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Weekly Links Roundup – CRO, Hosting Matters, Online Security

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

Here’s a great case study showing how UX design and visual hierarchy can improve conversion rates of a web page. Simple changes can bring you noticeable results! If your site is not converting as well as it could be, a brand new year is a great time to improve. Get in touch, Red Kite can help.

Where you host matters. Why would you relegate your business website, which hopefully is helping you earn a living, to a $1.99 hosting account? Here’s the latest big outage news from EIG, who bought up dozens of small hosts like HostGator, BlueHost, HostMonster and many more. I was with HostGator for about 7 years after I started Red Kite and loved them to death. Their support fell through the floor when they sold to EIG, with many unacceptable outages and far too much downtime. I left them shortly after for Knownhost (an awesome dedicated and VPS host) and now am with WP Engine (best host I’ve ever used). When you pay nothing, that’s pretty much what you can plan on receiving in return. Do yourself and your business a favor and get a better host if you’re with one of the EIG providers listed in that article.

There’s so much Internet security noise out there, it’s hard to know what to do! Here’s a short but useful list of 8 things you can do to improve online security for your business.

Finally… we lost our 15-year-old dog 2 days after Christmas. I saw this quote yesterday and it made me smile and think of her:

the best thing about dogs is you can act like something really good just happened and they’ll instantly start celebrating too and they have no idea what the context is they’re just always ready to party no matter what

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Creating Trust, Hosting Multiple Sites, Instagram, SSL

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

Not just for websites… learn how attentive UX design can help you create trust for your brand across the board (but note how important good website design is!).

How many business websites do you have? If you’re like one of my clients, you might have 6 – and hopefully they’re not using the same hosting account like his sites are! If you do this, you put all your sites at risk. If one gets hacked, all of them can easily be compromised. The best situation is one site per hosting account – learn more about why this is so. And yes, this does cost more, but there are still a very small number of decent shared hosts out there with reasonable prices if this is a big concern. It’s better to pay more than to risk all your business sites going down at once, isn’t it?

If you’re using Instagram for business (or even for fun) and are trying to actively grow your audience, check out these 10 tips to organically grow your  Instagram exposure.

Finally… I’ve written a lot recently about the increasing need to move HTTP sites to HTTPS. Here’s yet another article on how and why it’s more important than ever to secure your website.

 

When Is It Time to Say Goodbye to Your Long-time Host? Eight Signs a Change May be Due

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Bye bye.Change can be uncomfortable.

If you’ve been with a host for a really long time, the idea of moving away from them, losing that familiarity, not having them at your back anymore (whether they really were or not, or used to be but now not so much), can be scary. Maybe you feel an obligation to them. Or, you have a real obligation, like a 3-year contract. ‘Moving hosts’ is often a frighteningly intimidating prospect – just ask my clients.

A few weeks ago a new client signed up for my WordPress maintenance service, but I had to let her know I couldn’t help her because her host was running such a very old version of PHP on her site’s server that my software couldn’t work with it.

That’s more than just an inconvenience. Older versions of PHP are no longer updated for security or anything else; they pose a risk to everyone hosting on that server. Plus, they are waaaaay slower than modern PHP versions like PHP 7 (which is what WordPress recommends for their sites).

What are some indications that it might be time for a new host?

  • Support is lousy, or it used to be great and now is on a downhill slide. This is what happened with my beloved HostGator when they sold to EIG years ago. You don’t have to put up with poor support, even with cheap shared hosting. There are still inexpensive, high-quality hosts still out there, though far fewer than there used to be.
  • Your site experiences frequent downtime. This can be larger chunks of time or just a lot of little periods of unreachability that you might see if using an uptime monitor. Don’t put up with this.
  • Your site is snail-like. If your site is still ridiculously slow after you’ve made some effort to optimize it for faster loading, the host is a likely contributor. Especially if they’re running software from 2012 on your server, as was the case with my recent client’s experience. And, especially if you’re using cheap shared hosting where they pack way too many sites on one server. There are only so many resources to go around.
  • Your host ties you into a multi-year contract usually bundled with other services you don’t understand or need. Don’t do that – if you decide to move you usually cannot get a refund. Go month to month (my hosting does this) or at most a one year term.
  • You’re migrating from a simple website to a CMS (content management system) like WordPress. Your cheap shared hosting will not cut it for a CMS, it will be so very slow. Go with a host that specializes in the CMS you’re getting, you can still get very reasonable pricing and they will be much better positioned to support you.
  • You get flagged by your host for too much traffic. This is a good problem to have! You might consider going with a managed host (for something like WordPress) or even a VPS (virtual private server), which you can get for around $25-30/month.
  • Your hosting needs change. If your long-time host can’t accommodate your new, more specific hosting requirements, that’s definitely a sign that it’s time to move. You’ll have little choice in this.
  • You want to add SSL and secure your site and your host charges a lot to do this. This is pretty common and not necessarily a reason to move if this is the only issue with your host, but there are hosts out there that offer free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates.

So what happened with my client?

She really did not want to leave ____________ (insert name of popular big-box host) because she’d been with them for many years. She felt they were good because they were big and was afraid to move to a smaller (albeit much better-suited) competitor. But when she asked to be moved to a server with modern software and they tried to sell her a 5 year contract, she decided it was time to go. She is much happier with her new host, and it was a fairly pain-free move. It wasn’t as bad as she expected it to be. It rarely is.

What hosting do I recommend to my clients?

Here are three options based on budget: under $10/mo, $20-30/mo, and over $30/mo.

Cheap shared hosting – since all my clients use WordPress, a WordPress-focused host is required. SiteGround is my host of choice at this price point. Their WordPress plans are all well-constructed and include perks like a free CDN and free SSL certificates (super-easy to set up!), their support is responsive, and servers are optimized for WordPress performance and security. Disclosure: I’m an affiliate for SiteGround because I can recommend them whole-heartedly. If you care to use my affiliate link, click here, otherwise check out their WordPress hosting plans here.

VPS – I hosted with KnownHost for many years. Their managed VPS plans are affordable, starting at $25/mo for SSD packages, and they have some of the fastest and best support I’ve ever encountered. Learn more about why they might be your best choice for a VPS. You might need a VPS if you start getting a good amount of traffic, as it’s basically your own private server, and optimized for speed and security.

Managed WordPress hosting – assuming you’re using WordPress and have a larger, more complex site, like an ecommerce site, my host of choice is WP Engine. The best support I’ve ever had (even better than Knownhost) and you can’t faze their support techs with any kind of question. Fast servers, staging areas, CDN, 24/7 security, instant rollbacks. This is the cream of the crop for WordPress sites. Starts at $50/mo (with the CDN, or $29/mo without it but it’s useful for performance). Or you can get it for $25 (with the CDN) if you host through Red Kite as most of my clients do.

You don’t have to put up with a bad host. Moving is usually pretty straightforward, unless you have a monster of a site, and in that case most hosts will help you migrate. If you’d like more info on choosing a good host, or concerns about your existing host, just ask.

 

Friday Link Wrapup – Hosting and Performance, SEO, Email Marketing

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If you think it doesn’t matter where you host your business website, think again. Cheap shared hosting is not a bargain when slow loading times can be costing you customers and conversions. Check out our post on hosting and performance here.

When it comes to optimizing your site pages or posts, you don’t want to waste time and effort – but you could be doing just that if you’re adhering to these 6 outdated SEO strategies that are no longer important – or could actually be hurting your site.

And since we’re talking about not doing things – here are some email marketing practices you can safely leave behind in 2017https://blogs.constantcontact.com/email-marketing-practices/email marketing practices you can safely leave behind in 2017.

Friday Link Wrapup – Keywords in Domains, Hosting Moves, Online Mistakes

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The top website and marketing links for this week.

Verisign researchers published some interesting info about keywords in domains in May… their study shows that domains that have keywords matching a given search query received more clicks than those with no keyword. By the numbers:

  • No search keywords in domain: 12.44% click rate
  • 1 search keyword in domain: 21.79% click rate
  • 2+ search keywords in domain: 25.30% click rate

So when you’re considering domain names, it pays to make sure one or more of your product or service’s important keywords are included in the domain (of course, I haven’t done this myself – it’s not as easy as it sounds).

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One of the things that I frequently get asked by clients is, “can you help me move my site to a new host?” I agree that it can be a scary proposition… Sometimes it’s extremely easy, other times it can become a real nightmare. It all depends on the hosts involved. If you’re planning a move and want to learn how to DIY, here’s a post that may help you keep all the little details straight during your move.

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Finally – a quick guide to online mistakes made by small biz owners. All of these seem to be really common and I’ve had more than a few clients doing one or more of the following:

  • Using a social media page instead of your own website for your business presence. You don’t own this page – what happens if the social network shuts down your account?
  • Using a free email address for your business instead of your own domain.
  • Abandoning your website – never updating it so it looks like you’ve gone out of business (or aren’t paying attention to it)

Slow is bad.

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If waiting for your own business website to open is mildly irritating to you, magnify that feeling by about 10x to understand how visitors and customers  view any delays.

I recently worked on a site that was build on my production server (a dedicated server), with extremely fast load times. Once the project was complete and I moved the site to the client’s hosting account, everything seemed to go in slow motion. The account is hosted by one of if not the most popular low-cost hosting providers – who incidentally have a reputation among my colleagues as having some of the slowest hosting in the industry for database-driven websites, like WordPress sites. Cheap hosting = more crowded servers = slower speeds.

I clocked loading times on this site as slow as 68 seconds per page. Ideally, you’re looking for load times of just a couple of seconds.

Slow is also bad for SEO

It’s not just your human visitors who suffer when your site is slow – in 2010 Google began incorporating site speed as one of the many elements affecting search rankings. It’s a small element, but it’s still important. Faster websites are better for everyone!