://yourdomainname.co.uk');
define('HTTPS_CATALOG_SERVER', 'http://yourdomainname.co.uk/store/');
define('ENABLE_SSL_CATALOG', 'false');
define('DIR_FS_DOCUMENT_ROOT', '/home/user/public_html/store/');
define('DIR_WS_ADMIN', '/admin/');
define('DIR_FS_ADMIN', '/home/user/public_html/store/admin/');
define('DIR_WS_CATALOG', '/store/');
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG', '/home/user/public_html/store/');
define('DIR_WS_IMAGES', 'images/');
define('DIR_WS_ICONS', DIR_WS_IMAGES . 'icons/');
define('DIR_WS_CATALOG_IMAGES', DIR_WS_CATALOG . 'images/');
define('DIR_WS_INCLUDES', 'includes/');
define('DIR_WS_BOXES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'boxes/');
define('DIR_WS_FUNCTIONS', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'functions/');
define('DIR_WS_CLASSES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'classes/');
define('DIR_WS_MODULES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'modules/');
define('DIR_WS_LANGUAGES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'languages/');
define('DIR_WS_CATALOG_LANGUAGES', DIR_WS_CATALOG . 'includes/languages/');
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG_LANGUAGES', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'includes/languages/');
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG_IMAGES', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'images/');
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG_MODULES', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'includes/modules/');
define('DIR_FS_BACKUP', DIR_FS_ADMIN . 'backups/');
define('DB_SERVER', 'localhost');
define('DB_SERVER_USERNAME', 'database_username');
define('DB_SERVER_PASSWORD', 'userpa33word');
define('DB_DATABASE', 'database_name');
define('USE_PCONNECT', 'false');
define('STORE_SESSIONS', 'mysql');
?>
--------------------------------6) Edit .htaccess file for SEO Url’s Contribution.
If you are using the SEO Url’s Contribution
[http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2823] and your NEW SITE is installed in a SUB FOLDER on your NEW SERVER where previously it was in the ROOT of your OLD SERVER you need to make changes to your .htaccess file in the catalog/ directory.
Open the .htaccess file in your preferred html/code editing application and find this entry on line 4: RewriteBase /
and change to: RewriteBase /store/
[where ‘store’ is the directory name]
Conclusion:
We hope you found this useful and informative. We accept there may be better methods or approaches to moving an OSCommerce Store to a New Server but please feel free to comment below with any additional information.
Equally please feel free to link to this article as it may be of interest to others facing a similar problem.
Cheap Windows Hosting – Tips to Boost SEO with Social Media Twitter
CheapWindowsHosting.com | Hello guys today I will share some tips to boost seo with twitter, lets stared it. Twitter has a long history with Google, leading to a lot of confusion about whether signals from Twitter influence Google’s search results. Today I’m going to sort that out (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). Then I’m going to look at current best practices for upping your influence in search using Twitter.
Google Loves Twitter: Yes, No, Maybe So?
A few years ago, there was a lot of buzz about search engines using social signals to impact SERs. For a little while, Google did index tweets. Starting in 2009, Google had access to the full “fire hose” of Twitter’s data stream. A year later, Matt Cutts told us t 
hat these signals would officially be picked up by Google’s algorithm.
But the partnership was over a couple years later. In 2011, Google’s fire hose agreement with Twitter ended and Google rolled out its own proprietary social network, Google+.
Fast forward to this year, when Cutts went on record saying that “signals” from Twitter (and Facebook) are not part of the Google algo. The breakup between Google and Twitter would seem to be official.
But even now, a lot of SEOs insist that Twitter and Facebook activity weighs into Google’s search results. Most of the arguments point to observations that there’s a high correlation between activity on certain Twitter (or Facebook) accounts and their rankings in search engines. But, come on, folks … dust off your high school stats: correlation is not the same thing as causation.
The correlation is almost certainly about this: If you publish great content and it gets a lot of social shares, chances are it will also get links. Links, not shares, are influencing the search engine results.
The most damning evidence against Google using Twitter data currently comes from Stone Temple Consulting’s recent analysis of how and when Google indexes tweets. Those guys found that only a few tweets are being indexed and those that are coming mainly from superhero accounts of more than a million followers. And … the indexing is slow.
Conclusion: Google is almost certainly not indexing tweets in any way that brings SEO benefits to most of us. So let’s take our eggs out of that basket—at least for now.
Twitter Still Helps With Google SEO. Here’s How.
Assuming you agree with my arguments above, here are some key ways you can use Twitter to help improve your resultss with Google. It’s not a comprehensive list, but these will give you the most bang for your buck.
Encourage Natural Backlinks.
Links are still the foundation of the Web and the Google algo. They’re our best way of telling Google that our websites and content are valuable and trustworthy. And Twitter’s one of the best social avenues for building organic connections that lead to natural, “honest” links. So-the best way Twitter can boost your SEO is for building natural links.
You have to start with great, useful content. Wherever you publish this—your own website/blog, Google+, LinkedIn or guest blogs, etc.,—you can use Twitter to attract readers who will want to share and link to it.
To encourage this, you’re going to need to focus on Twitter habits that will:
- Build genuine community and connections
- Make your tweets more shareable
Best Practices in the Twitterverse
To build genuine community on Twitter, focus on these actions:
- Engage. Be as social as you would at a party. Be friendly, follow others, retweet, and link to content of people you’d like to do the same for you. Especially try to do this with influencers in your industry or field.
- Share useful content. Spread your tweets out through the day and know when to post. There’s lots of data out there about optimal times and quantities for tweeting, like this advice from Buffer.
To make your tweets more shareable, try these things:
- Use Twitter cards. These are bits of code that enable you to improve the user experience by adding photos, videos, product descriptions, and more to your tweets.
- Use keywords from traditional SEO. This is a way your search and social teams can work synergistically together. Chances are Twitter users will also use some of the same keywords you’ve researched for your SEO campaign. Experiment with using them in tweets and as hashtags.
Optimize Your Personal Information
One of the easiest tricks is to optimize your identity on Twitter. Have a complete profile that includes some keywords for your industry, and a username that’s the same as your company name, individual name, or product. Twitter bios are highly rankable in Google when people search for your name or company.
Use Twitter to Understand Your Customers.
Lastly, as a corollary to the point above about using SEO keywords in tweets, you can use Twitter as a rich source of trending keywords for SEO and/or topics for content creation. The search/social synergy goes both ways.
Key Take aways
To wrap up, the key SEO benefit from Twitter right now is link building. Bing is using signals from Twitter to influence its results, but the preponderance of evidence is that Google is not. This could definitely change. In the meantime, the ideas outlined here will help you maximize Twitter for Google SEO benefits.
The only constant at the intersection of search and social is fast and constant evolution. So stay on top of the trends. Use these best practices now, but keep your eye on the future.
Cheap Windows Hosting Tutorial – Tips to Improving Your Alexa Rank
CheapWindowsHosting.com | Hello today I would like to share my post about how to improve your alexa rank? Many people ask us: How can I improve my Alexa Rank? We understand how important this metric is for you and your business. As a public metric, potential advertisers, investors, and partners will look up your Alexa Rank and use it as a way to evaluate the value of your business. For this reason, improvements in your rank can make a real dollars and cents impact on your bottom line.
For those of you who are new to Alexa or unfamiliar with the Alexa Rank – it is a single metric that provides a quick summary of a site’s performance (yours or your competitor’s) relative to all other sites on the web. If you aren’t focused on it, you may not be doing everything you can to maximize the value and visibility of your business. In all, the authority of your site on the web is translated as your Alexa Rank.
But before we dive into how you can improve your site’s Alexa Rank, we should take a step back. It’s important to understand the makeup of the Alexa Rank so you understand how you can make it better.
Let’s get started.
What is the Alexa Rank?
Your Alexa Rank is an estimate of how popular your site is relative to all other sites. The Alexa Rank answers the question: Compared to all other sites, how is my site doing? Note that since rank is a relative measure, your site’s rank is not only dependent on that site’s traffic, but also on changes to traffic on other sites.
How does Alexa get its data?
Alexa has a large traffic data panel consisting of millions of people all over the world. Based on the data from this sample, Alexa estimates the number of visitors to all sites on the Internet. It’s a complicated calculation that involves correcting for biases as well as identifying and discarding fake or spam traffic. Our data scientists are the best in the business and they make sure the data we present is free of noise and non-human data, so you can make the best decisions for your business.
How is the Alexa Rank calculated?
Every day, Alexa estimates the average daily visitors and pageviews to every site over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews over the past 3 months is ranked #1. The site with the least is ranked somewhere around 30 million. If no one in our measurement panel visited a site over the past 3 months there is no rank at all for that site.
How does the number of visitors to a site affect the Alexa Rank?
If you plot the number of visitors to a site versus the rank it looks something like this:
At the head of the graph is Google.com, which gets a huge number of visitors and is ranked #1. The sites at the “head” end of the plot, like Google.com, get a huge amount of traffic compared to the sites on the “long tail” at the other end. The important thing to notice is that because of the shape of the distribution, a very small change in the number of visitors to a site on the long tail results in a large change in rank.
However, the closer you get to the head of the graph, the more visitors it takes to move up a rank. There’s a huge difference in traffic to a site ranked 10 versus a site ranked 200.
Getting a more accurate Alexa rank
To get a more accurate Alexa Rank you can certify your site’s metrics on Alexa. Sites with certified metrics have their metrics directly measured by Alexa instead of being estimated based on information from our data panel. Certifying your site’s metrics provides a more accurate rank, but not necessarily a better rank! There are several other benefits of Certified Site Metrics, but a more accurate Alexa Rank is just one of them.
So, how do you get a better Alexa rank?
There are several tactics that will help improve your Alexa Rank:
- Produce engaging, original content, updated frequently that provides real value to your audience. Content that strays from this motivation fails to build loyal audiences. When readers find resources valuable and informative, they engage with future content and share among their networks (link building), introducing new visitors that potentially turn into customers. Quality content is also being rewarded by search engines like Google, which is taking steps to get better answers faster for the end user.
- Get more related sites to link to your website. Otherwise known as inbound links, this tactic helps search engines clearly define your niche and also increases the trust and quality of your site. In other words, authoritative inbound links (from sites that are performing well) give your own site credibility. This tactic must be supported by producing engaging, original content, because why lead targeted visitors to your site if they don’t want to stay?
- Internal links, on the other hand, are links that lead from one page or post on your site to another. These are beneficial because they guide visitors through your website (i.e. website navigation), keeping them engaged with relevant and related content. They also contribute to site links, which are the sub-links that appear in a search engine below your main page link. But again, creating top-notch content goes hand in hand with any internal linking strategy so make sure the content you produce is relevant and of value to your visitors.
In all, both inbound and internal links help search engines understand the content of your site(s) and determine how valuable it is to visitors. But while an important part of your online strategy, you should use linking appropriately. Excessive linking can reduce the credibility or readability of your site and may be penalized by search engines.
- Find keywords that are driving traffic to your competitors and optimize your site for them, or buy PPC campaigns for those keywords. By doing a little keyword research you can understand what your audiences are searching for and how. In a way, keyword research is learning to speak your customers’ language in the context of their needs and desires. Inbound Marketing Agents shared a great infographic on the 5 fingers of a keyword placement strategy that will help you pick the right areas on your site to place your target keywords.
- Understand your competitors’ marketing strategy and learn what works. There are several reasons why analyzing your competition matters, but in a nutshell competitive analytics puts your own site analytics into context. Thus, giving you a clearer understanding of what metrics are important, what strategies are working (for you and your competitors), and allows you to identify and anticipate industry trends. All of these angles help inform your overall strategy and allow you to make more knowledgeable business decisions that will positively affect your position in the market.
- Follow SEO best practices on your website. SEO is a very important strategy that deserves a significant amount of your time and attention. But SEO is not just about improving the promotion and visibility of your website. It’s also about making your site better for your customers who use it to interface with your brand. Without a good user experience you have little hope of keeping or converting your customers.
There are countless resources for learning about SEO, but Alexa offers both SEO and Full Site Audits generated automatically as part of our Insight and Advanced plans. You’ll get specific instructions on how to improve search engine rankings, usability, page performance, back linking, and more.
Cheap Windows Hosting – Tips Why Your Web Hosting Business Needs a YouTube Channel
CheapWindowsHosting.com | Running a small business – regardless of whether it is a web hosting business or not – is hard work.You have enough on your plate. You are doing the marketing, setting up the products, getting in touch with customers… Your ‘to do’ list keeps growing, and growing, AND GROWING! Why on earth would you contemplate setting up a YouTube channel for your business and spending all that time messing around with video camera.
Well, there are a number of reasons, and some of them are quite compelling. Of course, the main reason is the number of users. YouTube is popular – very popular indeed.
Let’s look at some facts:
- 4 Billion YouTube videos viewed daily
- YouTube receives 800 MILLION unique visitors monthly
- 60 hours of video are uploaded every MINUTE
According to Alexia the most popular websites globally are:
- Google.com,
- Facebook.com and
- YouTube.com!
Those stats alone mean you simply can’t miss out on YouTube as a marketing avenue. But beyond numbers here are some other reasons why having a YouTube channel for your business is a compelling idea:
1. Global accessibility
There are only 23 countries that have ever censored YouTube, and aside from countries like North Korea or Iran, the level of censorship it has received has been limited.
That means YouTube is available in the vast majority of countries and for companies with global aspirations – or, like in web hosting, a company in a business that is global in nature – it offers substantial opportunities.
2. A compelling medium
Nobody forces you to watch YouTube.
The only reasons people visit YouTube are entertainment and enlightenment.
Think of what YOU use YouTube for…
If you are in a business like web hosting that relies on technology, what better way would there be to show people how to do something.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jvPSTd4TEQ[/youtube]
3. YouTube offers excellent advertising opportunities
- When you watch a video that is of interest to you, you can click on a link and visit the website of the company that made the video.
- Depending on which statistics you look at, upwards of 80% of video viewers do just that – compared to other advertising medium such as pay-per-click advertising, this is a phenomenal return.
- Despite such effectiveness and the enormous numbers of people who use YouTube, the advertising opportunities available through YouTube are curiously inexpensive.
If you have YouTube channel, it’s fairly cost-effective to generate a reasonable following.
4. Demographics: EVERYONE uses YouTube
Your target audience probably uses YouTube.
Whereas in the past its demographic was firmly the young, these days YouTube is the domain of every age group – grandparents uploading videos of their grandchildren, kids uploading videos of their scout camps – everyone is there, without exception.
One of the reasons for this is YouTube is no longer bound to the PC.
It’s accessible through mobile devices and these days people are just as likely to be watching YouTube on the move or on their living room’s smart TV.
5. YouTube directs users to the content they need or want
Regardless of advertising, by its nature, YouTube directs users to the content they want or need.
Google’s algorithms are particularly good at determining what type of advertising you might click on, and likewise with YouTube – use YouTube for a couple a weeks and the “Suggested for you” videos you receive really are the type of videos you might be interested in viewing.
Chances are if there is something specific in your channel that a certain group needs or wants, they will be directed to it by YouTube.
6. YouTube is designed for business
YouTube also has a clear focus on business – for instance, why does it need analytics?
How many people log in to their YouTube analytics to see how many people saw that video of a mouse frightening a cat?
Probably very few.
As with Google Analytics, YouTube’s analytics functions can let you know where you customers are and what they are interested in – invaluable data.
7. YouTube is designed for browsing
As I implied earlier, the chances are if someone hits your YouTube channel, they are going to shift through some of the other videos you have uploaded.
That might lead to them visiting your website… and that might lead to a sale!
It’s worth the risk!
8. YouTube makes an impact
A picture paints a thousand words, but a moving picture?
Just what sort of impact does watching a video have on a consumer?
The answer is fairly obvious. Would you prefer to buy a mobile phone after reading a description or viewing a videoed demonstration?
Yes, of course, quality matters and many videos produced for branded YouTube channels are often extremely well produced and have good visual quality – and cost a pretty penny.
9. YouTube offers a human touch
Informing people how to do something via video also shows the people that work for your company.
It gives them names and offers visitors background.
In a world of auto-responses and waiting in queues for calls to be transferred, a YouTube channel can show the real people that make up your organization.
10. Your competitors don’t have a YouTube channel
Simply put, if your website has a link to a YouTube channel and your competitor’s website doesn’t, that kudos to you!
11.Instant customer feedback
As with Facebook, YouTube allows you to ‘like’ something, but unlike Facebook, you can also ‘dislike’ something as well.
Put your products in videos and count up the ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ and you have a pretty good idea of what’s going to be popular and what’s not.
View comments and you can find out why people like or don’t like a certain product.
Final comments…
Of course, nothing is ever that simple, and a YouTube channel takes some maintenance.
For example, you have to optimise your channel so it stays on top of certain keywords, but generally, a YouTube channel is a cost-effective and fun way to engage customers.
Cheap Windows Hosting – Tips Website Optimization Through SEO
CheapWindowsHosting.com | This article will explain some of the major aspects related to websites that can at least make you feel better if you are involved in web development.
If you are managing or holding rights for a website or are going to launch a website to the market then you can be puzzled by several questions or things related to the future and the scope of your website. These questions can take your mind off of them.
Some of the most baffling questions that can arise are:
- How to increase website traffic
- How to increase website hit counter
- How to make it more user friendly
- How to optimize it
- Concept of SEO
This article will explain some of the major aspects related to websites that can at least make you feel better if you are involved in web development.
SEO | Website Optimization
SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO makes your website easier to find on search engines with their related search content and terms.
For example: if a person is trying to search for “5G” in Google or any other search engine then the person is most likely to click the first few links that comes out on the very first page on any search engine, people barely visit the secnd or third pages of the desired searched content page.
So why don’t you work in this direction to solve all the puzzles related to your website and website content. SEO helps your website and web content to have a higher priority for the desired searched content.
Some of the most useful aspects of SEO are shown in the following:
Easy web content provides tools to help you with your on page SEO.
SEO | Principles
There are no big secrets to optimizing a website for search engines. In fact a few basic principles are, if followed properly and wisely, can heavily increase your website traffic and your website pages will end up against other web page results from popular search engines.
There are millions upon millions of pages of web content out there and while you can work hard to build and update a great website, it can be quite frustrating to not get the desired results and more traffic.
Although there are thousands of websites, today around 90% of searches are conducted on just a few of the most popular web sites.
They are primarily:
Each search engine uses a specific search algorithm. The search engine displays results depending on these algorithms.
SEO | what we can do
Now the question arises, what can we do to increase website optimization and traffic to our website.
We can use several tools, built-in applications and some good coding environments to do these things.
SEO | Tools
This article will explain the tools that can be used to get the desired results.
These tools are:
HTML Editor
If you are already holding a website then you can use a HTML editor to control and edit your coding structure and also optimize it.
What you need to do is edit the following sections:
- Meta Tag
- Page Tile
- Description
- Elements within your page
Website Editor Toolkit
This is a powerful toolkit that will provide you total control over creating a new website and have total control over the layout and design. It is also known as a web content builder toolkit. Using it you can maintain:
- Layout
- Design
- Content
Cheap Windows Tutorial – Tips for Using Facebook To Boost Your Ecommerce Store
CheapWindowsHosting.com | In this post I will share about Tips for Using Facebook To Boost Your Ecommerce Store. With more than 1.5 billion registered users, a figure continuously rising, Facebook is a social networking powerhouse. It’s worth more than the annual output of many countries and has users from all across the globe. The amount of data Facebook has, and the detail with which people willingly share information about them on Facebook, makes it any marketer’s dream platform. Just look at some of these stats.
- Facebook has more than 1.5 billion registered users.
- More than 699 million people log in to Facebook every day.
- An average person spends around 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook every month. This makes it a total of 700 billion minutes globally.
- More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.
Currently there are thousands of Facebook pages where people are selling products directly to their fans. While it’s not always the best strategy to depend completely on Facebook for ecommerce sales, it certainly can be a part of your broader ecommerce plan.
If you have an ecommerce website or an online store, you can use the power of Facebook to reach your target customers much more effectively and drive them to your online store and boost sales.
Here are a few tips for using Facebook to strengthen your ecommerce store.
1. Content is the King – Even on Facebook
Quality content is the king everywhere. But the kind of content that resonates with Facebook users is very different from blog content or articles. Here, if you write 1000 word status updates, very few of your fans will have the patience to read till the end.
Facebook users like short, catchy, visually appealing and action oriented posts created in a fun way. Above all your posts should provide users value. Demonstrate your knowledge about your niche and products in your status updates.
Also, don’t be obsessed with your own product images, links and blog posts all the time. Regularly share stuff from other blogs and websites that your fans may find useful (not from your competitor’s site, of course).
2. Optimize Your Store for Facebook Engagement
Your ecommerce store should also be optimized for maximum Facebook engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares). You can do that in a number of ways. Offer sign up via Facebook. Make sure your store’s product pages have clearly visible social media sharing widgets. Add the Facebook comments widget to your product pages so that the user comments are visible on their Facebook profiles as well. Add a small statement below the product images encouraging users to share on Facebook.
These are basic things but many ecommerce stores don’t have them in place because of which they fail to take advantage of Facebook.
3. Use Engaging Descriptions and Smart Calls To Action
Whenever you add new products to your store, you’d most likely share them on your Facebook page. When you do that, make sure you add an engaging 1-2 line description with your links. Engaging or catchy descriptions drive more clicks as compared to simple link shares.
Use high engagement words in your posts. Research shows that status updates that include the words Facebook, Why, Most, World, How, Health, Bill, Big, Says and Best get most engagement and shares. Similarly,
- Posts with less than 80 characters attract 23% more engagement.
- Using emoticons increases comments by 33%.
- Question posts get 100% more comments.
- Quotes get 26% more Likes and 19% more shares.
Also, make your descriptions action oriented and add clear calls to action with them. Facebook recently introduced the “Add Call to Action” option with status updates. Always use it with your status updates and link shares.
4. Boost Sales With Contests, Deals and Special Offers
Facebook users love contests and discount deals. Running competitions is found to be the most effective engagement technique for ecommerce stores. Almost 35% users “Like” Facebook pages to participate in contests. So give them what they want. Ask questions and use “Like for Yes, Comment for No” type techniques for feedback. These small fun activities can boost your engagement significantly.
5. Focus on High Quality Visual Content
I’ve already mentioned the importance of content, but visual content deserves a separate mention. Facebook users love visual content like images, info graphics, videos, memes etc. Image based content gets almost 40% more interaction as compared to simple text posts.
But to get the best results, you need to mix up your updates with a combination of text only, text+image and image/video only updates. For ecommerce stores, product images get the highest engagement.
6. Run Targeted Facebook Advertisements
There’s no better paid advertisement mode for ecommerce stores than Facebook advertisements. Facebook Ads have improved drastically over the last couple of years. They’re not only much simpler to configure but also bring much more targeted results as compared to other advertisement modes. You can target users based on their location, interests, gender, like/dislikes, recent activity, pages liked and dozens of other criteria. Start with a small budget of around $50 and test different ads to see what works well for you. Once you understand how it works, increase your budgets gradually.
7. Simplify the Buying Process
One important thing is to make the payment and buying process as simple as possible for your customers. Normally ecommerce stores add a link to the product pages with their Facebook status updates. There’s nothing wrong in doing this, but since it involves multiple redirections, there are high chances that buyers would abandon the purchase mid-way through. A smart option is to use a direct link to the checkout page or, even better, use a Facebook app to accept payments directly on Facebook. There are several Facebook ecommerce store apps where you can configure your products for direct selling on Facebook.
8. Use Facebook for Customer Support
A great way to show your fans and prospective buyers that you care about them, is to move the customer support to your Facebook page. Ask users to share their product feedback, compliments/complaints and concerns of your Facebook page. Actively respond to such comments, and ensure quick problem resolution. This will show the world that you really care about your customers.
9. Use a Combination of Manual and Automated Posts
Most ecommerce stores serve customers belonging to multiple countries, due to which they need to operate in different time zones. Of course you can’t stay on Facebook all the time. So it’s recommended that you automate some of your posts to stay in touch with customers from all time zones. You can use the BufferApp or HootSuite for this purpose. But keep posting manually as well.
Research shows that the engagement levels are 18% higher on Thursday and Friday, and 32% higher on weekends. Every day, around 1PM gets the most shares and 3PM gets the most clicks. Keep these time slots and days in mind while scheduling your automated posts.
Conclusion
Like any other social network, Facebook thrives on user engagement. The more closely you engage your audience through high quality visual content, contests and comment responses, the more action you’d be able to drive from them. But remember that your goal is to route users from your Facebook page to your store, because that is where you can convert them into subscribers – your biggest online asset.
Cheap Windows Orchard 1.10 Hosting Recommendation
CheapWindowsHosting.com | Cheap and reliable Orchard 1.10 Hosting . To choose the Orchard 1.10 Hosting for your site, we recommend you going with the following Best & Cheap Orchard 1.10 Hosting company that are proved reliable and sure by our editors. Orchard is a free, open source project whose goal is to deliver applications and reusable components on the ASP.NET platform. The Orchard project has delivered a .NET-based CMS application that allows users to quickly create content-driven websites, and an underlying framework that allows developers to provide additional functionality through extensions and themes.
Best & Cheap Orchard 1.10 Hosting
Features
- Default values for content fields
- Configurable locations for Modules and Themes (see this documentation page on how to configure them)
- Parameterized snippets
- Orchard.Resources now contains common assets to be reused across core modules
- Layer rules have been moved to Orchard.Conditions for reusability
- Orchard.TaskLease has been deprecated in favor of distributed locks
- Orchard.jQuery has been deprecated in favor of Orchard.Resources
- Editor tabs support
Improvements
- Use of Nuget packages instead of the /lib folder
- New extension methods for migrations
- Upgraded to .NET 4.5.2
- Recipes and Import/Export improvements
- Orchard.exe help command enhancement
Orchard 1.10 Hosting Review
HostForLIFE.eu review is based on their industry reputation, web hosting features, performance, reliability, customer service and price, coming from our real hosting experience with them and the approximately 100 reviews from their real customers. HostForLIFE.eu offers a variety of cheap and affordable European Windows ASP.NET Shared Hosting Plans with unlimited disk space for your website hosting needs.
HostForLIFE revolutionized hosting with Plesk Control Panel, a Web-based interface that provides customers with 24×7 access to their server and site configuration tools. Some other hosting providers manually execute configuration requests, which can take days. Plesk completes requests in seconds. It is included free with each hosting account. Renowned for its comprehensive functionality – beyond other hosting control panels – and ease of use, Plesk Control Panel is available only to HostForLIFE’s customers.
HostForLIFE.eu Orchard 1.10 Hosting Review
HostForLIFE.eu has a very brilliant reputation in the community. According to the statistics of the reviews we have received by now, almost all of HostForLIFE.eu customers are quite satisfied with this web host.So far there have been many reviews received from their real customers, the 98.0% of customers are highly happy with the overall service received, and there is nearly no complaint surprisingly.
HostForLIFE.eu offers various ASP.NET hosting plan on their shared hosting plan. HostForLIFE.eu lowest plan named Classic plan start from €3.00/month, Budget plan from €5.50/month, Economy plan from €8.00/month. And the powerful plan named Business plan from €11.00/month. A 30-day money back guarantee is provided to eliminate purchasing risks.
Hosting Reliability
“Their servers never go down.” – when we surveyed on the reliability of HostForLIFE. We have set up an uptime testing through Pingdom to monitor a Orchard 1.10 site hosted on HostForLIFE.eu platform since July, 2013. So far, we haven’t detected any serious downtime which is longer than 10 minutes. HostForLIFE.eu always commits 99.9% hosting uptime in the real world. In the November 2014, there was no downtime and network interruption, and the testing site was 100% online.
HostForLIFE.eu Customer Service
The company provides 24/7 Europe-based technical support via email and live chat. Thus, customers can contact the experts immediately. What’s more, the company has promised that the first response time is in 2 minutes, which averages under 30 seconds in the real world. The support staffs of HostForLIFE.eu are all well-trained to resolve any technical problems effectively. Therefore, there is no need to worry about the capability of these people.
Besides, multiple FAQs are included in the section of Community Q&A, which provide people with the solutions for some common issues specifically. The Guides & Whitepapers offers multiple useful tutorials for site building.
HostForLIFE.eu is Highly Recommended for Orchard 1.10 Hosting
After reading so many outstanding points and positive reviews, the answer is very clear. HostForLIFE.eu is highly recommended for people who are looking for a multi-purpose, reliable, fast and trusted shared web host at an affordable rate. In case that you are planing to have your web presence or move out from your current horrible web host, HostForLIFE.eu is one of the best choices you won’t go wrong.
