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Quuality backlinkks are one of the strongest factors that build up a website's ranking in Google and othher search engines. Google is concerned with the backlinks your website receive and the quality of the links too. In tis article, we shall be looking at how to build quality links which we can also call good backlinks, we shall also look at what should be avoided which constitute back link building. Put simply, this article outlines the difference between good and bad backlinks.

When you begin the task of acquiring quality and relevant backlinks to your website there are many factors that can increase or decrease your search engine rankings.

A quality backlink pointing to your site should be in the same category and relevant in content to your website. The page where your link is located should be indexed by Google and the page should also have a Google page rank. The webpage where your link is located should also contain no more than 30 other out-going links to other websites. Link pages with more than 30 out-going links are less relevant to the search engines. Having your link posted on this type of webpage can affect your search engine rankings in a negative way. Other excellent techniques of acquiring backlinks are directory submissions, posting articles, blogs and forums.

For directory submissions select the proper directory category and take a look at how many other websites are contained in the category where your link would be posted, if you can manage to get on the first or second page of the listings, this is a quality backlink. Also look at the Google page rank of the landing page for your link. If the page has a Google page rank this is also a quality backlink.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/

Discusions about today's most popular social sharing websites focuses mainly on Facebook and Twitter, leaving out YouTube. That gives the impression that YouTube may not as significant, creating much impact as FaceBook and Twitter. That is not the reality. YouTube has a lot going for it. Although Facebook might be the largest social networking site, YouTube has the second greatest reach after Facebook in terms of general usage. It's also the second biggest search engine behind its parent company, Google.

Also read: How to get more YouTube Subscribers to your video channel

There are lots of things you can do with YouTube that you might not know about, whether you use YouTube to watch videos, post them, or both. For example, did you know that YouTube automatically creates a written transcript for your videos -- and that polishing them can help you get your videos found more easily in web search? Or that you can use YouTube to easily create a photo slideshow, and even set it to music using its royalty-free audio library?

To help you make the most out of YouTube, we've put together a list of 16 of the lesser-known hacks, tips, and features YouTube has to offer.

Read full blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/16-youtube-features-you-need-to-know.html

This is a very important topic for webmasters and especially for managers of ecommerce websites. 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. Today, 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.

Why you need to rank higher on Google?

Good rankings are hard to get and when you do it’s only after a lot of patience and hard work. By knowing the benefits of having a web page on the first positions of Google you can find the motivation and courage to work until your targets are met. So let us begin with the benefits of good ranking in Google.

Higher rankings means more traffic – Obviously the first advantage has to do with the traffic gains. The higher your ranking is, the more organic traffic you will get from Google. The more traffic you get, the more likely your conversions will be. Have in mind though that statistically the first 5 positions get the majority of search traffic which accounts for more than 60% of search traffic.
High ranking is a signal of trust – One of the reasons Google became the World’s most popular search engine is because people trust it. They trust it because they know that when they search for something on Google they will find what they are looking for. Ranking high in Google search engine makes people trust you for quality and reputation. Google is currently using more than 300 ranking signals and more than 15 years of research and development on ranking algorithms and they have become very good in choosing quality websites to show in their search results. When users find your website in the first pages of Google they know that it’s a good website since Google is trusting it and showing it in their results.
High ranking will give you more social media shares and comments – A website found in the first page of Google gets more social shares and comments because it receives more traffic and because of the ‘trust’ reason explained above.
Good rankings on other competitive search engines – Once you rank high on Google, you will also rank high on other search engines. Google is not the only search engine available but it’s the one with the most traffic. Nevertheless, the other search engines have SEO rules which are similar to Google and once you get a good ranking position on Google, it is certain that good ranking positions will follow in the other search engines as well.

How to get a higher ranking on Google

Now, that you understand the importance of good Google rankings let’s go into greater detail about how to get them.

Read full log post on https://www.todhost.com/blog/how-to-get-high-ranking-for-your-website-in-google.html

Website managers and administrators are increasingly focusing their attention on the online medium as a powerful marketing communication tool. This is as a result of the growing importance of the internet ith its large number of users. Marketing is undoubtedly the engine room of every business. From consumer studies to implementing strategies that can drive sales, marketing is the key that determines success. If you have a good product, idea or service and you get it wrong on the side of marketing promotion, you are no way going to achieve the success that would have been with good marketing.

Digital marketing is becoming increasingly important especially as it relates to search engine marketing. Much has changed in the way marketing business is conducted. Apart from the need for careful planning drawn from market studies, there are key changes that shape the direction of every online marketing buusiness.

This outline provides you with all relevant and key information that should shape your decision making as you create a strategy for marketing in 2017 and beyond.

Read more blog post at: https://www.todhost.com/blog/

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/checklist-of-seo-best-practices-that-will-drive-trafic-to-your-website.html

Getting more website traffic is extremely important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Also very important is that the visitors you get should be coming from organic traffic. Organic traffic are the visitors you get to your website through unpaid sources. So, when you advertise your website on Google or other medium, they are paid for and do not constitute organic traffic.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is ever-changing changing and the change increasingly tends towards greater focus on user experience. Search engines are increasingly adjusting their ranking patterns to get highly relevant results on top of its results – what is generally referred to as Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

A good SEO Checklist is the key to keeping your organic presence for your website and taking the best advantage possible. That’s why we’ve created this SEO Checklist. It’s the list of all the essentials you need to fully optimize your website and it will help you drive more traffic and deliver higher conversions for your online business. Before you begin the implementation of these recommendations, it is vital to conduct an SEO audit which will help you determine the changes needed to make better progress.

ONSITE SEO CHECKLIST

OnSite SEO which is also referred to as OnPage SEO focuses on optimizing content for target keywords. This includes use of proper heading, keyword placement, content quality and many other factors.

Title Tags:

Title tags are the main indicator and headline for what a page is about. Search engines use title tags to understand if and how the content on a page would be useful to a site user. When a search engine displays multiple search results, a concise and descriptive title helps the user know your link is the best to click on.

In setting up title tags, you must do your best to avoid Duplicate title tags. Duplicate tags confuse search engines that are trying to determine the relevancy of each page on your site. If you can’t create unique title tags for certain pages, you should consider whether or not the content should exist in the first place.

Avoid Missing Title Tags: Because users and search engines use title tags to understand what a link is about, missing title tags compromise a page’s ability to rank for that content in SERPs.

Long Title Tags: If a title tag is longer than 65 characters, it may be cut off when it is displayed on a search results page. Titles should comprise of at least 10 characters and should not be longer than 0 characters. We have seen search engines display as much as 70 characters but we recommend you stick to not more that 60 characters.

A fully visible title helps the user know exactly what the link is about. If they can’t parse what the link is about quickly, they may abandon your link for another.

Redirects: Redirects forward one URL to another. Setting up redirects is a way to have visitors to a particular web page sent automatically to a different page.

There are a couple types of redirects.

301 – Moved Permanently

This redirect is an HTTP status code for when a page has been moved to a new location or URL. The major benefit of a 301 redirect is that all the value or clout of all the inbound links to the first URL will carry over to the new URL. You might use a 301 redirect when a website changes domain names.

307 – Moved Temporarily (formerly 302 – Found)

This type of redirect is much less common, but allows a temporary movement of one link to another. Unlike the 301, the value or clout of the link does not carry over to the new, temporary URL. A case of a temporary redirect would be during website/page maintenance.

Hostname

Many sites allow users to visit them through different hostnames which may or may not include the www. (http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com). It’s important that all of your hostnames direct to the same site. This is called url canocalization. It simply means that the search engines will be made to index only one url format. So you need to choose whether to allow or not allow the www to be added to url url in search engines. This has become important because search engines could view the url with www to be different from the one without the www and this creates a lot of duplicate issues which search engines do not like and for which your website could get a penalty.

Reachability

Reachability refers to the ability to access the most important pages on your site in a small number of clicks. Your toplanding pages must be designed to allow easy access to your entire website. Good reachability makes for a better user experience. It also helps search engines crawl more pages, faster. If search engines can’t access, and therefore can’t read, pages on your site then they cannot be indexed or ranked.

Anchor Texts

Anchor text is the clickable text of a hyperlink that leads to another page on a website. Like title tags, users and search engines use anchor text to help decide what the destination page is about. This makes for more efficient indexing and more relevant user browsing. Descriptive anchor text also contributes to link relevancy – a big factor in SERP rankings. Anchor tets have also been useful in reducing website bounce rates.

Broken Links

Broken links are links that return an error instead of going to the destination page, file, or image. They can occur for a variety of reasons, like linked content being deleted or a URL being moved.

Broken links can negatively affect search engine rankings because they stop crawlers from indexing your site completely. This means less coverage and poor rankings. Broken links are also a poor experience for the user. If a user encounters a broken link, they may be discouraged from visiting other pages on your site.

Long URLs

Generally, shorter URLs are the better. Since search engines display URLs as part of search results, long URLs may be cut off and deter users from clicking. Shorter URLs are easier to share socially and are more readable. There are several recommended practices for structuring URLs.

Avoid Dead End Pages

Dead end pages have no outgoing links on them. If a user or web crawler hits a dead end page, they are unable to navigate anywhere else on your site. Dead end pages are a poor experience and can negatively affect SEO.

Page Not Found

Otherwise known as a HTTP 404 code, Page Not Found errors appear when a visitor tried to access a page on your site that does not exist (has been deleted) or moved. If moved, a 301 redirect would be the appropriate solution. Sometimes, you may need to use the .htaccess file to redirect to more appropriate page.

Customized Page Not Found pages can create a better experience for visitors, and tells search engines not to send traffic to a non-existent page.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content refers to content that appears at more than one URL. As a result, search engines are forced to prioritize the relevance and originality of each piece of content. This problem had been common with some SEO plugins developed for Content Management Syatems like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal. You can find a way to tweak your settings to avoid this problem. Often this means only one piece of content will be ranked in SERPs, which may lead to poor placement for your URL. Canonicalization or 301 redirect can be used to address duplicate content.

Duplicate Meta Description

A meta description is the descriptive text that sits underneath the title tag on the SERP. Duplicate description for multiple pages on your website can reduce traffic from search engines if users aren’t able to differentiate between pieces of content on your site.

Too Many Links

Too many links can negatively impact how search engines assess the quality of the page, and make your site harder to navigate. Google’s Matt Cutts recommended less than 100 links on a page is a good rule of thumb. While you won’t be penalized for going over a certain threshold of links, it comes down to the authority of your site. In short, the more links you have, the less authority (PageRank) will be allocated to each one.

Server Errors

Server errors indicate there is a problem that keeps your web server from returning a requested page. There are numerous server error codes, but common ones include:

Error 500 – Internal Server Error

Error 503 – Service Unavailable

Error 504 – Gateway Timeout

Robots.txt

The Robots.txt files serves a useful purpose of restricting crawlers from certain pages. The Robots.txt file can be used to restrict search engines’ access to all or part of your site. They can also be used to save bandwidth on your site, which can contribute to faster page speed and load times.

Session IDs

Session IDs are snippets of data that are used to track visitor activity. They are sometimes included at the end of a URL. Unfortunately, search engine crawlers have trouble understanding these IDs, as they aren’t concise or descriptive of the content the link represents. They aren’t intelligible to humans either. Parsing URLs that included session IDs or other parameters also consumes unnecessary crawler bandwidth that may result in fewer pages indexed on your site.

On-site/Internal Links

On-site links (also known as internal links) refers to the way pages on your site lead to one another. Onsite links help visitors navigate the content you provide. They are also the building blocks for the structure (or hierarchy) of your site and reduce your website bounce rate. Finally, on-site links help distribute page authority throughout your site. Better internal linking means increased and better quality visitor engagement. It also makes it possible for crawlers to navigate and index your site – hence, better rankings.

Low Word Count

The amount of text on your website indicates to crawlers the depth and quality of the content you can provide users. Pages with low word counts may receive poor placement in SERPs.(see Google’s update) because crawlers can’t determine the viability of the content. The number of words you have on a page will vary. But as long as your content is relevant and targets a specific keyword(s) that addresses customer need, you will be rewarded by the Search Engines.. Low word count aims to address poor user experience more than anything. Again, this does not mean you have to write irrelevant content just to increase the word count. The primary focus should be how the content addresses user queries and that is what Google is primarily interested in.

Image Descriptions

Image descriptions assist search engines with indexing your site’s non-text content. Incorporating appropriate keywords into your image descriptions or titles will allow those images to show up in search engine results, potentially driving additional traffic to your site. Image descriptions also benefit those using text browsers, screen readers, or other assistive technologies for the vision-impaired.
Also read: Image Optimization for the Web

PERFORMANCE CHECKLIST

Speed Analysis

Website speed has now become a search engine ranking signal. This goes to show how much emphasis Google is placing on user experience. How fast your web pages load has a tremendous impact on user experience, conversion rates, and the number of pages that search engines can index. Crawlers have designated crawl budgets, so the longer your pages take to load the fewer pages may get indexed.

SECURITY CHECKLIST

Insecure Forms

When forms aren’t accessed through a secure connection (https), it can compromise the security of information visitors submit in forms on your site. Secure forms protect emails, passwords, and more from being intercepted by malicious individuals, builds customer confidence and increases the potential for conversions. This makes the use of SSL very important for every website. Take note that the use of the https protocol has also become an important ranking actor in Google.

Insecure Meta Information

Insecure meta tags on your site provide information about the underlying software that could help someone attack or compromise your website.

REPUTATION CHECKLIST

Inbound Links: Links from Top Sites

Your site’s reputation and search engine placement can be influenced by the number of sites that link to it. But more important is the uality of the links. The more sites that link to your pages, the more authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant search engines will interpret your site to be. If the sites that link to your pages are very authoritative, this is an even stronger signal to search engines that your pages are authentic.

An important rule of thumb for any linking strategy is to always prioritize quality over quantity. Because in the end, search engines use a number of variables for link analysis:

The number of links to your pages
The popularity of the sites linking to you
The relevance of links to your pages – Does the anchor text include target phrases on your site?
The linking history of the site linking to you (Spammy websites tend to link to each other)
The freshness of the links to your pages
Social shares – Are your pages linked to on social media platforms?

Conclusions

This SEO Checklist will help you navigate the “must do’s” for an optimized website. The starting point is to conduct an SEO audit and proceed to implement the recommendations list in this post. All the checklist are very important and non should be preferred over the other. Ignoring or downgrading one in preference for the other could hurt your overall SEO efforts.

Source; https://www.todhost.com/blog/7-seo-tips-that-will-help-your-website-rankings-yet-are-not-often-talked-about.html

Every website owner is concerned about top ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This task is a huge one and require careful approach to avoid a penalty from the search engines and also to achieve high performance in the Search Engine Result Pages. The most popular among the search engines is Google and muh of our points made in this post are based on experience with Google, though not exclusive.

Avoid Frequent Changes to Website Title

Way back in 2011, it was possible to make frequent changes to the website title, adding more keywords and gaining positions in SERPs eventually. Today, it is no longer so. You need to be careful with website titles in 2017, making sure you have crafted the best possible title rich in keywords and descriptive of your business. You can read more on how to craft your website title as recommended by Google guidelines in this post covering op-page website optimization.

Website titles play a key role in boosting page ranks. While the role of keywords has recently been downplayed, some experiences we have had with websites we manage point to the fact that Google still uses keywords, especially when present in page title, to understand a website content and ranking placement.

Focus on Less Competitive Niches and Keywords

If your business is targeted at large groups with competitive keywords, a country for instance, you could face real competition with others offering similar services or products providers within the country. You can create pages within your website which focuses on smaller niches, that could give you good ranking placements for those searches. Since organic searches and clicks have been linked to affecting search engine ranking, you could make marginal gains from those clicks and your website could get an overall benefit from those clicks.

For instance, if you provide professional accounting services nationwide, this will be a huge task optimizing for nationwide searches. You could focus on Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja, Owerri and Enugu. If you can gain top ranking for these major cities, it will be rewarding and earn you a lot of clicks which will also help ranking for your website even for the nationwide search.

You will have to take keyword research very seriously. In other words, find low competition keywords that your website has a chance of ranking for. Cumulatively, these will help your website gain popularity and usability. Your popularity will be rewarded by Google with greater ranking especially if your bounce rate is low, suggesting that your content addresses the needs of your users. Finding the best keywords for your website is the foundation of a strong SEO strategy. Without a solid keyword strategy as a strong base, everything you do to optimize for search will be unstable.

Use Short, Readable URLs

Most content management systems like Joomla and WordPress have an option for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) within their admin area. You will simply need to enable this option to shorten your URL. In most cases, this option will require that you also enable Apache Mode Re-write and rename your htaccess.txt file to .htaccess

You may follow some guidelines for your specific Content Management System to fully optimize your website with short and clean URL structure.

Avoid Frequent Changes to Website Title Tags

We have tested this changes to the website title and found that it has some profound effect on rankings. Google has noted the importance of site title as a search ranking signal but making frequent changes to get the most out of it could hurt ranking. We found consistently that too many changes to site title led to a major demotion in at least five cases. We could not draw a definite conclusion given the changes to Google algorithm which took place during the period. One site was demoted from top 10 to position 53 and has taken 5 years before it started regaining ranking to 27 for a specific keyword. The title changes were made in at least 20 times. Changes occurred at least once in 2 weeks.

While changing title could be helpful, it should not be done so frequently so that you can see how best each title is performing. Initially, making the changes helped Google to re-assess the website and adding more relevant and specific keywords into the title boosted the rankings. After a period of about eight months, rankings started dropping and continued to drop as changes were made to the title.

Be Patient

This point is supported by the explanation given under frequent title changes above. Be patient to observe how your changes and settings impact on your site ranking in Search Engines. Do not be in a hurry to see the impact of your changes. Just continue to do the normal website updates and observe how your site performs overtime.

Take Website Auditing Seriously

Before you make SEO changes to your site, be guided by at least a basic SEO auditing. These can be done with Semrush, iwebchk.com, seositecheckup.com pingdom.com and woorank.com These are some of the basic tools that will guide you to make changes but they in no ay judged to be the best or exhaustive.

Never Fail to Maintain Regular Updates

Updates are like food to the search engines. If you provide this food regularly, the search engines will always visit your site to see if food is available. So, apart from having a sitemap which actually tells the search engines how often you update, the search engines will always visit once your website dishes out quality food for them.

Also read: Enhance your search engine performance in simple steps

The other consideration should be how often to update. It is a good idea to fix a specific period or day Most webmasters update thrice a week and that is usually Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We prefer those less busy days and go for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Also read: How to Submit Your Website to Top Search Engines for Free

Do Not Ignore a Sitemap

It is recommended by Google that you have a functional sitemap for your site. Make sure your sitemap is submitted to Google and always check for any reported errors so you can take appropriate action. Most Content Mnagement Systems have plugins that can help you generate a sitemap - both xml and html sitemaps. You can also use sitemap.org to generate your sitemap. upload to your website and submit to Google and other search engines.Every website owner is concerned about top ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This task is a huge one and require careful approach to avoid a penalty from the search engines and also to achieve high performance in the Search Engine Result Pages. The most popular among the search engines is Google and muh of our points made in this post are based on experience with Google, though not exclusive.

Avoid Frequent Changes to Website Title

Way back in 2011, it was possible to make frequent changes to the website title, adding more keywords and gaining positions in SERPs eventually. Today, it is no longer so. You need to be careful with website titles in 2017, making sure you have crafted the best possible title rich in keywords and descriptive of your business. You can read more on how to craft your website title as recommended by Google guidelines in this post covering op-page website optimization.

Website titles play a key role in boosting page ranks. While the role of keywords has recently been downplayed, some experiences we have had with websites we manage point to the fact that Google still uses keywords, especially when present in page title, to understand a website content and ranking placement.

Focus on Less Competitive Niches and Keywords

If your business is targeted at large groups with competitive keywords, a country for instance, you could face real competition with others offering similar services or products providers within the country. You can create pages within your website which focuses on smaller niches, that could give you good ranking placements for those searches. Since organic searches and clicks have been linked to affecting search engine ranking, you could make marginal gains from those clicks and your website could get an overall benefit from those clicks.

For instance, if you provide professional accounting services nationwide, this will be a huge task optimizing for nationwide searches. You could focus on Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja, Owerri and Enugu. If you can gain top ranking for these major cities, it will be rewarding and earn you a lot of clicks which will also help ranking for your website even for the nationwide search.

You will have to take keyword research very seriously. In other words, find low competition keywords that your website has a chance of ranking for. Cumulatively, these will help your website gain popularity and usability. Your popularity will be rewarded by Google with greater ranking especially if your bounce rate is low, suggesting that your content addresses the needs of your users. Finding the best keywords for your website is the foundation of a strong SEO strategy. Without a solid keyword strategy as a strong base, everything you do to optimize for search will be unstable.

Use Short, Readable URLs

Most content management systems like Joomla and WordPress have an option for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) within their admin area. You will simply need to enable this option to shorten your URL. In most cases, this option will require that you also enable Apache Mode Re-write and rename your htaccess.txt file to .htaccess

You may follow some guidelines for your specific Content Management System to fully optimize your website with short and clean URL structure.

Avoid Frequent Changes to Website Title Tags

We have tested this changes to the website title and found that it has some profound effect on rankings. Google has noted the importance of site title as a search ranking signal but making frequent changes to get the most out of it could hurt ranking. We found consistently that too many changes to site title led to a major demotion in at least five cases. We could not draw a definite conclusion given the changes to Google algorithm which took place during the period. One site was demoted from top 10 to position 53 and has taken 5 years before it started regaining ranking to 27 for a specific keyword. The title changes were made in at least 20 times. Changes occurred at least once in 2 weeks.

While changing title could be helpful, it should not be done so frequently so that you can see how best each title is performing. Initially, making the changes helped Google to re-assess the website and adding more relevant and specific keywords into the title boosted the rankings. After a period of about eight months, rankings started dropping and continued to drop as changes were made to the title.

Be Patient

This point is supported by the explanation given under frequent title changes above. Be patient to observe how your changes and settings impact on your site ranking in Search Engines. Do not be in a hurry to see the impact of your changes. Just continue to do the normal website updates and observe how your site performs overtime.

Take Website Auditing Seriously

Before you make SEO changes to your site, be guided by at least a basic SEO auditing. These can be done with Semrush, iwebchk.com, seositecheckup.com pingdom.com and woorank.com These are some of the basic tools that will guide you to make changes but they in no ay judged to be the best or exhaustive.

Never Fail to Maintain Regular Updates

Updates are like food to the search engines. If you provide this food regularly, the search engines will always visit your site to see if food is available. So, apart from having a sitemap which actually tells the search engines how often you update, the search engines will always visit once your website dishes out quality food for them.

The other consideration should be how often to update. It is a good idea to fix a specific period or day Most webmasters update thrice a week and that is usually Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We prefer those less busy days and go for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Do Not Ignore a Sitemap

It is recommended by Google that you have a functional sitemap for your site. Make sure your sitemap is submitted to Google and always check for any reported errors so you can take appropriate action. Most Content Mnagement Systems have plugins that can help you generate a sitemap - both xml and html sitemaps. You can also use sitemap.org to generate your sitemap. upload to your website and submit to Google and other search engines.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/789/How-to-check-Drupal-website-version-in-cPanel.html

Drupal is a very popular Content Management System (CMS) and currently powers about 2.5 percent of internet websites. The strength of Drupal can be found in some of the websites it has to its credit including the twitter.com the Whitehouse, the Economist and the University of Arizona.

Knowing your Drupal website version can be ver helpful in addressing issues. One of such issue is the Drupal white screen of Death (WSOD). A quick fix to the WSOD problem has always been to replace the files. It is good to know the version of Drupal running on your server space so that you do not run a wrong version in trying to replace the file. Running a wrong version will not solve the problem and could make things more difficult to fix.

On very few occasions, we have attempted to recover some exploited Drupal websites. One easy way to get this done had been to overwrite the files and then after things work fine, we secure the site again for the client. For you to do this successfully, you need to identify the software version that as exploited in order not to use a wrong software version for overwrite and create problems.

To be able to do this successfully, you need to identify the software version you are running and have it implemented on your website. If you are able to login to your website backend, that should be easy to knoww your software version but if you are unable to login to the backend, then you need to follow the rest of the tutorial to identify your Drupal website version.

Secondly, good server maintenance practice requires maintaining your Content Management System to run the latest updates of software version. This can be a problem in cases where there is an exploitation on your website such as a White Screen of Death. Dealing with such situations will in most cases require file overwrite and you need to run the right version to recover the website before you implement an upgrade and take steps to secure your Drpal website. Here is a guide on how you can check your software version in cPanel.

Checking Drupal Versions

The "Recommended releases" section has two versions which are both considered the latest stable versions. 7.31 and 6.33 are both adequate here.

Default cPanel configurations:

find /home/*/public_html/ -type f -iwholename "*/modules/system/system.info" -exec grep -H "version = \"" {} \;


Ok, now "How do I know the versions of ALL my Drupal installs?"

You'll see ouput similar to the following:

/home/baladon/public_html/modules/system/system.info:version = "7.9"
/home/flaviosp/public_html/openatrium/modules/system/system.info:version = "6.28"
/home/ioclaser/public_html/modules/system/system.info:version = "6.28"
/home/tamiresm/public_html/modules/system/system.info:version = "7.10"

This shows the location of the Drupal installation. /home/<CPANELUSER>/public_html/path and the version that's installed in that location.

If any of your Drpal installations are not using the most recent version of Joomla , it is very important to update it.

How to Manually Overwrite Your Drupal Files

Before you overwrite files please take note of the following:
• Delete the images folder so that all your image overwrite are retained. Except you have used custom image titles/names, you are most likely to loose the changes you made in your image folder after an override.
• Do not overwrite the logo. You can do this by deleting the logo file before you overwrite anything.
• Check any custom footer changes you made. Did you change or remove a copyright code, check in your new file before you overwrite the files.
• Check to protect any customizations you made to your files before you overwrite because you could loose all of them.

To manually overwrite your files, download the version of Drupal that you are currently running. Use an FTP software to overwrite the files. Once you do that successfully, immediately update to a most recent version that keeps you safe.

Final Advice: Always Maintain a Healthy Backup

If you keep a healthy backup, you can easily recover from a damage. Once you restore your website using your backup, you will need to take steps to protect your website from the exploitation or vulnerabilities that endangered your website. Always learn about your Drupal website CMS vulnerabilities and how you can protect yourself from them.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/beginner-tips-and-tricks-for-drupal-websites.html

Drupal is a very popular Content Management System (CMS) and currently powers about 2.5 percent of internet websites. The strength of Drupal can be found in some of the websites it has to its credit including the Whitehouse, the Economist and the University of Arizona.

The choice of content management system deployed for a websire development project will depend on the designer involved and his objectives. If you ask three professionals which content management system on the web is generally the best option, you are likely to get three different answers. Which CMS works for your organization is largely a matter of preference. For some, WordPress or Magneto are the superior option, while others prefer Joomla or Drupal. Today, we are discussing Drupal

As a powerful open source content management platform, Drupal is built with modularity in mind. With easy content authoring, great performance, and excellent security, it is also one of the most flexible on the market, rivaling even some of the market leaders in that regard. This means that when you are considering what you want to do with it, their is actually no limit.

Today, we will be discussing a few Drupal tips and tricks to get you started on one of the web’s greatest content management systems. It is a tip of the iceberg. There are lots of things you can do with Drupal and what you should now about Drupal. You will learn more to get a larger understanding about the powerful content management system. Now let's get started with the basic tips and tricks we want to share with you as a beginner Drupal user;

Take Control of Spam

No mater the use into which you put your Drupal website, but especially if you run a community a community site, you are no stranger to spam and need to take care of this nuisance called spam. In addition to clogging up your site with needless clutter, spams represents a significant security risk. Luckily, Drupal equips you with a number of powerful modules and built-in features to keep your pages spam-free. In addition to installing Akismet and spamicide, you can also do the following:

Install the Flag Abuse module to help your own users police the site
Block or moderate user registrations to require administrator approval
Require email verification on newly-created accounts
Install a geoblocker to protect against spam domains
Use Role Delay to gradually drip-feed permissions to new users
Use Ban and Unpublish to simplify removal of spambot users

Optimize Everything for Search Engines

One of the core components of a website’s success involves how well it’s optimized for search engines. Drupal includes a great selection of features that let you take care of everything you need in this regard. These include:

Caching and compression to improve site performance
Control over custom page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs
Integration with Google Analytics
Powerful SEO-focused modules such as Metatag, Nodewords, and Yoast


Override Stylesheets to Better Match Your Site’s Design

Last but certainly not least, imagine you have a module that makes use of a particular stylesheet. Unfortunately, it is one that meshes relatively poorly with your site’s overall layout. Believe it or not, you can actually choose to override that module’s stylesheet, and instead use one of your choosing.

The process is a bit complicated. First, place a file with the name of the css you want to override in your current theme’s folder. Next, simply add the following entry to your site’s .info file:

stylesheets[all][] = cssname.css

This is only a very brief overview of Drupal that is just meant to get you started. There is much, much more to the system than we have discussed here. Drupal provides an easy way to manage your website’s content.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/best-rated-anti-spam-plugins-for-wordpress-websites.html

WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) used on the internet today. So also is the attack level against the WordPress software. One study by Sukuri clearly put WordPress to be the most attacked CMS. The implication is that if you have a WordPress website, you have to do your best to follow recommended steps to secure it from attacks.

One of the common vulnerabilities of WordPress is that it can be exploited and used for spamming. This problem is notlimited to WordPress users alone. If you have a website, chances are you will be faced with spam. It’s one of the truths about online activity. Not only are these fake messages annoying, but spam can also be time consuming to get rid of. By implementing these tools, yout can eliminate these pieces of virtual junk mail. Here are 10 top-rated WordPress anti spam plugins effective in removing these problems from your site.

1. Akismet

One of the most utilized spam protection systems on WordPress, Akismet offers superb features. Any time a comment appears on your site, Akismet will quickly analyze it for content before processing the message. You need an Akismet API key from the developer’s website to operate this plugin. This service is free for personal websites, but paid subscriptions are available for business and commercial platforms.

2. Spam Protection by CleanTalk

CleanTalk develops a popular platform for eliminating spam. What makes this plugin special is the coverage it provides. Comments, registrations, contact emails, subscriptions and more are subject to scanning to verify the content. As a result, a large portion of your website is free of being a target by bots or spammers.

3. Anti-spam

Anti-spam has a high degree of rating among the 100,000+ installers of the plugin. It boasts no captcha formats or moderation queues. Although it’s not as versatile as Spam Protection, it is an effective tool for keeping the comment section clean. It has no advanced settings to adjust and does its job automatically and without input from yourself.

4. WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam

SpamShield is another plugin that does not use the traditional captcha methods for verifying human comments. It’s an all-in-one system that supports more than just the comment area of the website. For example, SpamShield works with many other community plugins. BuddyPress, Gravity Forms, Jetpack and more can all be free and clear of random spammy comments.

5. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam

For those who don’t mind the captcha method, SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam may be a good choice to consider. The plugin has been installed more than 300,000 times and rates well with users. It can protect areas such as comments, logins or even the lost password page. SI has a few customization options available including which areas to protect.

6. Antispam Bee

The Antispam Bee offers integration as well as protection for your website. For instance, the system can allow comments from specific Gravatar profiles. The plugin will match data against a public database for the most relevant and current information available. It can also prevent trackbacks and pingbacks through spam detection.

7. BulletProof Security

For those who like the idea of a general security measure, BulletProof Security may be ideal. This plugin protects a wide range of parts on the website ranging from spammy comments to database backups. From the WordPress dashboard, you’ll have access to a variety of security information. However, you’ll need to have the “Pro” account in order to take advantage of the JTC Anti-Spam function.

8. Captcha by BestWebSoft

BestWebSoft brings yet another captcha platform to protect the website. This plugin ranks high with site owners as it is an incredibly easy system to use. It protects the website from login, registration and comment spam while using white-listed IP addresses for auto acceptance. It has customization available so you can switch from letters, numbers or simple math to verify human visitors. The “pro” version even protects WooCommerce from spam for those who have online stores.

9. WPBruiser

Formerly known as GoodBye Captcha, WPBruiser offers a variety of protection without captcha images. This plugin prevents access to comments, logins and registrations from spammy humans and bots. It also includes the ability to block certain IP addresses. For those using CloudFlare and similar systems, WPBruiser properly detects the client IP address without accidentally blocking it.

10. Shield WordPress Security

For those who don’t want to worry about restrictions from “pro” accounts, Shield WordPress Security delivers everything you need without a subscription. This keeps your site free of malicious URLs, spambot comments, brute force attacks and even hides the admin and login pages. While you can use the plugin out of the box, you can join an exclusive membership with more features.

WordPress anti spam plugins are a necessity if you want to save time sifting through the junk messages that can flood the comment section of your posts. Install one of these above and breath a sigh of relief as automated systems screen messages for links in inappropriate statements. It will improve the experience of legitimate visitors while saving you time from having to sift through the messages yourself. Read about other ways to reduce spam comments in WordPress.

How often does your site get hit with spammy comments? How often do you have to verify links posted by those who frequent your website?

Source: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/787/How-to-check-WordPress-version-using-cPanel.html

On very few occasions, we have attempted to recover some exploited WordPress websites. One easy way to get this done had been to overwrite the files and then after things work fine, we secure the site again for the client. For you to do this successfully, you need to identify the software version that as exploited in order not to use a wrong software version for overwrite and creating a problem.

To be able to do this successfully, you need to identify the software version you are running and have it implemented on your website. If you are able to login to your website backend, that should be easy but if you are unable to login to the backend, then you need to follow the rest of the tutorial to identify your WordPress website version.

Secondly, good server maintenance practice requires maintaining your Content Management System to run the latest updates of software version. This can be a problem in cases where there is an exploitation on your website such a White Screen of Death. Dealing with such situations will in most cases require file overwrite and you need to run the right version to recover the website before you implement an upgrade and take steps to secure your WordPress website. Here is a guide on how you can check your software version in cPanel.

Checking WordPress Versions

To confirm the 'latest' stable release of WordPress you can visit their official WordPress Download page. You should see something similar to: "The latest stable release of WordPress (Version X.X) is available in two formats from the links to your right." X.X being the latest version.

Ok, now "How do I know the versions of ALL my wordpress installs?"

• Default cPanel configurations:
o find /home/*/public_html/ -type f -iwholename "*/wp-includes/version.php" -exec grep -H "\$wp_version =" {} \;

This shows the location of the WordPress installation. /home/<CPANELUSER>/public_html/path and the version that's installed in that location.

If any of your WordPress installations are not using the most recent version of WordPress, it is very important to update it.

How to Manually Overwrite Your WordPress Files

Before you overwrite files please take note of the following:
• Delete the images folder so that all your image overwrite are retained. Except you have used custom image titles/names, you are most likely to loose the changes you made in your image folder after an override.
• Do not overwrite the logo. You can do this by deleting the logo file before you overwrite anything.
• Check any custom footer changes you made. Did you change or remove a copyright code, check in your new file before you overwrite the files.
• Check to protect any customizations you made to your files before you overwrite because you could loose all of them.

To manually overwrite your files, download the version of WordPress that you are currently running. Use an FTP software to overwrite the files. Once you do that successfully, immediately update to a most recent version that keeps you safe.

Final Advice: Always Maintain a Healthy Backup

If you keep a healthy backup, you can easily recover from a damage. Once you restore your website using your backup, you will need to take steps to protect your website from the exploitation or vulnerabilities that endangered your website. Always learn about your CMS vulnerabilities and how you can protect yourself from them.

The most critical success determinant of every website is its rankking in the search engines, particularly the Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). High rankngs come as a result of quality content that is highly sought after. Some website managers have also enhanced their rankings by using the best plugins for search engine optimization. Today, the importance of SEO for businesses has become more monumental.

Below are 27 of the best free WordPress SEO plugins you will find helpful to get your content kick-started on the search engines.

1. Google XML Sitemaps

The first part to marketing a website and getting the attention of search engines is the sitemap. Google XML Sitemaps is a free plugin that is active on more than one million installations of WordPress.

A sitemap tells search engines where to look for content. This plugin will automatically create it for you. All you need to do is activate the plugin and modify which of your posts and pages to list in the file.

Making sure content is indexed in Google is important as one in every six people use it throughout the year.

2. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is an excellent plugin to have for many reasons. It can help you write content by analyzing what you create in real time and give you suggestions about how to fix it.

Yoast installs an addition to the text editor in WordPress. It will analyze the material in real time for readability and keyword use. This way, you’ll create better content for both search engines and visitors alike.

3. W3 Total Cache

Website speed plays an important role in SEO. Thanks to W3 Total Cache, the site has potential to be faster than it was in the past. Between leverage caching on browsers and storing copies of the site itself locally, this free plugin is exceptionally useful.

In some instances, W3 Total Cache improves overall performance by as much as 10 times. However, this depends on many factors and may be different in each case. It also works with CDNs such as using CloudFlare.

4. Broken Link Checker

If links are broken on the website, Google and Bing may rank the pages poorly. Broken Link Checker makes sure all of those links are still good.

Instead of going to each post and page to test the links, this plugin does it automatically for you.

Broken link Checker installs an admin panel in the WordPress dashboard. From this section, you can quickly alter the link itself without sifting through many posts and pages to find it.

5. WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup

Google uses the JSON-LD markup for displaying pages and posts in its search results. You may have seen this when looking at content that has star ratings and other snippets of information. WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup implements this feature into WordPress to help sites get more exposure from this platform.

Things like recipes, lists, user reviews and more are available when a post or page shows up in results.

6. All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack is an incredibly popular plugin to enhance optimization. It’s one of the longest running and most popular plugins for SEO. It supports a range of tools from security to automatic meta tag creation.

If you’re an advanced user, you can take advantage of fine-tuning the plugin for even greater control. Personally, I like this plugin’s ability to integrate with eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce. According to the developer, it’s the only free plugin that does.

7. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of those tools that every website owner needs to use. It will help with content development while giving insight into traffic behavior. The Google Analytics plugin allows you to see those results directly from the WordPress admin dashboard.

It’s a simple system that only requires the “UA” number Google provides for tracking the site. After which, the site admin can see a range of tracking data without leaving the dashboard.

8. Live Landing Page Composer

Landing pages are often a marketing tool to increase sales and leads. Plugins like Live Landing Page Composer help develop those areas while integrate with various WordPress SEO plugins.

This plugin offers a variety of modules to use when building the landing page from text to social media links. One of the finer additions to Live Landing Page Composer is the ability to develop either in the back or front-end of the website.

9. SEO Optimized Images

From social media to website posts, graphics can make all the difference in attracting an audience. However, a lot of developers don’t use the “ALT” tag when it comes to SEO. In SEO Image Optimizer, this tag automatically becomes an addition.

The SEO Optimized Images plugin is useful for several reasons. It will dynamically insert the tags for images, but it will also optimize the image itself such as using compression. This improves site speed to boost SEO.

10. Title Experiments Free

A lot of people will visit your website based on the title they see in search engines. Title Experiments Free gives you a tool that will help you fine-tune the opening of your content.

Users can determine which title is used for search engines from the settings of the plugin. Outside of the search engines, this plugin will display variations of the title to visitors you create and record which one performs better.

11. Jetpack

A lot of WordPress installations will come pre-loaded with Jetpack. This plugin has several modules that add far more functionality to WordPress. For instance, Site Verification helps an individual verify he or she owns the domain with Search Console in Google, Pinterest, Bing and Yandex.

Photon is Jetpack’s image optimization module, which automatically adjusts them for different screen resolutions. Images are placed on a CDN for even faster distribution. And sitemaps can also be quickly set up through Jetpack.

This plugin has more than 20 modules that are accessible simply by switching them on in Jetpack’s settings. From optimization to content development, it’s one of the more useful plugins I’ve come across.

12. Starbox

The content of the post isn’t the only thing that has potential for optimization. Adding a bit of flare to the author box is useful as well, and Starbox is an excellent plugin for this purpose.

Author bios made with Starbox include specific social media links, different themes for layout, bio images and more. Starbox may also be a great choice for showing guest posts.

13. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, or YARPP, is a common plugin that shows posts that are related at the end of an article. Using algorithms to find content on your site, YARPP will display material that is relevant much like how Google searches for linking content.

How does this help SEO? By putting posts that have a higher degree of interest for visitors in plain sight, which is tracked by Google Analytics. Quality content is placed higher in search results.

14. SEO Ultimate

For those who need an all-in-one pack for optimization, SEO Ultimate offers a wide selection of tools that are useful. From editing the meta description of a post to implementing rich snippets for search engines, this system has great versatility.

SEO Ultimate also comes with tools to market authors. It shows the Google+ profile picture as well as the author’s name. It helps exposure for the author as well as additional content.

15. SEO Post Content Links

Internal links are a valuable addition to any SEO strategy. SEO Post Content Links gives you a way to create these automatically based on keywords and phrases that are programmed into the system.

This plugin runs in the background and helps save time from going back through old posts and creating internal links. Once you make the configurations, the plugin will do the rest.

16. Internal Links Generator

There are many ways you can build Internal links to boost SEO. Internal Links Generator is another fine example of how to make this an automated process.

This plugin supports the use of importing spreadsheets for keyword linking. However, it goes a bit further than just finding words you use. The system can also check for content before and after the keyword to find specific relevant material. This helps diversify the links and appeal to Google.

17. Smush Image Compression and Optimization

For those who don’t have time to edit their images, Smush Image Compression and Optimization may be the perfect tool. This plugin will automatically edit the graphic as it’s being uploaded to WordPress.

One of the features I find to be useful is how Smush will go through your old images and optimize them as well. After installing the plugin, you may see an increase in performance.

18. WP Theme Optimizer

Have you ever considered that your theme may be hindering your SEO performance? WP Theme Optimizer goes through and removes the excess tags and scripts that have potential to slow your site down.

Things like excessive CSS, jQueries, JSONs and even RSS feeds can lend to decreasing site performance directly from the theme. This plugin removes the parts that are not needed and allows the site to function with a bit of a speed bonus.

19. JCH Optimize

JCH Optimize goes through the front-end of the website and makes changes necessary to speed it up. It makes changes to GZip compression, HTML minification, excluding unnecessary files, and minifies JavaScript and CSS.

Essentially, the plugin makes the framework of the website easier for guest computers to download the information. This boost in speed then leads to a greater ranking in search results. Although the free version works well, the Pro version also includes image optimization and CDN support.

20. Advanced Database Cleaner

The website itself isn’t the only thing that needs to be optimized. The Advanced Database Cleaner plugin will go through and remove unused data that could be affecting the performance of the website.

You can choose which data is to be cleaned and setting up a schedule. Things like revisions, drafts, orphan meta data, spam comments and more are eliminated reducing the queries the website has to make with each visit.

21. SEO by Squirrly

For the novice website builder, tools like SEO by SQUIRRLY can be greatly beneficial. Using an easy-to-understand color scheme, this plugin shows beginners when they do something right by labeling it green. The tool can also help find top keywords, customize meta descriptions and organize top posts.

Squirrly will manage all of the optimization settings automatically while improving social media options for the site as well.

Finding a strategy for keywords and phrases is ultimately important. In fact, approximately 50 percent of search queries use more than three words at a time. This plugin may help you find some of those.

22. WP Meta SEO

Meta data and content analysis are just a couple of the features available in WP Meta SEO. This plugin supports bulk edit of image meta tags, link titles, 404 error pages and provides both XML and HTML sitemaps.

If you want a good system to analyze the content you write, the on-page optimization of this plugin will give you a report below the content. It also delivers a snippet preview of how the post or page will look in search engines.

Meta data is important as 99 percent of the top 10 sites use description tags in content.

23. WP Speed of Light

The speed of the website can do everything from boost result page rank to engage a visitor. WP Speed of Light helps these aspects by making the site load faster. After all, it’s all about delivering superior performance on the Internet.

WP Speed of Light activates GZip compressions, minifying resources, expire headers and options for testing the site. It supports WooCommerce integration and is compatible with WordPress multisite.

24. Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

The developers of Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions made this plugin to be a “one click” database cleaner for WordPress. From a single point, you can delete spam comments, pingbacks, post meta items, trash contents and redundant revisions of post and pages that are not necessary.

This plugin also supports multisite for those who manage multiple WordPress sites that need cleaning.

25. Rich Contact Widget

Rich Contact Widget not only gives visitors a way to contact you, but it also includes the micro data for improving local search results. Because people are using the web more often to find nearby businesses, making sure the site is in local results can greatly affect foot traffic in the real world.

One of the things I like about this plugin is that it provides links for phone use. When a user clicks the link, it launches things like the mobile device or Skype to immediately make the call.

Local SEO is important when you consider how 50 percent of consumers visit a store they searched for on the Internet within 24 hours.

26. Editorial Calendar

Search engines often base indexing a site on how active it is. The more posts that are published regularly, the more often Google and Bing crawl for content. An Editorial Calendar can help keep writers motivated and plan out when posts are created.

This plugin is exceptionally useful for WordPress developers who have a team of writers. It lets you manage posts, drafts, easily change post dates and see the status of each piece of content.

27. WP Product Review Lite

Another great plugin to add snippets to search engines is WP Product Review Lite. This plugin is great for those who review products from their websites as it incorporates some of that data directly into search results.

WP Product Review Lite gives you an area to place pros and cons while giving a way to wrap up the article in a nice way at the end. It adds flare to the visitor and practicality for the search engine.

Implementing Schema rich snippets is a growing trend. By the beginning of 2016, 40 percent of people use Google’s Quick Answers. This is often derived from rich snippets like those delivered by WP Product Review Lite.
Plugins Can Make Good SEO Happen

Optimization of the website comes in a variety of shapes and sizes when you involve search engines. Through the use of these WordPress SEO plugins, your website will have a much better chance of scoring well. Don’t take my word for it; try them yourself. Since these are all free, you have nothing to lose but a few moments of your time.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/recommended-seo-practices-that-will-work-for-your-website.html

Search engine optimization has changed significantly since the early 2000s. With major changes to search engine algorithm especially the Google Algorithm, much has changed in the way websites are ranked. What once worked before can actually result in your website being penalized by engines such as Google and Bing. Making sure the site is compliant with the best SEO practices can ensure that your pages are still ranking high in the results page. What can be done to keep your site relevant for 2017?

Better Site Security

In an effort to improve the safety of the Internet for all, search engines are focusing more on the impact of security for websites. This means that URLs that are connected through secured socket layers score higher in the rankings. Of course more goes into being listed on the front page, but adding the HTTPS to your domain may be beneficial in the future. This helps visitors feel more comfortable as their information is less likely to be stolen.

In August of 2015, Gary Illyes of Google attested that security is a motivational factor for the search engine giant to score pages higher. Domains that are listed with the HTTPS suffix will more than likely begin to be seen more often on the front page of a search. The cost to include a secured socket layer may be worth the traffic per year. Learn how to easily get your SSL & enable HTTPS for your website.

Social Media Integration

According to SEO experts, social media has potential to play a more dominant role in the near future for search engine rankings. Although this is a work in progress, it’s an aspect that shows promise for building an online reputation. Sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are starting to appear in search results of some companies. What does this do for improving your business website?

Improves the visibility of your pages
Supports content developed on your site
Demonstrates professionalism
Boosts the online reputation of the business
Build Authority
build link authority

Creating an authoritative website enhances SEO rankings. It’s all about developing a reputation for your business or brand. While backlinks can play a part in building site authority, there is more to the process than just a blog linking back to one of your pages. Ways to impact your authority rating include:

Inbound links from blogs, forums and other websites
Links from social media channels
Reviews from other authoritative websites
Enhancing your network of off-site authorities – such as making connections on LinkedIn and other platforms

Part of improving your site’s authority comes in the form of content marketing. The more engaging you can make your material, the more people will link to your content. Essentially, you want to convince others to share and distribute the material of your website with everyone they know. This brings us to the following point…

Focus on The Content

Content is still the primary driving force to any given website. However, you’ll need to start creating material that is more focused regarding the topic to comply with the best SEO practices. Content that is generalized is becoming buried within the confines of the Internet. If you want to attract visitors or inspire sales and leads, you need information that is more focused. This can be done by:

Creating more unique content
Drilling deeper into the topic you’re writing about
Delivering information that isn’t common knowledge

Search engines adore unique content. When you regurgitate facts and information on other sites simply to create content, it doesn’t perform as well. In essence, you’re in direct competition with potentially thousands of other companies online. You need your content to stand out.

Center On Geographic Location

Since the advent of the smartphone, search engines such as Google have been working to deliver search results that are tailored to a person’s geographic location. Statistics show that most consumers will research local companies online before making purchases. This has been greatly beneficial for businesses that have brick-and-mortar stores. For example: If someone in Chicago is looking for the best place to buy pizza within driving distance, he or she may not see the results for pizza parlors in Miami. It’s believed by experts that this localization will eventually drill down to specific communities. You can contribute to this development by:

Writing about your immediate area
Submitting to directories such as Google Business
Contributing to local social groups

For businesses that are purely online, geographic locations may not play as important of a role. This includes Internet-based services and products from eCommerce. Both of these kinds of business roles may actually perform better by branching out to other locations through direct marketing.

Focus on Mobile Friendliness

According to numerous studies, mobile access of the Internet has surpassed that of desktop computer systems. This means that every site will perform better if it’s ready for devices such as smartphones and tablets. Websites that didn’t have mobile versions by April of 2015 lost their ranking due to Google’s algorithm change referred to as, “Mobilegeddon.”

A large number of sites have already been revamped for this technology. However, the process needs to go beyond just having a responsive design. What needs to be addressed in order to optimize the site for smaller screen resolutions?

Optimizing images
Reducing site clutter from banners, ads and excessive images
Removing HTML or other coding that is not conducive to a fast load time

Give your site a chance for continued success in 2017 by utilizing the best SEO practices. It can be difficult to keep track of the changes search engines make on a regular basis. Unless you invest in SEO services, you have to be vigilant about keeping current with optimization practices. As information technology continues to develop, so will changes to the infrastructure of search engines.

Todhost - Knowledgebase - Web Hosting in Lagos
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Web hosting in Lagos is easy and convenient with Todhost Web Hosting. Once you complete your web hosting order, it is activated, a process that takes few minutes

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Web hosting in Abuja is easy and convenient with Todhost Web Hosting. Once you complete your web hosting order, it is activated, a process that takes few minites

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Web hosting in Port Harcourt is easy and convenient with Todhost Web Hosting. Once you complete your web hosting order, it is activated, a process that takes few minites

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/4-things-that-will-make-your-website-unhackable.html

Attaining a truly safe and secure website had been a controversial topic and many experts believe there is truly nothing like a hack-proof website. To them, it is only a matter of time before the attackers get you. A number of steps had been recommended, prominent among them is to keep your website updated to prevent any form of hack.

The fact to bear in mind is that no matter how safe you think the website is, there is always someone trying to break into it. Whether it’s to distribute spam from your site or to steal personal information, hackers and bots continuously smash against your security protocols. Unfortunately, some of these attempts may gain a foothold of your digital business.

The question of what can be done to make yourself truly unhackable should interest everyone. But that really depends on the type of website you’re operating. We recently shared a guide to protect your Joomla content management system and commons reasons and how a website get hacked and how to protect it. Regardless of what your site focuses on, you should implement strong online protection to reduce the risks. These four steps will ensure strong protection. A strong protection policy will guard against some common exploitation especially in regard to outdated plugin and components.

1. Use HTTPS Domains

A secure socket layer can make sure that the information traveling from your site goes directly to the person accessing it. These secured websites are often identified by the “HTTPS” in front of the domain name. This denotes the site is secured through encryption and is next to impossible to intercept. With SSL, you build customer confidence and stay also build your website reputation.

Encrypting the information sent to your visitors eliminates the risk of compromised data transfers. This keeps information safe from snooping while reducing the risks of stealing login credentials. In this environment, by using an SSL on your site, you are helping yourself as well as those who visit your website.

NOTE: Using the HTTPS solution for domains doesn’t mean that you are hack-proofing your website. In fact, these focus more on encrypting data transfers from your pages to the visitor. However, it does prevent others from spying on that data transmission and accessing the visitor’s login credentials. This information could be used to gain access to the site in order to find other exploits. It’s like putting a curtain around an ATM machine. This would give privacy as well as stop someone from looking over a person’s shoulder to see the pin code.

2. Index Pages In All Folders

Folders that do not have an index.html page will display contents such as other folders and file systems. This will show the average visitor what exactly is in your website’s structure. If you’re trying to hide an admin folder or other piece of information, these areas can give hackers a way to identify access points.

This is an easy hole to plug for the most part. A blank index.html will prevent browsers from stumbling across a folder without a page. You will want to check all of your folders to make sure there is a index available. If there isn’t one, you can create this using text editor software such as Notepad. Save a blank document as “index.html” and upload it to the folder in question.

Most attacks are performed on those who are easy targets. Unless you operate a high-risk or very public website, most hackers will quickly give up on something that shows any kind of a resistance. Although this measure won’t absolutely stop those who are determined to access your site, it does act as a deterrent. It’s a bit like posting a sign in your lawn that says your home is being monitored. Most criminals will move on because the risk is too great for an unknown reward.

3. Routine Tests for Vulnerabilities

The more popular your website becomes, the greater the threat could be for security. By using a cyber-security organization or even security plugins to test your site’s functionality, you can address exploits quickly. Usually, these companies and plugins have extensive tools and capabilities that are used to test the limits of your website. When considering the alternatives, having security measures such as these can be enlightening for finding its week points.

Penetration Attempts

An extremely useful procedure is that of penetration analytics. Essentially, you’ll hire a cyber security company or use high-end software with the sole purpose of hacking your own site. Since you’re in control during this procedure, there is less of a threat when discovering the holes in security. The resulting reports will show you the weak spots in your site and how to seal them up.

Validate All Code

Preventing cross-site scripting can save your visitors a great deal of trouble. This is done when someone visits a page that has been injected with a JavaScript payload. This payload can contribute to a variety of problems such as impersonating a user through the use of cookies or play into remotely activating things such as webcams and microphones. Have security software routinely check your website can eliminate the threat of XSS attacks such as these. By making sure the coding is constantly legit, you can improve online privacy protection for your visitors.

4. Deny Access Through .htaccess

This had been one of the strongest approach to website security. The .htaccess file can be used to help eliminate access to your login page from any IP address other than your own. Although there are ways to circumvent this measure, it’s still a very useful stopgap to prevent those looking for an easy target. This kind of a method is ideal for websites that use WordPress or other content management system. You can edit the .htaccess file with Notepad or use your online editing system such as that provided by cPanel. In the .htaccess file located in your admin folder, enter in the following:

order deny, allow

deny from all

allow from Bleep.Bleep.Bleep.Bleep

In place of the “X”s, use the IP address that is assigned to you by your Internet service provider. In the event you have others working on the site with you, simply add another “allow from” line under the first with their IP addresses as well.

The downside to this method is that you must keep it updated should your IP address change. Not everyone pays for a static IP address, and many ISPs will change the number you use once every eight days or so. One way to get around this problem is to only input the first two series of the IP address. For example, 123.456. This will allow you to continue accessing those pages from that specific ISP. You can use this method to protect your folders/directories.

Should I Worry About DDoS and DoS Attacks?

Denial of service attacks are extremely difficult to stop. The purpose of these assaults is to prevent others from accessing your website by bombarding it with fake traffic. Luckily, these kinds of attacks are not meant to hack your site or steal data. However, it can be frustrating to be targeted as it could drive the productivity of the site to a standstill. Many security measures are already put into place by your web hosting provider to address DOS and DDOS attacks. Unfortunately, DDoS and DoS attacks are next to impossible to prevent simply because the nature of changing IP addresses from the attacker or attackers but most web hosts have an internal system to prevent DOS and DDOS..

Although there is truly nothing that is 100 percent hack-proof, the methods mentioned here can greatly reduce the risk to your site. As long as you remain vigilant about protecting the data of visitors and staff, you can remain ahead of some of the most potent hacks out there. Make sure you keep your proverbial doors and windows locked and secured on your digital space.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/website-security-a-guide-to-protect-your-joomla-content-management-system.html

Security risks in Joomla releases had been a major concern for website developers and managers. Quite often, you are required to implement security update patches on your website to keep it safe from attackers. It was recently announced that there has been a major security risk in previous versions of Joomla!, and a new version was released. While it is easy to upgrade to the latest version if your ebsite is running on 3 or later, it does require a little more work if you are running a previous version, such as 2.5 or 1.5.

Upgrading your website from Joomla 2.5 or 1.5 to a recent 3x version can be technical and if ot carefully implemented can also break down your ebsite causing a huge problem. But you can carefull follow these guide to safely implement an upgrade for your Joomla website:

How to upgrade your Joomla! version 3 installation:

Back up the current version of your site
Log into Joomla!
Go to Components
Go to Joomla! Update
Click on the ‘Install the Update’ button

Once it’s complete, refresh your browser to see the changes

To upgrade your Joomla! version 2.5 or 1.5 installation:

Back up the current version of your site
Find the update file your need for your installation, that is the Joomla update file
Download and extract the file
Open up the /libraries/joomla/session until you see session.php
Log into your website using FTP or the File Manager in your eXtend Control Panel
Browse to the /libraries/joomla/session folder in your site
Replace session.php with the version you have just downloaded

Once it’s complete, refresh your browser to see the changes

While this only affects Joomla! users, this is a problem that is regularly seen with all Content Management Systems, CMS, – including WordPress, Drupal, and others. An exploit is found, website owners don’t update their software until when their site is hacked.

There are steps you can take to prevent this from happening. They might seem obvious, but many people forget, and end up with major problems down the line.

Never Forget to Take The Followwing Steps:

Update your software regularly

This is one of the most obvious thing you must always do. When WordPress, Joomla!, or any other piece of software tells you there is a new version available, update it. If your software doesn’t inform you there’s a new version out, make an effort to regularly check the software’s website, and see if new versions are released. With Joomla and most popular CMSs, you will alays a notification on the dashboad

Software companies don’t release new versions to make minor cosmetic changes – if they’ve released an update, it’s fixing something that’s wrong, and the more things patched, the safer your system is.

Update your plug-ins

While you might remember to update the main software, you need to make sure you update your plug-ins as well. Plugin incompatibility can be a real problem and is a source of CMS hacks as revealed by Sucuri in its recent securty report on content management systems.

WordPress is great for telling you what needs to be updated, from the main software to your smallest plug-ins to even the translations, but you still need to actively click that “Update” button. And if you have a bespoke plug-in, check with the developer regularly to make certain that you’re using the latest version and that any potential security holes have been patched.

Secure Your Website With the .htaccess file

The htaccess file is a powerful file that can be used to manipulate the behaviour of your website including its security. You can use this file to prevent eploitation and access to vulnerable folders and that will help prevent exploitations on your site.

If it costs money, don’t go hunting for a free version

You find an excellent theme or plug-in, but you don’t want to pay for it. You might think that you can just search for a free version, download, and install it, but many so-called “free” versions will have malicious code embedded right into the theme or plug-in. Install it, and it doesn’t matter how careful you are with your site’s security – you’re already taken.

If the designer or developer has created a free version, they will always have it with the paid version. Only trust the software developer or the theme designer – any other websites offering you a download are suspect.

Always back up your site

Again, an obvious thing to say, but so important. If your site is hacked, a clean backup makes it infinitely easier to check where things went wrong and fix them, rather than trying to restore your site while fixing it at the same time.

Close up of a Home key on a white keyboard

If your site is infected and causing problems on our servers, we may disable your site. Obviously, we don’t want to do that, and we want to work with you to prevent problems, but follow this advice, and, hopefully, you’ll never have a problem.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/how-websites-get-hackked-a-2016-2nd-and-3rd-quarter-report.html

The data in this report is based on compromised websites worked on by the Sucuri team, with insights and analysis performed by the Sucuri ncident Response Team (IRT) and Malware Research Team (MRT).

CMS Analysis

The analysis was based on of over 9,000 infected websites. The four open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) we focus on in our report include WordPress (78%), Joomla! (14%), Magento (5%), and Drupal (2%).

Some interesting datasets include that WordPress installations were out-of-date 55% of the time while Joomla! (86%), Drupal (84%), and Magento (96%) continue to lead the way with out-of-date software.

Out of Date CMS Distribution

As WordPress makes up the largest sampling in our environment (78%), we place special emphasis on the top three plugin vulnerabilities contributing to 22% of WordPress site hacks.

Top 3 vulnerable WordPress plugins 2016-Q2

In this report, we also include a new dataset that shows the most popular WordPress and their distribution amongst the sample set. On average, WordPress installations had 12 plugins installed at any given time.

Blacklist Analysis

Looking at the number of websites that were blacklisted. We felt this was an important bit of data to include as the impacts to website owners can be devastating.

Per our data, 18% of the infected websites we analyzed were blacklisted, which means that 82% of the infected websites we worked on were not flagged. The most prominent blacklist was Google Safe Browsing with 52% of blacklisted sites. Here is a more complete distribution of the blacklist APIs we monitored:

Percent of Sites Blacklisted by Google, Norton, Yandex, and McAfee

Malware Analysis

We also focused on understanding what attackers were doing once they successfully hacked a website, specifically the payloads they were using.

Our analysis shows that SEO spam continues to be a go-to for attackers, with a 6% increase over the first quater of 2016. In total, 38% of sites had some form of SEO spam injection. Backdoors continue to be one of the many post-hack actions attackers take, with 71% of the infected sites having some form of backdoor injection.

Some quick takeaways that you might find interesting:

WordPress continues to lead the infected websites worked on (at 74%), and the top three plugins affecting that platform are still Gravity Forms, TimThumb, and RevSlider.
WordPress saw a 1% decrease in out-of-date core software and infected websites, while Drupal had a 3% increase. Joomla! and Magento website deployments continue to show the most out of date instances of any platform.
New data points show that on average, WordPress installations have 12 plugins, and the report provides a list of the most popular plugins within our set of compromised sites.
New data points were introduced showing what percentage of infected websites were blacklisted. Only 18% were blacklisted, and Google made up 52% of that grouping (or 10% of the total infected sites).
Analyzing the malware families showed that SEO spam continues to be on the rise, increasing to 38% (a 6% increase) and backdoors rose to 71% of compromised sites.


In The 3rd quater of 2016, thefollowing findings obtained on How websites are hacked

The Hacked Website Trend report is a report produced by Sucuri. It summarizes the latest trends by bad actors, identifying the latest tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) seen by the Remediation Group (RG). This report will build on the data from the previous quarters, including updated data for 2016/Quater3.

The one constant you’ll find in this report is the issues pertaining to poorly trained website administrators (i.e., webmasters) and their effect on websites.

This report provides trends based on the CMS applications most affected by website compromises, the type of malware families being employed, and updates on the state of website blacklisting. It removes the data pertaining to WordPress plugin configurations.

This report is based on a representative sample of the total number of websites the Sucuri RG performed incident response services on in Calendar Year (CY) 2016 Quarter 3 (CY16-Q3). A total of 7,937 infected websites were analyzed in this report. This sampling was the most accurate representation of the total sites Sucuri worked on in this quarter.

CMS Analysis

Based on our data, similar to 2016 - Q1 / Q2, the three leading CMS platforms were WordPress, Joomla! and Magento. Again, this does not imply these platforms are more or less secure than others.

In most instances, the compromises analyzed had little, if anything, to do with the core of the CMS application itself, but more with improper deployment, configuration, and overall maintenance by the webmasters.

Infection distribution WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento

The Q3 report shows things were relatively stable across all platforms. The overall changes seemed marginal, with both Joomla! And Magento both experiencing a 1% increase. The modest increase in Magento is not a surprise, taking into consideration the trend this year of attackers shifting their focus to platforms used for online commerce (i.e., e-commerce).

Hacked CMS month WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento

Outdated CMS Analysis

While the leading cause of infections stemmed from vulnerabilities found in the extensible components of the CMS applications (i.e., extensions, plugins, modules), it’s also important to analyze and understand the state of the CMS’s we worked on.

A CMS was considered out of date if it was not on the latest recommended security version or had not patched the environment with available security updates (as is the case in Magento deployments) at the time Sucuri was engaged to perform incident response services.

The most surprising change this quarter was the 6% increase in out of date, vulnerable versions of WordPress installations at the point of infection. In Q1 / Q2, hacked WordPress sites recorded outdated installations at 56% and 55% respectively.

Drupal also experienced a 2% increase from Q2 to Q3.

Similar to prior quarters, Magento (94%) and Joomla! websites (84%) were mostly out of date and vulnerable at the point of infection.

There was no change in why we believe this is happening. It appears to stem from three areas: highly customized deployments, issues with backward compatibility, and the lack of staff available to assist in the migration within the respective organizations. These tend to create upgrading and patching issues for the organizations that leverage them for their websites through incompatibility issues and potential impacts to the website's availability.

The most concerning aspect of this trend is with the Magento platform, one of the leading platforms for online commerce by large organizations. There is an increase in interest by attackers targeting the platform for its rich data environment, targeting cardholder data (i.e., credit card information, including up to PAN information).

WordPress Analysis

Similar to prior quarters, we provide a deep dive analysis into the WordPress platform as it makes up 74% of our sampling.

The top three WordPress plugins continue to be TimThumb, Revslider, and Gravity Forms:

Top hacked WordPress plugins

These were the top three out of date, vulnerable, plugins at the point in which Sucuri provided incident response services:

Out of date plugins

In Q3 there is an improvement in Revslider, dropping from 10% to 8.5%, and in GravityForms, dropping from 6% to 4%. The total number of infected WordPress installations as a result of these three platforms has dropped significantly this year, from 25% in Q1, to 18% in Q3. The continued decrease is expected as more website owners and hosts continue to proactively patch out of date environments. The most interesting, and possibly disturbing, dataset is the lack of change in TimThumb. We believe this has to do with the fact that many website owners are unaware that they have the script on their site at all, similar to what we see with Revslider.

The data shows, however, that as these get patched, others will begin to take its place. Currently there are no other plugins that are being used in mass that would represent greater than 1% of sampled dataset.

Note: All three plugins had a fix available over a year, with TimThumb going back multiple years (four to be exact, circa 2011). Gravity Forms was patched in version 1.8.20, December 2014 to address the Arbitrary File Upload (AFU) vulnerability that is causing the issues identified in this report. RevSlider was patched silently February 2014, publicly disclosed by Sucuri September 2014, with mass compromises starting (and continuing) since December of 2014. This illustrates the challenges the community faces in making website owners aware of the issues, enabling the website owners to patch the issues, and facilitating the everyday maintenance and administration of websites by their webmasters.

Blacklist Analysis

Website blacklists have the ability to adversely affect website owners, so it’s important to understand how to remove a blacklist warning.

A website being flagged by a blacklist authority like Google can be devastating to website functionality. It can affect how visitors access a website, how it ranks in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) and also adversely affect communication mediums like email.

Per this analysis, approximately 15% of the infected websites were blacklisted (a 3% drop from 18% in Q2). This indicates that approximately 85% of the thousands of infected websites worked on were freely distributing malware. This highlights the importance of continuous monitoring of your web property beyond traditional means like Google and Bing webmaster tools. It also highlights that blacklist monitoring is not enough to detect whether a site has been compromised.

Website blacklist warning distribution Google, McAfee, Norton

The most prominent blacklist was Google Safe Browsing; it accounted for 69% of the blacklisted sites, which also happens to be 10% of the total infected sites worked on. Norton Safe Web had 24% of the total blacklists and McAfee SiteAdvisor captured 10% of the blacklists. All other blacklists check flagged less than 1% and were removed from the report (including: PhishTank, Spamhaus, and a couple of smaller ones).

Note: The percentage will never be 100% as some sites were flagged by multiple blacklists at the same time.

Malware Families

Part of the research over the past quarter includes analyzing the various infection trends, specifically how they correlate to malware families. Malware families allow for better assessment and understanding of the attackers tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP), which inevitably leads to their intentions.

A hacked site can have multiple files modified with different families of malware in them (a many-to-many relationship). It depends on the attacker's intent (i.e., action on objective) in how they plan to leverage their new asset (ie. the website that is now part of their network).

Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog/how-to-build-online-trust-and-reputation-for-your-brand.html

Doing business on the web is strongly dependent on trust and reputation. Online businesses are largely services, very impersonal and no physical contact are required to transact in some cases. This underscores the need for trust and assurance to be conveyed on every website for business to grow and be successful. Being able to build trust will help your reputation support the business growth. So, operating a successful company of any size today, especially an online business, requires managing your reputation Building your reputation involves managing many aspects of your business beginning with building brand awareness regarding your products and services.

Also read:Build Up Customer Confidence in Your Website with SSL

While reputation management was once primarily a subsection of corporate human resources departments, the internet has changed the definition forever. People communicate regularly about their levels of satisfaction. What exactly is your online presence and reputation and why does it matter? Your brand identity is established by the total of the internet messages regarding you personally and your company. The business website and blog, social media posts and public interactions are all available for interested consumers to see.

This post details some of the most effective strategies for building brand trust and improving the reputation for your online brand.

Also read:; Digital Marketing: Top Strategies That Yield Big Results

Be Mindful of Your Content

Careful crafting of your content, expert knowledge and elevated customer service are among the ways you can establish a positive reputation and gain consumer trust. You need to develop a systematic plan for establishment and maintenance of your reputation.

Give customers a consistent experience

Consistency is key to creating trust according to a research conducted by McKinsey & Company. McKinsey surveyed 27,000 American consumers across 14 industries and found that consumers trusted banks that scored high in delivering consistent customer experiences 30% more often than they trusted banks that scored poorly in consistency. So consistency in service delivery can help build brand reputation and trust.

Each post or interaction should advance your goals. Before adding anything to your site or even responding to social media posts, confirm that it is in line with your brand image and goals. This can be especially useful when dealing with customer complaints.

Also read: SEO - What Search Engines Love and Hate About Websites

Work with Experts

Utilize the services of a web design expert and SEO agency to ensure that your business site is attractive and relevant. Potential customers should find it easy to navigate and to learn about your history and goals. Those who are experienced with making your website and content are well worth the expense.

You may also consider hiring a reputation management team if you or the business has developed a poor presence online. These companies utilize various means to diminish the noticeability of negative content and promote positive search results regarding your business.

Creating trust with the public is essential to operating a successful company. These methods will assist you in creating an attractive online reputation for your business, giving you and the company a strong foundation.

Blogging

Make time for blogging at consistent intervals. It is suggest that you blog at least once a week. It will help customers get a real sense of who you are and what your experience is. Choose your content carefully and show off your expertise within your niche. Your blogging will give readers the answers to several questions, teach them something new or just refresh their knowledge about something.

If you associate a blog with your website, as recommended by most SEO companies, provide the visitors with valuable information. You can use a variety of media to convey your message, including embedding videos into the page. The content must be relevant to your niche and show you as a credible authority on the matter.

Also read:: Useful URL Structuring Tips That Will Help Higher Ranking

Make Use of Social Media

When people come across a new product or company, they instinctively turn to Google and social media. They’re looking to find out more about you and get a sense of your reputation. A positive presence on social media is vital to build trust. Consumers trust the crowd. It’s simple psychology. If we find social media platforms with lots of followers and engagement, we feel more confident in their service. Make it a priority to build a social media presence and engage with your community.

Although social media sites should not be the focal point of your internet communications, you can gain trust and attention from the public through them. The bulk of your shares should be promoting the content of others. No more than one-quarter should push your products and services directly.

This strategy will build trust with others because you are showing a support for the industry as a whole rather than being focused solely on self-promotion. Additionally, you will build a reputation with your peers as a trustworthy business, which may lead to new opportunities or partnerships.

Search engine optimization

Internet users naturally turn to Google to find out more about a company or website. That means investing some time and effort in your search engine optimization (SEO)will help you shape ho people see your company hen they perform their searches. People trust the results Google shows them, and it’s up to you to make sure you appear at the top. Everything from defining and strengthening your keywords to building a network of organic links to your site will help.

Also read: Link Building Strategies That Will Boost Your Search Engine Ranking

Join Online Communities

Join groups and forums that are related to your business, however, do not focus on advertising your company. Contribute relevant insights to conversations when appropriate. Ask polite questions when you do not understand something. Many online communities allow users to post business and blog URLs in their signatures. This is all of the promotion you should do for forums.

Thomas Gunner is a successful entrepreneur and business owner. He operates ReviewFilter.com, which is a cloud based tool for Hotel And Restaurant operators that engages with recent customers via email or SMS and invites them to give feedback on their recent experience of your business.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/786/My-Joomla-Text-Editor-Stops-Working-What-Should-I-do.html

Have you experienced a situation here your Joomla editor just stops working. We have seen such cases with a few client websites and will like to share our experience about what caused it and how we were able to address it.

Why Editor Stopped Working

Upgrade Related Problem

Basically, it was due to an upgrade to the Joomla core. Upgrading from version 3.3 to version 3.6 caused the problem.

Template Related Problem

We have also seen that with some other templates, the upgrade did not cause a problem. So we could reason that depending on your template framework, you could expeience a problem with your Joomla text editor.

Editor Related Problem

We found that this problem exclusively affected the TinyMCE editor. The TinyMCE is a What You See is What You Get, WTSWIG, editor. If you use other Joomla text editors, you will not find this problem.

How To Fix The Problem

The approach you will use to fi the problem will depend on what you intend to do. Creating a blog page content could be different from just adding or editing an image.

One way we were able to overcome this problem is to change the editor.

The other way is to update the editor to a most recent vesion compatible with your Joomla version.

A third way is to copy the editor from a functional and updated version of Joomla into your Joomla installation. This is recommended in cases where you are unable to download a recent version of the software. To do this, ou can run a recent Joomla installation with the most updated version of the software, then locate the editor folder through your website file manager and download the file. You will then need to use FTP software to upload your downloaded file to the appropriate location on your Joomla installation.

Popular Joomla Editors

DropEditor is one of the most innovative editors on the Joomla market. The editor integrates extensions developed by the company behind and have revamped usual tools we use to find in such extension. Significant tools are:

- Advanced image manager

- Advanced file manager

- Custom columns manager: column creation with custom size

- Automatic summary: summary based on article titles level

- Button creation tool: create, save and reuse buttons

- Template saving: save the HTML structure of your content and reuse it

- Custom style visual edition: create style with custom CSS and load it in edition interface

- Custom title visual edition: title override tool

- Easy to use link manager: link manager to Joomla menu and content

- User profile with Joomla ACL: create custom profiles for editor

- HTML colored code with automatic tag creation

The editor is free and optionally can be upgraded to advanced image/Files/Tables manager and support.

JCE is one of the oldest editor for Joomla, it exists since Joomla 1.0. This is a more classical text editor but the structure is rock solid and it’s highly maintained.

Important points are:

- Office-like usage and formatting not to be lost

- Image manager allows you to: upload, rename, delete, copy &paste, insert them into your articles

- Link manager give shortcut to Joomla categories, articles and menus

- Syntax highlighting in HTML edition

- Spellchecker tool using your browser’s Spellchecker

- Lightbox tool for images

The editor is free and optionally can be upgraded with a plugin set like advanced image, file, media manager and support.

ARK Editor has the particularity of allowing inline edition of your content. Means that you don’t need to open your content on a dedicated page to edit it, even from frontend. Just click on it and edit.

It contains classic edition tools plus advanced plugins such as:

- Inline editing

- Image uploader and manager

- Content versioning

- Word copy/paste tool

- Link manager for make easy link to articles, menus or components

- Typography package

The editor is free and optionally can be upgraded with a plugin set like advanced file, media manager, a dedicated media folder for users and support.

YEEditor between an editor and a content builder, means that you can build a layout inside your page content. And of course you can call a text edition interface in the blocks.

Main advantage and content available:

- Drag’n drop layout builder

- Responsive grid layout

- Call editor

- Module insertion

- Media player

- Google map widget

- Custom HTML/CSS/JS code insertion
The extension is free and optionally can be upgraded with advanced widget such asslider, media player, accordion, tab layouts and support.

CKEditor is also one of the oldest editor for Joomla too, it has been developed sine years. This is a more classical editor than the previous one, but if you need to start fast, you’ll enjoy to see that you know the major part of the tools inside.

Notable tools are:

- Configuration integrated with Joomla! administration pages with custom edition profiles

- Drag’n drop tool to make it available in edition toolbar

- Paste from Word feature

- Tool to style your content

- XHTML valid code generation control

- Bad formatting filtering

- Full accessibility support for the entire interface

The extension is free and optionally can be enhanced with CKFinder (a media manager) and support.

How to hide the default user registration form in Joomla https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/785/How-to-hide-the-default-user-registration-form-in-Joomla.html

Source: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/785/How-to-hide-the-default-user-registration-form-in-Joomla.html

You can hide the user registration form from appearing at the bottom of the core login module in Joomla. This mans, your visitors cannot register as new users on your website. With the Joomla core login module, you can allow users to log into your Joomla site, but this Module also contains a "Create an account" link that will allow your website visitors/ users to register on your site. Some users do not want the Create an Account” link and it can be removed. This article explains how to disable this feature and disallow new users from creating an account.

How to Hide the "Create an account" Link

Disablng From Joomla Admin

To begin, log into the administration area (the back end) of your Joomla site, click on the User Manager.
Click on the "Options" button in the toolbar.

Under the "Component" tab, find the "Allow User Registration" option, and turn this off by selecting "No". There are many other options here for configuring your user accounts and this area is worth exploring. Be sure of the setting changes you make and how they affect your website. For instance, it is good to enable the option allowing new users to activate their accounts. This helps you deal with spam registrations and emails. Remember to save your work.

Return to the front end of the site, refresh the page, and the "Create an account" link will be removed. Current users will still be able to log into the account.
Effect on Joomla Registration Menu

If you have created a Joomla registration meneu linked to the Joomla Core Login and you disallow new user registrations, the menu item won't disappear, but it will redirect users to the login form instead of the registration form.
Removing the Link by Editing The Joomlla Code

For removing link from login module edit the default.php template of this module and remove the code

Code:
<a href="<?php echo JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_users&view=registration'); ?>">
<?php echo JText::_('MOD_LOGIN_REGISTER'); ?></a>


Rather than making changes in the core template its better if you override the module template and then make changes into that file so that your changes will be maintained even when you upgrade Joomla.

How to Create an Overwride

One of useful features of the new Template Manager is how easy it makes overrides. Previously it was almost impossible to get a clean overview of what override possibilities were available on a Joomla site.

To create override, do the following:
Click the "Create Overrides" tab and the new Template Manager presents all of the possibilities in one neat list:
Click on a component and you'll get all the possibilities inside that one component. In this following example, I clicked on com_content:
Click on one of the possibilities, for example "article", and see.
Go back to the Editor screen and your override files will be available for editing:

Getting a Started with overrides

Joomla documentation has provided this guide on getting started with overwride. If you are new to Joomla! development, then it is probably easiest to start with an existing view, and try modifying it to get what you want. To do this, you should make a copy of the existing view in the html directory of your template, and then modify the copy.

The directory structure you need is:

TEMPLATE_NAME/html/EXTENSION_NAME/VIEW_NAME/FILE_NAME.php

For example, if you want to change the way that the 'Article' view displays a com_content article, then you should copy the file at :

PATH_TO_JOOMLA/components/com_content/views/article/tmpl/default.php
to
TEMPLATE_NAME/html/com_content/article/default.php

(note the slight difference in directory structure)

Similarly, if you want to change how the mod_login Module is displayed, then you should copy :

PATH_TO_JOOMLA/modules/mod_login/tmpl/default.php
to
TEMPLATE_NAME/html/mod_login/default.php

Joomla! comes pre-packaged with a frontend template called Beez. Beez utilizes template overrides to produce a table-less layout for faster, smoother, and semantically correct markup. To see how it's done, locate your Joomla! installation's template directory, and you'll notice the Beez template. Inside the Beez template directory, you'll find a directory named html.

The entire directory structure is as follows:

/your_joomla/templates/Beez/html/

If you want to try modifying the overrides used in Beez, you could simply copy and paste the Beez html directory into your own template's main directory. However you choose to make your override files, you will need to ensure that they are correctly installed with your template. To do this, you should add the following code to your template's templateDetails.xml file (in between the <files> and </files> tags):

<folder>html</folder>

The above code in essence lets the Joomla! package installer know that there are files to extract, and that they are part of the template as a whole.
Hope you found this article useful. Let us know by clicking the yes/no button below.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/784/How-to-upload-a-database-in-cPanel.html

This tutorial primarily focuses on database upload in cPanel. This will involve uploading from localhost or re-uploading a database you have backed up or downloaded.

This kind of activity is used in restoring a database backup or in duplicating a website. If you wish to.

Uploading a Database

There is a simple utility tool in cPanel which can be used to upload a database or restore downloaded database in cPanel. This tool is called phpMyAdmin. It is available under the database section in cPanel.

Follow this process to use the phpMyAdmin tool to upload a database in cPanel

1. Login to your website cPanel environment. This ill usually require authentication with a username and password.
2. Once you are successfully logged in, scroll down to the database section and click on the phpMyAdmin icon. This ill lead to a window where you will have all your databases displayed. Depending on the configuration of your cPanel and the version you are running, you will have all databases listed. In latest version of cPanel, you will find a button to click which will display all the databases on the website control panel.
3. Click on the database you want to populate. From the top menu bar, click on “import”, locate your database file, usually an “sql” file and then you upload the file. Once it is done successfully, you will find the green bar indicating success.

The database you upload could have been downloaded from the web or saved from localhost.
Let’s briefly look at how to download a database from a live server.

1. Login to the cPanel control panel.
2. Scroll down to the database section and click phpMyAdmin.
3. Click on the database you want to download. Scroll down to the bottom and click the check all button. From the options that follow, click “export” to begin download. You need not do anything else to download an “sql” file of your database.
4. Click “Go” to download your database. The file will save on your local computer. By default, it will save in the downloads folder.

Downloading a database from localhost

To download a database from localhost, let us assume you are using WampServer, you will follow these steps:
1. Start WampServer on your local machine.
2. Click on the phpMyAdmin tool
3. Click on the database you wish to export.
4. Scroll down to the bottom and check all the database tables.
5. Click on the export button to begin download.
6. Click “Go” to get started.

The database will be downloaded to your local machine and can be imported from there to a live server.

What if there be an error?

There are cases when you upload a database and all the tables are not uploaded or an error is reported. Normally, there will be an error message which should guide you on how to go about it.

As a rule, you can try re-uploading your database, if the error continues, try to re-download your database. If the problem is not fixed, check your internet connection. Slow internet can create a problem for file upload.

To delete a database and re-upload, simply check all the tables again, this time, click on “Drop” and click the “Go” button.
Note, terminated databases cannot be recovered so make sure you have a rethink before you terminate. Infact, it is advisable you download to your local machine before you terminate your database.

That will be all. Was this tutorial useful, please let us know by clicking one of the feedback buttons below.

9 Ways to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate https://www.todhost.com/blog/

Bounce rate is a reflection of how your website serve the expectation o 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 Google's greater focus on user experience, you are not likely to get higher raning because your wwebsite quality will be affected by your highbounce rate.

Here is a suggested practical advice for how you can improve your bounce rate. Not all of these suggestions will be relevant for every website, but by doing all, you can learn how to lower your bounce rate which will contribute emensely towards increasing the overall success of your site. You will need to focus on these critical elements to lower your bounce rate:

Page content – Quality page content is relevant to lower your website bounce rate. The emphasis is on quality content. The key question is whether the content provide real value. Does it entice the visitor to read on and explore the site more deeply? Is the information fresh and current? Does the page content follow naturally from the headlines? If your page content does not successfully address the needs or wants of your visitors, they will likely close the page or use the browser’s back button instead of sticking around to read more of what you’ve got.

Design and usability – May be your content is great, but it’s wrapped in a design that turns users off users or may be the site is just too hard to use. The “user experience” (UX) of a site is a huge factor in encouraging visitors to stick around and spend more time clicking around your site.Just bear in mind that your website design will influence visits and rankings for your website.

Calls to action – This is an important subset of design/usability: Your pages should be designed to make it clear to visitors where they should click next: a button to perform a particular action, a link to another relevant page, a form to fill in or any other action that you want visitors to perform. If your calls to actions are weak, uninteresting or difficult to spot, visitors may not be well led to proceed deeper into your site.

Ad messaging/keywords – If you’re paying for ads to direct traffic to your site, it’s really important that the messages being conveyed by your ads, and the keywords you’re bidding on, match the content users will find after clicking an ad. Many users are already somewhat wary of ads, but will click them when they appear to be very relevant.

Mobile-friendly pages – Your website should display wlell on both mobile devices and destop computers. A large percentage of your visitors today are using their mobile devices to view your website. If your site isn’t good-looking and easy to navigate on small screens, many of those users will just not go beyond the landing page and that will increase your bounce rate

Page load speed – No one enjoy a slow website. If your website loads so slowly, your visitors may even leave the page even before they see the page. Slow-loading pages (generally considered as those that take more than two seconds to appear) almost always result in high bounce rates. PageSpeed Insights, can help you know your website speed and also presents specific recommendations for improving load times.

Selfish pop-ups – Make sure that your pop-ups are functional and deliver the user some sort of value.

External links – It is a good idea for you to provide links to other websites of relevance to your audience, but if many visitors are clicking on those links, you’re directly increasing your bounce rates. Since your goal is probably to keep your visitors clicking around your site more, consider very carefully how much external lins you should be including on your entry pages.

Broken links – If your site contains broken links, visitors might be trying to read additional pages, but are unable to because links they click lead nowhere! For this reason (and other important ones), it is important to regularly scan your site and make sure that all links are working properly.

HqBoss:
all these longtin when there's wordpress

What about uploading WordPress from localhost? You stilll upload files and database. Though uploading a database is different from uploading files. We will teach database upload in a later tutorial

Thanks for your comments and observations particularly missing out the public_html folder

Faithdamy:
Nice sir..
Http://damytechs.com

You are welcome.

Source: https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/783/How-to-upload-files-to-a-website.html

The usefulness of every website depends on the content of the website. People are not just interested in the quality of a web hosting service or the reputation of your web host. They are more interested in the content you offer through your website because that is what brings benefits, either in the form of learning, getting a service, purchasing a product or enjoying an application. Quality content are not just important for human visitors, they are also what search engines love about websites.

Every website owner wants to understand how to upload files. This will be necessary for the purposes of redesigning the website, updating the website or simply changing certain elements like images.

In this tutorial, we will show you the different ways to upload to our website control panel, also known as cPanel.

Uploading With cPanel Filemanager

The cPanel upload tool is one of the fastest means to upload a website. It is however good for file upload and probably the fastest means for file upload:

To use this tool, follow these steps:

Login to your website control panel. This will usually be accessed through yourdomainname.com/cpanel. You will authenticate with a username and password.
Once you are successfully logged in, click on FileManager. This will be found under files and appears at the top left position if you are using the Paper Lantern theme.
Within the filemanager, there is a top menu. Click on the “upload” button. A dialog box opens. Select the file you want to upload from the location within your local computer and click open to upload the file. Once the upload is complete, it will indicate a 100 percent completion on the task bar and the bar will turn green.
You may refresh to your uploaded file.

How to upload a folder from Filemanager

You can upload the content of a folder using the cPanel filemanager tool by following these steps:

Requirement: You will require a utility tool like WinRar or WinZip to be installed on your local computer to be able to upload the content of a folder.

Use your utility tool to zip your folder. That will convert your entire folder content into a single zipped file.
Login to your website control panel. This will usually be accessed through yourdomainname.com/cpanel. You will authenticate with a username and password.
Once you are successfully logged in, click on FileManager. This will be found under files and appears at the top left position if you are using the Paper Lantern theme.
Within the filemanager, there is a top menu. Click on the “upload” button. A dialog box opens. Select the file you have zipped from the location within your local computer and click open to upload the file. Once the upload is complete, it will indicate a 100 percent completion on the task bar and the bar will turn green.
You will now have to refresh the filemanager by clicking the refresh button to be able to view the zipped file you have uploaded.
Highlight the uploaded file with a simple tap.
Click on extract, this will open up the zipped file and convert it to a normal folder within your filemanager.
You may want to delete the uploaded zipped file from your filemanager. It is always good to delete such files and any other file not in use as a security measure.

Using an FTP Software for Upload

A File Transfer Protocol software like Filezilla and Ipswich FTP are good for file transfer to your live server. The procedure for uploading files using FTP is essentially the same for all FTP software.

With an FTP software, you can upload individual files as well as a set of files all at the same time. You will also be able to upload all files contained in a folder by simply uploading the folder. Usually this kind of upload is not possible with using the filemanager as explained above.

You will require the following information to be able to upload to your web server using an FTP software:

Server name: enter your domain name

Server address: enter domain name

Username: enter account username as indicated in your “New Account Information”. If you cannot remember, simply request if from your web host.

Password: Enter password as provided in your “New Account Information”. If cannot have access to the information, request that it be resent to you.

That will be all for you to be able to transfer files to our live server.

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How to upload files to a website https://www.todhost.com/knowledgebase/783/How-to-upload-files-to-a-website.html