The recent Google Panda refresh not only brings the infamous algorithm to 4.0, it also heralds a new direction in which updates to the algorithm will happen on a regular and unannounced basis. This means your SERPs could change any time without any warning, so it has become important to stay on top and get alerted to major SERP changes. Thankfully, Rank Ranger’s Risk Index can do the job for you.

How it Works

The Rank Ranger Risk Index is able to measure fluctuations in the SERPs for more than 10 thousand domains and keywords, which are monitored daily. The rankings can be brought up on any particular date, with higher risk indexes showing more movements in the SERPs. If you see any alarming fluctuations, then you can go ahead and check your rankings just to see if any specific action is required on your end.

Rank Ranger monitors sites that are more likely to be using SEO strategies that run the gamut, from white hat to black hat and everything in between. This makes it more likely to catch major algorithm changes from Google, particularly ones that hit one camp over the other.

Another use to Rank Ranger is it lets you spot trends in SEO, if there’s a new strategy that’s been showing a good increase in webmasters’ traffic. From there, you can decide whether it’s something that you should adopt or something that’s going to be on Google’s chopping blocks soon (and should therefore be avoided.)

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If you already have an active site with a decent amount of regular traffic, you know that switching servers can be troublesome. It takes at least 24 hours for your domain to propagate to the new servers so there’s always going to be downtime on the visitor’s side. The revenue and potential new visitors you could lose from such a downtime is no joke, but has been accepted as the norm and a necessary cost of moving servers. However, there is a way for you to switch servers without waiting more than a few minutes for the domain to propagate to the new one.

However, this is not something that you could do at the last minute. You have to do some things in advance (or before you have a need to switch servers.) You need to follow these steps to the letter:

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1. Make sure the host you are currently on uses cPanel with full standard backups.
2. Keep a recent copy of the cPanel backup on your desktop or on a remote server like Amazon S3.
3. Set up CloudFlare directly via CloudFlare itself, don’t use the hosts cPanel. (more…)

Content Delivery Networks (or CDNs) are very useful and can solve many problems for websites who value availability and user experience. However, they’re not exactly a requirement and whether or not you need one for your site depends on various factors.

But First, What is CDN?

CDNs are essentially designed to address problems with global availability, bandwidth constraints, and latency. If the server that hosts your website’s files are located in the US while the user browsing them is in France, the request for the data and the data itself will have to travel from the US to France. Data travels fast, especially now that we have fiber optic cables serving as the pathways, but the time it takes to make a roundtrip is still affected by distance and the number of data that must travel (it’s not uncommon for a single page from a website to contain at least 100 objects that need to be sent to and fro.)

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A CDN addresses the problem of latency by caching static resources in edge caches (or points of presence – basically distributed servers) located in various parts of the world, ensuring that the resources can be accessed in places that are nearer to the user, thereby reducing round trip time. (more…)

Webmasters should always be ready for the day when they have to migrate their site to a new host. Even if the current host is perfect, there’s no guarantee that they will stay the same forever. Or maybe a better host will come along, or maybe the current one suddenly goes out of business.

Regardless of the reason, you should be ready to move your site without undergoing too much of a hassle. If you want your migration to a new host be efficient and with minimal downtime, you should take the following into consideration:

Make Regular (and Full) Backups Of Your Site

You don’t want to be that guy who only makes a backup of his entire site at the moment he has to migrate to a new host. The really big migrations can occur as a result of a host suddenly disappearing or a host being so unreliable that their servers frequently corrupt your databases.

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If you don’t have any backups yet by the time you’re forced by circumstances to change hosts, you’ll find yourself with just bits and pieces of your old site available, which can be so difficult to restore that you’d find it easier to just start a new site from scratch. Additionally, really big, established sites take a lot of time to back up, so you don’t want to be rushing everything at the last minute. (more…)

When it comes to choosing a hosting solution, most people find it easy to choose between a dedicated host and a shared host because of the price difference between the two (the former costs more than the latter,) with people either choosing shared because they want to save money or going with dedicated hosting because they subscribe to the “you get what you pay for” mentality. However, the truth is that there are other factors to consider besides the price when deciding if dedicated hosting is the best option.

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Difference Between Shared and Dedicated Hosting

As the name implies, the main difference between dedicated and shared hosting is the resources they use. A shared hosting shares server resources with other accounts, while dedicated usually get its own server. Dedicated hosting is essentially akin to a web host leasing server hardware to the client, with some hosts also including software as part of the package. The client then has full control of the server, where he can have as much traffic to his website (at least, as much as the server can handle) without worrying about other websites. He can also install applications that he wants and doesn’t have to worry about security concerns normally associated with sharing space with other websites.

Benefits of Dedicated Hosting

Of course, you’re not paying more for dedicated hosting just for the sake of status. There are practical and justifiable reasons why a dedicated host costs more than shared, such as:

1. Flexibility – a dedicated host will allow you to use as many or as little of your server’s resources – be it bandwidth, memory, or hard drive space – provided that it remains within the limits allotted by your plan.

2. Greater Control Over the Server – since you’re not sharing the server with other users, you’ll be given much greater control and access. One great example of this is root access, which is usually not allowed on shared services.

3. Stability – this is easily the most important benefit of a dedicated host. The fact that you’re not sharing the server’s resources means that you don’t have to worry about your site’s performance being affected by other websites. You can also rest assured that you won’t be outgrowing your server anytime soon.

So Is Dedicated Hosting Really The Best Option?

Technically, dedicated hosting is the best hosting that your money can buy, but that doesn’t exactly mean that it’s the best solution for you. A Porsche may be the best car that your money can buy, but is it the car you should buy if you’re just going to drive it a few blocks to work every day?

Basically, if you have a personal site that won’t generate much traffic, a dedicated hosting might be considered as overkill. There’s no need to spend too much money on a dedicated hosting plan if you won’t need the kind of benefits it gives. However, if your site generates tons of traffic and requires utmost stability and security, dedicated hosting is the best solution for you.

One of the most frequently asked questions about start-ups is “how do you make a startup succeed?” The answer to the question is easy, but completely useless: you make something that users want. Answering exactly what users want is the hard part because it changes over time and is affected by many factors. Besides, if it were easy, no startup would ever fail and everybody will be a startup millionaire.

The better question is “how do you make a startup fail?” because the answers are based on examples of past failed startups. Additionally, the answers can be used to eliminate things that wouldn’t work, making it easier to get a startup to succeed. Here are 10 of the most common (and easily avoided) start up screw ups:

1. Having Only One Founder – quick, think of a successful startup that was founded by a single person. Can’t think of one? Even companies that look like they were only founded by a single person, like Oracle, actually have more. This is not a coincidence. The thing is that having no other founder is a sign that the person can’t talk any of his friends to start the company with him, which shows that nobody except him is confident in the idea. Next, running a startup is hard work that no single person can do alone. The amount of work required and the pressures involved in getting the business up and running requires multiple founders that can help and support each other even in the lowest points.

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This year, mobile users have already surpassed the amount of PC users, not even counting the fact that PC users who have a mobile device will go mobile most of the time due to the convenience the device offers. It stands to reason that any marketer who wishes to keep up with the industry must devote some time to targeting mobile. In order to help you with that, here are the facts that you need to know about mobile marketing:

Mobile Users Exhibit Brand Loyalty

Consumers are starting to spend more and more time on their smartphones and tablets compared to their PCs, but for the most part they are still gravitating towards brands that they favored on the PC – this means they still search on Google even when mobile, they still access Facebook over more mobile-targeted social networks, and even the ailing Yahoo managed to capture a decent market share on mobile.

The Shift to Mobile Means Loss in Traditional Ad Revenue

Despite mobile users outnumbering desktop ones, online advertising companies are finding out that their revenue has gone down once people shifted to mobile use. The main reason for this is more technical than behavioural – mobile devices simply have less screen real estate devoted to advertising. When the actual content of a page barely fits on a smartphone’s screen, you can bet that people will prioritize that over the banners or sidebar ads.

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One thing that mobile marketers need to do is design their campaigns based on this limitation. Instead of launching ad campaigns that compete for screen real estate with the actual content, why not do what companies do in some movies and have product placements? An ad banner on a mobile device might get shunned (or blocked entirely) but your product being used by a game character or your logo being part of an app cannot be ignored without sacrificing the content they came for. The idea is no longer to force your brand on people, but to find ways how to squeeze it in their lives. (more…)

We all believe in the adage “nobody is perfect,” and it’s true even for web developers. Even the most experienced ones still commit mistakes that make you scratch your head. Here are some of the most common ones:

Lack of Search Box

Many websites, even ones designed by seasoned web developers still don’t have a search box. All websites need a search box. Even if you have the most user-friendly layout and navigational tools, it is still easier for visitors to just search for the content he wants using a search box. In fact, visitors tend to stay longer by randomly typing search strings at the search box than manually navigating the menus and site links.

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Additionally, adding a search box to your website isn’t even that difficult even if you have no coding skills. Google provides a search box that you can add to your own layout simply by copy and pasting a snippet of HTML code. (more…)

DIY (Do It Yourself) Website Builders have become popular as of late, mainly because it allows people to create their own websites even if they have no prior knowledge of programming. It opened up the industry to even people without any technical aptitude. However, DIY Website Builders are usually frowned upon by professional web developers. But how exactly do DIY website builders fit in? Are they inferior to expensive software packages or are they better?

As with everything, the answer might be subjective and will depend on the person. In order to find out, you need to take into account the following dangers and benefits of DIY Website Builders:

Dangers of Using DIY Website Builders

If you have a business that relies heavily on the website – whether if it’s for sales or branding and customer support, relying on a DIY website builder can be risky. There is no way for you to predict how powerful it will be in the future and whether it will require constant updates. Additionally, if the platform shuts down, you stand to lose everything – from content to audience in one fell swoop.

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Fortunately, the really decent companies offer advance notice if their service will be shutting down, and offer solutions on how to backup and sometimes even migrate your content to a different service. This means you have to be very careful when choosing which DIY website builder to get before you start your site. Make sure you go with the company that is reputable and has a track record for good customer service.

Benefits of a DIY Website Builder

As mentioned above, the main benefits provided by a DIY Website Builder is that it is easy to use, so there’s no need to hire a firm or a tech person to handle the creation and maintenance. Additionally, DIY services can sometimes be free, and even when they are not, they usually require very little overhead as providers either operate on a “freemium” model or offer extremely low cost services, which they are able to do because DIY software doesn’t offer as much capabilities as a full fledged hosting account. (more…)

Many pundits and experts in the industry are proclaiming 2014 as the tipping point in technology, citing the shift in balance between users of mobile devices and tablets compared to desktop users as the catalyst. It is a great way of simplifying the changes that this year may bring, but the main driving force underneath it all is the rapid increase in computing power and bandwidth, which gives people smaller and more portable means of accessing data.

What does this mean for your business? It means that there may be some big changes coming your way and you need to be aware of them, just in case you’re one of the many businesses that need to change or adapt in order to avoid being left behind. These changes include:

Mobile Overtakes PC

By the time you are reading this, the number of mobile users have already overtaken the number of desktop PC users. And it’s not just in the number of ownership, mobile has also overtaken PC in frequency of usage. After all, mobile devices are designed to be used anywhere and anytime a person wants, so it’s only natural that there’s more opportunity for mobile owners to use their devices as opposed to PCs.

In your business, this means you have to start targeting mobile users based on the strengths and limitations of their devices – anywhere from the size of their screens, to their unique input methods and even the location where they are used.

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