Featured – Page 6

Tips for Thinking Up Blog Content for Small Businesses

July 19, 2015 Beth Devine

Small businesses who blog are ahead of their competition. A small business owner with a blog generates 126% more lead growth than those who don’t, according to a HubSpot study on 2,300 customers.

Kudos to you if you’re already a blogging. If you’re not blogging yet, then what are you waiting for? Here are some tips for generating blog content to help you get started, or to jump start some idea brainstorming.

Use Your Customer’s Questions

You’re so close to this one, it’s easy to miss. Like when my mom used to say, “If it was a snake, it would’ve bit you.” You’re looking right at one of your easiest blog topics every time a customer asks you a question.

Your blog is not for you, it’s for your customers. When you use their questions, you’re helping them solve a problem. What better way to show you’re listening and you care about your customer’s concerns than to give them the answers.

At the same time, you could be giving them new insights about your business that helps you stand out.

Use the Don’t-Do-This Tactic

We all make mistakes. But we’d rather not. Use your blog posts to provide ways to avoid common pitfalls related to your business. Think of current issues that plague your customers and write about how to eliminate them.

Tie in your services or products, but only in a very non-promotional manner. Blog posts aren’t for hard selling. Use your blog to increase awareness on problems and topics that your business is designed to handle. Write about the failures and struggles you’ve encountered in your business that could help your readers.

Share your stories in a way that gives your visitors a look-see into your business, but doesn’t toot your horn. When you give answers with a don’t-do-this approach to problems, you’re also demonstrating your authority on a subject.

The next time your visitor has a question or concern, they know where they can go for some help.

Spy On Your Competitors for Ideas

If you are aware of what your competition is doing, you’ll be more prepared to advance your own blog strategy. If your competition appears to be making a mistake, avoid doing the same blunder. If they’re doing something fabulous, think of how you can try to outdo their efforts.

Spying on your competitors is easy with free tools to analyse their data. With SEMrush, you can discover new competitors, what their best keywords are, and what they’re using for display advertising, organic and paid search, and link building.

Another handy tool is Buzzsumo. You can do a quick search on key phrases or terms to see how content that’s related to your industry is doing. You can also find out who the top influencers are in a particular niche to further your idea-generating spy efforts.

If Sherlock had been internet savvy, he would applaud your genius.

Research Keyword Terms

If you want to blog about something relevant to your business, Google Adwords Keyword Tool is a great way for discovering the keywords and keyword phrases internet surfers are using to search for your product or service. Google Webmaster Tools shows you the keyword queries being used to find your site, so you can check to see if you’re on the right track.

Try using these keywords terms for your blog title, subheading, and in your meta tags, as well as to generate ideas for your blog content.

Build on a Good Quote

No need to reinvent the wheel when there are reams of quotables out there. Use a quote to inspire your next post, making sure to credit the source.

Search a particular topic or person using the word quote after the search term. Visit Bartleby.com for thousands of quotations from famous authors, Goodreads for more recent quotables, or Google Book Search for references to books of interest for quotes.

You can build your entire post around a particular quote. Quotes from famous people and industry leaders will inspire your readers as well as your writing.

The Official Blog Post Ideas Generator

Matthew Loomis of Build Your Own Blog has created the Blog Post Ideas Generator, a terrific free tool to help you think of blog post ideas when your brain is failing you. It can help small businesses get creative when in a crunch. Try it out; it’s fun!

Loomis also has a bunch of videos for WordPress users to help you get started blogging. Helpful tutorials include creating an about page in minutes, installing a plugin, and changing font and background color.

However you do it, do it with your own distinct flair. Find a way to communicate using your own voice, giving your blog some personality. Blog those ideas of yours with something besides textbook-speak so your readers will know you’re human.

Your IP Reputation and How To Protect It

July 9, 2015 Beth Devine

IP address reputation — “Lucky” by woodleywonderworks, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Your IP address can earn a bad reputation when suspicious activity is detected. Let’s say you have spam or a virus coming from your IP address. This can get you blacklisted by spam databases or banned by a country’s firewall or a content delivery network.

As a result of blacklisting, anything you email from your website won’t get delivered. Your new subscribers to your website won’t be able to get beyond the initial subscribing stage and won’t receive password approval or your welcome email.

Are You Sharing Your IP Address With a Bad Site?

If another IP address within your content delivery network is blacklisted, then your website’s IP address could also be negatively affected. The bad reputation of another website can rub off on your website.

Most hosting providers will share your IP address with hundreds of other websites. In the event that one of the sites you’re sharing your IP with engages in spam or gets a virus, or is blocked by a country or a large network, your site could also share in the negative fallout.

If you think your IP address has a bad reputation in error, or due to sharing an IP address with a hacked site, you should request an investigation. Inform your web hosting provider of your concerns.

How To Check Your IP Reputation

To find out if your IP address has a bad reputation, you can check it with a number of free online tools, including Barracuda Central, MX Toolbox, What Is My IP Address, and IP Void. For a list of ways to check for potentially malicious websites, check out Zeltser’s list.

You also want to prevent your site from being spamvertised. This is when a hacker has placed a piece of code in your site that redirects viewers to a different and often unsavory website. The hackers send out emails with your website’s redirected link because their own site has already been blacklisted as spam.

WordFence is a great plugin for preventing spamvertising from happening, and if it does find something, they will alert you that your files have changed. If you pay for the premium service, you also get an early warning system built in for spamvertising.

How To Check Who Is On Your IP Address

By doing a reverse domain lookup, you can check to see what other sites share your IP address. You Get Signal is a tool that checks for and lists other sites on your web server. The list isn’t guaranteed to be complete (and it probably isn’t). As long as none of these sites are being blocked by spam monitors, your site won’t share in their bad reputation.

Norton Safe Web or Unmask Parasites will scan a URL to see if it’s safe. If it’s been hacked, infected, or is otherwise unsafe to browse, it’s probably not a site you want to share your IP address with.

How To Deal With Suspicious Activity

In the event you discover an issue with your site’s IP reputation, let your web hosting company know. They can help you to get it sorted out. The better you know your web hosting company, the more reassured you can be that they aren’t allowing questionable sites onto the shared server.

Web hosting companies who are web savvy (particularly those with a team of superheroes) are going to be paying attention, and they will investigate suspicious activity for you. Your IP reputation matters. Make sure you know yours is good.

5 Simple Tips to Writing Service Descriptions Like a Boss

June 24, 2015 Beth Devine

write service descriptions — “Cat as King” by Fiona MacGinty-O’Neill.

Your web pages aren’t meant to give your readers a spectacular view of your business. They are meant to act as a device that takes your reader from one place to the next. As Seth Godin says in “Knock Knock,” there are three questions all your web pages must answer:

Who’s here?
What do you want them to do?
How can you instantly tell a persuasive story to get them to do #2?

To accomplish these three things for your services web pages, begin by making a list of your services. Then follow these five tips as you write copy for each one.

1. Don’t talk about yourself

Your reader doesn’t want to read all about you. No one wants to listen to your grandstanding. Regardless of what a fabulous product and service you provide, you’re not that interesting.

People want to hear about you in terms of how well you can help them solve a problem or fulfill a need. People are basically only interested in themselves. Surprise, surprise. This is something you should’ve learned in kindergarten.

Write about your unique skills, special applications, and new improvements, but only with the angle that speaks to your audience’s needs. If it’s not ultimately about them, then it’s not going to capture their attention.

2. Keep your mission clear

Your home page is the obvious place for your mission. This could also be phrased as what you promise to do, what are your goals, or what purpose your business serves. This message should also be present on your service page.

A brief statement that describes what drives you as a company at the beginning of your service page reminds your readers of your mission and helps them to connect. They will be more likely to think of you as human beings who care about what you’re doing. Restating your purpose gives your readers a sense of reassurance that there’s more to your brand than a sales transaction.

A good way to include your mission in your service page is to rephrase it so it serves as the perfect introduction to your services. This helps your customer-focused approach as well.

3. Focus on the benefits

It’s tempting to write about your services by describing the features. Usually this leads to technical descriptions which can be boring, difficult to understand, and not enticing. If you want to encourage readers to stick around, you’ve got to make it about how it benefits them.

Find out what the benefits are by focusing on the results. What do the boring features provide for your customers? A benefit answers the question, “What’s in it for the reader?”

This is the same question all writers must ask. Whether you’re writing a novel, an essay, or online copy, you need to address this question. Many years ago my aunt gave me this same advice. It’s what entices people to keep reading, to care, or to buy.

Your new Apple TV might have all sorts of new improvements, but they’re only important to you based on how they impact your experience. Apple tells its readers the benefits with a straightforward chart listing the new TV features alongside a benefit summary.

For example, “family sharing” means you get to play your family’s purchases. The new “ask to buy” makes sure children get permission before buying items from iTunes. And the “peer-to-peer” software means guests can use Airplay from their Mac or iOS device directly to the Apple TV without wireless.

Now we care about these features because it’s clear how they benefit us.

4. Use hypnotic “power words”

The right words you use to entice your readers have hypnotic power. These words possess an innate ability to produce a subconscious psychological reaction. Don’t believe it? Try Googling it and see what you find out.

The top three hypnotic power words are imagine, you, and because. Each one has its own effect on readers,

The word “imagine” is the stimulus that creates a visual reaction, allowing your readers to experience how it feels to use your product or service.
The word “you” capitalizes on the self-obsessed nature everyone has, making things personal and stimulating our self-interest.
The word “because” gives us what we crave to know: the why of something. As in the example of The Copy Machine study, our subconscious minds don’t even need a good reason. We just crave any reason at all.

5. Keep it short

Your readers want it to be all about them, and they want it to be quick and easy. From meal plans to hairstyles, to exercises, to DIY projects, quick and easy is the selling point.

I know. So demanding.

Everyone is busy, we’re all in a hurry, and what we consume on the internet fits in with this fast-moving lifestyle. According to the research on how people read on the web, the results show that people don’t.

They don’t read. They scan. People pick out words and phrases. In fact, only 16 percent read text word for word. What does this mean? Why bother writing copy at all? Is anyone even reading this sentence? You have to wonder.

It means write using text that is easily scannable with:

Bullets and numbers
Headings and sub-headings
Keywords that are highlighted as links, bolded, italicized, or in color
White space to break up the copy and guide readers down the page
Inviting images, graphics, and videos to hold your reader’s attention

Keep your copy short, with each paragraph composed of a single idea. Check out popular sites and blogs and get a feel for the short paragraph style. Your service description has to tell the story in as few words as possible, without leaving anything critical out.

When you want to write effective service descriptions for your website like a boss, follow these five tips and You might want to include a cute cat image somewhere, because cats rule the internet. Imagine that.

5 Ways to Make Boring Blog Content Interesting

June 10, 2015 Beth Devine

So you’re writing for a boring industry. Or maybe the topic you’re covering makes you yawn just thinking about it. If you’re bored out of your pants with what you’re writing about, I have the solution for you.

It’s like my mom used to tell me. There’s no boring subjects, just boring people. In other words, you can take anything and make it interesting just by applying your unique je sais quoi — that “indefinable, elusive quality” that is sure to please.

Bring on the exciting. Only you can do it.

Get Educated Yourself

There are three main reasons people write blog posts for their business or organization:

Educate
Communicate
Become an authority

Writing is only boring if you are. In this case, you’re boring when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Take the first reason for writing a blog: to educate. In order to do that, you need to know what you’re writing about. And the more you know about a topic, the more it can become interesting to you.

As you research it, you’re going to develop a better understanding of it, grow more interested in it, and write about it in a more compelling way. Way less boring and way more engaging.

Be the Most Helpful Teacher

That’s how Marcus Sheridan at The Sales Lion grew into the Content Marketing Guru. By being the most helpful teacher about inground swimming pools, he not only grew a boring business, he learned the secret to online success.

Share your valuable information with your audience, and they’ll come back to you when they’re interested in learning more, or are ready to buy.

The Sales Lion defines content marketing as “the process of using text, video, and audio communication in an effort to establish your company as the best and most helpful teacher in the world at what you do.” How can you be boring when you’re being a teacher who’s got your pupils’ best interests at heart?

Make the Topic Relevant

Boring topics are instantly captivating when you can make them relate to something that’s currently happening. If it’s in the news, tie your blog post to it where possible. You will find yourself more intrigued in the subject when it’s got today’s headlines slapped right on it.

Take the boring experts on diseases. They’re given a wide berth until a fresh outbreak of bird flu or some other communicable disease makes headlines. These experts can’t say enough to fill the insatiable interest in what’s now relevant. You can do this without a life-threatening disease, I promise you.

Stay tuned to the latest news stories and see how your boring posts might use a little boost with current events. Check out sites that list the latest headlines, such as Fox News, Yahoo News, USA Today, Reuters News, and CNN.

Give Your Content a Visual Boost

Remember show and tell from your grade school days? Notice how it’s show and tell, not just one or the other. You’re going to be far more interesting when you give your presentation some imagery.

With your online content, you have the option of adding a variety of different images: photos, memes, infographics, videos, storyboards, GIFs, and charts of all kinds. Visuals are powerful communication tools, conveying your message with a single medium, where it takes the proverbial “thousand words” to say something similar with text alone.

When you’re struggling with telling a boring story, give it some moxie with an eye-catching visual. No one’s too old, too clever, or too dissatisfied to not appreciate the draw of visual mediums.

Write Like You Actually Talk

When information is tough to understand and boring, it’s tempting to write about it using the same inflated terms. When your readers consume this kind of professional business babble, it’s equally difficult for them to understand. So what gives?

You have to write like you speak in order to make it interesting. How can it be interesting when it’s not even understandable? So remove the elevated, hard-to-decipher jargon and write as naturally and clearly as if you were talking about it over a cup of joe.

Writing good content for your blog involves connecting with your audience. If you write about things as if you’ve been up close and personal with it, as if you’re willing to jump through hoops to help, as if it’s completely relevant, then you’re conveying your thoughts and ideas in a manner that hopefully won’t put readers in a cat-like stupor.

The Basics of Copyright Infringement

May 30, 2015 Beth Devine

what is copyright infringement — “Large copyright graffiti sign on cream colored wall” by Horia Varlan, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Whenever someone creates something and puts it into a fixed form, such as in paper, software, recording, or online, they own the copyright of the creation. This means that even your first drafts are protected by copyright law — whether or not it’s published, registered, or marked with a copyright symbol.

Of course, by taking extra steps to protect your work, you are not only taking your ownership seriously, you are increasing your chances for recovering damages. In the recent “Blurred Lines” copyright infringement case gripping the music industry for the last year and a half, Marvin Gaye’s family sued Robin Thicke and his co-writer for their 2013 hit “”Blurred Lines” as plagiarizing on Gaye’s 1977 “Got to Give It Up.” The Gaye family chose to be awarded $7.3 million in actual damages as opposed to choosing $9,000 in statutory damages.

What is copyright infringement?

Section 106 of the Copyright Law of the U.S.A. states that copyright gives the owner of the copyright the exclusive right:

To reproduce copies of the work
To create derivatives of the work
To distribute copies of the work for sale, rental, lease, or lending
To perform the work publicly
To display the work publicly

In Section 501 of the copyright law, it states that “anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner …is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author.” Anyone who engages in the activities deemed the to be exclusive to the copyright owner is an infringer of the copyright, unless they obtained permission.

Naturally, there are limitations and exceptions to these exclusive rights, and there are probably exceptions to the exceptions. Some of the limitations, called fair use, are listed in Section 107 of copyright law.

Original work of art cases continue to cite a Supreme court ruling back in 1883 in determining works that are protected by copyright law. Thanks to Oscar Wilde and his erstwhile photographer, your photographs can be claimed with exclusive copyrights from the moment you hit the selfie button.

What to do if your work has been infringed

If you discover that your intellectual property has been plagiarized, contact the infringer through social media, email, or through their website and ask them to remove the infringing material. Remember, your work doesn’t have to be marked with a © for you to claim infringement.

Most social media sites have their own online forms for reporting copyright infringement. You can also file a takedown notice with Google in the event your efforts for removal go unanswered.

Steps to take to protect your work

Include a policy on your website, particularly if you have a blog, that states your position on using your content. Create a permission page on your site where people may contact you to request use of your content. Include a copyright notice that states your position on the material as your own and requires permission for use.

While you don’t have to register copyrights to your work — you own it from its conception into fixed form, after all — real legal protection comes for those who are concerned about infringement by registering for a copyright. Check out Copyright Registration for Online Works from the United States Copyright Office for more information.

How to check for copyright infringement

There are a few ways to check to see if your content is being plagiarized. Copyscape will search for copies of your content on the internet with a simple copy and paste. You can also check for links back to your site to see if any content is being taken without your permission.

For checking images, you can do a reverse image search. There is a Google reverse image search, or you can use Tineye to check for misuse of your work. Since most infringements don’t involve any credit to the artist, and the title and any URL will be changed, a search by text will be ineffective.

Copyright infringement laws aren’t keeping up with the internet. According to Keeping It Legal, a senior registration specialist at the Copyright Office defines “published” as tangible material that’s distributed, which is generally considered material that’s printed. Fortunately, unpublished material is similarly covered to what is published.

5 Reasons You Can’t Do Without Online Newsletters

May 19, 2015 Beth Devine

The online newsletter continues to confound and perform after decades of relentless community building and information sharing. It has been called the cockroach of the Internet, the goose that laid the golden egg, tried-and-true, a direct line of communication, old-school artifact, the workhorse of nonprofits, and, perhaps most eloquently, “hand-curated pipes for mainlining quality Internet directly into our veins.” (Thank you for that, The Kernel.)

As a vein-clogging, direct line into our email inboxes, the online newsletter is a tool that will build your business and develop your brand image. Despite the Snapchatters and Whatsappers and Instagrammers out there, there is a time and a place where emailing your online newsletter is without rival.

Here are five reasons you can’t do without an online newsletter:

1. It’s easy to personalize and customize as part of your marketing plan.

Competing with Facebook isn’t so hard with a personalized newsletter. When you customize your newsletter so it contains personalized recommendations, the reader’s name, and reader-designated content, you’re more likely to keep your audience’s attention.

Newsletters tend to come before everything else in terms of self-interest. As David Carr writes in The New York Times, “It makes sense. My personal digital hierarchy, which I assume is fairly common, goes like this: email first, because it is for and about me; social media next, because it is for and about me, my friends and professional peers; and finally, there is the anarchy of the web, which is about, well, everything.”

As an addition to Facebook and other social media, the online newsletter is a way to personally connect with your audience and be an important part of your larger marketing plan.

2. It keeps your audience informed (and entertained).

Your newsletters are designed to do more than keep your readers connected. Your audience is reading to learn more and receive something valuable. Whether it’s helpful information, up-to-date news on your brand, or a discount or reward, your newsletter is an effective way to continue the relationship with ongoing communication.

By continuing to offer your audience something useful, you’re showing them that the’re valuable and haven’t been forgotten. You already know that your readers are interested because they’ve signed up for your newsletters, so be sure to give them something useful.

3. It’s a low-cost way to reach a large number of subscribers.

Small businesses and nonprofits can’t dispute the low-cost, pennies per message advantage to online newsletters. When you have a marketing budget, newsletters are the lost-cost choice over other marketing channels like direct mail and search engine advertising.

You can easily send out a new edition of your newsletter to a target audience of thousands of people, whenever you choose and as frequently as you want.

4. It’s a simple way to be mobile-friendly.

Without having to invest in new technology, you are instantly mobile-friendly with online newsletters. Email allows you to reach your audience on all types of mobile devices in an increasingly mobile-centric society.

A Forrester Research study shows that “on average, 42% of retailers’ email opens now happen on smartphones, up from 28% in 2013, while email open rates on tablets grew from 16% to 17%.”

When seeking mobile-friendly communication, texts are the competing alternative. But email newsletters are free to your audience where texts can incur a charge, and email gives much more space for your message in comparison to texts.

5. It’s the best way to grab your audience’s attention.

So what’s worth paying attention to when there is a never-ending supply of information? Most people are lazy when it comes to searching out content that interests them. By having it show up in their inboxes, reading content that your audience selected just got a lot easier.

No need to go looking for what they might like. Newsletters make sifting through the endless stream of online information easier for your readers. When your newsletter arrives, they recognize the sender, know you as a trusted source, and are confident that this is content they’re seeking.

If you like what you read, feel to share using our social media buttons!

What is RSS Feed and Why Do You Need It?

May 14, 2015 Beth Devine

Are you ready to change the way you read information on the World Wide Web? The internet is like a massive library with books strewn all over the place. So much free information and entertainment available without having to get out of your chair, but how do you keep track of the things you want to follow?

As it turns out, it’s rather simple. If you like getting daily or weekly updates on certain topics, want to see it organized, enjoy following your favorite sites, and want it all in one convenient place, then you need RSS feed.

RSS is Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication, and it has the ability to inform you with real, personally selected, continually updated news. In comparison to what social media offers, this is an improvement over random, not tailored to your needs, late-arriving, often false news delivery.

RSS feed takes the websites you choose to follow and distills the information down to the most important parts. The feed from your favorite sites are automatically updated and republished in one place for efficient reading without ever having to visit them.

RSS Feed Is Better Than Bookmarks

Many of you probably bookmark sites for later referral. This is a problem for several reasons:

You have to manually return to the site for updates.
When sites don’t update frequently, you’ll keep seeing the same old information.
You might miss information when a site updates frequently because you forget to check your bookmarks.
It’s a complicated process when you try to keep track of multiple sites at once.
You’re doing all the work surfing the web through your numerous bookmarking and link clicking.

Who Publishes RSS Feeds?

Most websites and blogs publish RSS feeds, including magazines, news sites, stores such as Amazon and iTunes, and podcasts. You will often see a link with a picture, one of the universal feed icons labelled “RSS,” “XML,” “Subscribe,” or “Atom.” These are all ways for you to subscribe to a site’s content through an RSS feed.

The most common feed icon is a little orange button with a dot and two downward-curving bars. This tells you that this site’s feed is freely available.

What Are Some Ways RSS Feed Will Rock My Web Experience?

RSS feeds can help you in a number of ways:

Unclutter your email inbox by storing website updates in your RSS feed reader. Read them (or not) at your convenience.
Unsubscribe or subscribe to email lists without having to ever give your email address away.
Save time and stay informed on the latest updates without having to visit all your favorites sites.
Save your favorite sites and stories without having to worry about losing or forgetting the web address.
Read a whole lot of blogs and articles in record time by scanning through all the headlines and selecting what you want to read, all organized in one handy location.
Eliminate the distraction of advertisements on a site by sticking to the content only on your RSS feed.

How do I read RSS feeds?

The way to read your RSS feeds is through RSS feed readers. These are websites that allow you to subscribe to selected blogs and articles by signing up for an account. Many excellent RSS feed readers are free and involve two components. The RSS feed and the RSS feed reader or aggregator.

The feed reader is the feed reading application, or news aggregator, and there are many different options. There are five categories of feed readers, depending on how you want to read your feeds:

Web-based Feed Readers

If you prefer to read all your articles from a browser, without any set-up hassles, this is the easiest and most flexible choice. Feedly, Digg, and Feedreader are popular web-based reader sites and are accessible from any computer with internet.

Desktop Feed Readers

Desktop feed readers let you read your feeds separate from your browser by installing them into your computer. Examples aren’t easy to find, probably because web-based RSS feeds are taking over, but I found two that haven’t been discontinued: NetNewsWire for the Mac and Straw for Linux.

Built-In Browser Feed Readers

It appears that these are disappearing fast, whereas many different apps are cropping up that you can download for a built-in feed reader. Opera still has a version as a browser, and many search engines offer a “My” site homepage with the ability for a limited RSS feed, such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, and AOL.

Email-Based Feed Readers

You’ve probably heard of Google alerts, an email-based feed reader. If you’re set on following your chosen topics via email, this is the way to go. There is also a Chrome extension called RSS Feed Reader and an application for Windows and Mac OS X called Feed Notifier. This option notifies you of a new item in your subscribed feed with a pop-up display on your desktop instead of in your email.

Mobile Device Feed Readers

These are growing in popularity and are available with Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Apple, all designed for on-the-go reading and keeping you connected to the information you want, wherever you go.

Stay tuned for more on the online RSS feed readers and how they rate.

Don’t Make These 5 Domain Name Mistakes

May 12, 2015 Beth Devine

Your domain name is a critical component to your online presence. As your internet address, it points visitors to your website. Without it, you have no visitors, no readers, and no customers.

Don’t make these domain name mistakes and risk the safety of your domain name and website.

Mistake #1: Falling for the Fake Renewal Notice

Because all domain names must be registered with ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, they are there for the taking by spammers and marketers who do Whois searches. By doing a ICANN Whois search, you can get a domain name’s data, including the owner’s name, address, phone number, and email address.

Having this one global internet has its drawbacks. After registering your domain name, you might start to receive marketing spam to the email address you used to register it with.

Watch out for the renewal notice sent by fake registrars (or very unethical ones). If you pay the renewal invoice to these fraudsters, you are not only losing money, but you could be initiating a domain name transfer. Your website and email, if you have it through your registrar, will crash and your original domain name provider will no longer be in effect.

Use extreme caution when you receive a renewal notice. Make sure you know who your registrar is and when your domain name expires. A quick check Whois search will answer these questions.

Any unsolicited domain name emails inviting you to either register for a new top-level domain name or to renew an existing one should be treated as if it is spam until you verify the information.

Mistake #2: Thinking You Own Your Domain Name When Using a Privacy Service

Whois privacy services are designed to protect your domain records from public viewing. Instead of our personal contact information, you will see the registrars (or whoever is selling the service). What most people don’t realize is that the name listed in the domain Whois record as the domain registrant is the owner of the domain.

In a rare dispute case, the owner of the case isn’t you, regardless of anything written in a contract of terms of service agreement. You have no legal rights to the domain.

Another concern is that some domain registrars will sell your private contact information for a small fee to anyone who asks. Also, if a law enforcement or government agency wants it, it’s as good as theirs. (This doesn’t seem like a problem, but the rumor mill has it that they will give out this information at the first mention of the word “infringement.”)

A simple way to handle this if you’re concerned about privacy issues is to have your web hosting company list their name and information. Having a good relationship with your web hosting company can help you solve a lot of potential website problems!

Mistake #3: Forgetting to Renew Your Domain Name.

Make sure you have a valid email address for your Whois records. Not only will this be used to contact you to verify any changes that are made, but to warn you of impending domain name expiration.

In both cases, there is often a time limit imposed by the registrant, and if not met, your domain name will be suspended. Trying to recover a lost domain name involves financial costs and a few headaches.

Consider signing up for automatic renewal with your registrar. Your web hosting company can also be responsible for your automatic domain name renewal, leaving you without the worry of following through on a reminder from a registrar.

Mistake #4: Paying Registrar Transfer Fees

You are free to transfer a domain name registered in a generic top-level domain to another registrar, assuming you meet none of the exclusions as outlined in ICANN’s policy on transfers between registrars. These include waiting more than 60 days from domain name creation, no evidence of fraud, and no reasonable dispute over the identity of the Registered Name Holder or Administrative Contact.

If you pay a transfer-out fee, which can be more than double the cost of the domain name registration cost, then you’re paying for a charge that’s in violation of the ICANN transfer policy. Ask your credit card company to reverse the charges, and be glad you’ve transferred out.

Mistake #5: No Registrar Change Protection

Unauthorized domain name transfers are easy to avoid by taking preventative measures. The registrar lock, once set by your registrar, prevents unauthorized, unwanted, and unintentional changes to your domain name.

Unless it is unlocked, no one can modify, transfer, or delete your domain name. While locked, you are still able to manage your domain name by renewing it. Only certain top-level domain names can have registrar lock, including .com, .net, and .org.

Another added security layer is auth code. Some of the top-level domains require an eight character authorization code before you can transfer it. The auth code is supplied by the current registrar, and you will need it to transfer to another registrar.

These protections are generally offered for free by your registrar, and are often put in place automatically. If you have a transfer complaint, go to ICANN and fill out their ICANN transfer complaint form.

The work of managing your domain name can be turned over to your web hosting company, leaving you worry-free. But it’s good practice to be aware of the mistakes to avoid as well as who is responsible for making sure your domain name is safe.

Domain Name Management and the New Name Extensions

April 29, 2015 Beth Devine

What is a domain name?

Your domain name is the unique name to your website using letters from the alphabet. It’s easy to remember, whereas the IP address (Internet Protocol address) associated with your domain name consists of a string of numbers that is difficult to remember.

There are two parts to your domain name: the top-level domain (TLD) and the second-level domain. The letters that come after the dot are called the top-level domain or extension, and the letters preceding the dot are called the second-level domain or the label. When you refer to a website, you use the label or second-level domain.

Registering Your Domain Name

Because your domain name is your online address, it must be registered in order for your website to be found. There are many domain name registrars. To find out what registrar your website uses, you can search using a Whois search for your domain name using InterNIC.

For more information about your website, such as who the registrant is, try doing a Whois search using http://whois.icann.org/. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They coordinate the internet’s address book by making sure the domain names all over the world can find each other. By keeping the Domain Name System (DNS) operating, we are able to have one global internet.

You can check to see if your registrar is an ICANN-accredited registrar. If it’s not, there is a simple procedure to follow to transfer to another registrar.

Managing Your Domain Name

The registrant of your website is the person who owns the domain name. There will also be an administrator and technical contact. A registration service provider might also be listed. Any or all of these could be your web hosting provider.

Having a domain name management plan in place is essential. This will assure that your website remains registered for your domain name without interruption. You should know who your domain name registrar is, how it is renewed, and whose name it is registered under. It is also important to know where the domain name points, or to what site it takes you.

As a business owner, records should be kept indicating all this relevant information in the event of any change, such as an employee leaving the company. Knowing who is responsible for what to do with domain names will ease any transition that might occur.

A clearly defined policy includes indicating which employees are designated for each of the following:

Domain name registration procedure
Who is named as registrant
Who is the technical contact
Who is the administrative contact
Which registrar or domain name company is used for registration
Renewal of domain name
Confirmation of where each domain name points
Password preservation and recovery

The New Domain Name Extensions

Did you know there are many new top-level domain names or extensions?

You might be surprised to find out that there are many other extensions besides .com, .edu, .net, and .org. New generic top-level domains are fast becoming available, with over 1,300 new names predicted over the next few years.

All the TLDs shown in this post’s picture are the real thing. Your imagination is the limit to what you can create.

Are the New TLDs Better?

Top-level domains have been under the control of ICANN, but in 2014 the creation of these URL extensions was opened to entrepreneurs. TLDs now comprise an endless number of possibilities as business owners can pay to have their website end with a specific TLD, such as jewelry, cafe, wedding, diet, and dentist, to name just a few.

There are over 5 million websites with new TLDs. Despite their obvious unique appeal, a study by Moz on generic TLDs showed that users weren’t likely to trust a domain based on its TLD. “A new gTLD is probably not a silver bullet.”

As for SEO, TLDs don’t offer any improvement. Search engine algorithms don’t include the new TLDs as a ranking factor.

According to John Mueller from Google, “There still is no inherent ranking advantage to using the new TLDs. They can perform well in search, just like any other TLD can perform well in search. They give you an opportunity to pick a name that better matches your web-presence. If you see posts claiming that early data suggests they’re doing well, keep in mind that this is not due to any artificial advantage in search: you can make a fantastic website that performs well in search on any TLD.”

Your first move in domain name management shouldn’t be worrying about your TLD. It should be checking the list to see that you know exactly who is responsible for each item, and keeping the information in a secure spot.

How to Stay Safe With WordPress Updates

April 22, 2015 Beth Devine

wordpresssecurity

WordPress is a fantastic content management system and blogging platform, but like most popular open source software it can be vulnerable to certain malicious activities–especially if your software, theme and plug-ins are not kept up to date and running the most current version.

What kind of malicious activities might occur?

Someone could install files with malicious scripts within your WordPress installation that send out SPAM. This could lead to an exceptional load on the hosting server causing it to slow down website performance and the volume of SPAM can cause the mail server to be blacklisted. The blacklist could prevent other folks from receiving your emails that you send causing you to lose business. And it can be time-consuming to get a server off a blacklist.
A malicious script redirects your site to another (SPAMMY) location causing you to lose business, damage your reputation and hurt your search engine rank.
Any number of other mean-spirited activities the hackers decide to wreak upon your site that will cause you to lose business, or your reputation or both.

It’s important to protect your website.

We’ve talked about WordPress security before (and will probably talk about it again). See No-Worries Website Security , More Password Hacking Methods and How to Stay Safe, How to Change Your WordPress Username, and How To Prevent Zombie Hack of Your WordPress Site, and 6 Ways Your Site Is Hacked and What To Do About It for some previous posts.

There are many tools and plug-ins useful for keeping you site secure, but today we’re going to talk about managing WordPress updates. Let’s get started.

How to Manage Your WordPress Updates

WordPress makes it very easy to keep your website up to date. The most important thing to ensure is that you have a current and complete backup of your database and your files.

There are many ways to backup your website, but here are the easiest and most common.

You can create a backup from your web hosting cPanel.
There are backup plug-ins that you can install in your WordPress dashboard that will automatically backup your site at set intervals.

Once you ensure that you have a current backup, it’s very easy to complete the updates from within your dashboard. All updates for plug-ins, themes and WordPress versions will be noted under WordPress updates in your dashboard. Simply click the update links and in most cases the site will begin updating.

The Order of Operations

In my experience I find it best to start with the plug-ins and update all the plug-ins that have updates available. Once those have updates have completed, move on to the theme (see theme warning below) and update it, then update WordPress itself.

Theme Warning – Why it’s important to use child themes.

Ensure that your theme hasn’t been modified or your updated theme may not display your website the way you want it to look. We usually build websites with all the style modifications made to the child theme so it’s less likely to cause a problem when updating the theme.

OOPs! Something went wrong!!!

You’ve made your updates but now…

Your website doesn’t look right – See theme warning above.
You can’t even see your website and you see a “Fatal Error” message(s) instead.

Now what do you do?

Disable Plug-ins.

Sometimes a plug-in doesn’t play well with the current versions of WordPress. If that’s the case, it might actually make your website unavailable. Instead of seeing your website, you’ll see a fatal error message. So, if you’re seeing a fatal error message, the first thing to do would be to disable all the plug-ins. Probably the easiest way to do that is to login to your cPanel and find your plug-ins directory and disable it. An easy way to disable it is just change the name on the plug-in folder. Use something like Disabled-plugins.

Did that fix it?

If yes, continue reading this section. If not, continue on to restore your website from the backup.

You’ve determined that your website works with plug-ins disabled so you know that one (or more) of the plug-ins caused the problem. You need your plug-ins so you’re going to enable them one by one to find out which plug-in caused the problem. To do that create a new folder in your cpanel called plugins (don’t get creative here – put it in the same location as the old plugins folder was located.) Copy over each plugin folder from the disabled-plugin folder to the plugin folder. Check after moving each plug-in to the active plugin folder to see if the website is still working. When the website breaks – you’ll have discovered which plug-in broke the website. Now you need to consider whether you really need that plug-in or not.

Restore your website from a backup.

Here’s where it’s important to have you backup database and files.

In your cpanel:

Overwrite or restore your WordPress files with the backup files you saved.
Restore the old database you saved or create a new database and import your backup database into the new database. Change the wp-config file to point to the corrected database.

Your website should now be restored to the state it was in prior to trying to update it. So now you’re back to square one with a working but outdated WordPress installation. Chances are during the restoration you discovered if it was a outdated plug-in or outdated theme that created the havoc during updates. It’s likely you’ll want to replace the plug-in and/or theme with something that is compatible with the current WordPress version.

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