Now more than ever we depend on the internet on our lifelihoods and with more ways to connect, the question is what keeps this secure. The answer is SSL or “Secure Sockets Layer”. SSL instantly encrypts passwords and credit card detail numbers into data that only the user and the website can decrypt. SSL also insures that the data remains unchanged and also authenticates websites too.

All modern browsers show warning signs when the connection is not entirely secure. To verify that SSL is protecting a page, look for a web address beginning with https:// and a closed padlock sign.

SSL works at keeping your data secure and private.

SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. SSL is an industry standard and is used by millions of websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers.

A bit more indept look at how it works and how you set it up

To be able to create an SSL connection a web server requires an SSL Certificate. When you choose to activate SSL on your web server you will be prompted to complete a number of questions about the identity of your website and your company. Your web server then creates two cryptographic keys – a Private Key and a Public Key. 

The Public Key does not need to be secret and is placed into a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) – a data file also containing your details. You should then submit the CSR. During the SSL Certificate application process, the Certification Authority will validate your details and issue an SSL Certificate containing your details and allowing you to use SSL. Your web server will match your issued SSL Certificate to your Private Key. Your web server will then be able to establish an encrypted link between the website and your customer’s web browser. 

The complexities of the SSL protocol remain invisible to your customers. Instead their browsers provide them with a key indicator to let them know they are currently protected by an SSL encrypted session – the lock icon in the lower right-hand corner, clicking on the lock icon displays your SSL Certificate and the details about it. All SSL Certificates are issued to either companies or legally accountable individuals. 

Typically an SSL Certificate will contain your domain name, your company name, your address, your city, your state and your country. It will also contain the expiration date of the Certificate and details of the Certification Authority responsible for the issuance of the Certificate. When a browser connects to a secure site it will retrieve the site’s SSL Certificate and check that it has not expired, it has been issued by a Certification Authority the browser trusts, and that it is being used by the website for which it has been issued. If it fails on any one of these checks the browser will display a warning to the end user letting them know that the site is not secured by SSL.

Discuss your needs with us

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A number-one ranking within Google’s organic search results is valuable because you don’t pay for the resulting clicks. That’s why you need a website that conforms to search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques.

It is hard to determine how relevancy is calculated as the algorithm is often changed, and realistically only Google really knows what it is, but there are ways to improve your chances:

Page content

Content is very relevant to your business and the products and services you offer. Is your content unique? And is it useful and of a high quality? Pictures speak a thousand words but without the ALT description Google does not know what to do with it. Text is what Google can and does scan but careful not to overload it with keywords, you might get penalised.

Content freshness

Is the content fresh and original? Does it touch on a current subject? A website without new content gets stale and Google knows about it.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)

is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral.

Google is starting to take this into consideration from the beginning of 2017. You see if a domain has SSL if they have a lock next to the domain name in your browser.

Read more about the use of SSL here

Domain name

Is your brand well known, so people would put your brand name as a search keyword? Then maybe use the brand name over the business name. Or think about what people would search for if they would want your products and services and register a domain name with these keywords. You can have more than just one domain name for the same website.

Register a new domain name

Domain authority

Is the domain linked to from other trustworthy, business-related domains? Are those links gained in a natural way? Does anything look suspicious? Could you partner with other website owners whereby you deliver good quality content with a link to your website mentioned in it. Think about what value you could add to other websites?

Domain age

An older domain might have more trust than newer ones.

Define your keywords

Keyword research should be the starting point of your campaign, so think about what phrases or words will take too long to rank via SEO.

A common mistake when choosing words and phrases is to select generic terms that will never be able to boost your growth. By learning to recognise which words and phrases you need to target you’ll gain an insight into how your customers search for and find your website.

Another error is using three or more keywords per paragraph, which means you run the risk of being accused of ‘keyword stuffing’. There are penalties for this behaviour that could impact where your site appears in search engine results pages.

Measuring results

The best part of SEO and inbound marketing as a whole is the ability to track and refine the entire process. Numerous tools are available that allow you to keep tabs on your website, traffic sources and user engagement. The free analytics tool Google Trends, which is used for keyword research, allows you to see what others search for and even plots on a graph how often a term is used over time – pinpointing geographically where most people are searching for a given term.

Other tools such as Google Webmasters are essential for understanding how search engines see your site. It will help website owners and web marketers monitor performance in the Google search index and gather information about search traffic, while offering technical status updates and crawling data.

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A well-maintained website means up to date code. Just like your car, a content management system needs regular tuning, updating and maintenance in order to run smoothly and securely.

There are a lot of updates happening each month to either the content management system or its extensions and plugins. Therefore it makes sense to keep an eye on them every month and bring them up to the latest version. This ensures the maximum security for your website. Problems can be monitored and addressed.

This is what is included

• Content Management Updates (Joomla or WordPress)
• Template Updates (Joomla or WordPress)
• Plugin or Extension Updates (Joomla or WordPress)
• Running a snapshot to see where there could be a vulnerability in the way your website is setup
• Running an audit
• Uptime Monitor of your Website
• Checking of SSL certificate expiry
• Monthly report emailed to you

This is what is not included

• If you have made changes on your website and this is causing problems, we will not automatically fix that for you. Fixing that for you is a paid service!
• If we are running a screenshot and find that there are some vulnerabilities on your website, we will contact you. Fixing this is a paid service! However this will only be a one off because once the adjustments are made they will be continually applied.
• Major upgrades of the CMS (Joomla or WordPress) or its template are not included in the maintenance plan.

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We are following a simple plan to create your website – click here to read more on the different stages of web design.

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A Content Management System, or CMS, is a powerful and essential platform for your website. It essentially allows you to take full control over the content of your website, and update it as often as you like – without needing to pay additional maintenance fee’s.

It keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don’t have to.

We are using Joomla or WordPress. With millions of users all over the world they are one of the most supported systems available and with thousands of extensions there is virtually almost anything possible.

Creating content is simple with the WYSIWYG editor, giving even novice users the ability to combine text, images in an attractive way. Once you’ve created your articles, there are a number of pre-installed modules to show the most popular articles, latest new items, newsflashes, related articles, and more.

CMS Key Features

• User Management
• Multiple languages 
• Contact Management
• Search
• Multiple Authors
• Media Manager

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9 out of 10 searches begin online with a search engine …

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via organic search results from Google, Bing and the other search engines.

Generally, the higher a websites shows on a search engine page, the more visitors and traffic that website will receive.

Search engine optimization, in its simplest form, means thinking about the words or phrases that people might use to find your business and your website, and writing content that includes those words and phrases.

Feeding the right information from your website to the search engines

SEO has become big business and it is not always as successful as one would hope it to be. Fact is that a lot of time and money goes into feeding those search engines the right information in order to grab a higher ranking listing.

Generally, the search engines  look at titles, descriptions, meta tags, image descriptions, linking within the website, links from the outside that feed into your website indicating that your website is of interest to others. They engage comprehensive algorithms to make sure that the information is not just only set up to get a higher listing but the information on your website is actually relevant to what you are portraying.

Website owners often highly desire that their site appears in the top 10 in a search engine search. This is because users are not very likely to look over more than one search engine results page (also known as SERPs). In order to obtain good placement on search results in the various engines, webmasters must optimize their web pages. The process is called search engine optimization. Many variables come into play, such as the placement and density of desirable keywords, the hierarchy structure of web pages employed in a web site (i.e.. How many clicks from the home page are required to access a particular web page?), and the number of web pages that link to a given web page. The Google search engine also uses a concept called page rank.

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives: for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important. Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.

Engaging a powerful helper

On every website we build we install a powerful sitemap extension that allows us the feed the search engines with the information they are looking for. It can be easily customised in the backend of your website. The extension is tied into the Google webmaster (console), Google analytics account of the website.

More about Sitemaps & SEO implementation on your website

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