Client News

Recently I (and many of you) have received emails that start like this...

Subject: New inquiry from your website -- yourdomain.com DMCA Copyright Infringement Noti

Hello there!

My name is Angela.

Your website or a website that your company hosts is infringing on a copyright protected images owned by myself.

In a previous article I talked about some of the basics of making your website found in Google. Now I will describe a specific technique I use to apply some science to this art.

The first step in determining how well your site is doing in Google searches is to find out exactly that... How well does your site do in Google searches.

Today I received a distressing email with the subject: “I’m Crack”. Distressing that is until I realized this was a simple scam to get money. The scammer claims to have hacked your “device” and will send compromising information to everyone on your contacts list unless you pay them. What separates this from other scams is that the email includes your email address and a mostly legitimate password. 

The email looks like this. There are many variations of this scam, so the email you received may look different...

Hello!

I’m a hacker who cracked your email and device a few months ago.
You entered a password on one of the sites you visited, and I intercepted it.
This is your password from email@something.com on moment of hack: password

OK, first, what even is SSL? Communications from a customer's web browser to your website can be encrypted (SSL) or not encrypted (non-SSL). Don't worry about what SSL means, it doesn't matter. But if you see a little lock in your browser's address bar, next to the website URL, then the site is running under SSL. Every e-commerce site, where you might login, or may enter your credit card number, already runs under SSL. SSL encryption means that the credit card number you enter in your browser cannot be seen by anyone hacking that communication as it travels to the server running the website.

So, SSL is a good thing, if your website asks users to type in sensitive or personal information. But the majority of the sites my customers have do not do that. So is SSL needed?

OK, so what does "Defensive Domain Name Registration" mean. Well first let's start with some terms... Your domain name is the name people can type in their web browser to get to your website — like tunedinweb.com. That name actually consists of two names with a dot separating them. The name on the left is your domain name, the name on the right is called a "top-level" domain name, or TLD for short. Examples of these are ".com", ".net", ".info", ".org", ".gov", ".edu", etc.

Most of you have a ".com" TLD because that name was one of the first TLDs created when web pages started. But in the last few years many more TLDs have been opened up — ".solar", ".soccer", ".social", ".sucks", and many hundreds more.  

We all want our websites to be found when someone searches Google. But how do we make this happen? This topic is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short.

If you've asked me about this in the past I've probably coached you on the basic principles of creating keyword phrases, and we've probably added those keyword phrases to your website. I have previously written about SEO in this article, which introduced the basic principles involved.

Today I found an excellent short ebook that explains these same basic SEO principles, but more thoroughly and completely that I did in my article. It's worth the 10 minutes it will take to read.

Download and Read the eBook.

What is mobile-first? It's a principle used in designing websites where the mobile version is designed first, then the desktop versions. This is the opposite of how many websites were designed in the past, where the desktop version was up and running, and mobile was added later.

As increasing numbers of your web visitors arrive via a mobile phone, the mobile experience becomes just as important, or even more so, than the desktop experience. Recent surveys from comscore report that over 60% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices. Read my earlier blogs about how to decide if mobile is right for your website, but the answer in most cases is "Yes".

Many of you are concerned with ranking well in Google searches. The "science" of making this happen is termed "SEO" by the industry -- Search Engine Optimization. I put the word science in quotes, because I feel this is still as much art as it is science. Google doesn't tell us how their algorithm ranks search results, and with good reason -- as soon as they would publish this, everyone would scramble to find ways to beat the algorithm. Google doesn't want that, they want to give you really useful search results, not results where those that figured out how to scam the algorithm win.

But that doesn't mean that we don't know how to get websites to rank highly in Google searches. There are several simple principles that will lead to good rankings.

"Responsive" websites are designed as a single site that displays well on all types of devices -- desktop browsers, tablets, and smart phones. Responsive sites adapt themselves to the size of screen the user has in order to display well on that screen. They are a good choice for clients who primarily need a mobile website, and where support for tablets or browser is needed but secondary.

So, now that you have read the previous parts of this series, you are ready to ask the question "Do I need a mobile website?"

Understand that adding a mobile site is not as simple as having your Hudson Valley web designer (that's us!) flip a switch somewhere. You saw in part 3 how mobile sites look and work completely differently from their desktop versions. This means your web designer (that's us!) has much more work to do to create a mobile site.

At about this time in this series, you're probably starting to wonder if you need a mobile website. To figure out an answer, probably the first question you would have is "What does my website look like on a mobile device. If it looks and functions well, then maybe I don't need to do anything, but if it doesn't...."

One simple way to find out how your website looks on a mobile device is to look at it on your mobile web browser. Let's start with our own site -- Hudson Valley Music (HVmusic.com) is a regional website showcasing the music of this region, covering the area from Albany to Queens, and including Hudson, Woodstock, Saugerties, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Beacon.

Let's look at it the way a web browser sees it...

Let me try to explain the difference between a mobile website and a mobile app. Really, there is not much difference that you as users care about...

• A mobile website is reached using the web browser on your smart phone or tablet. The mobile website runs within the web browser. To go to a mobile website you start the browser on your mobile device and enter the website address to go to, just like you do on your desktop or laptop computer.  A mobile website can use some features of your smart phone, like geolocation.
   
• A mobile app is reached using an icon on your smart phone or tablet. You install the app from an app store, and that places the icon on your mobile device. To go to the mobile app you just click the icon and the app starts. A mobile app can use all the features of your smart phone, like geolocation, the camera, the accelerometer, etc.

My last job before I retired from IBM was leading the mobile strategy for mainframe computers. In this job I was able to read many research studies that predicted the increasing importance of mobile and how it would affect our large customers. But you and I really don't need corporate research to tell us that mobile is a trend. Just look around. Almost everyone in the Hudson Valley has a mobile phone, and not only a mobile phone, but a smart phone -- a phone that can run a web browser and apps. Look at the popularity of tablet computers like the iPad, and the popularity of mobile apps. We don't need much research to tell us that these devices are popular, and people are using them to do more than make phone calls, send texts, and play Candycrush! They are using them to reach your website.

If you're my age you may not be noticing this trend. We grew up using desktop or laptop computers to access websites, and we're still used to doing it that way. But for people under 30, they grew up with smart phones and apps. Many of them do not own a laptop or desktop computer. Many of them do not own a landline phone. Many of them do not have home internet service. Many only have their smart phone and a data plan from their mobile carrier. In other words, many people under 30 today predominantly access the internet via their smart phone.

Welcome to our new client blog. The internet is always changing, with new trends and devices emerging all the time. Some of these will impact your web presence, some don't. We'll try to give you a summary of those trends, and whether you need to do something about them. We'll also write articles on general news and how-to's of interest our Hudson Valley clients.

— Steve