For Fixing Your Hacked Site You Use Google’s Valuable Suggestions
On February 18th, Google Webmasters Blog posted a new article on how to fix hacked websites, and the blog post is provided with valuable tips and with interesting case studies. According to Google Webmaster Blog, the search engine giant decided to share the stories of two site owners who resolved complicated hacked site problems, to help other website owners who are looking for ways to fix hack-related issues. Google will also be using these stories, and other feedback sent in from website owners, to continue to improve its documentation on fixing sites that are facing hacking issues. The following are shortened versions of the two case studies that mentioned in the February 18th Google Webmaster blog. If you want the full version of the two case studies, then visit the official Webmaster blog site.
Case Study 1: Several Hack-Injected Scripts on a Restaurant Site
A WordPress-based restaurant website was hit by Google penalty after being reported it as a hacked website. The site owner discovered links has been inserted into the source code linking to ‘spammy’ phrases such as “cialis” and “viagra”. The restaurant site owner removed those links, but she found that her reconsideration request to Google has been rejected. On a second inspection, the website owner found that her site consists of new content that is added to her index.php, footer.php, and functions.php. Once that was cleaned up site owner submitted another reconsideration request and Google informed her that her website was free from hacked content. Following the hacking incident, the restaurant site owner kept her website secure by doing the following:
- Two-step verification for login
- Keeping CMS and plugins up-to-date
- Installing plugins only from reputable sources
- Having an unique and somewhat-difficult password for admin account
Case Study 2: Professional Site Owner finds it Hard to Trace Hacked Pages
After being informed of the hacking situation, Maria who is the owner of a professional website made many attempts to find the hacked content in her site’s source code but came up with nothing. Google then advised Maria to verify the non-www version of her website, as hackers often try to hide content in folders that may get unnoticed by the website owner. Second thing Google said to Maria was to check her .htaccess file for new rules.
Maria found that once she verified the non-version of her website she was able to successfully see the hacked content with the ‘Fetch as Google’ tool. Also, she found some strange code when she checked her .htaccess file, and they redirected website visitors to a hacked content file. When Maria removed the main.php file, the .htaccess file, and removed an unknown user from her FTP users’ area, she found that her website was no longer hacked.
Google Recommended Tips
Google has provided following tips for website owners to secure their website from future hacker attacks:
- Check the permissions on sensitive or important files such as .htaccess
- As FTP does not encrypt any traffic, avoid using FTP when transferring files
- Monitor your admin panel for any strange activities, and anywhere else an intruder could login to your website.
Google Mislabeling Websites as ‘Hacked’
John Muller who is Google’s Webmaster Trend Analyst has admitted via Google’s social media account on February 20th, that a small number of websites are getting mislabeled as ‘hacked’ in its SERPs. Currently, the internet search company is in final preparations for introducing a new hacked page classifier, and for rectifying the big mistake the company do on these websites. Obviously, this is an issue as it would dissuade anyone from wanting to visit your website.
If you want to know whether your site is also affected, then do a quick search for your website and see if a line of blue text appears underneath the title tag which read as “This site is hacked”. If you do not see that blue text underneath your site link, then you are good. You need to certain that your site is not hacked and here is what you have to do.
Go to this link and fill out the form, then a Google expert will review it and remove the label if your website is in fact safe. If your site is indeed hacked, then follow above mentioned tips or consult with an expert to resolve the issue.
Can Mobile Push Notifications Attract More Engagement than Marketing Emails
If you are a smartphone user, then you are familiar with push notifications that pop up on your mobile screen when you have installed apps such as Facebook, your favorite news sites, your bank, or any other third-party mobile app. Basically, there are two types of push notifications:
- The one that’s not informed by anything other than the fact that you have a mobile app, your notifications for that app are turned on, and the app developer decided it wants to send out a message.
- The second type is a smart one which is informed of the location of the user, proximity to someone, time of day, or triggered by an activity.
Over the last several years the number of these alerts has grown in volume and according to many industry experts, the amount of ‘spammy’ alerts will also increase. Based on a 2014 research report by localities, about 52 percent of smartphone users enable push messaging on their mobile device. Other interesting data from mobile automation firm Kahuna indicates that about 40 percent CTR can be garnered from the 40 million push notifications the company gathered. Even though these numbers are ridiculously high and will surely drop over time, most experts say that customers will be inclined to get more of their alerts through push messaging when compared to email.
Push vs. Email
Even though the traditional email marketing is still effective, online marketers need to find alternative ways to enhance their connection and engagement with their audiences. It is not necessary for every business need to have their own for brand promotional campaigns. There are other ways, such as using popular third-party apps such as Facebook, Apple Passbook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter, and these apps allows you to create messaging, and in some cases, location-specific. This will enable you to connect with your audience even without your own mobile app.
Another option for businesses, especially retailers can think of, using technologies such as Bluetooth low-energy (BLE), Wi-Fi grids, or beacons that allow for the delivery of in-store, relevant messaging to their customers. Some experts in the mobile marketing industry believe that push notifications may eventually replace email or at least succeed a large portion of it. One of the things that some online marketers must keep in mind is the fundamental rule of the “value exchange”.
While customers do like discounts and coupons and additional information about products/services, they do not like to be attacked by messages as they are walking down the street or through your store. Similar to email, where many online marketers may have to take extreme caution when and how they are communicating with their customers. One of the reasons why push messaging is so popular these days is because they are impossible to ignore, they are timely, and are usually more relevant as the application has more data to work with. Imagine a situation where hundreds of push notifications pop up on your mobile device in the course of few minutes and how quickly the “52 percent” of people that currently have notifications turned on will be persuaded to turn them off.
Keeping Your Push Messages Short and Sweet
Similar to the microblogging site Twitter, one of the main benefits of utilizing push notifications is need to keep the intended message short, simple and sweet. And in most cases these notifications are less graphical or lightly graphic. This will evolve over time but given the mobile screen size is small, there will always be some need to be concise, direct and provide an explicit connection to something else, whether it be a link, a image or a longer message.
When you are using push notifications beware of few risks involved which could pose issues as you maximize their use. Unlike email, push notifications may or may not show up on your laptop, smartphone and tablet, although if you are logged into an app with the login credentials on different mobile devices, you will see messages on both. Furthermore, even if you are sending an important service notification, users may ignore it or miss it if there are too many other push notifications that move them off the main screen.
In conclusion, with today’s mobile technology it is not possible to replace email marketing with push notifications completely, but they both can work in a complementary fashion with fewer emails being sent, especially for alert-type messages. Ironically, emails are somewhat similar to push notification, but given their less ephemeral nature and ability to be archived and searched, they have a longer expiry date than most.
According to most experts in the SEO industry, technology giant Apple Inc, maybe developing its own search platform and to make it as a worthy rival to Google’s own search engine. They made this assumption based on job posting seen on the Apple’s official website that is entitled as “Engineering Project Manager – Apple Search”. The job description for this post says that “a technically driven and creative project manager to manage backend operations for a search platform supporting hundreds of millions of users”. According to the job description mentioned in the ad, the project in question will play a significant role in revolutionizing how people use their desktops and mobile devices.
Not Everybody Agree On it
Many in the industry are asking the question whether Apple is preparing to enter into the highly competitive online search market. Some experts say that in the last two years, the technology was busy in recruiting mode for filling online search positions at their main campus. Also, a Belgian developer has reported that he found a web-crawling searchbot originating from Apple’s servers.
But there are others who believe that Apple is just expanding its technology ecosystem and getting further into people’s household, and search platform does not fit into that ecosystem. Some have pointed out that the company’s search platform may simply be a further improvement for its Spotlight feature, which allows Apple’s OS X Yosemite to search things such as emails, documents, apps and songs on Macs, news, Wikipedia pages, nearby locations, and other items in the iTunes store. According to Benjamin Spiegel who is the director of strategy at GroupM believes that content aggregation, display and indexing do not fit into Apple’s arena. Spiegel says that Apple Search will be used for linking different content libraries together and it can be regarded as an improvement to their cloud computing platform.
The year 2015 mark the end of Google’s 5-year tenure as the default search engine on Apple’s Safari web browser which according to web traffic analysis tool StatCounter currently accounts for a total of 10.28 percent of US internet browser share. According to many recent news reports, Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo search engines engaged in talks with about placing their search platform on Safari as their Google contract is coming to an end. But Spiegel expects that the current Apple-Google partnership will continue as the internet search giant has the best user experience, even if it being an Apple competitor.
Apple Supports Search Startup DuckDuck Go
It was in last June that Apple made the announcement of supporting the startup search engine DuckDuckGo in the OS X Yosemite. The startup search platform has joined the league of Yahoo and Bing as Safari web browser’s other pre-set search alternatives, if desktop or mobile users decide to make the transition from the default search, Google. It is well known that Microsoft’s Bing remains as the default search engine of Apple’s Siri. DuckDuck Go has posted a blog after the announcement about their excitement of Apple adding their search platform on Safari so that it will be easy for people to access their anonymous search option. Also, they claimed that their search platform is privacy-focused and they consider it as a huge milestone as their search engine is included in one of the top four web browsers.
After the Edward Snowden revelations, the startup search engine has gained some traction, particularly in the US, where users are concerned about how their search information is being used by Google and other major search engines, and who might be aware of that search history. In 2013, DuckDuck Go celebrated one billion searches and the Apple announcement follows on the startup’s new search design, which was rolled out in May 2014 with an emphasis on providing searchers with “smarter answers”.
From all this we can make a conclusion that Apple is definitely focusing on search platform and in reality, no one knows exactly what Apple Search is. Some industry experts say that it could be the redefined Spotlight device search, or a better solution to search for applications or music on iTunes Store.
Your Slide Decks Can Be Improved in Four Different Ways
For any type of presentation, slide decks are a powerful way to backup it from team meetings and sales pitches to conference keynotes and workshops. There have been presentations conducted and received poor response from the target audience and the main reason for it is the mediocre design of the deck slides. However, most people who are presenting an event are not graphic designers. For your information slide decks can be really irritating to build, and if the slide decks are eye-catching then they help in communicating to your audience that wants to hear.
And while you cannot be an expert in graphic designing overnight, there are some easy tactics that can make your terrible-looking deck slides into decent ones. Even though decent ones won’t get you showered with praise, but it also won’t leave a bad taste in someone’s mind about your graphic design skills and will allow them to concentrate on what you actually have to say.
Plotting Your Way to Success
While we all have varying creative ideas, it is not recommended enough to outline your deck before you begin on the building of slides. In this way you will be focused and will let you organize the narrative of your presentation’s story. Many graphic design experts refer the “everything and the kitchen sink” version of the outline. It is typically two-three times longer than the average allotted time for presentation. If you follow this step, it will help you in fine tuning for the specific audience and ensure your message will stand out.
Fonts and Font Sizes Must be in a Readable Level
When it comes to making presentations at a conference or a launch event, make use fonts that are highly legible. It is not, your whole presentation can be boring and frustrated for the audience as they cannot able read any of your slides. If you do some web browsing, you can get plenty of free fonts other than the usual Times New Roman, Calibri and Arial. Font size can be an issue for events where there are two sixteen-foot high screens. For legibility, even in the back of the room, experts recommend speakers to not use fonts that are lower than 36pt. Depending on the font, 48-60pt font can be your smallest range. You need to keep in mind that not all of your audience will have perfect vision, so you need to make some necessary adjustments. You can send the fonts you have chosen to the event organizer along with your slide decks if you are using any non-standard ones.
Forget the Bullet Points
It is common for any presentation to include bullet points to showcase what you have really in your mind. If you find yourself spending any time explaining points, it is definitely the time to break them up. But when comes to conferences or product launch events, audiences will first read slides before they listen to speakers. Typically bullet points leave the deck slides heavily copied and their speakers get no attention. At least for however long it takes for someone to read the slide. If those bullet points need their own slides before you begin practicing your talk, it is a great way of reviewing your outline.
Kill “About Me” and Promotional Slides
A good moderator or emcee will introduce you based upon the profile you submitted with some other details of social media monitoring. They will tell your audience why you are qualified to be speaking on this particular subject. If you are presenting before a small audience or clients, who may not know you, keep it short and sweet, and if everyone knows you, no need to include it. If you impress the audience with your presentation, they will start hunting you down. And hopefully, they can do this simply because you have added that information to your slides. Also, a thank-you ending slide with your contact details is always considered as a nice gesture.
For a business conference or a product/service launch event, excellent presentations accompanied with deck slides are considered as an art form in their own right. The above mentioned suggestions will help you build good slides for your presentation.
Your Facebook Business Page can get a Boost by Implementing the Right Content Strategies
It seems that Facebook is following Google in terms of content quality in its social networking site. Announced in last November, Facebook will filter content that it is “overly promotional”. The social media giant will ramp up efforts to inflict harsh penalty on businesses for posting to much promotional content. It means that businesses now onwards cannot straightly ask for likes, clicks, comments and other spammy strategies for boosting their Facebook page visibility.
It seems that businesses need to work harder each month as Facebook is intensifying its content quality aspects. According to industry experts, the social media site has been killing the brand page visibility via organic posts, which has made getting your posts in front of Facebook users just like climbing a steep hill. But there are ways to get more visibility and traffic to your Facebook business page and delivering relevant and quality content that will naturally attract the attention of Facebook users.
Creating Customized Content Images
One thing that gets more likes and shares in social media sites is the visual content (images and videos). For the past few years, many surveys have shown that people notice visual content rather than just plain text content. A more recent study has shown that photos posted on a Facebook page gets 120 percent engagement than an average text based post. You must keep in mind that even the highest quality content won’t get noticed if it is marketed and organized vaguely. Here you need good presentation and it is just like giving a gift wrapped in an attractive paper and a ribbon on it. Your content marketing efforts on the social media site can be greatly improved if you create customized content images. There are many tools (such as Canvas and Share As Image) available on the web that can help you in crafting your own content-complementing images.
Time to Invest in Paid Facebook Advertising
Without upgrading to the paid Facebook advertising, you cannot get the expected results on the social media site. As Facebook giving no space for organic brand posts, the only solution in front of you is opting Promoted Posts. You need to select a post you want to promote, prepare your budget, focus on specific audiences, and you need to execute it without any second thoughts. Also, Facebook has some pretty good targeting options you can benefit from. One cost-effective tactic that many marketing experts recommend is creating a custom audience by uploading your opt-in email list. This means that your post is only targeting users who have an existing relationship with you, and this keeps your expenses down and assures better user engagement.
Keeping Your Facebook Posts Short
When it comes posting content on your Facebook page, you do not need an entire summary of the content you are linking to on the social media site. You must keep in mind that shorter posts tend to get more engagement than longer ones. So, you need to keep your posts under 250 characters and you will witness about 60 percent more engagement.
Content, Exclusive for Facebook Users
For getting more customer interaction via your Facebook business page, you can post special content that is exclusive only for your Facebook fans. By posting this special content, you will see your content getting more user attention than it might otherwise. You must give a feeling to your Facebook fans that they are part of a special group getting a better deal, and they will be more likely to take benefit of your offer. For example, if you have a downloadable white paper with “Four Content Strategies for Your Facebook Business Page”, consider inserting two more additional tips and repackaging the white paper as ‘Facebook fan exclusive’.
Facebook aims to Improve User Experience
As Facebook users do not want to hear sales pitches, Facebook is intensifying its efforts to improve the user experience even though social media site facilities and tools for businesses to carry out their marketing goals. It seems that Facebook want businesses and marketers to understand that users want to be delighted, educated and engaged.
You can Use Inbox By Google Helps for Boosting Your Email Marketing Efforts
It was in late 2014, when Google introduced “Inbox by Google” email client, which is an updated version of the nearly 10 year-old Gmail interface and it is aimed at helping people to manage their busy lives. Google’s new email client took inspirations from Google’s popular products such as Gmail and Google Now, as well as from emerging emails like Mailbox. Now in invite-only mode, the revamped inbox also focuses on making an inbox experience in the current mobile world, as its interactivity depends strongly on swipes and other touch-screen-like movements.
Inbox by Google – What is it Really
In a Reddit’s AMA session, the developers of Google by Inbox shared some indications as to what drove the development of the new email interface and said they hope it eventually surpasses the current standard Gmail surface. Inbox by Google is considered as the first Google interface designed using Google’s own Material Design guidelines which are now popular with Android Lollipop OS released in last November. In fact, both Material Design and inbox by Google were apparently developed side by side at the same time, according to the Google developer who mentioned on the Reddit AMA session that some design guidelines created for Inbox were later included in the Material Design guidelines.
One of the Material Design guidelines is to make information easily accessible, and help users by providing fast and efficient service. Google fulfilled this with Inbox email clients through the use of Bundles, grouping of emails by date ranges, instant archiving of messages and allowing a user to “snooze” an email or set of reminder based on Geo-location.
- Bundle Up – Inbox by Google has some features of Gmail including same categories and tabs, but in Inbox they are called Bundles. There are default bundles that are the same as the tabs in original Gmail such as the Social, Forums, Updates and Promotions, but the internet search giant has added extra three things – Travel, Purchases and the ability to create personalized categories. Google allowed users to create Custom Bundles easily and you can set the key word or criteria that you want emails to match on to be included in this bundle, and then select when these messages should be bundled in real time.
- Media and Documents are More Visible – In your Inbox account, YouTube videos are playable, and documents such as PDFs and Word files also stand out prominently, both on webmail and in the mobile app. Marketers could be something interesting things with video, with the additional bonus that these emails will stand out in the inbox and grab the attention of subscribers as a result. No doubt this is also a play from Google to tempt more businesses to use its popular video-sharing service in their email marketing efforts.
- Purchases – This bundle sorts purchases based on date and displays an image of the purchase when available, as well as shipping information. As more retailers start to use e-receipts like their online counterparts, locating past purchases is extremely easy, and users are no longer need to filter through emails to see when a package will be delivered as Inbox by Google will prominently show recent tracking details.
- Social and Updates – The Social and Updates bundles are not much different from the existing Gmail counterparts. The social category bundles social related emails and sorts by date, while updates are less-promotional communications from known firms.
How Marketers can make Use of Inbox
In the Reddit AMA session, many people asked Google developers, whether Inbox will replace Gmail and they said that Google won’t replace Gmail in the near future, but they did disclose the information that replacing their popular email service was a long term goal. This means that marketers should be aware of the future developments related to Inbox by Google, they need to start preparing now itself.
One of the great things about the new email client introduced by Google is that it is more visual. In the Inbox by Google, the sender of an email is displayed by an icon rather than a plain text From: address as in Gmail. And, it works by authenticating with SPF and DKIM, having a verified Google+ business account and registering with Google for email markup.
As a marketer or business owner, this something you can do now to prepare for a widespread rollout of the Inbox, and by doing this, your company icon will also appear in the Grid View of Gmail Classic for those that have it enabled.
Four Reasons for You to Use Call Tracking for Boosting Your CRO Efforts
Most online marketing companies boast about delivering great results to their clients due to their cutting edge strategies, creative skills, versatility and their brand’s personality that sets them apart from their competitors. Even as the online marketing industry is turning towards mobile search, phone calls still play a significant role in the conversion rate optimization (CRO) process. There are some industry experts who believe that can make better measure the success of their call tracking efforts.
These days, call tracking software can provide online marketing firms as much insight into phone calls as compared to mouse-clicks and online forms. This means you can tell exactly what both online and offline marketing channels are making phones ring, and focus on the marketing that works best. Many well-established marketing firms point out that marketing attribution as the key aspect that helps service providers to retain more clients. Here are the reasons why your marketing team should include call tracking in your CRO efforts.
Phone Calls can Enhance Your Leads Attribution
Your client has no reason to invest their money and time in your company if start an online marketing campaign without tracking as much of the user’s search behavior and online interactions as you can. Also, just gathering clicks and conversion data on your online marketing campaigns is not enough. Here you could attribute a phone call inquiry to your company’s marketing activity and for that you can utilize any reliable call tracking software available on the market. You need to remember that majority of the call tracking software is designed especially for marketing and advertising firms. A call tracking software that records user interactions will draw together a complete overview of the user journey. Within the report you prepared you can see which marketing source driven the phone call whether this was offline or online things. And if the marketing was an online source, then you will see which pages they viewed right up until they dialed your number.
Accessing Real-time Marketing Campaign Data
For the sake of your client, you need to find the most useful information from the vast quantity of data generated from call tracking. Most call tracking software is designed to make its user easy to access useful information efficiently. If your client wants to access the software themselves, then the software developer will facilitate this by letting your client log in to a dashboard with their own branding and personalized reports. Call tracking also lets you record calls and play them back for qualitative feedbacks, even though quantitative data get you so far. If the receiving phone calls are not generating enough revenue, then call playback allows you to listen in on the calls and determine where sales are being lost. This allows your managers to address any issues in the sales message quickly.
Minimizing Wasteful Spending
You can use that spend for more effective marketing campaigns by analyzing your inbound phones for identifying which of your marketing efforts are not generating enough ROI. The granularity of phone call data allows your marketing team to find those landing pages that that drives majority calls, and the keywords that are driving customers to those web pages. This is how call tracking enables you to focus on investing in platforms that are providing their returns, so you do not have to make any assumptions. One of the key metrics to use is the cost-per-response and it tells you instantly whether you are getting the return you need, or whether you should revisit or cut marketing that do not promise results.
Integrating with Web Analytics
For maximizing your conversion efforts, you can integrate call tracking software with your current web analytics, monitoring and CRM software. The analytical combination of phone calls and online inquiries provides you a more complete picture of your marketing from the first interaction to converting the sale.
Online marketing firms can use call tracking software to consistently outperform the market as they have access to the full lead picture. Not only you proves your clients that you are generating quality leads, but it also shows how much revenue you are added to their end result.
