The top website and online marketing links of the week. Thinking about starting a podcast? Or already doing one, but need to upgrade your gear? Here’s a review of the top 10 podcast microphones and some reasons to justify getting one! Do you keep your WordPress website up to date? A recent study showed that only 36% of WordPress users have the latest version of the core software installed. That’s a big security problem. Did you know that the WordPress folks publish the details about the reasons for each update they publish in their changelog? That makes it easy for… Continue Reading
security
Weekly Links Roundup – WordPress Resources for Beginners
The top website and online marketing links of the week. Are you brand new to WordPress? Or considering moving to WordPress but not sure if you’ll be able to get the hang of using it? Don’t worry! Today’s post is all about resources for WordPress newbies. First is the user manual – WordPress doesn’t come with one, but there’s a great alternative in Easy WP Guide. It’s free, it gets updated frequently (unlike a real book) and is easy to read and use. Just don’t print it – it’s big and it updates too often to make that worth your… Continue Reading
Weekly Links Roundup – Site Speed, Product Pages, Contact Pages, WordPress Security Myths
The top website and online marketing links of the week. You know your website is slow. It’s always been like that. But do you really understand what that slow site could be costing you in terms of customers and conversions? A recent report shows that 70% of buyers are influence by a site’s page loading time. The average site loads in about 15 seconds – but a number of studies show that the majority of online shoppers will leave a site if they have to wait more than 3 seconds. If you need help making your site faster, check out… Continue Reading
Weekly Links Roundup – CRO, Hosting Matters, Online Security
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… Continue Reading
Weekly Links Roundup – Security, Let’s Encrypt, Competitor Analysis, Selling
The top website and marketing links of the week. Looking to improve security on your site – WordPress or otherwise? This post (not for the tech-averse!) is an overview of 5 technologies you should consider, including Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. Warning: this is a tech-heavy post and assumes you have advanced knowledge relating to your host server, etc. If you’re looking for a more straightforward introduction to Let’s Encrypt for normal people, try this one. Here’s a list of hosting companies offering free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates – mine does (WP Engine). Last updated 8/16/17. If you need help with… Continue Reading
Will Switching to HTTPS Hurt My SEO?
Earlier this week, a client expressed concern about losing search engine result rankings if they made the switch from HTTP to HTTPS. They’d been told that making this move can result in big rankings losses for 6-7 months, and I was pretty sure that was not the case. But it really depends – making this move (which is a great thing to do, highly recommended both for site and user security and for SEO too) can cause major problems with rankings if it’s not done right. It’s the equivalent of changing domains which can have a big impact on rankings,… Continue Reading
Moving From HTTP to HTTPS: Part 2 of 2
This is Part 2 of my initial article on Moving From HTTP to HTTPS from April… To pick up where we left off… the last thing we did was add the 301 redirects from the old HTTP URLs to the new ones using HTTPS. Let’s continue… 6) If your robots.txt file has any hard-coded HTTP links, change them to HTTPS. You may or may not have a robots.txt file in the root directory of your site; it’s a file that lets you indicate what parts of your site you don’t want crawled by search engine bots. 7) If your site… Continue Reading
Moving From HTTP to HTTPS: Part 1 of 2
Making the move from HTTP to HTTPS is now something I’d advising all my clients to do for a number of reasons: 1) Google Chrome and other browsers are now pointing out sites that aren’t secure in the address bar. 2) Google Search is now beginning to use HTTPS as a ranking signal, so switching can benefit SEO rankings. 3) When you use HTTPS you show your customers and visitors that you’re concerned about their safety and doing your part to protect them (as well as your yourself and your staff or employees). 4) It builds credibility – you don’t… Continue Reading