Lets talk in car terms. If you have a WordPress website your site is made up of 3 main components.

WordPress Core.

Think of this as the engine.  WordPress Core updates are usually for security reasons (often to plug a new vulnerability) or for functionality. Keeping wordpress up to date is very important.

The Theme.

The theme or the builder that the site is built with. Think of this as the chassis and the paintwork.
Theme Updates are usually released to ensure compatibility with the latest WordPress version and also to add features to the theme.

The Plugins

The plugins add extra functionality to the site.  These are the accessories, like aircon, satnav , power steering etc. Plugins (like apps on your phone) are developed by third party developers who then have a responsibility to ensure they work with the latest WordPress version. If those developers don’t provide regular updates then your plugins may not function correctly (like the apps on your phone)

Updates are released all the time, if you have a number of plugins on your site then there will be multiple updates every week available for those plugins.

—

Problems when updating are rare.  If they do arise it is usually a result of a conflict between a Plugin or a Theme that hasn’t been updated by its developer in a long period of time and it becomes incompatible with the latest WordPress Core update.  When this happens you might need a web developer to look at it and either fix the conflict or often it is best just to find a new, more up to date plugin that can achieve the same result.

I have seen many instances where people don’t want to apply WordPress updates because it might cause a conflict with an old set of out of date plugins, but this is only delaying the issue and potentially putting your site at security risk.

So to sumarise the risk of not applying regular updates to your wordpress site far outweighs the small chance of those updates causing a problem.

At Buzzword we have a maintenance program for clients that also includes security checks and daily backups. You can read more about that here

Happy updating!

The post Should I be updating my WordPress site? appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

In this article you will learn about:

• The minimum number of words a blog post should have to be recognised by Google
• The ideal length a blog post should be so Google gives you some serious love
• How to structure your blog post
• Why using headings and subheadings is important
• The most important thing to consider when writing your blog post

What’s the minimum number of words a blog post should be?

Google requires a page/post to have a minimum of 300 words for it to be recognised. Any less than this, your post will not have enough words, specifically not enough few keywords, to rank in search engines.

As a rule of thumb 300 words is the minimum number of words we recommend.

That said Google loves long articles.

Long articles of 1000 words or more rank higher by Google this is because they will usually have more keywords and long tail keyword variants that really help people find your post when searching online.

If you are fining it hard to get those longer articles aim for 700 words, double the minimum amount so it should contain more keywords.

Why structuring your blog post is important?

Having a clear structure and flow to your blog post is important in ensuring your reader will get to the end of your post. An easy to read and easy to navigate structure will make your article an enjoyable read and keep the reader engaged.

A summary serves a few purposes:

1. It provides the reader with a clear outline of the topic covered
2. It allows you to get more of those long tail keywords in your post
3. This summary also gives the author a list of the questions they wish to cover in post. How awesome is that!

Header Tags – Why do they matter?

If you’re using WordPress or a similar website editor you can select text and turn it into a heading using a dropdown button from your text editor.

Header tags are hidden HTML code that structure and style your blog posts. Web designers use H1–H6 tags to provide a clear hierarchical structure to the content that is visible to both humans and computers (the reader and search engines) who are both reading your post, just in slightly different ways.

You should only ever use one H1 tag per page and that honour should be given to the most important heading. This would be your page/post title, e.g “How to write blog posts that Google loves” has been given the H1 tag in this post. You will notice that this title is larger and stands out in comparison to other headings in the post making it clear to the reader that it’s the most important.

H1 tags signify the same level of value to search engines—they know to give more weight to H1 tags over H2, H3, etc.

The second level of headings should be styled by H2 tags. And if your post requires smaller subheadings under that they would use H3 tags and so on. Usually you’ll only need to use up to the H2 or H3 tags.

Don’t use H tags for text like “Call us on 0400…” or to make an entire paragraph stand out. This is not what H tags are for. They really should be used as a means of telling Google and other search engine’s what information is important and what your content is about.

If you want to use heading tags for styling your text use the H4, H5 and H6 tags only. These tags don’t carry much weight with Google and therefore your web page won’t be indexed for random words/phrases unnecessarily.

PRO TIP: You should include your keywords in your headings as much as possible. If Google gives your heading tags more weight, then including your post’s keywords and long tail keywords in your headings will help you appear in more search results.

The Wrap Up

This post contains a ton of pointers, so let’s recap.

• Make sure your post contains a minimum of 300 words.
• Google loves long articles so try to make yours 700–1000 words or even longer.
• However, don’t bulk up your content with fluff just to make it longer and without providing any real value to your readers.
• Don’t over use your keywords. Keeping your post easy to read is key.
• Give your blog posts a clear, easy to follow structure.
• Use the H1 HTML tag for your post’s title.
• Use H2 & H3 tags for your posts headings and subheadings.
• Don’t sacrifice your blog post’s readability for better search engine visibility.

The post How to write a blog for google appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

This alone makes a blog a great strategy for your website – but did you know that it can also help with your website’s ranking on search engines?

How can a blog help?

It helps keep your website updated.

Let’s face it: there are . That’s why search engines are constantly checking the time stamps on when websites are updated.

Publishing blog posts is an awesome way to add new content your website frequently, which is a signal to search engines that it’s being taken care of and is a good place to send web users. A new blog post even every couple of weeks will show those ‘bots that things are happening on your website.

It increases the number of pages on your website.

This is the real secret to SEO. The more quality content you have, the more the search engines will have to crawl and index. This helps give the crawlers a better understanding of just what your website is about, and which types of searches it should rank highly for.

It also gives you the opportunity to branch out on your keyword use. There are two main complications with SEO:

A limited number of pages means a limited number of keywords you can use.

Because of the way search engines function, you can only optimize any given page for one or two keywords without diluting their effect. If you try to optimize a website with five pages for everything a pet owner could possibly be looking for, it just won’t work very well.

You can only use keywords so many times.

Keyword stuffing is when you go a little overboard trying to pack your keywords into one page. It’s usually identified by keywords that show up in a list or group, or even seem forced in a selection of copy. Search engines can identify when this is the case, and they may assume that you’re trying to trick them into giving your site a higher ranking – which usually just has the opposite effect.

Because blog posts are generally about a single topic, they’re useful for incorporating a range of keywords into your site without running the risk of overdoing it – and by increasing the number of pages on your website with blog posts, you’re giving yourself more room to use your keywords and to include different keywords without affecting your current ones.

Blogging comes with benefits (for SEO).

There are a couple of benefits that your business can get out of a blog as an SEO strategy:

It’s great for direct SEO…

…which means anything that search engines can see and use in their algorithms to rank your site on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is your blog’s content, as well as any keywords that you’re using.

It also helps with indirect SEO…

…which means anything that influences your visitors to behave in ways that tell search engines that your site is a valuable resource.

This includes:

• Inspiring longer visits. If people click on your site from the SERP but go “back” almost immediately, this tells search engines that the content on your site is either irrelevant or not good. By bringing folks in with quality content that they’ll want to read, you can influence them to stay longer than a minute or two – which tells search engines that your site is a good place to send people looking for that type of information.
• Encouraging inbound links. When people think that a website has quality content, they’re much more likely to include links to that website in their own content as a reference. Search engines see these links that direct users to your site as votes of confidence in your content. You can also put inbound links to your own site in your blog posts, which helps search engines understand what your site is all about.

Tip: It’s important to play by the rules when creating your content.

It needs to be unique and original; search engines love content that doesn’t exist anywhere else on the web, and penalise duplicate content, so make sure it’s your own work.

It needs to be relevant; if the title, keywords, meta description, and body of the post don’t agree on the subject matter, search engines won’t like it – and trying to trick them won’t work! The bottom line? A blog can be a great SEO strategy for your website – and what’s even better is that you don’t have to focus specifically on the SEO aspect for it to work! Sure, there are a few things you’ll need to check off the list to make sure you’re getting the right attention from search engines, but as long as you’re writing high-quality content on topics that interest readers, posting on a regular schedule, and sharing your posts, you’ll be able to enjoy all the benefits of having a blog – including SEO!

The post Does Blogging Help with SEO? appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

Step 1:
To get to the login screen go to either https://host1.buzzword.net.au/webmail   or http://host2.buzzword.net.au/webmail

The correct link depends on which server you are on. If you are not sure which is correct for you just give us a quick call.

 

 

Step 2:
Fill in your username and password.
The username is the entire email address.

 

Step 3:
Choose the default program to use.  (I like the middle one)

 

Step 4:
Welcome to your mail account.  You can do all of the usual functions of emailing from here and the beauty is that it is always accessible as long as you have an internet connection.

 

The post How to log into your webmail appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

In a nutshell, SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates are small packets of data that are used to encrypt important information (like passwords and credit card numbers) as they pass over the internet. In short an SSL means that data passing between your website and another server can’t be read.

If you have an online store an SSL certificate can protect your customers and you and they have been an important requirement for e-commerce stores for a long time.  

A larger percentage of Aussies are shopping online than ever before and that number is growing all the time.Online shopping in this country is a billion dollar business and this makes it a growing target for scammers.

But I don’t sell online, so I have nothing to worry about right?

Wrong.

If you don’t sell online having an SSL isn’t a requirement and therefore many sites don’t have one.  

BUT here is what has changed.  As of August Google have stated that they will be using SSL as a ranking factor for websites, this means that the Secure / NOT SECURE status of your website will now play a small but significant part in how your site ranks in search results. The reasoning is that businesses that have an SSL are considered a higher quality and therefore return better results in search.

Even if you don’t care about that, Google will be displaying the status either SECURE or NOT SECURE in the address bar.  There is absolutely no doubt that this NOT SECURE message will turn prospective website visitors away so regardless of the security or SEO concerns this alone is really compelling reason to make the switch if you haven’t already.

To see if your website has an SSL certificate, simply view your website’s URL to see whether it contains HTTP or HTTPS.

If you do not currently have an SSL We can install, configure and test it for you for $199

Just shoot us a quick message below and we can get started.

The post You need an SSL certificate and here is why. appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

Buzzword are offering a FREE 15 phone consultation to help determine if you might be eligible for the grant and to advise what services you could implement to help grow your business. 

Simply give us a call on  0421 750 353 or send an email to support@buzzword.net.au and we will be in touch within 1 business day.

You can read more about the grant process here https://www.business.qld.gov.au/starting-business/advice-support/grants/digital-grants

The post Small Business Digital Grants Program appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

Image: Google

October will mark stage two of Google’s plan to label all HTTP pages as ‘Not secure’ in Chrome.

In January, Google started to label some pages in HTTP as non-secure with the release of Chrome 56. This phase affected pages that transmit sensitive information such as login and payment-card data on the web.

The not-secure label indicated that data is being exchanged on an unencrypted connection. HTTPS, the secure version of HTTP, offers better protection against someone on the same network viewing or modifying the traffic, in what is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.

Beginning in October, Chrome will label HTTP pages as insecure if users can input any data. Google highlights this will apply to any page with a search box.

“Any type of data that users type into websites should not be accessible to others on the network, so starting in version 62 Chrome will show the ‘Not secure’ warning when users type data into HTTP sites,” said Emily Schechter, a Chrome Security Team product manager.

The expanded warnings for HTTP pages will are likely to add pressure on site owners to acquire the necessary SSL/TLS certificates and setup HTTPS on their web servers. Also, warnings for any user-input field cast a wider net than login and payment pages, given the frequency of pages with a search box.

Site owners have about six months from now to enable HTTPS with Chrome 62 due for stable release on October 24.

Firefox maker Mozilla hasn’t yet said whether it will follow Chrome’s new user input warnings, but it also began displaying ‘in-context’ warnings for payment and login pages in January.

One site owner discovered the consequences of not enabling HTTPS on payment and login pages in March, and, amusingly, filed a bug report to Mozilla requesting the warnings be removed.

Chrome 62 will also introduce warnings for all HTTP pages when the user selects Chrome’s Incognito mode.

“When users browse Chrome with Incognito mode, they likely have increased expectations of privacy. However, HTTP browsing is not private to others on the network, so in version 62 Chrome will also warn users when visiting an HTTP page in Incognito mode,” said Schechter

Google hasn’t said how or when it will expand non-secure warnings to more HTTP pages but it will eventually label all HTTP pages insecure. When that happens, it will display ‘Not secure’ in red, which is today only used for broken HTTPS.

The other reason Google is dragging the web towards HTTPS is to support its push for developers to adopt progressive web apps through JavaScript ‘service workers’. These sit between the browser and network to enable offline and background syncing features and require HTTPS to be enabled.

According to Google’s HTTP Transparency Report, over half of all pages are viewed over HTTPS on the desktop. For Chrome OS, 71 percent of pages are loaded over HTTPS, while 58 percent are for Chrome on Windows. While it is becoming more common for sites to enable HTTPS, dozens of the world’s most popular sites still have not.

Get your SSL from Buzzword for $199 for 2 years including installation

Call now to organise on 0421 750 353

This article originally featured on http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-tightens-noose-on-http-chrome-to-stick-not-secure-on-pages-with-search-fields/

The post Google Chrome “Not Secure” Website Warning – Are you Ready? appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

The post Jodi Brown Website Case Studies appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

The post How to setup a new email account in cPanel appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.

—

As your business grows so does your day to day transactions! You have double the clients, double the transactions, double the paperwork!  (and half the time to do it in).

In this blog I wanted to share some tips, tricks and software programs that can help to simplify and even automate many of the bookkeeping functions of your business.

Tip 1: Jump into the cloud

Cloud-based software programs are great! If you have not made the move – this is a must. These programs allow you to quote, invoice and have access to your database on any device. But the big time-saver of these is the ability for ‘bank feeds’ which allow all of your bank accounts transactions to automatically feed into your program for you to reconcile – no more data entry.

Astute Assist –Our pick at the moment for price and features would be Quickbooks online starting at $10 a month.

Tip 2 – Software Set-up

Now that you have a cloud based program that allows for bank feeds you must automate your reoccurring transactions. What does this mean? Those expenses or income that are the same each month for example your rent expense. You can have this expense automatically reconciled (called bank rules) to the ‘rent-expense’ account without you having to do a thing – well other than set it up in the first place. Once you get going you will be amazed at how many transactions you have that are reoccurring.

Astute Assist – If you have regular monthly invoices set these up as an automatic invoice that can then be emailed directly to your client each month without you having to do a thing. Bonus, You can also have overdue invoices emailed out once they reach 7 days overdue!

Tip 3 – Get Photographing

Is that pile of receipts in the glove box piling up? Is the shoebox overflowing? NO longer do you need to keep them, you can use your software app to take photos of your receipts that will feed into your software program. The bonus is you then have access to them online. Lets say you go to Bunnings when you sit back in the car before you turn the key, grab your phone and take a photo, this will be uploaded and coded in your bookkeeping program before you arrive at the next job!

Astute Assist – While each program has their own product they do come with limitations, Receipt Bank would be the front runner and has great tools for extra automation.

Tip 4 – Cash is King

For small to medium sized business, CASH-FLOW is king, it will make or break your business especially at times of rapid growth. As yourself these five questions

1. Do I know the difference between profit and cash flow?
2. How much does my business expect to earn in the future?
3. What proportion of my earning is liquid?
4. How much do my outgoings amount to?
5. Are there any areas of the business not making money?

Astute Assist – Spend some time writing down your business goals and turn these goals into budgets. You can then monitor these budgets to your actuals each month and make adjustments accordingly.

Now that you have the business transactions side of things under control! Lets move onto the payroll. There are no many business around these days that can afford to have a full-time admin staff let alone someone who is qualified in payroll processing. The great news is that there are also some things that you can do to help systemise this part of your business.

• Timesheets – convert them from the paper version to an electronic one. Your bookkeeping packing will have the ability for you staff to log their times electronically through an app. These timesheets can then be signed off by you at anytime from anywhere ready for processing.
• Outsource – Don’t be afraid to outsource this part of your business. You can advise them of your own unique set of pay rules such as penalties allowances, overtime and rostered days off. Or if you are paying staff under an award, remove all your manual calculations and pre-fill one of the modern awards which will automate the pay rates, allowances and accruals – Astute Assist – check out Keypay.

I hope that you have picked up a few, or at least one, simple tool that you can implement into your business to simplify your bookkeeping. Of course if it all seems like too much we can tailor and implement a Business Bundle that suits your business needs!

Soonah Walkom is the Owner and Director of Astute Administration Services you can look her up here www.bookkeepergoldcoast.com

The post Business Growing? This is great news right? But why are you feeling so overwhelmed? appeared first on Buzzword Hosting.