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OpenCart is taking the e-commerce world by surprise, growing to become one of the most secure e-commerce platforms and also one of the most recently used. Although OpenCart security has been widely acknowledged, it is still recommended that these four steps be followed for the security of an OpenCart e-commece store.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security/182-best-practices-for-opencart-website-security

In our technology driven world, small businesses can contend with large and established ones. With access to different online tools, a small business can succeed at new levels never thought possible.

Through computerized promotion which join online video and email showcasing procedures, you can open new doors of chance for your little business.

Computer-Based Marketing

Computerized promoting puts your little business before an immense number of potential customers. Leveraging YouTube and diverse stages creates open entryways for small businesses to accomplish massive clientele. Propelled publicizing positions your small business in the same stages as substantial business online and allows them to battle on a proportionate playing field. A couple of associations use custom activities and development representations to make their imprint in the business world while others use standard video messages passed on by the CEO. By utilizing the instruments you have accessible, you create conceivable outcomes of accomplishment in matching gigantic business.

Email Marketing

Email promoting are another unfathomable way a small business can fight with tremendous businesses. Email messages can get you and promote your business to countless buyers, while moreover serving as an effective leads generator. Email serves as a prompt customer specific instrument which makes the customer experience more encounters. You can implant connections with your associated site and recordings in your email communications. Studies have shown that people will most likely read an email totally if it has a video within the message.

Drives Generation and Customer Acquisition

Drives allow little organizations to have permission to the same leads and potential customers as substantial associations do. There are a couple of ways to produce drives that will bring about deals. Offering free information or access to coupons can make for a little business so it can effectively equal more prominent associations. The goal of leads time is to focus on concentrating on the right customers that are well while in transit to purchase what you offer.

Nature of Service

Using instruments that automate procedures allows little businesses to have access to the same customers the colossal brands do. Through online structures and e-exchange gadgets, little businesses can offer a rate of the same raised prerequisites of organization that tremendous business customers have become use to. Minute access to things and organizations is one of the keys to purchaser dedication. Setting up a robotized email response to customer solicitation is a shrewd thought. Your target should be to automate the method with the objective that it is set up to handle trades at whatever point. By means of motorizing methods, for instance, arrangements and customer organization, little associations can fulfill the same level of affirmation with their customers that huge ventures appreciate.

The Importance of Analytics

Measuring the progression of your online business is vital to its flourishing. Using Google Analytics and other online gadgets is another way to deal with and compete with colossal brands. Tremendous associations use methodical programming instruments every day with the objective that they can see the change they are making toward their association's goals. By using these same gadgets, you can evaluate your association’s advancement, see the examples with respect to customer change rates, and grasp the stream of your business on new levels. This information will be beneficial and help drive the best ways to focus your action and acquire concentrated on more leads and visitors.

Level the Playing Field with Internet

Steve Jobs said in a meeting in 1995, The most diminutive association on the planet can battle with the greatest association on the planet on the web. He expected then that the web would change the way business is done, including customer acquirement and arrangements. This declaration has wound up being substantial in our present world as more associations go on the web. More wage is being made on the web through e-business than in honest to goodness stores today. People are getting on mobile phones more than ever some time as of late. Little associations can misuse this miracle by displaying their thoughts and contemplation on YouTube and other social stages and by making responsive locales for their flexible gathering of spectators.

As Steve Jobs expected over 20 years prior, the web has changed everything. More retail stores are selecting to put their associations on the web. Gigantic brands run online with the objective that they can make their region known in the electronic medium. The online agitation has allowed little associations with a webpage and a web systems administration record to fight with immense names and colossal brands.

Through absolutely masterminded advancement methodology furnished to address online customers, and by making the asking for and customer organization strategies robotized, little business can largely influence the world. Along these lines, in case you are a little business, apply these norms and don’t surrender. You’re playing with the tremendous young fellows now!

Credit:https://www.todhost.com/blog/small-business/181-how-small-businesses-can-compete-and-win-against-big-businesses-on-the-web

Today, most marketing teams are structured to drive traffic towards websites, which then converts into leads for the sales team to close. Once this process starts to deliver results, marketers then seek to generate even more traffic, and hopefully even more success.

An oversimplification, but that’s the standard marketing playbook. Few marketing teams focus on getting more from existing traffic. That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. In this blog post, we’ll teach you all about CRO — what it achieves, why you should do it, and how your team can execute it. We’ll explain how you can drive more results from your existing traffic so your content can work smarter, and not harder, for you.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

Many websites are designed to convert website visitors into customers. These conversions occur all over the website — on the homepage, pricing page, blog, and landing pages — and all of these can be optimized for a higher number of conversions. The process of optimizing those conversions is exactly what CRO entails. CRO is a huge, often untapped opportunity for marketing teams, and you might be surprised by the oversized impact you could deliver by fine-tuning your website for conversions.

When Is Conversation Rate Optimization (CRO) Right for Your Business?

Once your sales and marketing engine attracts website visitors who consistently convert into leads for your sales team, you should start thinking about CRO.


Read full blog post at; https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/180-a-guide-to-conversion-rate-optimization

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/178-30-most-important-google-ranking-factors-for-beginners

Google has an inconclusive and ever changing list of factors taken into account by its search engine algorithm in ranking a website. However, attempting to optimize a website for all the factors will mean a lot of work and webmasters may not be able to optimize more than 5 websites in a year. Understanding the direction of Google in ranking websites and focusing on the more important factors with greater impact on website overall performance is the recommended way to go. In this post, we take a loo at the most important factors and how to optimize your website for these factors to achieve ranking success in Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

On-Page factors:

On Page factors, also called On-site SEO is about optimizing content for target keywords and essentially focuses on the use of proper heading, keyword placement, content quality and many other factors. On Page search engine optimization on any website has the most profound effect on its rankings. From our experience, proper On-Page optimization can significantly affect the possibility to rank within the top ten results in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Here are the critical on-page optimization factors that can affect its search visibility quite significantly:

Keyword in the title tag.

The title meta tag is one of the strongest relevancy signals for a search engines. The tag itself is meant to give the accurate description of the pages content. Search engines use it to display the main title of a search result. Including a keyword in it will indicate to search engine what to rank the page for. Website titles define how a search engine understand the purpose and primary focus of a website and invariably will help search engines what to rank the website for.

It is recommended that the keyword should be placed at the start of the title tag. Pages optimized this way will rank better than those with keyword closer to the title’s tag end. This is generally the rule but we have also seen websites that simply place keywords within the title and not necessarily starting the title with keywords ranking much better than websites that start with keywords in title.

Keyword in meta description tag.

The meta description tag has gained less relevance since Google made it known that it does not use this tag in page ranking anymore. However, we still thin it is important for Google because our tests reveal that a poorly written meta description affects Google's understanding of a website's primary focus and could affect how Google places the website in its search engine result pages. Remember that Google's focus is to give users the best search experience and so Google tries to place websites it considers to be of high quality at the top of its search engine result pages.

Having said that, it should be understood that the meta description tag today is is nonetheless still a relevant signal as it is crucial for gaining user clicks from search results pages. Including some relevant keyword in it makes it more relevant to a search engine and a searcher. The bottom line is that you still need to take the meta description tag very seriously.

Magento is the most popular e-commerce application and had attracted a lot of attacks as well. Protecting your Magento website is important not just for the security of your website but also for your pleasant user experience which is important for your reputation and search engine ranking as well.

Although these recommendations have been made with the security of a Magento website in mind, they will apply to many other content management systems. Generally speaking, website protection principles are generally applicable to most platforms and will be peculiar to most applications only in some specific cases.

Magento is the most widely used e-commerce application and that makes it naturally a target for cyber-criminals. Sometimes, hackers attempt to steal personal customer data, misuse credit cards or perpetrate identify theft. Other times, they simply want to deface a site by hacking into it or to take it down with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

Magento is a relatively secure system and is frequently patched, it is critical that you (or your Magento site administrator) invest time and effort in order to ensure that your Magento security is as tight as possible.


The following list of security recommendations and practices will help protect your Magento websites against attacks.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security/177-best-practices-for-magento-website-security

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/172-reasons-your-business-should-own-a-website-in-today-s-world

A website is a single domain that consists of different web pages. Many people operate very successful website while a lot more do not see the real reasons to even own one. In this article, we examine some of the reasons people should own websites and show why it becomes misplaced not to own a website in today's business world. Statistics show over 3.5 billion internet users in the world today with Nigeria ranking number 8 with over 90million users based on the ownership of internet connections.

With this staggering number, if you have a business and don't have a website, you are losing out on great opportunities for your business. To many, being on the top ranking list is the only way to run successfully, but that is actually far from the truth. With long-tail keywords and focus on smaller niches, it has become possible to operate successful websites that serve smaller localities.

Also read: Web Hosting Tips and Tricks for Beginners

A website can be used to accomplish many different growth strategies to help your business expansion programme. As a business owner, you need to know where your consumers are. But what if consumers know your business and what you can offer, but they can't reach you? That is one of the risks you take by not having a website for your business. Owning a website helps your availability all the time and limits the problem of distance.

So, generally, what are the benefits of owning a website?

There are several reasons people setup a website. It varies as it depends on the purpose or objective of the website owner. However, there is some agreement that these reasons below justify owning a website especially for a business.

Also read: A Simple Guide to Choosing Your Web Hosting Company


Why A Business Should Own A Website

Cost Effectiveness

When compared to a shop, a website is incredibly cheaper to run and operate. It takes a few dollars to get a hosting account packed with free scripts and templates. Once you understand how to set these up, you can get your website running within 24hours and at less than 30US Dollars for one whole year.

On the other hand, a physical location for a business could cost up to 1,000 U.S. Dollars to pay for accommodation. Getting the layout in place could cost even more.

Besides the initial setup costs, a brick and mortar store is susceptible to many risks out of the ordinary occurrences which could blow out the costs such as leaving the lights on, theft, damage, extra staff etc.

Also read: How to Choose an Affordable Web Hosting for Your Blog


A website provides tremendous benefits and costing outlines. In fact, you make enormous savings with a website. A website will serve as your point of sale and does not require a physical office. This has been one of the most exciting features of the website/online business. The benefit of starting a business without any legal registration requirements, physical location and yet build trust and become a very successful business.

24/7 Accessibility

Your website will be available and accessible to deliver services 24/7/365. People can order at any time even though delivery can be done hours later. A website helps to ensure that businesses are not lost to non-business hours. Imagine that you want to buy from a store.

Also read: A Review of Web Hosting in Nigeria

You put in all the effort required to go to the store, but when you get there, it's closed. We all know how irate we feel in that situation. On the other hand, with a website, purchases can be made at any time since a website is operational round the clock.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/172-reasons-your-business-should-own-a-website-in-today-s-world

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/170-seo-what-search-engines-love-and-hate-about-websites

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a common word and if you have worked within the web development industry or even manage a simple personal website, you will likely have come across this word. It affects websites and will significantly determine its placement in search engines and visitor traffic. In this post, we shall examine the key friendly factors that search engines love and which if implemented, will affect your website performance.

What is SEO?

First, let us refresh our understanding of what is SEO. SEO is the umbrella term for all the methods you can use to ensure the visibility of your website and its content on search engine results pages (SERPs).

The methods vary from the practices you can achieve behind the scenes on your website (we tend to refer to this as on-page SEO) to all the promotional off-page approaches you can use to raise your site's visibility (link-building, social media marketing).

For the purpose of this article, when we talk about visibility, we mean how high up the SERP your website appears for certain search terms in the organic results. Organic results refer to those that appear naturally on the page, rather than in the paid-for sections. Paid search is also a large part of search engine marketing.

Why do you need SEO?

Good SEO through building a strong site architecture and providing clear navigation will help search engines index your site quickly and easily. This will also, more importantly, provide visitors with a good experience of using your site and encourage repeat visits. It's worth considering that Google is increasingly paying attention to user experience.

When it comes to how much traffic is driven by search engines to your website, the percentage is substantial, and could perhaps be the clearest indicator of the importance of SEO.

In 2014, Conductor suggested 64% of all web traffic comes from organic search, compared to 2% from social, 6% from paid search, 12% direct and 15% from other referral sources.

Of all organic traffic, in 2015 it was found that Google accounts for more than 90% of global organic search traffic. So obviously the rules set by Google will be very important in your SEO practices and you need a strong presence on Google SERPs.

One study from Advanced Web Ranking shows that on the first SERP, the top five results account for 67.60% of all clicks and the results from six to 10 account for only 3.73%.

It's therefore vital that your site appears in the top five results. Much of our efforts have been put into achieving this though we rank well for less competitive keywords.

How are you going to achieve this? The following tips will help.

What are search engines looking for?

1) Relevance

Search engines try to provide the most relevant results to a searcher's query, whether it's a simple answer to the question, (the answer of which Google will likely provide without you having to leave the SERP) to more complicated queries.

How search engines provide these results is down to their own internal algorithms, which we'll never truly determine, but there are factors that you can be certain will influence these results and they're all based around relevance.

2) The quality of your content

Helpful content counts. You have to publish helpful, useful articles, videos or other types of media that are popular and well produced. Write for actual human beings rather than the search engine itself. Well, you should. Latest research from Search metrics on ranking factors indicates that Google is moving further towards longer-form content that understands a visitor's intention as a whole, instead of using keywords based on popular search queries to create content.

Basically, stop worrying about keywords and focus on the user experience.

3) User experience

There are many SEO benefits for providing the best possible user experience. You need an easily navigable, clearly searchable site with relevant internal linking and related content. All the stuff that keeps visitors on your webpage and hungry to explore further.

4) Site speed

This has become a ranking factor and you should be interested in how quickly your webpages load.

5) Cross-device compatibility

;Is your website and its content equally optimized for any given screen size or device? Bear in mind that Google has stated that responsive design is its preferred method of mobile optimization.

6) Internal linking

Internal linking can help push traffic around the site and that may lead to higher trust signals for Google. Internal linking has many advantages:

It provides your audience with further reading options. As long as they're relevant and you use clear anchor text (the clickable highlighted words in any give link). This can help reduce your bounce rates.

It helps to improve your ranking for certain keywords. If we want this article to rank for the term SEO basics then we can begin linking to it from other posts using variations of similar anchor text. This tells Google that this post is relevant to people searching for SEO basics. Some experts recommend varying your anchor text pointing to the same page as Google may see multiple identical uses as suspicious.

It helps Google crawl and index your site. Those little Googlebots that are sent out to fetch new information on your site will have a better idea of how useful and trustworthy your content is, the more they crawl your internal links.

7) Authority

An authority website is a site that is trusted by its users, the industry it operates in, other websites and search engines. Traditionally a link from an authority website is very valuable, as it's seen as a vote of confidence. The more of these you have, and the higher quality content you produce, the more likely your own site will become an authority too.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/170-seo-what-search-engines-love-and-hate-about-websites

Credit;: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/167-email-marketing-and-the-trouble-with-auto-responders

Auto-responders allow you to send an already prepared message to your contacts each time an email is sent to you. It is usually assigned to the specific email so you send different messages for different email accounts.

An auto-responder is usually one feature of every web hosting control panel and there will hardly be any hosting environment without this feature.. It is a good way of making your website more interactive and could be used to provide some basic answers to some of the important questions your clients may want to ask.

But auto-responders have its downside. Advances in web building tools especially the development of content management systems and the exploitation that come with it when spammers take advantage have further created a disincentive to the use of auto-responders. Auto-responders can hurt your business when it is exploited by spammers and we will advice that they are used with caution. The following reason point to the downside of auto-responders and informs our advice.

Imagine that someone contacts you through your contact form and he is a spammer. He sends you a message and enters a fraudulent email in your contact form. Your email receives the message and and triggers your courtesy well prepared message to the fraudulent email he has entered in the contact form. If this happens when your contact form is exploited as is with most outdated content management systems, you will find yourself creating a problem of server IP address being blacklisted for spamming. That could lead your web host to suspend or even delete your account.

One good way to address this is simply to remove the auto-responders. Doing so is to eliminate the problem created by them. The next thing will be to find a way to address the problem - Find the root cause of the spamming and fix the problem. With most Content Management Systems, this could likely be due to bad plugin or any other extension requiring an update.

Where your project will require an auto responder and you think it is particularly important to use one, We will recommend the installation of an opt-in plugin to ensure that all emails are properly verified before responses are automatically sent to them.

An acceptable approach is for massages to be sent from registered email addresses. That way, you avoid a contact form which gives room for the use of unverified email addresses. As a replacement for auto-responders, an opt-in system should be put in place.

The Solution: Email Opt-In System

Email opt-in is simply an email system which allows you to choose whether to receive an email or not. You are given the option to accept to receive the email or not. This is a measure against unsolicited emails or spam. There are two ways to implement the opt-in system on your website:

Single opt-in
Double opt-in

Single Opt-in

The single opt-in system is a one way sign-on. it means that a user does not need to confirm that he or she signed up to receive emails from the system. All he or she is required to do is to enter his email address into the sign-up or join box and no further confirmation is required to be added to the email list. The subscription is automatic once the email is submitted and the user instantly starts receiving emails from the system to which he is subscribed.

Double Opt-in

Flowing from the explanation given above for single opt-in, you can understand that the double opt-in system requires you to confirm your subscription after submitting your email to the system. A double email opt-in sign-up requires that a user confirm that he or she has deliberately and consciously joined the email list. This is done by generating an email to the user after the signs up. That email then requires the user to click on a link in the email in order to confirm the ownership of the email address and to acknowledge that the email owner is actually willing to receive emails from website to which the subscription has been made. This process eliminates some of the many "bad" email addresses that get entered into a system especially as regarding errors in typing the email address and incorrect email addresses as well as cases where somebody may be taking "revenge" on another person by using their email address to sign up for numerous email marketing lists. The double opt-in system ensures that the new subscriber confirm that he or she do own the email address that they signed up with and do want to receive emails from the system.

Email List Building Systems

There are lots of email list building software available out there. The vary with the web building tool. However, we will look at some of the popular email list building tools available for the popular web builders including WordPPress, and Joomla.

Features of an Emailing List System

A email sending mechanism should contain the following features:

Reliable sending mechanism: If you have gone to the trouble of getting visitors to subscribe, your email newsletter needs to be sent reliably. Pause/resuming the sending is a very useful feature to help make sure you emails get out.

Ability to throttle sending; Sending email can be resource intensive for your server. Having emails sent out with delays after X sent is called throttling. It also can overcome forced web host email sending caps

Unsubscribe mechanism: For your email to be legal, it must meet the CAN-SPAM act requirement of having an easy unsubscribe mechanism

Subscription form: You need to be able to offer site visitors to subscribe to your email list

Double opt in: This option is accepted to an industry best practice, it is advised to ask subscribers to confirm their email subscription in some way by clicking on a link sent to that email.

Bounce handling: Emails might bounce for many reasons. Its important for these to be automatically removed from your list as repeat bounces from a particular server can get you flagged as a spammer and blacklisted.

Import/Export subscribers: At some point, there may be need for you to change your email newsletter system. You’ll need to be able to easily import and export your subscriber list.

Integration into website user database: Many sites will have registration set up on their website for many reasons, ecommerce, private pages, paid subscription. You will often want send emails to these users.

Email Statistics: Its also important to be able to track statistics about your newsletters, such as open and click rates.

Building an Email List in WordPPress

WordPress is the world's most populat content management system (CMS) and so will ordinarily have lots of email marketing software. We will take a look at just few.

Hello Bar

Created by marketing wizard Neil Patel and his team at CrazyEgg, this plugin works not just for WordPress sites. The amazing thing is that despite its great features, it is still free. It has great features:

Choose to show the bar on every page
Choose to show the bar on specific pages
Exclude showing the bar on specific pages
Show the bar only within a specified time frame (from date X to date Y)
Change button text
Change colors of everything
Change fonts and font sizes and many more!

Cost: Free

Mobile friendly: Yes

WordPress version: Works with any version

Supports these email/newsletter providers: Aweber, Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, Constant Contact, GetResponse, iContact, MadMimi, MyEmma, Vertical Response.

Optin Feature Box

An optin feature box places the email subscription box that right under the header of your WordPress site, but before the main content. It helps turn more of your visitors into subscribers.

Price: starting from $37

Working on mobile devices: Yes

Optimized for WordPress

Supports these email/newsletter providers: Aweber, Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, Constant Contact, GetResponse, iContact, MadMimi, Infusionsoft, Google Feedburner, MailPoet, Feedblitz, Sendinblue, Ontraport, Jetpack.

Optin Forms

This is useful to place your opt-in form above your blog posts and really worth trying. This plugin is also good for placing a subscriber button within a post.

Price: FREE!

Working on mobile devices: Yes

Optimized for WordPress version: 4.0

Supports these email/newsletter providers: Aweber, iContact, MailChimp, GetResponse, MadMimi, Interspire Email Marketer

Magic Action Box

This plugin is very useful to place the opt-in form below a blog post. This may not really sound great for a lot of developers as many readers do not read the entire article to be able to find your subscriber button. However, it is a good option for building your mailing list. It's many features include:

Change all colors and fonts
Display the form after first or second paragraph
Display form below blog posts
Hide certain things on the form like title, subtitle, name field or disclaimer

Price: FREE!

Working on mobile devices: Yes

Optimized for WordPress version: 4.0

Supports these email/newsletter providers: Aweber, MailChimp

MailChimp for WordPress

This is a very well known and easy to integrate email marketing plugin for WordPress. It is ecellent to integrate this plugin into the WordPress comment box. It allows you to take a visitors email added to your mailing list at the point he or she makkes a comment to your blog post.

Price: Free

Working on mobile devices: Yes

Optimized for WordPress version: 4.0

Supports these email/newsletter providers: MailChimp
Building an Email List in Joomla

There are 3 major mailing list components for Joomla: Letterman, Anjel and Yanc

Letterman

This component is easy to use, comes with clean interface. Contains most of the core features you would need in an email newsletter. Imports CSV and XML. It is however missing features such as multiple lists and bounce handling.

Anjel

This component comes with a complete feature set and some attempt at integration with the Joomla user database. It's major drawback is that it has serious questions about support and updates.

Yanc

Yanc allows multiple lists, integration of content and HTML templating. These are its major advantages. Its major drawbacks are that there is currently no attempt at integration with the Joomla user database. Anoter drawback is that interface and installation can be difficult to manage.

Credit;: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/167-email-marketing-and-the-trouble-with-auto-responders

Credit: https://www.todhost.com/blog/tested-tips-to-increase-joomla-website-loading-speed

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you thing of closing a page and moving to another, waiting for a page to load or just returning back to your search results to see if you can view another page due long wait for a page to open. These scenarios actually lead to visitor losses and are common when a page is slow and are indeed a bad experience for visitors.

Page loading speed is an important factor in deciding the success of an online business website. It does not only affects the website user experience but also Google search ranking. Our website gained 14 positions after page speed increased by 25percent. Its Moz Rank also increased by 7percent within the same period. What all these means is that page speed is a key factor in ranking and can be far more important than we have placed it. Page speed is not based on a user's subjective experience and personal judgement, it can be tested and there are several metrics for doing that. You may want want to use one of them to test your website page speed here

Improving the speed of of your website is not something you get tired of. The faster the speed of your website, the better for your visitor experience. So, the big question is how improve the site loading speed?

In this article, we will be dealing with how to optimize a Joomla website with the aim of improving it's speed. At the time of this publication, the latest Joomla version is the 3.7.5. It is not expected that there will be major changes in optimization procedure for the expected 4.x release. This article can also be useful for the optimization of every Content Management System (CMS) based website like WordPress, Drupal, Magento, OpenCart, SMF, and any other CMS.

Best and Tested Tips to Increase Joomla Website Loading Speed

Begin with an assessment of your website loading speed.At first, you should check your website load speed by using the following tools:

Google Page Speed Insights
Pingdom
Gtmetrix.com

Keep records of the loading speed so you can also know which one loads faster? There are other testing tools out there. You can search for more available tools if you wish.

Remember, it is always recommended that you to make a backup of your website before changing any section in case of unexpected errors. Keeping a backup will save you from a lot of trouble should there be any unexpected error. Now, let's return to the recommended tips to optimize and speed-up your Joomla website load time.

1. Use Extensions Cautiously

Use only necessary extensions. You do not need to run every extension simply because it is free, there has to the need for the extension. Some extensions slow down your website and so you have to be careful when using extensions. If you find one that slowdown your website, then you have to source for an alternative. Clear all unnecessary extensions which slow down your site speed by deactivating or uninstalling them. You will also have to manage all installed extensions effectively by updating regularly to make sure you are running their latest versions because the new versions have better improvement than the previous ones.

2. Take Advantage of Joomla Caching

Caching is one of the most effective ways of improving the speed of your Joomla website. By enabling the Cache system, the sever does not need to fetch all the information requested from its database (content, plugins, modules, template files...) every time one of your pages is loaded. You need not install anything to get started with caching. Joomla comes with caching extensions pre-installed. You will only need to enable caching in Global Configuration and in the plugin manager. That's all. We recommend the use of the conservative caching system for all Joomla websites including those with heavy traffic. Remember the following

Enable in Global Configuration and make sure to select the conservative caching option.
Remember to enable caching in the plugin manager under extensions > plugins

3. Turn on Gzip Compression

It is a good practice to enable the Gzip compression feature. Gzip compression allows your pages (include css and html) to be compressed in a zip file. This package is sent to your computer and uncompressed by the browser (all browsers supported, except old IE versions). It may sounds really complicated but you need not worry about how it works. It will really make your website load much faster.

To enable Gzip compression from your Joomla website backend, go to System > Global Configuration > Server and set Gzip Compression to "Yes".

4. Optimize the size of your images

Getting your web images lighter is really one great way to speed up your website load time. This tip is very simple and easy to carry out. When adding images to your web pages,you should take in mind:

Do not use large images. The bigger an image is, the more time it will take to load.
Optimize your photos. Use tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks to reduce images' size without any significant effect on the quality.
Do no place too many images to a single page. Loading image is slower than loading text. So, be careful with having a lot of image on a single page. Tis has been known to affect news and photography websites.

5. Work with JavaScript and CSS

A website whose content is more of Javascript and CSS will load faster than those built with text and images. Some people will wonder how JavaScript and CSS affect the website load time. The answer is that they stop the page to load while they are executing. Most Joomla templates will have this feature by default allowing to compress your JavaScript and CSS files. It is recommended that you do the following:

Compress JS and CMS files.
Use one large CMS file and one large JS file (by merging multiple files into one)
Use *defer* or *async* attribute in the script.

As mentioned earlier, these settings will usually be found within the template area. You will login to your Joomla admin area and click on Extensions, then navigate to templates and then click on the Styles. You will then click on your default template to be able to access and adjust the template settings. In most modern Joomla templates, from this area, you can change the logo, favicon, adjust the JavaScript and CSS settings. Set Compress CSS to yes and set Compress Javascripts to yes.

6. Ensure That Your Templates are optimized

Fortunately, there are tons of Joomla templates that are well optimized and can help to speed-up load time effectively. Most of these are available on the Joomla template store while some can be sourced on the web. The golden advise is that you check the comments and reviews of other users before you decide to buy, use or not

7. Optimize Your Website For Mobile Devices

The use of mobile devices for surfing the web is growing and some statistics has put it higher than desktop users. Fortunately, Joomla 3x templates are mostly mobile friendly templates and you will require no extra work to enable your website for mobile devices. However, some modules are not mobile friendly and that could create a problem for mobile users particularly if the module displays very useful content.

8. Take Web Hosting Seriously

Your web host is important because if your web host is slow, there is practically nothing you will do to achieve a good speed. You need to check and be sure that your not running on a web host that overload servers. Your web host must have fast servers to be able to server content speedily to visitors.

A bad web host can may screw up all your efforts. Checking the reviews, forum before making the decision is a good idea. After you finish implementing all these tips, check your website speed again. You will be impressed by the change.

Have you suddenly got to see that your website has been dropped from the Google Search Engine Result Pages(SERPs). The first thing that should come to the mind is a possible penalty from Google. Well, many of us have been through that and the first thing to do is to remain calm and follow the suggestions in this article.

Read full blog post at https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/165-how-to-manage-the-sudden-disappearance-of-a-website-from-google-serps

Bounce rate indicators can be very important in understanding user behavior towards a website. When it comes to website analytics, bounce rate is part of a metric should be taken seriously in assessing website performance. It may be a bit confusing when you first stumble upon it, but it can really be helpful in understanding how much visitors are retained on a website. It actually gives a good insight into how the content on a website helps address the needs of visitors.

A lot of questions pop into your head. Is a bounce rate close to 100% good, or bad? Is it at all like a bounced email? Is it a fluffy metric that I should ignore? And if I want to fix it, what should I do?

Luckily, you're not alone. Many marketers have asked those questions and might not have found a solid answer yet. We're here to shed some light on the elusive bounce rate. We've put together a quick overview of what constitutes a bounce rate -- and what doesn't -- and help you find some ways to fix it.

What Is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is a reflection of how your website serve the expectation of your visitors. When people leave your website without moving on to another page it indicates that they did not get what they were looking for or the information they got on your website did not satisfy their needs. Google have a way of measuring this trend and the higher it becomes, the more likely it is that your website is not serving useful content to visitors. With greater focus on user experience you are not likely to get higher ranking if your bounce rate continues to be high because your website quality will be affected by your high bounce rate. High bounce rate ordinarily demonstrates that the landing page or the internal pages are neither attractive and containing the expectations of visitors and therefore forces them to explore towards another site.

Bounce Rate is Different From Exit Rate

Your website bounce rate is not the same as your exit rate or email bounce rate. Your website's bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on a page on your website, then leave. They don't click on anything else. They just get to one of your pages, hang out for a bit, then leave.

While bounce rates only measure one-and-done; visits -- the ones in which people arrive and leave your website without navigating away from a single page, Exit rates, on the other hand, are a little more complicated. They include the percentage of people who leave your website from a certain page -- but, that's not necessarily the only page they've visited on your website. The page from which they exited could be the last in a long sequence of page visits. That's why the exit rate isn't always as troubling as bounce rates.

Bounce Rate Scenarios

1: A guest burned through 1 hour on a solitary page and after he is fulfilled, he shuts the page. This is dealt with as bounce by Google Analytics on the grounds that he didn't see another page in the site.

2: A guest burned through 30 seconds on a site by going to two unique pages in a steady progression. His visit won't be viewed as a bounced in light of the fact that he went by more than 1 page on your site

3: A guest arrived on a site page where he saw a video for around 30 minutes and afterward left without going to another post, then it is likewise regarded as bounced.

How to Reduce High Bounce Rates

Now you know what a bounce rate is. But what can you actually do about it?

In general, high bounce rates might indicate that the page is irrelevant or confusing to site visitors. But don't jump into drastic actions like deleting a page or undertaking a redesign right away. There are some important steps you need to take before you figure out which action to take.

Remember: Bounce rates really only tell you that someone landed on a web page and left it without visiting any other page on your website. It doesn't tell you how someone interacted with your page. That's why it's important to take practical steps to examine other metrics and pieces of your web presence to see what might be behind the bounce rates. We've outlined these steps below.

1) Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.

There are now more searches and traffic coming from mobile devices than desktops. That makes it crucial, not only provide a mobile-ready experience, but to make sure that experience is engaging. How annoying is it when you arrive at a mobile site, only to have to zoom-in to read its content? Having a responsive site is no longer enough -- engagement with the mobile version has to be user-friendly and interactive.

Video is one particularly engaging type of content. It can often explain complex topics more concisely than text, which might be why 4X as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. But when it comes to mobile usage, long videos require a significant amount of data and might therefore slow the user experience -- causing the visitor to bounce. For that reason, it is good eliminating these longer videos from your mobile site, or creating more concise versions that still address the most important points.

This kind of improvement, however, isn't limited to video. Take a holistic approach to evaluating your mobile experience, and consider how you''ll address contingencies like these.

2) Look at your bounce rate based on different sources.

Sometimes, the sources directing traffic to a given page might have something to do with its bounce rate. Let's say your bounce rate is particularly high for visitors coming from social media -- take a close look at the message you're using to accompany the content you're distributing.

Does it truly match what the content is about? Would a visitor clicking on that link in Twitter, or Facebook expect to see the headline, and initial image? If the answer to either of those questions is "no", your promotion strategy might need some work.

When you're distributing your website's content, make sure the messaging actually matches the page to which you're directing visitors. You have to clearly meet the expectations of the visitor -- regardless of source.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/164-how-to-fix-website-bounce-rate-problems

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/163-an-seo-guide-on-the-top-3-factors-that-guarantee-success-for-every-website

No matter the type of website you run, for profit or not for profit, ranking high in the search engines and driving quality traffic are a must for its success. But achieving these goals is usually not an easy task. We recommend you focus on three key elements discussed below and watch your website achieve the expected outcome. These may just require some small changes or a complete redesign to get the website competitive. The key lies in how better you can be than your competitors in certain areas. You just have to be slightly better than your competitors to get many better results.

If your changes drives you from being one of the discarded sites to the site that is chosen by searchers then your sales will increase.

Your website has to score highly and be exceptionally good in three areas in the fight for the customer:

1: Choose the right keywords

Being better than your competitors starts with choosing the right keywords. If you target keywords that aren't used by the people who want to buy then you might get a lot of visitors but no sales. Your web pages should be optimized for the keywords that attract people who are looking for the products and services that you sell on your website and who are ready to buy.

There are keyword tools out there that can help you with this. One of them is SEOprofiler. This tool will help you find the best keywords for your website.

1.1 How Best to Use Keywords in Your Website Content

Although the role of keywords have been significantly played down especially in Google metadata as a search engine ranking sigal, there are some evidence that it is not yet completely over with keywords. For instance, not using the right keywords in writing your web page title is still seen as a disadvantage for competition because it could affect how Google and other search engines understand the focus and offering of your website and that could seriously affect its search engine placement.


Note that although keywords and content generally can be useful in getting the search engines understand your website and what it talks about, keyword density and the likes are currently not a ranking factor. Ranking today is linked other factors like the website title, external and internal links, freshness of content and social sharing.

The role of keywords and how it affects search engine understanding and placement of a website can be related to a real life story of how we dress to be noticed. People dress well or do something bizarre in order to be noticed or make a statement. To get ahead in life or business one needs to be at the top, first in line. Now more often than not, the World Wide Web too functions along the same principle.

With tough competition between websites, blogs, and e-commerce sites what makes one more successful than others is the position a site gets on search engines. The higher the ranking the larger the number of hits or traffic to the site. To achieve a higher position for your website, you can follow our suggested SEO guide and develop your content such that it contains some of the relevant keywords. You will also want to read our article on a Checklist Of SEO Best Practices That Will Drive Trafic To Your Website

Keyword management is not as simple as using words repeatedly. You need to know which keywords are relevant to your website and pages. Once you have a master list ensure that you do the following :

Match keyword tag with content. Ensure that the keyword meta tag has around 900 characters or 25 words.
Ensure that the keyword density in between 3-10% . And, avoid using the same word more than once in a sentence. Check keyword validators to determine the exact density percentage.
Try and maximize keyword usage in the top half of the page. Many search engine spiders do not go beyond 25-50%.
Be smart and spell your keywords with variations and also include plurals.
Go one step ahead and make use of a keyword density checker. This is an automated system that will comb through your web content and highlight words used in higher density. The system will enable you to perfect your pages and provide what search engines or spiders want.


Keyword Density Cloud can be used effectively to crawl selected URLs, analyze word density, and remove common stop words. The tool can be added to your website and play a vital role in Search Engine Optimization.

It is all about knowing how to gather your audience or customers and the keyword density checker or cloud can help you through several stumbling blocks. The golden rules of SEO are: keyword density, keyword frequency, keyword prominence, and keyword proximity.

The basic rule of thumb is to know "what are the keywords your potential customers are likely to use." Keywords must not be random but relevant to your line of business. The trick is to strike a balance neither too many nor too little. Too many can get your site banned and too little means you get lower rankings and your wonderful site goes unnoticed.

So, while sticking to your marketing plan and focus take a moment to take care of web content and its many nuances. Make content meaningful and relevant, find out the most important words that will be used to find what your site has to offer (put yourself in the user's shoes). And construct content using all the golden rules and keys mentioned above. More than that, take quality content very seriously, avoid thin content and do not just churn out content that do not offer value. By refreshing your website with new and relevant content, you will be able to attract more links to your website because your quality content will be linked to. If you tread the right path success in the World Wide Web will be yours.

2: Get on the first results page

Of course, it is important to target the right keywords. However, your website must also be found on the first results page of Google, Yahoo and Bing to attract customers. Most people only take a look at the first results page. If your website cannot be found there then potential customers won't find your website.

2.1 How to Get High Ranking for Your Website in Google

This is a very important topic for webmasters and especially for managers of competitive website that have a product to sell. Google ranking is crucial and takes a whole lot into account. In a recent post, we discussed some of the factors not commonly discussed yet are important to rank high in Google. All that had been based on our experience at Todhost. Here, we do a more comprehensive evaluation of the factors to take into account to rank high in Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

There are many factors to take into account if you want to rank high on Google but some of them are more important than others. What we will outline below are the essential steps that you need to take if you want to get better rankings on the Google search results. It is also important for you to know that patience is required as you walk through this road.

Read full blog post at https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/163-an-seo-guide-on-the-top-3-factors-that-guarantee-success-for-every-website

Off page Search Engine Optimization, SEO, or link building is a critical aspect of an SEO campaign. The approach to link building for a new website and for an already existing website are quite different. We will take a look at how to go about the two scenarios. We will further, in this post, try to give some insights on how to get quality links from reputable website and gain some advantages including higher ranking.

Read full blog post at https://www.todhost.com/blog/link-building-strategies-that-will-boost-your-search-engine-ranking.html

Recommended Caching Plugins for Your WordPress Website

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security/161-recommended-caching-plugins-for-your-wordpress-website

According to WordPress official documentation Plugins are ways to extend and add to the functionality that already exists in WordPress. The core of WordPress is designed to be lean and lightweight, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. Plugins then offer custom functions and features so that each user can tailor his/her website to specific needs.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security/160-wordpress-plugins-you-can-t-do-without

WordPress as you may now is a very powerful web development tool. The most popular content management system (CMS) and therefore gets the much attention given to it. If you are WordPress developer, especially if you are new to WordPress, this post will be very useful as you may just be considering which plugins are best for your projects and when to or not to use them. Below is a list of WordPress plugins you will always find handy no matter the project you are undertaking. It guides you on which plugin to deploy for various projects and purposes.

Also read: WordPress Maintenance Tasks You Need to Perform Regularly

It is noteworthy that using WordPress plugins should not be a thing done without proper guide or knowledge. Not all plugins listed here will be necessary for all websites. You need to assess your needs and determine whether or not you need to use a particular plugin. It is also a good idea to review a plugin before its installation so that you can judge the relevance based on the experience of users. That will also help you determine if the plugin can slow down your website and affect its security

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security/160-wordpress-plugins-you-can-t-do-without

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security/159-wordpress-maintenance-tasks-you-need-to-perform-regularly

Website maintenance is extremely important for security. In a report by Sucuri, poor maintenance accounted for most of the compromise and hacks associated with content management systems. While most WordPress website administrators simply setup websites and never care about the maintenance thereafter, this a very important task that should not be taken for granted. In some cases, some webmasters, especially those who are new to WordPress do not know exactly what maintenance tasks they should be performing. In this article, we share a detailed list of crucial WordPress maintenance tasks to perform regularly, and how to do each one of them.

After starting a blog, often users don’t perform maintenance checks unless something breaks. But by running regular maintenance tasks, you can make sure that your WordPress site is always performing at its best. Running regular maintenance and keeping up with updates also ensure that your website is secured against attacks.

Why and When to Perform WordPress Maintenance Tasks

Your WordPress site is a powerful system made of several parts. This includes your WordPress hosting, WordPress software itself, plugins, and themes. On top of that, you add your own content with text and images. Together, all of them make a website that is loved by your visitors and customers.

However, this system needs to be looked after to ensure optimal performance. There are few simple maintenance tasks that you can perform on a regular basis to ensure that your website is working at its best.

How often should you perform WordPress maintenance tasks?

We would recommend that if you run a busy website with a lot of traffic, then you should consider maintenance every three months. For smaller websites with low traffic and content, you need to do these maintenance tasks every six months

Note: Before you embark on any maintenance, you should do a backup of your website to be sure that you can roll back if things get bad. Now that being said, let’s take a look at the essential WordPress maintenance tasks you need to perform and how to do them.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security/159-wordpress-maintenance-tasks-you-need-to-perform-regularly

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/156-how-to-use-keywords-in-website-content-for-seo-gains

The use of proper keywords and optimizing them for relevant posts and websites drive both traffic and search engine ranking for a website. When you begin to delve into Search Engine Optimization, SEO, you will get repeated emphasis on the need for proper use of keywords. This article will focus on this time tested instrument that drives both traffic and search engine ranking.

If you are unfamiliar with Search Engine Optimization, read about SEO here

If you are a blogger, you will notice that 95 percent of traffic come about 5 percent of your posts. You should be wondering why it is so. The reason is that those post got better keyword placement than the rest. You will find out that your website/posts are being ranked by machine language (Algorithm), which looks for certain signals to rank the content. Paramount among theses signals is the keywords used in your posts. Ranking here is used in respect of specific keywords. So what i mean by ranking is the position of a website in search engines when certain key words are being searched.

You can visit the SEMRUSH website and type your blog address to see which keyword your blog posts/pages are ranking for. Let us attempt a definition of the key terms used in this post:

;Keyword: This is the Keyword, which is driving traffic to a specific. (It is also called target keyword, or keyword one is trying to rank for).

Pos.: Position of the keyword in Google search. Your target should be to rank on the first page on Google search for the target keyword.

Volume: This relates to how many people are searching for a keyword in a month. When searches are made through Google to look for a solution, even though different terms are used to conduct searches, Google keeps a data of how people are searching; let you see the number of monthly searches for any keyword. This way, you will be able to find the keyword that get more searches than keyword that gets fewer searches.

Short tail Keywords: Short keywords are 1-3 words. Ex: Nigeria web hosting, Todhost Web Hosting.

Long Tail Keywords: More specific keywords that could e longer. For example: How to sign up for web hosting with Todhost, Is unlimited disk space really unlimited?

Once a word gets some considerable amount of searches (Search volume) in a month, it qualifies a keyword.

Long tail keywords are more profitable as you will drive more targeted traffic and your chances of ranking on the first page are higher.

Keywords in SEO.

It's true that writing quality posts will help you to drive traffic, but have you ever asked yourself why you are still not ranking in Google searches for any keyword, or why your quality posts stop getting traffic after some time has passed?

If you have understood the basic concept of Keywords, now let's dive into a little deeper into it. When a blog is optimized for search engines, we have the option to define our target keywords. This is most commonly known as Meta_keywords. Back until 2012, it was important to specify Meta_keywords (Keyword you are targeting), but in 2016, it's not of any use. Search engine has become smarter to auto-detect keywords and rank your pages automatically.

Google has already made it clear that they do not consider meta keywords when selecting keywords, and this makes sense because many bloggers who are new to blogging or article writing add lots of keywords in their posts.

How to start with keyword research

Keyword research is essentially finding the right keyword in your niche. This step is important if you wish to grow your blog/website in a shorter span of time. There are various ways by which you can find keywords and here you will learn some. The arrangement is entirely based on preference and experience of the writer.

SEMRUSH

This is an online tool that let you find great keywords, or you can also put in URL of a website, it would show all the keywords that website is ranking for. A good idea is to start by picking the top blogs in your niche; add it to see which Keyword those sites are ranking for. From here you just need to start building unique high-quality content around those keywords. SEMRUSH is a paid tool but you can get 15 days free trial, which is worth $150.

Keyword tools

Keyword planner tool (This is free but not as simple as SEMRUSH)   <a href="

LongTailPro (This is another keyword tool that you can download on your desktop)

Ahrefs: This is an alternative to SEMRUSH

How to use Google instant search for quick keyword ideas

Google Search can be used to find your target keyword. Because Google auto suggest search query when you type anything, and it's a good place to start the primary search. You can create a list of keywords using this technique and use SEMRUSh or Google keyword planner to check the search volume for all the keywords.

Once you have found profitable keywords, your task is to write an SEO optimized article for your target keywords. You can follow this guide to understand targeting keywords on a particular post.

Keyword density and keyword placement

Keyword density is a complex topic. We will not delve into how it is calculated. Depending on the target keywords, (long tail or short tail), you maintain a particular percentage of keyword density. When bots crawl your page, they can determine from the density that which particular keyword page should rank for.

Keyword targeting is important but stay avoid keyword stuffing which is the overuse of keywords on a web page, as this will hurt your ranking.

Different SEO professionals have different ideas about keyword density, but note that your main keyword should not be more than 2% of the article length. I try to keep it between 1-1.5%, along with related search terms or that are known as LSI keywords.

Do remember, you can target more than one keyword on a blog post or a page. I would suggest don't keep it more than three as; if your content is of high quality, you will rank for indirect long-term keywords.

What does keyword stuffing do?

Stuffing your articles with keywords is never a good idea. Overuse of keywords alerts is taken as spamming by Google bots. Google penalizes for this action, as spiders are alerted to the fact that you are trying to trick the system by using lots of keywords many times. This can affect your ranking.

So be wise when you select the number of keywords you are using for SEO. Particularly since Google Panda, I highly recommend that you stop taking SEO actions that do not appear to be natural

Meta title, meta description and meta keywords:

Now you have searched for a perfect keyword, and you are delivering it into a post or a page. Try to use that keyword as part of the title of the post.

One additional tip: Try not to use numbers in your permalink, because in the future if you want to extend the article by adding plugins or sites or additional information, your number will no longer make sense.

Adding a relevant meta description will give more insight about your page to search engine bots. I suggest that you use your keyword in your meta title, meta description and meta keyword field along with an H1 tag. Also, try to write more SEO friendly articles by using H1, H2, and H3 tags. However, don't overuse heading tags, as improper headings and too many H2 or H3 tags can lead to a negative ranking.

What next?

Now that you are aware that keywords play an important role in SEO, your first task is to find 5-6 profitable keywords for your next post. You can use the Google Keyword Tool, SEMRUSH or any other online tool. Write a post on your targeted keyword, and use any of these Google keywords rank tracker sites and keep track of your keyword positions.

If you find the information useful, please share it and let us have your comments

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/156-how-to-use-keywords-in-website-content-for-seo-gains

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/small-business/151-starting-a-new-business-basic-considerations-and-success-factors

Quite often, people start new businesses only to find that much of the decisions they have taken regarding their marketing, human resources, finance, and accounting had been based on wrong information or a weak understanding of the challenges ahead. In this post, we take a general look at what should basically be considered before starting a small business. We also examine the layout considerations necessary for launching a business website. We start with the basic marketing considerations necessary for new business analysis.

1. Basic Marketing Considerations

There are two basic justifications for the establishment of a new business. The first is an expanding market; the second is the existence of inefficient firms. As a business owner, looking out for these two considerations may be very challenging and difficult especially if the indices for measuring market expansion and inefficiency are not well known to you, not clear, or difficult to determine. In less developed economies, statistics on market expansion, new entrants, buyer behavior, and company performance are virtually non-existent. Yet, business owners must decide on these issues before they start.
One way to go about it therefore is to conduct primary research. Such researches should asses the business layout and physical environment, the customer’s assessment of the business and their propensity to switch, the possible reason why they could switch, their assessment of the product quality, if the product is imported, then the customer’ perception of the country of product origin must be made relative to quality, durability, and warranties.
It is also important to conduct detailed studies into the pricing policies of existing businesses, determine any previous price wars and what sparked it up, determine customers’ perception of the current pricing mechanisms, and evaluate one’s own capabilities relative to competitors. This assessment might enable decision on which market to serve profitably without any serious collusion with major competitors.
The business owner must also decide on how to cope with the promotional needs and to distribute products efficiently. He will need to choose among the legally allowable promotional methods or a contribution of promotional techniques. However, it must take into consideration the cost of promotion and its impact on overall performance. Decisions relating to the distribution policy have to be taken with reference to the behavior of customers and competitors’ distribution practices. There is a growing increase in personal and home delivery service. If middlemen have to be used, choosing them will be influenced by their ability to meet producer’s. distribution targets, their ability to provide adequate customer support, and handle such problems as cognitive dissonance, rejections and other complaints.

1. Corporate Positioning and Layout Considerations

The concept of “CORPORATE POSITIONING” had being widely used in the areas of external communication, corporate imagery, and market leadership. Sometimes its presentation through advertising creates a gap between the message and the customer perception based on real life experiences. Layout design is one way of harmonizing customers’ perception with the business positioning strategy.
A business that is well located and sited has some clear advantages. Its chances of getting sales from primary demand are higher. Secondly, It could rely on its layout strategies to win loyal customers. This concept is however strongly related, though not exclusive, to retailing. Site analysis is important especially in retailing because the site must first be accessible. Marketing studies have shown that automobile traffic is not a true measure of a site’s value otherwise all retailers would be located on major roads. Pedestrian traffic are also very important. Personal interviews, store traffic studies, and a survey of transportation facilities can provide valued information in these areas. Parking space is an important aspect of site consideration, its importance seems to be increasing as more shops now value and seeks to have parking spaces.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/small-business/151-starting-a-new-business-basic-considerations-and-success-factors

Yes you do a transfer without any downtime: https://www.todhost.com/

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/146-digital-marketing-top-strategies-that-yield-big-results

Digital marketing is shaping the way businesses are generating sales and revenue from non-conventional means and methods. But just like every other marketing effort, from idea generation to planning your implementation strategy, digital marketing requires careful and well thought-out strategies to give it some advantage and record the desired success. In this post, we examine some Small Changes that you can make which have some incremental and positive impact on your digital marketing strategy and produce big returns.

Introduction

Traditional marketing approaches still have their place. even personal selling is still being deployed and because they are still profitable for some organizations and businesses, they are still being deployed with huge expenditure spent on their implementation. The banks for instance still rely very heavily on personal selling to gain conversion. Notwithstanding, digital marketing is becoming increasingly central to the success (or failure) of many companies. If you are not focusing on the latest marketing tactics for attracting new customers, meeting your revenue goals may be very tight and you will be missing out on a huge potential you will find in digital marketing. But relying on digital marketing to record outstanding success requires heavy investment in digital marketing efforts and patience to see the results. Because the online world is in such a state of flux and growth, and the chances of success largely depends on how you can respond to the changes and lead your industry, you need to be flexible enough to keep pace with these changes.

Read full post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/digital-marketing-seo/146-digital-marketing-top-strategies-that-yield-big-results

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/web-hosting-tips/141-how-to-set-up-your-personal-blog-with-joomla

Turning your Joomla website into a blog or just creating your new blog website with Joomla can be very easy. This article will provide you with the steps involved.

To begin building your blog with Joomla, you need to understand how to setup a Joomla website on Localhost or a live server. There is a free tool with which you can install Joomla in cPanel. On Todhost servers, you can use the Softaculuous or QuickInstall icon to setup your Joomla website. Both Softaculous and QuickInstall have the latest version of Joomla and you can install in simple clicks.

Most people are familiar with building a blog with WordPress. This is not going to be one of those highly technical articles you find on how to, it will provide a very concise and clear guide to starting your own blog. For this article, we are focused on the Joomla software.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/web-hosting-tips/141-how-to-set-up-your-personal-blog-with-joomla

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/web-hosting-tips/141-how-to-set-up-your-personal-blog-with-joomla

Turning your Joomla website into a blog or just creating your new blog website with Joomla can be very easy. This article will provide you with the steps involved.

To begin building your blog with Joomla, you need to understand how to setup a Joomla website on Localhost or a live server. There is a free tool with which you can install Joomla in cPanel. On Todhost servers, you can use the Softaculuous or QuickInstall icon to setup your Joomla website. Both Softaculous and QuickInstall have the latest version of Joomla and you can install in simple clicks.

Most people are familiar with building a blog with WordPress. This is not going to be one of those highly technical articles you find on how to, it will provide a very concise and clear guide to starting your own blog. For this article, we are focused on the Joomla software.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/web-hosting-tips/141-how-to-set-up-your-personal-blog-with-joomla

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security/140-how-to-prevent-an-exploitation-of-your-website-by-an-attacker

If you are new to website hosting or website designing, you could have had an issue with your website and you may have been surprised that despite security assurances from your web hosting company, your website got suspended due to an attack or exploitation without your knowing how it happened. You can also face issues like spamming, White Screen of Death (WSOD) which is the result of an attack which produces a blank white screen.

A WSOD is usually as a result with plugin or extension compatibility with your current CMS version. Regular updates to current CMS version including an update on all plugins and extensions is the solution to preventing this kind of attack. Plugin update in itself can sometimes create problems. You could also have experienced a hack leading to a complete defacement of your website. There are various forms of website attack but these are quite common especially with Content Management systems (CMS) like Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal.

Also read: 6 Ways to Protect Your Website From Security Hacks

Also read: How to Prevent Spam on Your Joomla Website


Another common problem with CMSs is load issues. This is also a area of exploitation. High load is common with content management systems and this is particularly associated with websites like WordPress that are managed by newbies.

It is important for you to know how to deal with these problems to be able to safely operate your website without any issues. It is good for you to know how to keep up with your website updates to avoid a site breakdown or suspension.

Today, we will discuss simple steps you need to take to ensure that you get to know what is happening to your website and take appropriate action.

Also read: How to Find and Clean Backdoors in a Hacked WordPress Site

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1. Your Web Hosting Should be Linked to Your Favorable and Frequently Monitored Email

Your web host will always communicate with you whenever there is an issue. You must therefore always keep an eye on your emails for any update from your web hosting provider. Remember that your registered email must be different from an email created on the website you are hosting.

The security of your email is as important as that of your website. This is because every website is always linked to an email address. This is one key area that has been neglected but it's as important as the other items. However, it should also be mentioned that most website hacks have not been linked to weak email passwords. I will still recommend you take your email security important to be protected all round from those who will go all out.

Here are tips that will protect your email from intruders:

· Obtain comprehensive security software. Be sure that the security software you select is like McAfee Internet Security and protects you and your PC from viruses, worms, Trojans, unwanted e-mail (spam), phishing scams, and other malicious software. It should also have a firewall like McAfee's products, which can monitor your Internet connection and stop unwanted traffic to and from your PC. Be sure to keep your security software up-to-date. Ideally, you want it to be like McAfee's Internet Security Suite that has automatic updates and upgrades.

· Share your e-mail address with only trusted sources. Only your family, friends, and trusted business contacts should have your personal e-mail address. Do not post your e-mail address on Web sites, forums, or in chat rooms. If you post your e-mail address, you are vulnerable to receiving spam or having your e-mail passed on to others. If you would like to subscribe to a newsletter or Web site and receive confirmation e-mail for online transactions, consider using a generic e-mail address that is not linked to any of your personal information

· Be careful when opening attachments and downloading files from friends and family or accepting unknown e-mails. You can obtain a virus, worm, or Trojan simply by opening e-mail and attachments, and by accepting files from your friends, family, or others. If you choose to download files, make sure your security software is enabled and pay close attention to any warnings provided.

· Be smart when using Instant Messaging (IM) programs. If you use an IM program to communicate with friends and family, be careful when sending any personal information. Protect yourself by using a nickname for your IM screen name. Never accept strangers into your IM groups. Be smart about how you use your personal IM at work because your employer may monitor and view your personal messages.

· Watch out for phishing scams. Phishing scams use fraudulent e-mails and fake Web sites, masquerading as legitimate businesses, to lure unsuspecting users into revealing private account or login information. To be safe, if you receive an e-mail from a business that includes a link to a Web site, make certain that the Web site you visit is legitimate. Instead of clicking through to the Web site from within the e-mail, open a separate Web browser and visit the business Website directly to perform the necessary actions. You can also verify that an e-mail is in fact from a legitimate business by calling the business or agency directly.

· Use e-mail wisely. E-mail is a great way to keep in touch with friends and family, and as a tool to conduct business. Even if you have good security software on your PC, your friends and family might not have the same protection. Be careful about what information you submit via e-mail. Never send your credit-card information, Social Security number, or other private information via e-mail.

· Do not reply to spam e-mail. If you don't recognize the sender, don't respond. Even replying to spam mail to unsubscribe could set you up for more spam.

· Create a complex e-mail address. With a complex e-mail address, it makes it more difficult for hackers to auto-generate your e-mail, send spam e-mail, or target your e-mail for other types of attacks. Make sure you come up with an e-mail address that you can easily remember. Try to use letters, numbers, and other characters in a unique combination. Substitute numbers for letters when you can. A sample complex e-mail is: Tracy3Socc3r2@samplee-mail.com.

· Create smart and strong passwords. Make it difficult for hackers to crack your password. You can create a smart password by incorporating capital letters, numbers, special characters and using more than six characters. An example of a strong password is: KK+Go1dM!n3.

· Never enter your personal information into a pop-up screen. Sometimes a phisher will direct you to a real organization's Web site, but then an unauthorized pop-up screen created by the scammer will appear, with blanks in which to provide your personal information. If you fill it in, your information will go to the phisher. Install pop-up blocking software to help prevent this type of phishing attack.

2. Encrypt emails and valuable information. I

f a hacker does breach your system, encryption makes it that much harder to get away with critical data. Voltage, DataMotion, and Proofpoint are industry leaders worth checking out.

Read also: Recommended Security Checks For Your Joomla Website


3. Keep Your CMS Versions and Plugins Updated

This has been repeated in several posts. It is important to keep your plugins updated if you are running a content management system. As a general rule, ensure you are running the latest version of your software. Remember to always check for updates within the backend of your website and fix any update issues before they become a problem.

Read also: The Safe Path to Install and Un-install Joomla Extensions


4. Avoid Un-updated Plugins

One of the issues with websites like WordPress and Joomla is the use of plugins that are not updated along with the released versions of these CMSs. Because most of the content management systems undergo regular updates, it is important that whatever plugin you use should also be updated. When a plugin is not frequently updated in tune with CMS updates, these can cause a security problem.

Read also: WordPress Performance: How to Find a Slow Plugin


5. Ensure that you enable the cache system on your content management system.

You may want to learn more about how the cache system works. The cache system will essentially speed up your website. It basically saves a copy of your web page so that when a visitor clicks a page, it saves the saved page which loads like a static page. That way, your website loads very fast.

If you carefully follow these guidelines and make them habitual, you will be able to cope with security challenges occasioned by your software changes.

6. Restrict Access to Secured Folders with the htaccess file.

It is important to protect your files, folders and certain parts of your website by limiting access to them. This can be done using the allow, deny rule in your htaccess file.

You may want to learn ore about how to use the htaccess file to secure your website

With the allow, deny rule set, you deny access to the folders that contain plugins and components and also can stop attackers fro saving backdoors in your files and folders especially your template folders which is the most common location known to be used by attackers to save backdoors.

7. Change Your Default Admin Username.

If you run on a Content Management System (CMS), your default admin username will likely be "admin". You will need to change this to a customized name. That way, it becomes more difficult for bots and humans to guess your login credentials correctly as they may never be able to rightly guess your username in the first place even though password guesses could be correct.

8. Use Secure Password Rules to Create Passwords

You should never ignore strong password rules for all your accounts. First, do not use the same password for your cPanel login and for your admin login. Ensure that every account use different passwords. This is a safety precaution.

Also ensure that in creating passwords, it should be at least 10 characters, contains both upper and lower case characters, contains special characters like ^(@_. Remember that it must be strong because even if you forget your password, there is always a way to reset your passwords. So, never compromise the strength of your password.

As a rule, do keep to the following:

Avoid using dictionary words These passwords are easy for hackers to figure out using an electronic dictionary.
Don't use personal information. Any part of your name, birthday, Social Security number, or similar information for your loved ones is a bad password choice.
Avoid common sequences, such as numbers or letters in sequential order or repetitive numbers or letters.
If the web site supports it, try to use special characters, such as $, #, and &. Most passwords are case sensitive, so use a mixture of upper case and lower case letters, as well as numbers.
Passwords become harder to crack with each character that you add, so longer passwords are better than shorter ones. A brute-force attack can easily defeat a password with seven or fewer characters.
To help you easily remember your password, consider using the first letter from each word in a sentence, a phrase, a poem, or a song title as a password. Be sure to add in numbers and/or special characters.
Create different passwords for different accounts and applications. That way, if one password is breached, your other accounts won't be put at risk too. Do not use the same or variations of the same password for different applications.
Despite admonitions to the contrary, one easy way to remember your passwords is to write them down and keep them in a securely locked place. Never leave them on a Post-It note on your monitor, in an address book, in a desk drawer, or under your keyboard or mouse pad (or any other obvious place).
Consider using a secure password manager. The Firefox browser has a password manager already built in The Firefox password manager and 4 others are reviewed.
If you have already established a password that is not strong, change it! Web sites have a variety of procedures that govern how you can change your password. Look for a link (such as my account) somewhere on the site's homepage that goes to an area of the site that allows password and account management.

Read also: How A Plugin Installation Can Crash Your Wordpress Website

9. Back up your data

Copying your key company data onto a cloud-based system, such as Dropbox or OneDrive, or a USB hard drive takes minutes, and will save you time and anxiety if your system is ever compromised.You can backup your entire website online. cPanel hosting environment and other hosting applications have one-click backup tools which are very handy. You can use the back up tool to maintain a healthy backup just to protect you from very serious disaster.

10. Maintain updates

We continue to re-emphasize this because it is critical to the security of your website. This is an aspect that had been neglected by many. It is important that you check for updates daily on your most critical websites to be able to take action as quickly as possible once there be need for an update. Always ensure that your keep your website up-to-date especially if you run a content management system. Keeping your system updated with the most recent software updates will help you overcome exploitation associated with discovered vulnerabilities.

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