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There is only one valid definition of business: to create customers. It is the customer who determines what the business is. Because its purpose is to create customers, any business has two basic functions:

marketing (customer orientation)
innovation

This far-sighted quotation came from Peter Drucker (1973) and it was originally said in 1954. Relationship marketing is critically important for every business. After a client is won, they have to be kept and what keeps them is the relationship between the company and the clients.

Businesses must maintain their clients because clients keep the business running. Getting customers is one thing, but keeping them is a whole different story.

Customer loyalty can ensure a strong long-term relationship with your business. But customers do not just become loyal, their loyalty is tied to the relationship between them and the business and this is a fuction of how they are managed. Having the right tools to manage customers can help you deliver what they need and rightly guide you in the right direction to winning their loyalty.

Also read:Conversion Rate Optimization - How to turn prospects into customers

This post details a practical guide to effective relationship marketing that kkeeps your customers, build a longterm relationship and bring success to the business.

Know Your Customers
Build a Customer Service Team
Create Q&A Templates
Implement the A.C.A.F. Customer Feedback Loop
Build an Automated Customer Support Process
Work Towards a Better Customer Experience
Setup Specific Customer Retention Actions
Reward Loyal Customers
Set up a Referral Program
Follow Up With Sales Number and Customer Feedback Metrics
Invest in CRM and Other Technology
Create Valuable Content Based on Customers’ Questions

Read more: https://www.todhost.com/blog/a-practical-guide-to-relationship-marketing.html

How to Improve the Security of your WordPress Website

WordPress is the most widely used Content Management System (CMS) and basically everyone can have access to its default code no matter if that person is a simple user, hacker or a developer. The default code of the WordPress platform is secured enough and there are no reports recently for weak elements that might cause your website to be compromised.

In some cases however, the users or the developers uses resources which are distributed not by the authors of the platform but from 3rd parties which might not pass the required integrity test. Usually using a free resource such as plugin or a template on your website does not always mean that it will lack security or you will face similar issues with it. However commonly used free templates or plugins are not secured enough and they are in some cases providing security holes which the attackers of your website might take serious advantage of to brea into your website and cause problems.

Basically there are few ways to deface or hack user website build with WordPress. The most commonly used method is for a malicious file to be uploaded on the website and then executed directly so it can provide a web interface to the hackers. With the help of that web interface the attackers can basically do anything with your website..

To improve the security of your WordPress, here are the basic steps you need to follow:

Step 1: Disable PHP Execution
Step 2: Protect Account Registration and Contact Forms
Step 3: Activate the Akismet Plugin
Disable PHP execution

There are two directories in your WordPress that are writable by default. The /wp-includes/ directory contains themes and plug-ins which can create files on their own and the /wp-content/uploads/ directory is used by the users to upload content on your website so both of these folders must be writeable. Unfortunately, this brings security vulnerability with the PHP files in those folders. A malicious PHP file can be uploaded and executed in order to compromise your website and even the entire server on which it is situated. As changing the write permissions is not a good solution in this case, you can instead remove the execution permissions on files with the extension PHP. In this tutorial, we will show you a few ways to do this depending on your configuration, rights and specific needs using the .htaccess file or the Apache configuration file.

Read full post: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/874/How-to-Improve-the-Security-of-your-WordPress-Website.html

Duplicate content is something that is affecting the performance of miliions of websites and esppecially because Google frowns at it, it is worth given some attention to address. In this post, you will learn about duplicate content, what it is and how you can fix it in specific cases.

1. What Is Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is simply the content you use on your website which has been already written by someone, somewhere else. So, if you copy a piece of content off one website, paste and then publish it on your website, then you have duplicate content. Google frowns at it as it represents some form or attempt to manipulate the Search Engines.

Duplicate content is one major behavior which affect website quality, it has many sides and can be caused by many things. It could be due to some technical difficulties or unintentional mistakes and can also be a deliberate action. Before we move on to greater details, let us first understand what content duplication actually is.

On the web, duplicate content is when the same (or very similar) content is found on at least two different URLs.

One key thing here to keep in mind is that the content is already on Google indexed pages. Again, even though the content could appear on another website, if Google doesn’t have the original version of the copied content in its index, then it can’t really consider it duplicate content, even though it is!

Another take away here is that old content which is completely revamped using some content management software, turning them and the images into text and then using may not be right from a copyright point of view, but it should pass Google’s duplication filters. This wouldn't be encouraged but Google is not likely to see it as duplicate content.

I would actually recommend publications which are moving from print to digital should repurpose old content in their magazines on their websites.

We know Google loves quality content on websites. So, for evergreen contents that is not yet indexed and is still is new and original, you can publish it and not incure any penalty for duplicate content.

Furthermore, you can modify an existing content, enrich it and turn it into something like How people used to do optimize websites in the 90s’. You can keep the content identical this way (although a small original introduction might be required) and it will still pass the duplicate content test. The discussion on what amounts to duplicate content is big and ongong.

The other big issue is what is the solution to duplicate content. It is important to understand that there isn’t one single solution for fixing duplicate content issues. This is because there are very many scenarios representing content duplication. And so, there are multiple solutions and one of them might be better than the other. We will look further into these solutions and problems and hope that we can provide answers to most of the uestions you will have on content duplication.

However, we must first get some other things clear to better understand the nature of duplicate content. Then we will analyze different scenarios and give solutions for each and every one of them.

2. How Google Handles Duplicate Content

There’s a lot of content out there in the world. Compared to that, Google knows only about a small part of it. To be able to truly say if the content on your site has been copied, Google would have to know every piece of paper that has ever been written, which is impossible.

When you publish something on your website, it takes a while for Google to crawl and index it. If your site is popular and you publish content often, Google will crawl it more often. This means it can index the content sooner.

If you publish rarely, Google will probably not crawl your site so often and it might not index the content very quickly. Once a piece of content is indexed, Google can then relate other content to it to see if it’s duplicate or not.

Read full blog post at https://www.todhost.com/blog/effects-of-duplicate-content-on-seo-and-google-rankings.html

Drupal is the world's third most widely used Content Management System. Like any other major platform such as WordPress and Joomla, Drupal security is also a big concern for business owners. With the increase in Drupal’s popularity, the chances of a Drupal site coming under cyber attack are higher than ever. Thus, you can never take your website’s security for granted. In fact, security is a continuous process that needs your attention at all times. Because the security breach will not only affect your website resources but also put your website reputation at stake.


Drupal is an extremely powerful system and it has numerous security modules to prevent any breaches. It is good practice to make use of Drupal security modules to the minimize security of your Drupal website. This post takes you through the steps and actions you need to take to boost your Drupal security. We have carefully selected a list of must-have Drupal security modules that will boost your Drupal website security and help you escape any potential cyber-attack. Take a look


Read full post:: https://www.todhost.com/blog/best-drupal-security-modules.html

Your article was another great resource. Thank you for sharing it with us.

SaintMalik52525:
Worried About Your Website Security?? It's okay, you don't have to panic any more, opt-in to read the below proven and applicable Security Measures/Protections

12 Security Tips to Protect Your Website From Hackers

https://www.smtechub.com/website-security-tips-protect-your-site/

After a successful installation of your Simple Machine Forum (SMF) software, the next steps is to configure the website. These involve the following:

Managing the Core Features in SMF
Configuring the basic options
Configure the SMTP
Install modules
Install Themes

Managing the Core Features in SMF

In order to access the core features page, you should first log in as administrator of your forum. Then simply navigate to Administration Center. Navigate to the Configuration tab on the main menu and then Core Features.

On this page you will be able to activate or deactivate the included features of SMF. Note that in order to apply the changes, after performing the same, you need to press the Save button.

The available core features that you can use are:

Calendar - This feature can be used to show forum events, holidays, and user birthdays
Advanced Profile Fields - This feature can be used to hide standard profile fields, or add a new one. The administrators can also choose whether or not certain profile fields show up at the registration screen
Karma - This is the SMF reputation system.It is an optional feature that shows the popularity of a certain member.
Moderation, Administration and User Logs - This will log all actions taken as a moderator or administrator. This also allows moderators and administrators look at any actions that a user has done in their profile
Post Moderation - If this feature is enabled, moderators can choose boards in which all posts need to be approved, which membergroups need to have their posts moderated
Paid Subscriptions - This allows users to change their membergroup, get more access, and more
Report Generation - If this feature has been enabled, administrators may generate reports as to how the forum is set up, what features are enabled
Warning System - This functionality allows administrators and moderators to issue warnings to users; it also includes advanced functionality for automatically removing user rights as their warning level increases. Note to take full advantage of this function "Post Moderation" should be enabled
Search Engine Tracking - Enabling this feature will allow administrators to track search engines as they index your forum.

Read full post: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/873/SMF-Configuration-Tutorial.html

WordPress still remains the most popular Content Management System (CMS) with so many websites being built with it. WordPress popularity has also made it a target for hackers, with tens of thousands of websites getting infected with malware, becoming the sources of phishing schemes and getting blacklisted by search engines. In this guide, we will put our best efforts to cover everything you need to know about WordPress security, including a comprehensive list of do-it-yourself WordPress security tips for hands-on website owners. We will try to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to protect your website against even the most determined attacker.

Read full blog post:WordPress Security: The Complete Guide https://www.todhost.com/blog/wordpress-security-the-complete-guide.html

Backing up your website is important for several reasons. One being that in case of emergency you will have a copy of your website which you can use for restoring the website to a previous functional state. In this tutorial, we take you through the steps you need to take to backup your WordPress website and how to restore your WordPress website backup. This process equally applies to many other Content Management Systems (CMS).
How to Backup Your WordPress Website

In WordPress, the process of generating the backup is quite straight forward and we will explain it in details in this tutorial. WordPress is a php/MySQL driven platform and so you are required to perform the backup on two stages.

To create a backup of WordPress, you need to take the following steps:

Step 1: Back up the files
Step 2: Back up the Database
Back up your files

The first step you need to take is to backup the files for your website. This can be easily done via the FTP service for your account. If you are not quite sure how to use this service or if you are not entirely familiar with it please check our FTP tutorial series.

Once you connect to the FTP service for your website and access the root folder for your website (where the WordPress files are located) you will need to download them in a folder on your local computer.

Once you are done downloading the files you will need to backup the database your website is usin

Read full tutorial: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/872/How-to-Backup-and-Restore-the-backup-of-a-WordPress-Website.html

WordPress is the world’s largest blogging platform. That also places it in the position to be the most attacked Content Management Systems. However, you can never know when the malicious mind will hack your site. Because it doesn’t matter how much traffic is on your site, you may at any time be a victim of Brute Force attack. Therefore, you should keep your site safe and secure with a WordPress Brute Force Protection Plugin.

Brute Force attack is one of the scariest thing for any website owner. Especially when your site is running on WordPress, it becomes a pool of opportunities for wrongdoers. Therefore, it becomes the primary need of a developer to keep this list of best WordPress Brute Force Protection Plugins within reach. The Brute Force Protection Plugin for WordPress is great help you to protect your WordPress website or Lock out bad guys.

Weak passwords are one of the major loopholes that lead to website hacking. And that is where you need an extra layer of protection for your site from hackers.

In this post, we have a list of the best WordPress Brute Force protection Plugins for you. But before we move on to look at the recommended plugins, let us briefly provide an understanding of brute force attack.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/best-brute-force-protection-plugins-for-wordpress.html

Read full post at: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/867/PrestaShop-Store-Configuration-Tutorial.html

Once you have your PrestaShop store successfully installed, you should settle down to properly configure and customize your store for your purpose. In this tutorial, we examine the basic configuration settings for your PrestaShop store:

Configuring the SMTP Settings
Configuring the Payment Methods
Configuring the Shipping methods
Configuring Contacts and Our Store pages
How to configure SSL for your Store
How to Change the Logo of your Store
How to Configure Special Promotion
How to Activate Maintenance Mode
How to configure the Email templates

SMTP Settings

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and as the name suggests the protocol is mainly used for sending messages from your web hosting account to another user. Our Hosting packages fully support that protocol and in the next few lines of this tutorial we will provide you with more information on the integration of that protocol with your Store in order for all the emails sent from your Store to use that protocol.
To activate the SMTP protocol for your Store, you need to:

Step 1: Access the Mail Configuration for your Store
Step 2: Configure the SMTP mailer

Access the Mail Configuration for your Store

PrestaShop provides you with a fully dedicated to the mailing system of your store page where you can configure entirely the mailing system and also to test it. In order to access that page you will need to login into the Back Office of your Store and to navigate to Advanced Parameters>E-mail.

Once you click on that link you will be presented with all the emailing options which we will review further in the second step of this tutorial.


Read full post at: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/867/PrestaShop-Store-Configuration-Tutorial.html

Ranking for a keyword in organic search engines a great feat to achieve. Ranking well for a single great keyword can bring fortunes which come with traffic and sales. But it is a repeatable process. You won’t get the results you want 100% of the time, especially if you’re a new website trying to rank for a popular keyword, but if you take content marketing and SEO seriously, you can start to make things happen for things like rankings, traffic, and sales.

Here, we have put together the ten steps you need to take that will help you to rank for a keyword in Google Search Engine Result Pages.
Step 1: Lay the Groundwork

This is really more of a pre-step than a first step. You’ll need to have some basics in place before you can hope to rank for any random keyword. These pre-requisites include:

A strong website – The longer your website has been around, accruing authority and links, the better. It’s also key that your entire site follow SEO best practices – start with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines if you don’t know what that means.
A network to draw on – In order to rank quickly for a keyword, it’s very useful to have a built-in network to share new content with – a blog following, an audience on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, email contacts you can reach out to for occasional help with a link. If you don’t know what that means, it’s time to start thinking about link building as relationship building.

To read from source and to read full blog post, visit:: https://www.todhost.com/blog/an-seo-guide-on-how-to-rank-for-a-keyword.html

The confidence of internet users have been built on the integrity of online payment systems So also have there been an increase in shopping on the internet and tons of companies are accepting online payments, which also increases the risk for credit card fraud. Unfortunately, this is a familiar scenario for webshops. You receive a large order from a new customer. But at the same time, something doesn’t seem quite right.

With a little research, you realize that this is a case of credit card fraud – hopefully before sending the order. It can be very damaging to your business if you end up being the victim of many successful fraud attempts.

Although it is difficult to catch every credit card scammer, there are a number of things you can do as a web shop owner to protect your web shop against credit card fraud.

Indicators for credit card fraud

First and foremost, it is important to discover what you need to monitor in case of attempted fraud. We’ve listed some potential indicators of transactions that are very likely to be attempted credit card fraud:

1. An order that is much larger than normal

2. First-time customers you haven’t sent an order to before.

3. An order where the delivery address is not the same as the billing address

4. Any previously rejected orders prior to a successful order, especially if the billing information or card number was changed in subsequent order attempts

5. IP-addresses that are not in the same area as the billing information for the order

6. Email addresses where the person’s name in the email address does not match the name of the person in the billing information

These are just some of the things you need to be aware of. These indicators do not necessarily mean that you are dealing with a fraudster. Even so, it is important that you be aware of them before shipping out an order.

Read full blog post: https://www.todhost.com/blog/how-to-combat-credit-card-fraud.html

Once you have completed the installation of our Prestashop website and created your online store, you will need to set up and customize your store to make it operational.

Now lets go with our recommended and essential (but not exhaustive) steps to set you on the right track!
1. Maintenance mode

This option lets you work on your store in peace and quiet. Your customers will see a page letting them know that you are making changes to your e-commerce site. This mode lets you carry out tests and changes without your clients noticing, giving you a real view of your store. To enable maintenance mode in PrestaShop, follow these steps:

Log in to PrestaShop as the administrator.
On the top menu bar, click Preferences, and then click Maintenance.
Under Enable Shop, click No. This setting takes your store offline.
In the Maintenance IP text box, type the IP address or addresses that you want to allow to access the store while it is in maintenance mode.
Click Save. Now when you visit PrestaShop from an authorized IP address, it displays normally. All other site visitors, however, receive a PrestaShop maintenance message in their web browsers.

Some modules let you add a countdown to your maintenance mode, for example by installing “Maintenance with countdown mode module”. This can be handy if you want to promote a store launch campaign before it goes online.


2. Configuring languages

If you want to sell abroad, you must translate your store into various languages so that each visitor can understand your products and make purchases.

Add a language to your store and remember to translate all your categories and products.

You can find out more information that will help you configure languages in your e-commerce site’s back office.

Read full post: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/865/Basic-Steps-to-Take-After-a-PrestaShop-Installation.html

From the stand point of working from Nigeria, a power bank is certainly a great tool. You definitely cannot work in Nigeria without a power support alternative. But I still do not think it should be added to this generic list.

Alejob:
You need powerbank for your laptop and phone. Why don't you holla? I am the right person to talk to as far as powerbank for your laptop, Phones is concerned. See my signature below and recommend. Thanks

Designing websites for online merchants is one of the most time consuming aspects of launching or rebranding an online business. The challenge of designing a unique and successful web store is quite challenging and expensive. But with proper planning the design process can be very enjoyable.

The needs of website owners are different and so are their requirements but this list of the top 10 things to think about before designing an online shop will always apply to all merchants. All of these elements are subtly connected to each other but if you review them carefully, you’ll be on the right path!

Read full blog: https://www.todhost.com/blog/10-things-to-consider-when-starting-an-online-shop.html

n this tutorial we'll show you how to install PrestaShop 1.7 and above on your web hosting plan account. Free Script Installation is available on the Todhost cPanel control panel - Once you have an active web hosting plan, you can have our PrestaShop specialists take care of installing PrestaShop for you at no additional cost. All Todhost clients can request a free installation by submitting a ticket.

PrestaShop 1.7 pretty much installed in the same way as older PrestaShop versions.

You need to do the following basic things:

create a database for the application

download an installation package for the latest PrestaShop

upload the installation package on your hosting account

install the application

delete the install folder from the root PrestaShop directory on your hosting account

make sure that the admin folder in the root PrestaShop directory on your hosting account is renamed

In this tutorial we've used as a basic example PrestaShop 1.7.

Now we'll go over these steps in more details.
Create a database

Although it's possible to install different applications or several instances of the same application in one database it's recommended that you keep each application in a separate database. You can add new databases and manage your existing ones from the Databases section of the control panel. To add a new database click on the Add Database button that's in the black area on the right. On the following page type the name of the database and create a database user by specifying a username and password in the respective fields. Then click on the Add Database button that's under the options.

For some more details check out the tutorial on how to manage databases with the Todhost control panel, and more specifically the section on how to add databases.

Read full post at https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/864/How-to-install-PrestaShop-on-a-Live-Website.html

WordPress is the world's most popular content management system and so the massive attack against WordPress is not surprising. Using WordPress security plugins had just been one way to protect WordPress websites and it has been effective.

Not to get you scared about WordPress attacks – securing your WordPress site doesn’t require you to be a programming guru. But you will want some WordPress security plugins and tools to get the job done.

In this post, we will cover a selection of the best WordPress security plugins and tools out there, along with their pros and cons. Then, at the end, we'll try to help you pick the right set of tools based on your own situation.

Quick caveat: WordPress security isn’t just about plugins and tools

All of the security plugins and tools on this list will help you make WordPress more secure. But they don’t eliminate the need for action on your part.

Think of them kind like wearing a vehicle seat belt. Sure – seat belts will help protect you in a crash, but they aren’t a license to go out and drive recklessly. These tools are like that. They give you some much-needed protection, but you still need to drive safely if you want to stay safe and secure.

So what is “driving safely” in the WordPress world? Here we are talking about really simple things like:

Promptly updating your WordPress software, plugins, and themes
Using a secure password for your WordPress administrator account and web hosting account
Only using themes and plugins from reputable developers/sources
Backing up your site on a regular basis

Those tips might seem overly simplistic, but doing those four things alone will help protect you from most WordPress security issues. Then, to protect your site from everything else, you can use these WordPress security plugins and tools.

Read full post: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/861/WordPress-Security-Plugins.html

Generally speaking, cPanel and email login issues are common and normal. The most of the complaints we have received come from invalid login problems due to wrong username or password. The other had been frequent changes affecting connection IP addresses. In this post we look at all these issues and how to resolve them.

What are the Email and cPanel Login Issues Users Encounter?

Invalid Login Issues

Usually, thie error occurs when your username of password or both of them are not correct To be able to login to your email or cPanel environment, you must enter the correct email address(username), enter the correct password as well. The same will apply to cPanel environment you must enter the right username and password..
What if I Forget My cPanel Username or Password

If you forget your username and password, you can recover them. You can recover your username and reset your password through the Todhost client area.

Visit the secured client area
Enter customer support email address
Enter client area password.
Go to services
Click on the green active button applicable to the domain name for which you intend to change email or client area password
To change cPanel password, look on the left menu bar and click change password. Enter a new password following our recommended password rules - a combination of special characters, capital letters and small letters as well as numbers.
save your changes and you are done..

To Change an Email Password

Follow the same procedure to login to client area.
Scroll down to Quick Shortcuts
Click on email accounts
Click password and authentication to reset your password.
Change the account password band save your changes

Now you can try to login again to your email or cPanel control panel of your website.

Read full post at: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/860/How-to-Address-cPanel-and-Email-Login-Issues.html

The ImageSizer plugin from Lumis is a fantastic plugin and you will get to find that out very shortly. This great plugin will make it easy for you to upload any file, crop it and resize it on the fly in multiple places throughout your whole ExpressionEngine site.

We often use ImageSizer in conjunction with the FF Matrix FieldFrame field type to let users add as many images as they want with captions. Then we pull at the first one and give a link to view the rest in a lightbox gallery. Works great!

But some EE users do not realize that that those pictures they take with their tiny cameras are actually really large files. File size notwithstanding, the pixel dimensions are out of control. Now some lightboxes will scale the image to fit in the visible area, but either way it’s still having to load up images that are way too big for the web.

To cope with this problem, developers had to put instructions on the field: “900px wide max.” Yeah that worked. It will mostly meet with blank stares on that one. And then the question of…”so you’re saying I have to resize all my images before I even upload them? I thought you said this was supposed to be easy.” Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the way we use computers we forget that everyone else is still not so sillfull in using them.

Read full post: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/859/How-to-Use-ImageSizer-to-Scale-Lightbox-Gallery-Images-in-ExpressionEngine.html

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) changes has made writing for SEO an adventure and a complicated problem that many are all trying to find the secret to get good the results faster. The number of search engine factors advanced, the Google algorithm updates increased, the number of businesses that use SEO increased, the number of SEO agencies increased and more and more people became aware of its importance, the market is pretty cluttered and the competition is very high. And we know how important it is to stand out in the crowd.

Read full blog post: https://www.todhost.com/blog/how-to-write-content-for-seo-a-step-by-step-guide.html

If you are familiar with ExpressionEngine for the design of your website, its important to have an optimized website to reduce the page load time. This guide takes you through the tips to optimize an ExpressionEngine website. Following that we look at why you need to speed up your website and some basic steps you require to speed up your website. Let's go.

1) De-install/remove unused add-ons(modules, extension, plugin, accessories) and templates (snippets & global variable), channels/weblogs, category group etc.

2) Practice to use disable parameter within channel entry tag. While using channel entry tag ({exp:channel:entries}), the system loads all the data/related data of the channel entry and one can disable few data which aren’t necessary anymore like:

Categories
Category Fields
Member Data
Pagination
Trackbacks

Read full story: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/858/Tips-for-optimizing-ExpressionEngine-website-for-better-performance.html

Optimising your Expression Engine website is fundamental to help our site performance especially to improve the speed and not slow down the performance of the hosting server.. Some tips to dramatically speed up your Expression Engine site. Following some of the simple steps below should result in a big improvement in your EE website performance. But let us first look at how and why EE is loved for SEO.

For any CMS to be seen to be good for SEO, it should have some features and handle some ranking factors in a professional way. It should handle SEO in the following ways:

Completely automate
Allow the developer to configure
Let the end-user manage

We went through the list of raning factors and pulled out the ranking factors we think a CMS has its fingers in. Here's that list and how the ExpressionEngine CMS from EllisLab would handle them:

Read full post at: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/856/ExressionEngine-Search-Engine-Optimization.html

Building links and sharing content through Web Directories have been the norm for the world wide web and for search engine optimization for a long time. But a lot have changed on the web and with Google, the leading search engine. The question now is whether web directories are still relevant in this age of advanced Google Algorithimic Updates. We will learn more about that.

Head of Web SPAM at Google John Mueller has thrown some insights when he said, “in general, no”. But the key words in that answer are “in general”. That’s the usual answer we get from John and, as much as we’d like to say we will dissect it, the truth is that we can only be speculating and interpreting things based on own knowledge and experience.

So we take some time to find out whether web directories are still useful for SEO today. But before then, let's look at some background information.

What Are Web Directories Really?

In order to better understand whether directories work or not, we have to create a background for them. Like an introduction.

Most people probably think of directories as just sites that list other sites. While that’s true, the reality is that they’re much more than that.

Before modern search engines, such as Google, web directories were THE INTERNET.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/are-directories-still-useful-for-seo.html

The key advantage of all small businesses are derived in their competitive edge. If you run a small business, you should be looking for a competitive advantage or strengthening your advantage to get your leg up on the competition.

While there is no way of knowing what the future holds, one thing is for sure: you don’t want to be among the approximately 80% of businesses that fail within 18 months. So you've got to equip yourself with the right tools for internet marketing.

Gone are the days when you could afford to ignore the internet. If you want to achieve success, regardless of your industry, it’s imperative to have a sound online marketing plan in place – a strategy that leverages the power of social media, uses search engine optimization to drive traffic, and makes good use of the media marketing advancements that are out there.

In this post, we outline online marketing tools that you need when starting a business or seeing to run effectively. Each of these tools will help you get that competitive edge.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/13-tools-that-will-enhance-your-online-marketing-efforts.html

Many SEO managers have taken the impact of images on website ranking lightly. Whenever SEO is talked about, some of the first things that come to our mind are content, backlinks or keywords. This is not wrong and these factors do have great impact on SEO, but it isn’t all that is important as there are many other possibilities for SEO that impact site performence on search engines. Especially since there are plenty of factors that weigh in a page rank that are not purely backlink or content-driven. So it should not have come as too much of a surprise when Google announced that page load speed is a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches. Of course, one factor out of more than 200, but one that is still worth serious consideration.
1. Website Speed as a Ranking factor

Site speed, according to Google, “reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests” and for all intents and purposes serves both the user and the site owner. Users get an enhanced experience, site owners are more likely to get reduced operation costs and… well, more users, who stay on the website longer.

Google thinks the same, as indicated by the very fact that it provides us with tools to check our site speed and suggests solutions for sluggish pages. There is the PageSpeed module in the Google Developers section and a Page Speed Insights for making a speed audit for every website.

Yahoo also has a developer module for page speed improvements, called Yslow. The slew of freely available tools is certainly meant to wear off some of the concerns that only big sites can benefit from this change. In fact, chances are smaller sites have the upper hand here in terms of flexibility and adjusting. Some questions and concerns remain though, the most important being:

What is and how exactly does Google measure “site speed?”

For instance, the difference between “document complete” and “fully rendered” time when loading a page was mentioned. The former means that while not all the elements on a page are showing, you can start clicking and navigating. The latter means that everything is clearly visible on the page, even background stuff like ads and images. Even though it is difficult to pinpoint specifically and with certainty which aspect of speed directly helps your rankings, working on your site loading speed, in general, is bound, at the very least, to enhance your users’ experience. So, for instance, having a “document complete” time which is faster than the “fully rendered time” could help.

Read full blog post: https://www.todhost.com/blog/image-optimization-for-high-ranking.html

Updating a website is critical for safety and security.. Updating is necessary mostly when their is a new version of software and you want to launch the new version of the website. In doing so you will need to take some steps to ensure that you do not damage your codes and also do not hurt your search engine rankings in the process. When you update your website, especially if you decide to change your domain name, these changes can potentially have negative impacts on SEO. You can avoid these problems by carefully planning the update process. Here are the steps that can guide you when you update your website.

1. Figure Out the Scope of the Project

The first thing that you will need to do is start by making a list of all of the URLs that need to be updated. You can use your sitemap to retrieve a list of these pages. There are also online software tools, including Google Webmasters, that can be used to crawl your website in order to generate a list of pages. Once you have this list available, you need to check it to make sure that all of the links are viable links and that there are no broken links or pages that you simply do not want to include in the upgrade.

Read more:

9 Common Problems of a WordPress Website

A checklist against cybercrime

A Guide to Google Website Ranking

2. Check Inbound Links

Your SEO strategy depends on the inbound links that point to your website. As a result, you will need to perform an inbound link audit that will determine which direct links need to be updated. You should make sure that you contact the webmaster for each inbound link and ensure that they update the old links on their site. If it is not possible for you to reach everyone because of a large number of links, you should make sure to establish 301 redirects for all of the old links in order to point them to the new URLs on your updated site.

3. Update Your Content

In addition to updating the design of your site, you should also make sure to update the content on your site. Review all of the existing pages to ensure that there is no content that is outdated. Is your current SEO strategy meeting your needs? Check the analytics data for your website to make sure that your current plan is working. You may want to consider updating the keywords that you are targeting on certain low ranking pages.

Although it might be tempting, try to avoid unnecessarily deleting pages of your site. There may be pages that are having a greater impact on your current rankings than you might assume at first glance. However, if you find duplicate content on your site, do a 301 redirect of the content pages to the correct version of the pages. In the future, avoid creating pages that contain mostly similar conten

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/a-detailed-guide-to-safe-website-updating.html

Updating a website is critical for safety and security.. Updating is necessary mostly when their is a new version of software and you want to launch the new version of the website. In doing so you will need to take some steps to ensure that you do not damage your codes and also do not hurt your search engine rankings in the process. When you update your website, especially if you decide to change your domain name, these changes can potentially have negative impacts on SEO. You can avoid these problems by carefully planning the update process. Here are the steps that can guide you when you update your website.

1. Figure Out the Scope of the Project

The first thing that you will need to do is start by making a list of all of the URLs that need to be updated. You can use your sitemap to retrieve a list of these pages. There are also online software tools, including Google Webmasters, that can be used to crawl your website in order to generate a list of pages. Once you have this list available, you need to check it to make sure that all of the links are viable links and that there are no broken links or pages that you simply do not want to include in the upgrade.

Read more:

9 Common Problems of a WordPress Website

A checklist against cybercrime

A Guide to Google Website Ranking

2. Check Inbound Links

Your SEO strategy depends on the inbound links that point to your website. As a result, you will need to perform an inbound link audit that will determine which direct links need to be updated. You should make sure that you contact the webmaster for each inbound link and ensure that they update the old links on their site. If it is not possible for you to reach everyone because of a large number of links, you should make sure to establish 301 redirects for all of the old links in order to point them to the new URLs on your updated site.

3. Update Your Content

In addition to updating the design of your site, you should also make sure to update the content on your site. Review all of the existing pages to ensure that there is no content that is outdated. Is your current SEO strategy meeting your needs? Check the analytics data for your website to make sure that your current plan is working. You may want to consider updating the keywords that you are targeting on certain low ranking pages.

Although it might be tempting, try to avoid unnecessarily deleting pages of your site. There may be pages that are having a greater impact on your current rankings than you might assume at first glance. However, if you find duplicate content on your site, do a 301 redirect of the content pages to the correct version of the pages. In the future, avoid creating pages that contain mostly similar conten

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/a-detailed-guide-to-safe-website-updating.html

How to Keep Your Customer Surveys Fresh

Surveys is one way businesses gather information on customers to understand their behavioural pattern. Surveys are useful in understanding customer needs, product development, customer buying patterns and are also useful in dealing with post purchase behaviour like dissonace situations.

Read full post at https://www.todhost.com/blog/how-to-keep-your-customer-surveys-fresh.html

Top 10 Ecommerce Platforms Recommended for Small Businesses

The world is changing with more internet users showing confidence in ecommerce platforms and making online purchases with less fear. The skepticism about online stores are declining with internet users understanding how to locate fraudsters and verify real shops over the net. There is also an increasing number of online stores and newer applications for building online stores have also sprang up. In this post, we examine the top 10 platforms you can use to build your ecommerce store.

https://www.todhost.com/blog/top-10-ecommerce-platforms-recommended-for-small-businesses.html

Useful Tips on How to Use Google Analytics on eCommerce Websites https://www.todhost.com/blog/useful-tips-on-how-to-use-google-analytics-on-ecommerce-websites.html

Assessing the performance of an ecommerce store will depend on different indices. The report from the analyses or assessment will determine what might be done to improve the site performance. This could include things like reading user surveys, customer posts on social networks, and frequently asked questions, but these cannot offer so much insight.

Read Full story at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/useful-tips-on-how-to-use-google-analytics-on-ecommerce-websites.html

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/848/How-to-Create-Redirects-in-WordPress.html

Redirections are a normal part of websites, plugins, and themes. Some are happening right before you and you may not be even aware what’s going on in the backend. Although redirections are usually left for developers, we are going to show you several tips that will let you understand how you can implement redirects in WordPress.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/848/How-to-Create-Redirects-in-WordPress.html