The 5 Things You Need to Consider for Your Website in 2022
2021 was a tough year for business. Shut downs, new regulations, a volatile political environment and social issues made navigating much more difficult than in past years. There are hacks and problems with many companies and online services. We learned a lot and gained some powerful lessons and tools for our clients. Going into 2022, Here are the top 5 things you should consider for your website and online presence. These recommendations are specifically for my clients and based on GoDaddy’s products. You can get GoDaddy products at a discount at my online store.
Number 1: Advanced Website Security
This is at the top of my list because it has “rescued” several clients this year already. Malware can creep in to your site in a variety of ways. Most common is through vulnerable or outdated plugins and themes. While they can be updated regularly, they can have blind spots, opening or weaknesses that hackers will exploit. Hackers will scan for these weakness, upload a “payload” and it will start running on your website. Often, this is not detected early. In some cases, it becomes obvious. Two clients got the same malware infection this year. It redirected their web traffic to an online Viagra Pharmacy. Frustrating, but it could also be much worse. Malware could delete the site, highjack it, or even delete files. It is not easy to clean up or recover from either.
While I monitor client sites for Malware, it is only detected AFTER the infection has occurred. To clean up the site, either a back up is restored (not a good option for active sites with a lot of content updates) or a specialist it brought in to scrub the site.
You can avoid this costly situation with a simple security package. This is proactive prevention and monitoring! GoDaddy’s Advanced Website Security provides the following services:
- Protects one website.
- Firewall prevents hackers.
- SSL certificate included in firewall.
- Malware scanning.
- Unlimited site cleanups.
- DDoS protection, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) speed boost.
- 25 GB of secure backup.
- Repair and clean up usually within 12 hours.
- Only $239.88 / year through the Great Things LLC online store. *Your hosting account must also in the same account
Number 2: SEO and Content Optimization
This year, we have spent hours researching and optimizing sites for our clients. With the changes to FB ads, Apple’s privacy changes and other shifts in the online marketing world, it is imperative that you have great organic content that is search engine friendly. There have been some eye opening findings in our research too. A common thread seems to exist for most clients. The original copy and content was written by the client. Here are a few aspects of what that causes:
- Clients often speak and write at a level higher than most readers. Research suggests writing an 8th grade level.
- The terms and lingo used by our clients is often not aligned with how people are searching for it. Or worse, there is a similar / related term that dominates the search results.
- They choose keywords that are extremely competitive and hard to rank for. Often times, slight derivations of the words or phrase have good opportunity and low competition.
We (and our clients) have seen significant improvement in search rankings from focused research and optimized content. This is probably the single best investment you can make into getting found online. We are in the process of offering more services and packages related to content optimization and SEO. Contact us today to see what can be done for your site.
Number 3: Domain Protection & Privacy
When you registered your domain, the information you provide is public record: your name, address, phone and email. Spammer, hackers and Bots troll this information and will sell that information to everyone from telemarketers to bad actors. If you have noticed a lot of spam in your inbox or telemarketing calls, this may be the source. It is pretty inexpensive to add privacy and protection to your domain registration.
Domain Privacy obscures that information and the registrar will provide their connect information. The will show as an agent for your domain and your information will be hidden from the public. This can be added to your domain usually for under $20 per year. Domain Protection locks your domain, prevents unauthorized transfers, proactively monitors any potential changes to the DNS records and can also keep your site safe, if your payment is missed. That is something that often happens when credit cards on file are expired. Yearly costs range between $10 and $30.
Number 4: Upgrade You Hosting
This year, I moved all of my sites from GoDaddy’s Ultimate Managed WordPress Hosting to Business Launch Hosting. The Managed WordPress is a decent platform, but I wanted more server resources and control. It was also cost effective for 2 or more sites, as the Business Launch hosting can support multiple websites on your own server. The speed and performance are noticeably better. The included CPanel access provides a deeper level of technical control . A single site Ultimate Managed WP hosting plan is $172.66 per year per site. The Business Launch Hosting is $344.86, which you can host multiple site on for the same cost. So, if you have two or more sights, it is a no brainer. There are some costs in migrating, but those are one time spend.
Number 5: Full Site Audit and Review
Web sites are like garages, over time they get filled up with junk. Businesses change and grow. Often websites are updated piecemeal with a lot of little changes that eventually create muddled user experience. Reviewing your pages ranking, passwords, domain authority, spam scores and other technical check ups can also shed some light on problems. Put this on your list of 2022 ToDo’s and get a full site review and start out the year with clean site.
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