Hosting Article

SEO Tips – How Boost Your Joomla Site Ranking?

Emilyn Hosting Article ,

How Boost Your Joomla Site Ranking? | Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important aspect of a website’s development process, as it provides valuable info to both search engines and visitors of a website. Joomla, as a complete Content Management System, features most of the settings you will need to optimize, in order to achieve better Google rankings. In this article, we will share some tips about how to boost your Joomla site ranking.

SEO Tips - How Boost Your Joomla Site Ranking?

How Boost Your Joomla Site Ranking

Tips 1 – Enable Search Engine Friendly URLs

This option is enabled by default on a Joomla installation, but it can be tweaked even further by enabling URL rewriting. To enable URL rewriting you will have to rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess (mind the dot before the filename). With this option enabled your website’s URLs will not contain the ‘index.php’ part, thus making them more user-friendly, therefore more search-engine-friendly. You may also enable “adds suffix to URLs”, an option that will add a .html suffix to all your website’s pages. There is an ongoing discussion whether this option will enhance your website’s SEO, but we prefer to keep it enabled.

Tips 3  – Use your aliases effectively

This is a feature that is often being disregarded by most new Joomla users. In fact, the alias is used as the url for each article, hence it will have to contain the article’s title, with all spaces replaced by dashes. You should never leave an article’s alias empty, as Joomla will autocomplete it with the article’s publication date and time – certainly not a very user-friendly information. Further more, if you create a menu item for an article this will override the article’s alias, so you will need to set the menu item’s alias accordingly.

Tips 4 – Use your page titles effectively

Page titles are a major factor for a website’s SEO, hence you will need to define them with care, making sure they include your main keywords. Again, pay extra attention to menu items, as their page title settings override the article’s page title. This is a very important step, especially for your website’s homepage title – it certainly has to be something more specific than “Home”.

Tips 5 – Do not forget the meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are not visible to your website’s visitors – unless they are proficient source code readers. But still, search engines consider them as an important factor for your website’s ranking, as meta descriptions provide valuable information for your website’s content. Actually, a meta description is the text appearing beneath the link of your website on search engine result pages. You should use this setting to gain an advantage for your desired keywords.

Tips 6 – Avoid duplicate entries for your category items

Search engines do not like duplicate entries – especially as meta descriptions. In the case of a category, you should avoid setting a generic meta description on the category’s menu item. You should define this meta description on the category settings (in the Publishing tab of the category settings), thus letting each article to have its own meta description.

Tips 7 – Enable gzip compression

A website’s performance has a great impact on search engine optimization. One of the first things to do, in order to boost your website’s performance is to enable gzip compression on the Global Configuration. This will shorten the loading time of your pages, thus making your website faster.

Tips 8 – Enable cache

oomla comes with a handy cache feature that is disabled by default. As caching affects the overall loading speed of a website, it actually has a major impact on search engine optimization. To enable cache you will have to :

  • turn on Conservative Caching on the System tab of the Global Configuration, under Cache settings
  • enable the System – Cache plugin (where you might leave ‘On browser caching’ disabled)
  • enable the cache of your template (where available)

Tips 9 – Use a sitemap extension

Search engines are relying on sitemaps to analyze the structure of a website. As Joomla does not come with a sitemap generator, the best option is to use a free extension for this task, such as Xmap – a free, reliable and highly recommended Joomla extesion. With Xmap you can have automatically updated sitemaps (even multiple ones, for multilingual websites) and you may also use a 301 redirection for the sitemap.xml file that needs to reside on your website’s root directory.

Tips 10 – Use redirection to eliminate 404 page errors

Joomla features a redirect plugin, which needs to be enabled, that you can use to provide redirections for any URL pointing to a non-existing page of your website. This is particularly important, in cases of a website re-design or a migration from a different CMS (such as WordPress), to make sure that you maintain your old Google ranking.

Tips 11 – Never leave the alt-text of an image file empty

Alternate text of image files has a great impact on your website’s SEO. You should never leave it empty, or – even worse – autocomplete this field with the image’s filename. Use your desired keywords with care, in order to describe each image in a way that even a screen reader can help a user to understand the role of an image within an article.

Responsive Web Design: How Important Is It To Boost Your SEO Ranking?

Emilyn Hosting Article , , ,

Responsive Web Design: How Important Is It To Boost Your SEO Ranking? | Google loves responsive websites. Google runs the search game at this point, and dictates what a lot of websites should or shouldn’t do. If Google put their weight behind responsive website design, then it makes sense to listen. Does your business cater for your mobile audience yet? If not, then the sooner the better. A responsive web design boasts a range of benefits, giving your potential customers the online experience they deserve, whether they’re viewing it on a PC, mobile, or tablet device. Why responsive web design is so great for SEO purposes?

Young couple using tablet computer

What is Responsive Web Design?

A responsive web design means that whatever device is used, the website will respond to their screen size, and be automatically compatible. This allows optimum viewing and usability on all devices, rather than only catering to desktop PCs, and having mobile users struggle to view content. If you’ve ever had to pinch to zoom and scroll around an unoptimized website on a mobile device, you know how annoying it can cause.

How Important Is Responsive Web Design To Boost Your SEO Ranking?

1. Usability

When it comes to SEO, Google runs the show. Google wants to send their own users to the websites they wish to see, which means offering them the most accessible and usable sites for the user is important. And what gives the best form of usability to the biggest percentage of users? A responsive web design. Going responsive means there’s less frustration for users trying to find their way around your website, and it also gives them your content in a format they can actually read.

2. Longer Time on Page

If you are providing a top experience for customers who come across your website, they are going to spend longer on it. If browsers find content on your website that responds and is suitably presented on their device, then they will continue to read and navigate through your website. The longer they spend on the page, the more Google will recognize you are providing a great quality experience for any users, meaning a nice boost in search rankings. If users are spending very little time on each page, whether it’s down to content or navigational issues, then Google will not rank you as highly, then it will reduce your SEO efforts.

3. Link Building

If you have a mobile website, you are going to have fewer links to your mobile site rather than your main desktop one. With a responsive web design, your website is always mobile-friendly, meaning it will still maintain the backlinks of your original site. As people will be linking to your site from both desktops and mobile devices, this combination means you stand a higher chance of gaining a better backlink profile. With a separate mobile website, it would mean starting from scratch in order to build authority. Focusing in on one single site is a much more appealing alternative and that is what responsive web design offers. Responsive websites have the same URL and use the same HTML. Therefore, responsive websites make it a simpler task for Google to crawl and index your content which is always a plus when it comes to SEO.

4. Page Loading Speed

Responsive websites do not require a redirection of queries in order to reach a particular URL. So, responsive web designs will be reduce to only the necessary parts for mobile devices, it leads to faster website load times, which Google will recognize, and use in their algorithm to give you a boost in your search rankings.

Your Web hosting provider can also play a part when it comes to site speed. The information superhighway acts a lot like a real highway. Traffic builds up and slow your Website down. However, if your Web hosting has multiple connections to the Internet backbone, they can re-route you to a less crowded connection. If they have access to a cloud infrastructure, the highway is never too crowded. The cloud servers simply add processing capacity as traffic builds. Cloud infrastructures allow Web hosts to keep your traffic flowing and your site speed up.

5. Sharing and Social Signals

A huge number of social media users are accessing and browsing the networks via the mobile networks. When you share a link to your responsive website, your website will be suitable for whatever device a user is using. If you are sharing content on social media, and don’t have a responsive web design fit for purpose for those on their mobile phones, they could be landing on poorly optimised websites, and fail to digest the content. However, if the site is responsive and fits their screen for easy use and accessibility, they’ll be more likely to stick around.

This is a plus from an SEO standpoint anyhow, but this also means they would be more likely to follow your brand on social media, alongside engage with posts through likes, shares, favourites, retweets, or anything else. The bonus here is that Google now recognizes social engagement as an indicator of good quality content, and so will use social media engagement as part of their search signals to boost rankings. Social media may seem like a waste of time to some, but it is a great way to find new audiences, directly engage with them on a regular basis and also help you stand in search engine results.

What’s wrong with Arvixe? Is Arvixe Not Working Right Now?

Emilyn Hosting Article , , ,

What’s wrong with Arvixe? Is Arvixe Not Working Right Now? – In the first years of appearing, Arvixe has been a good hosting provider. They have been hosting thousands of personal, small business and enterprise websites on a global level. In 2011 and 2012, Arvixe has been included in the “Inc. 500 list” as one of the fastest growing private companies in America. They also listed as one of the top 10 cost effective hosting choice in 2013. But recently we heard some issues and problems related to Arvixe hosting service. As reported in SiteGeek.com, in this past few weeks, Arvixe has lost 20.000 of its costumer in average. What’s wrong with Arvixe right now? Some rumors say that Arvixe was hacked, the other says due to its acquisitions by EIG. Here in this article, we try to find the truth about what happened to Arvixe actually.

What’s Wrong With Arvixe?

Here is the timeline about what happened related to Arvixe over the past year until present.

Planning to Move Away From Arvixe? Why You Should Not Choose EIG’s hosts?

Is Arvixe still okay to be your hosting partner? It’s hard to say that Arvixe is not in a good condition at this time. You can see in above timeline, there’s a lot of costumers who has disappointed with Arvixe’s service. Some costumers tell that they often receive frequent downtimes and unsatisfied support, it’s true that Arvixe become worse since they are acquired by EIG. The same condition happened to HostGator in 2012, they used to be excellent host, but when EIG acquired them, they turned to be unreliable hosting provider. Here’s a list of EIG web hosting companies that you need to look. So, if you’re planning to switch a host, make sure you didn’t move to one of EIG’s host or you will face the same problem over and over again. Luckily, there’s still so many hosting providers who are not owned by EIG, here are some of them that we recommend you to try:

HostForLIFE.eu

HostForLIFE.eu is one of the most stable, reliable and fast hosting providers in Europe. Their hosting plans include unlimited disk storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domain and unlimited email account. As Microsoft #1 recommended hosting partner, HostForLIFE also provides ASP.NET all versions, the latest MSSQL, Windows Server, IIS version and the latest-updated Plesk admin panel. HostForLIFE.eu offers affordable hosting plans which are priced from €3.00/month. n addition for what mentioned above, its technical support is also extraordinary. The company offers contact channels as much as they can, so that customers can seek help via live chat, tickets, email, as well as knowledge base. 

Liquid Web

Liquid Web is a flexible, feature-packed online host with outstanding customer service and excellent dedicated and VPS hosting plans. They have established a world-class support team that is professionally educated and available on-site at each of their data centers 24 hours per day. Designed with redundancy installed at every level, their data centers were also built to ensure that a failure will not affect your server. Their shared hosting plan is starting from $14.95/month. If you’re looking to build your website on the strongest possible foundation, however, you’ll want to check out Liquid Web’s dedicated server offerings. They come in a variety of configurations, ranging from a single-processor to a quad-processor starting at $179/month. Their top-notch hosting and 24/7 support are very well worth the money.

ASPHostPortal

ASPHostPortal is particularly professional in supplying excellent Windows hosting. They provides four hosting plans, which are priced at $1.00/month, $5.00/month, $9.00/month and $14.00/month. The four plans include a huge amount of disk space and monthly data transfer, unlimited domain, multiple MySQL5 and MSSQL 2012 or above. In the same time, they give you access to IIS 7/8, latest Windows Server and ASP.NET 2.0/3.5/4.0/4.5/5.0. What’s more, ASPHostPortal owns world-class data center which are located in 12 countries accross the globe.  By making use of the robust power supply units and array of advanced hardware, ASPHostPortal exceeds the average 99.9% uptime. 

MDDHosting

MDDHosting is a privately owned company that was formed in 2007 to provide services with affordable prices for individuals and businesses around the world. MDDHosting shared hosting for example, includes three packages, which are priced at $7.50/month, $11.50/month and $15.50/month. Since the three packages are with different pricing, there exist some essential differences in disk space and bandwidth. All of MDDHosting plans also contains unlimited domains, subdomains, the latest version of PHP & MySQL 5.5, shared SSL, SSH & automatic daily backups and unlimited FTP accounts. This host does a great job in providing useful and advanced features, and the utilized powerful facilities in data center ensure a robust hosting environment for customers to run their websites stably and appropriately.