Sunday, September 19, 2021

QCPH Golf Outing

QCPH Golf Outing Sponsor

The QCPH Golf Outing took place on Saturday (9/18,2021). We were happy to be able to help support this charity event by sponsoring a hole and by donating some golf balls. The Quad City Parrot Head Club held their annual Golf Outing at Sunrise Golf Course in Bettendorf, Iowa with a shotgun start at 11:00am. All proceeds from this event were donated to Birdies For Charity.
This event was open to the public. You did not need to be a member of the QCPH club to play golf or attend the after-golf party. As usual with this event there was a great party after golf was over with entertainment by Dave Ellis, Rich Fricke, Barry Beranek, Bill VanAtta & Rich Wilcox.
We love supporting great events like this that contribute to charitable causes. Learn more about the Quad City Parrot Head Club.

Original post here: QCPH Golf Outing

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

How To Claim Your Google My Business Page FREE!

How To Claim Your Google My Business Page FREE!

"How To Claim Your Google My Business Page FREE!" A few days ago I told you that, if you are a local business owner or someone who owns a local business, then you need to be claiming your Google My Business page (GMB). It is extremely important to you and your company showing up in the local search results. If you know anything about SEO and local search engines, then you know that local search is essential to your business. Why? Because local search will bring you more customers and more business and more traffic and more leads and more money. If you don’t show up in the local search results, then you won’t get any of that traffic.

How To Claim Your Google My Business Page FREE!

If you haven’t already, then you need to claim your Google My Business page. When you claim your page, you will need to verify your business location. To claim your page, go to Google My Business and get started. It’s easy, and it only takes a few minutes. What do I need to know about claiming my business? To claim your Google My Business page, you will need to request a post card from Google mailed to the address of the business. It must be a physical street address, not a PO box. The post card will have a verification code printed on it. Once you receive the code, login to you GMB account and click on verify, then enter the code from the post card.

After You Verify Your GMB You Need To Optimize It

Now that you have a verified GMB listing it's time to start optimizing it. Here are the areas you need to focus on to maximize the effectiveness of your GMB.

Go to the Info tab and fill out as much as you can for the following items:

  1. Category: Limit to 3
  2. Business Address: Make sure your location is 100% accurate and your map pin is in the correct location
  3. Service Areas
  4. Hours: Hours you are open
  5. Phone
  6. Website: Enter your website address
  7. Appointment Links
  8. Services
  9. Products: Add all of your products and include photos
  10. Business Attributes: things like women-owned, wheelchair accessible, etc.
  11. Description: Use all of the available room to talk about your business
  12. Date Business Opened

Go to the Photos tab and upload photos:

Upload your logo Upload photos of your business, your customers or anything else that pertains to your business.

Go to the Products tab and verify your products:

Make sure the products you added are shown correctly and correct them if not GMB gives you 1000 characters for each product description so try and use as many as possible Make sure your products are linked to the correct page on your website

Google Reviews

You need reviews from your customers. One way to get them is to publish a button on your website that will go to the review page for your business Don't offer any type of compensation for a good review. Google will not be happy and may suspend your GMB if they become aware of your scheme Reply to any reviews you get as soon as possible and write your response tailored to each review. Try not to use the ubiquitous "Thanks for your great review" type of response. You are allowed lots of room and you should take advantage of that to talk about your business and include some keywords.

GMB Website

Did you know GMB includes a complete website you can use for your business? This is an alternate website and compliments your main website. It is a free service and this is a great way to promote your business and show off your work. The website has a simple interface and is easy to navigate. And it is mobile friendly! The GMB website automatically takes all the information from your GMB and creates a website for your business. Anytime you create a GMB post or receive reviews or post photos - your Google My Business website is updated. You are limited to some basic formatting and you can't change the layout but this is a great way to promote your business - and again, it's Free!

GMB Posts

Ideally you should post 5 days a week for the most benefit. Your post should include a photo and be relevant to your business. Make sure you read the Posts content policy in order to make sure your post meets Google's criteria for acceptable posts.

Conclusion:

As you can see, by following these simple steps, you can learn How To Claim Your Google My Business Page FREE!. This will give you a place on the web to promote your business where millions of people are searching every day. If you have questions or need help with your GMB, let me know and I'll be happy to help.

Original post here: How To Claim Your Google My Business Page FREE!

Monday, September 6, 2021

Website Protection Tips

My Website Was Hacked | Website Protection | Website Security

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Website Protection - Threats Are Everywhere

What to do about website protection? The news has been reporting huge increases in cyber attacks in the last few weeks. Make no mistake about it, there are people out there actively working to hack your website. You need to be proactive with your website protection strategy.

Small business websites don't have the resources to throw at online security and are particularly vulnerable to hackers. There are steps you can take to protect your website without spending a dime. Since we work primarily with WordPress sites we'll focus on WordPress specific tips.

Install an Anti-Virus Program on your PC

(Not specifically WordPress related) You don't need to pay for a good anti-virus program these days. A Google search for "free antivirus" will turn up quite a few options. We currently use the free version of Avast Mac Security and have good results.

Email

(Not specifically WordPress related) You've heard it many times - don't open email attachments unless you are absolutely certain they are from a trusted source. Even then, be very careful with email attachments. Your trusted sender may have been hacked. One more reason to have a solid anti-virus program in place.

If you receive an email from a trusted source but for any reason you are suspicious of the email, pick up the phone and call them or text them to verify they actually sent the email. Hackers have gotten sophisticated enough to intercept email so if you use email to ask the sender if they actually sent the it, chances are you'll be talking to the hacker. It's getting crazy out there folks - be careful.

If you're sending email via your WordPress website you should utilize one of the many SMTP plugins.

WordPress Login

WordPress is susceptible to brute force attacks from hackers. A brute force attack is simply an attempt to gain access to the website by guessing at a username and password over and over (usually employing some software to run these login attempts unattended).

Brute force attacks are common on WordPress sites. They're easy to mount and just as easy to defend against. First, we need to make sure all of our passwords are strong. By "strong" I mean made up of a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. Here are some guidelines for creating strong passwords:

  1. Never use the same password twice.
  2. Use a different password for every site you have a login to. This will slow down a brute force attack considerably.
  3. Use a mix of upper and lower case letters.
  4. Use numbers and special characters where appropriate.
  5. Use a mix of uppercase, lowercase, and mixed-case letters in your password. This will make it more difficult for an attacker to guess your password.
  6. Use a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters in your password.
  7. Two easy ways to help guard against these attacks are to not use the default name for your admin account and to rename your wp-login.php file. You’d be amazed at the number of WordPress websites using the login user name of “admin” – terrible idea as far as website protection goes.

Since you can’t rename users in WordPress you’ll need to create an additional user account with admin privileges and then delete the original admin account.

Renaming your wp-login.php file can easily be done using a plugin like Rename WP-Login.php or Protect Your Admin. The capability to rename your login is also available in iThemes Security plugin.

Keep Your Site Updated

WordPress updates are released frequently for the WordPress core files, themes, and plugins. Make sure you keep your site up to date by applying updates when they become available. Many of these updates contain patches to security vulnerabilities and failing to update could expose your website to security threats.

Remember this when applying updates to your WordPress website. Always install updates in this order: Plugins, Themes, WordPress Core Files.

WordPress Security

There are lots of internet predators out there trying to do bad things with your website. You need some defense to combat these lowlifes. One of the best we've found is Wordfence. We install Wordfence on every site we build. There is a Pro version which costs $99 per year but the free version is excellent and plenty for most Wordpress sites. Install it and use it!

Another WordPress security we really like is iThemes Security. This plugin has lots of options and has been a rock-solid performer for us.

Backup Your Website

Site backups are an important step in your overall website health strategy. Your hosting provider may make periodic backups but you should make the effort to backup your site as well. We use UpdraftPlus and it's another default plugin on the WordPress websites we build.

Use a VPN

The kind of security a VPN provides is on the way from being a luxury to becoming a necessity on the modern internet. While directly hacking a computer using its IP address is difficult today, thanks to the various firewalls employed by service providers, an IP address can still be used as a starting point to access location data that can then be used to dig up further sensitive information. What makes a VPN effective is that it encrypts your internet traffic before it reaches any server outside of your device. We recommend visiting VPNRatings.com for lots more information on VPNs.

VPNRatings logo

These few steps will go a long way in preventing website headaches and should keep your site running strong.

Having problems with your WordPress website? Get in touch and we'll be happy to help.

 

 

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Original post here: Website Protection Tips

Saturday, September 4, 2021

The Evolution Of Web Browsers

Evolution of Web Browsers

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Looking for our Web Browser Poll? Scroll down.

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Update: 09/04/2021

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Brave Browser Update

It's been nine months since we last updated our statistics for the Brave browser. Here is the latest. Over a million and a quarter trackers and ads blocked by Brave with almost 25GM and 17 hours saved. Pretty impressive.

Firefox

Firefox has been getting some rave reviews for their latest version of web browser. I have Firefox installed and have used it off and on since it first came on the market. The developer community is giving it high marks for its' capabilities in working with CSS and other its' developer tools. Firefox has come a long way since the days of Netscape.

Brave Browser Stats

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Update: 12/16/2020

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Brave Browser Update

Over 800,000 trackers & ads blocked. Wow. I'm not sure what I did with those 11 hours of time Brave saved but I'm pretty sure I used it to work on web design projects.

brave browser stats

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Update: 8/9/2020

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Brave Browser Update

Since we began using the Brave Browser we have saved 5.6 hours and had over 400,000 trackers and ads blocked. That's a significant reduction in the usual irritations that go along with browsing the internet.

Brave Browser Stats

 

We have noticed that Brave seems to be a little more "locked down" than other browsers. Brave kicks up some security errors where other browsers don't. Is that good or bad? I prefer to error on the side of a more secure browsing experience. 

I have Brave installed on my MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone. It's become my go-to browser and I have zero issues or problems with it on these devices.

If you haven't taken the Brave browser for a spin yet, it might be time to check it out.

https://brave.com/

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Update: 2/5/2020

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New Kid on the Block - Brave Browser

There a new browser in the fray. Created way back in 2016, the Brave Browser was updated with new algorithm code and re-released in November of 2019. Brave is FAST, in fact one of the faster web browsers out there. It runs all the extensions the Chrome runs and proudly displays its' stats on any new tab. Here are the stats registered on my install since December 15, 2019.

Brave Browser

As you can see, Brave has saved me over an hour of time.

We like Brave and so far haven't encountered any problems using it.

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The Evolution of Web Browsers - It Started With Mosaic

Mosaic was introduced in 1993 and ushered in the age of the World Wide Web and the web browser evolution. Soon after Mosaic came Netscape's Navigator. Then in 1995, Microsoft introduced their web browser called Internet Explorer and the war was on between Netscape and Microsoft. There was a big advantage for Microsoft because they bundled Internet Explorer with it's popular Windows operating system.

By 2002 Microsoft's Internet Explorer had over 90% of the web browser market. In the late 1990s Netscape launched what would become Mozilla Foundation to develop an open source web browser which evolved into Firefox.

In 2003 Apple poked its' head in the race with their web browser named Safari. Although popular on Apple devices, Safari never caught on with the PC crowd.

Google jumped into the web browser market in 2008 with Chrome. By 2012 Chrome had absorbed market share from the competitors and was the dominant web browser in the market.

Here's a look at web browser market share as of January 2018 for desktop users.
The Evolution of Web Browsers

When web browsers were in their infancy, almost all connections to the world wide web were through dial-up modems. Many of the technologies we take for granted today were just not possible with the slow transfer speeds of the dial-up modem days. Things like game playing, streaming services, YouTube videos and other data-intensive activities were not available. I can remember connecting with a 300 baud modem and waiting hours for a file to download. Today that same size file downloads in the blink of an eye.

As connection and data transfer speeds increase, web browser technology will continue to keep pace and bring us more capabilities than we ever dreamed of.

What web browser are you using? Do you use different browsers depending on the device you're using? Let us know in the comment section below. And don't forget to take our Web Browser poll.

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Participate in our Web Browser poll!

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Original post here: The Evolution Of Web Browsers

5 SEO Tips for Iowa Businesses: Get Found Online

via Team 218 Web Services https://ift.tt/Gw0peob