Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is arguably the most important way to drive targeted traffic to your website. This is because SEO leads to improved ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Every business wants to be on Page 1 of Google, but with only limited places – they can’t all be there.

Read on to learn some effective SEO strategies that can help earn you a coveted spot on Page 1 of Google and start reaping the rewards! 

SEO delivers targeted traffic to your website that you need to succeed online.

Did you know that 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine? That’s a lot of people trying to find something. Perhaps they’re trying to find you. Wouldn’t it be incredible if you got on to Page 1 and were quickly found?

We think so and the numbers speak for themselves – The #1 result is 10x more likely to get a click compared to the 10th. SEO will help to achieve this for your business.

Google Ads, along with other PPC marketing channels such as Facebook advertising, stop delivering the web traffic as soon as the ads stop running. Search engine optimisation solves this problem by providing a steady stream of traffic to your website 24 hours a day, 7 days per week – without all the ongoing cost.

SEO delivers ‘organic traffic’ to your website, it’s promotion that never sleeps.

Promotion that never sleeps and never rests is a dream come true for any business. This is the reason why so many people are desperate to have their websites search engine optimised.

The web traffic just keeps on flowing and it often improves with time as more content is added to your website, Google builds trust with you, and more site visitors come.

This article is Part 1 of a 5 part series written to teach you the art of Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. We’ll cover the basics, right up to the more lucrative and rarer methods that get results.

Read every article and they will help you to improve your relevancy, target the right audience, and improve your search engine rankings. Get ready as we deep dive the latest techniques in 2023!

Starting with:

1. Define your SEO Strategy

2. How to perform Competitor Analysis

3. How to Identify Keywords

4. Keywords Do’s & Don’ts

5. How do I Apply Keywords?

1. Define your SEO Strategy

First, let’s explain what an SEO strategy actually is. We’ll then provide you with some real-world examples so you know exactly how to create your own.

An SEO strategy will help you to achieve your digital marketing goals, this is a fact, so it’s vitally important you have one before you start anything. This is why it’s first on this article.

So, without further ado, what exactly is an SEO strategy?

An SEO strategy is defined as the process of organising a websites content – by topic – to improve the chances of appearing in search results.

Essentially, it’s the process you follow in order to maximise the opportunity to gain organic traffic from search engines, such as Google. This matters because organic traffic is precisely what we are aiming to achieve – your website needs a lot of it to succeed online.

An SEO Strategy will spell out exactly what you need to do – and when.

Being prepared with an ‘oven-ready’ SEO strategy, before you actually start doing or paying for anything, is really important. This is because it helps you stay on track when creating content which means it avoids you wasting time and money.

Instead of just creating what you think people are searching for, your SEO strategy will ensure you only create content that people are actually searching for. 

To save you time, here are some real-world examples of what an SEO strategy actually looks like. They are 100% free to download templates so why not take a look?

They have all been populated with examples of what companies, just like yours, use to define effective SEO strategies. Depending on your industry and goals, naturally SEO strategies can vary, but the core structure and topics often remain the same. 

Setting up a Blog and defining a posting schedule are often part of an SEO Strategy.

So, what topics should you cover in your SEO strategy? In no particular order, let’s start with these proven topics… get ready, there’s a few!

• Define your Goals (What do you actually want to achieve?)
• Describe your Customer Persona
• Perform Competitive Analysis
• Keyword Research & Implementation Plan
• Align Content with Search Intent
• Differentiate Titles to Boost SERP
• Conversion Tunnel Optimisation with SEO
• Monitor & Report on your Website Analytics
• On-Page Technical Analysis
• Content Strategy (including Video SEO)
• Off-Page Link Building Strategy
• Mobile Search Strategy
• Local SEO Strategy
• Core Web Vitals

Now you’re armed with real-world examples and topics to start thinking about, you can begin to write your own SEO strategy. Next, we’re going to dive straight in topic three on that list – Competitive Analysis.

2. How to perform Competitor Analysis

SEO competitor analysis, or competitive analysis, involves researching your online competitors thoroughly in order to understand their target keywords, content strategy and backlink profile (amongst others).

The reason you do this is to incorporate many of the things that are working for them into your own SEO strategy.

This approach is smart because it completely avoids guessing which keywords to target, content to create, or links to build. Instead, by researching your top 5 competitors, you are able to analyse what’s working well for them – and build upon that success.

An SEO competitor analysis can help you answer the burning questions such as:

• Who actually are my SEO competitors? (Spoiler, it’s unlikely to be who you think)
• What keywords should I target?
• What does the competitive landscape look like?
• What topics should I cover?
• Where can I find valuable backlinks?
  
  

Behind every successful business, are hours of research.

Researching your competitors and answering similar questions is not a new concept. Long before you founded your own company, we bet you walked in to other competing businesses first or at the very least worked for one or two previously.

Reviewed their product offering, investigated their margins, reached out to some suppliers or perhaps even gained some inspiration from their branding too. No one, from the ‘Ma and Pop’ business down the street to the most successful businesses in the world – haven’t thoroughly researched their competitors first and you should be no different.

This is also true in the digital space and precisely why taking a long hard look at your online competitors is vital to fulfilling your SEO strategy. It is for this reason it features on Part 1 of this 5 Part series.

So, how do you research an online business? You use online software!

Two popular platforms right now are Seodity and SEMRush.

These are powerful SEO tools and even with only a 1-month subscription, they will help you to create an effective search engine optimisation strategy. All you need is a domain name to get you started, they handle the rest.

Consider these two companies carefully; we’d recommend choosing the one which better aligns with your goals so do compare the product offering as they do differ a bit.

Whichever one you choose – before you know it, you’ll have gained a vast amount of knowledge on your online competitors and be fully prepared what to do with it that knowledge.

3. How to Identify Keywords

Keywords are vitally important to any SEO strategy – even in 2023. Choose the wrong keywords and your website will not rank well in search engines, it’s as simple as that. 

This means all the effort, and expense, would have been for nothing. So, what exactly are keywords?

Keywords are defined as the words or phrases you enter into a search engine, the goal being to find something – a product, service or maybe to answer a question.

Perhaps you are in need of a local florist, the keywords you might use to search for one might be ‘a florist near me’ or perhaps ‘wedding florists in kapiti’.

A keyword does not have to be just one word, it can be many. These are called ‘long-tail keywords’ and are used for one reason – to be very specific what you’re searching for.

Identifying long tail keywords and shorter keywords is vital for your website.

But they need to have search volume too, in other words, people other than you need to be actively searching for them as well – a lot. Ideally, you should aim to choose two or three keywords for each page on your website, different for each page and relevant to the content on it.

Why do keywords matter so much, especially with online marketing?

They matter because placing the right keywords on the right pages of your website can improve your ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). And, by doing so, increase your organic traffic.

Once again, this is precisely what you want to achieve with search engine optimisation. Web traffic is the life blood to your website and you need lots of it to gain market share.

Keywords differ in three main areas. These are:

• Search volume: How many people are searching for a particular keyword.
• Competitiveness: The Domain Authority (DA) and Page Rank (PR) of the sites currently ranking for a particular keyword.
• Intent: What the user is looking to find when entering a keyword into a search engine.

By performing keyword research effectively, it helps you determine the best keywords to add to your webpages. They even help shape the content on those pages too so this can help with inspiration should you need it.

Seodity and SEMRush both provide you access to sophisticated keyword research tools. But, so does Google Keyword Planner for free… granted, it does have a steeper learning curve.

Whichever tool you use, they can all reveal the search volumes, competitiveness and the intent of your chosen keywords. So, now you have some keywords in mind, let’s cover the Do’s and Don’ts!

4. Keywords Do’s & Don’ts

Keywords need to be distributed around your entire web page. Not all grouped up in one place or added too many times on a webpage.  

Too many keywords on one page is a practice known as ‘Keyword Stuffing’ and if you fall foul of it, your website will tumble down the search rankings. We’re talking cliff edge here.

Most SEO experts recommend that your keywords should appear in no more than 2% of your text. For example, if your post or page has 1,000 words, using your primary keyword less than 20 times should be safe.

However, this guideline is largely speculative as Google does not release official advice on what the optimal keyword density is so it’s best to play things safe and be conservative.

Once you have written the text and you’d like to check it for keyword stuffing. You can use this keyword density checker for free as a quick means of verifiying.

If in doubt, play it safe. Reduce your keyword density.

Another important thing to note, is to ensure the keywords are added in context.

Using our florist example from earlier, the following paragraph would be considered keyword safe as it includes the keyword ‘local florist’ in context and not too many times given the character length:

‘We are your local florist based in Paraparaumu delivering Birthday and Wedding flowers to your door, 365 days a year, 7 days a week. Bloomin Good Flowers are the trusted local florists on the Kapiti Coast for over 35 years’.  

One last thing to mention is that keywords change.

What is being searched for this month might not be next month, people’s search habits change regularly and nothing stays the same for very long.

So, it’s really important that you remember to keep up-to-date on your keyword research to keep the web traffic flowing.

We recommend, for most businesses, checking at least every 3-6 months. Some less competitive industries and regions may get away with performing it annually, but keeping on top of them either way is important to your success online – so don’t neglect it.

We offer some of our clients ‘real-time’ rank monitoring of their keywords, so reach out to us if you’d like to be aware of any changes on a daily or weekly report. This way, you’ll be first to know if the wheels are falling off!
 

5. How do I Apply Keywords?

Once you have chosen your keywords, you’ll need to add them to your website.

This is the part that can get a bit technical so feel free to reach out to us at this stage if you don’t have a website developer on speed dial!

There are 7 places you will want to add them to, ideally, but this will depend on the objective of the webpage as some might not be suitable.

They are:

• Title Tag 
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Page Content (incl. all the Headers from H1 to H6)
• Link Text
• Images ALT & Title Text
• Embedded File Names (any attached files on the page)

So, how do you apply keywords?

If you are using WordPress, this task is surprisingly easy to achieve and can be accomplished by following this helpful video prepared by a Youtuber.

To start, you will need to download a plugin called Yoast SEO from the WordPress plugin directory and follow the in-app instructions.

Yoast SEO is completely free and provides you with the ability to add your keywords. Are there better options? Sure. But this is plugin is a great place to start and you’ll learn a lot from it with it’s shallow learning curve.

If you’re curious, there is a Premium plugin option for Yoast SEO which we would highly recommend if you can stretch to it. Infact, we used the Premium option in the image above. It will save you time and help you to gain more insight on applying keywords to your webpages – that’s a major win!

For other CMS platforms or Web Frameworks, please get in touch. Laravel, Joomla, PrestaShop, Magento, Drupal etc all require a unique approach to implement SEO effectively so it’s important it be done correctly.

Your next steps.

At VIEWFULE, we intimately understand the importance of SEO in 2023. As the internet becomes more competitive and millions more web pages are added each month, your place in the search results will change. It’s as predictable as the sun rising each morning. But to keep the right web traffic flowing to your website, you need to define your SEO Strategy, keep a watchful eye on your competitors, choose and apply the right keywords and actively monitor your rank in the search engine results. This powerful approach will not only maintain your place in the search results, but gain places too. Stay tuned for the 2nd part of this 5 part series so your Brand can benefit from the power of SEO and dominate in Google in 2023!

In 2021, Google made a big change to how it ranks websites in the search results. What they did was take a closer look at something called Core Web Vitals. They then refined and improved them further in 2022.

Although Core Web Vitals sounds like something from a Shortland Street episode, it’s a major change in how Google ranks your website. So, read on to learn exactly what they are so your website can rank higher in the Google search results in 2023!

Core Web Vitals make poorly coded, slow websites pay a heavy price in search results.

To help you get started, we have put together a guide that helps answer the burning questions:

1. What are Core Web Vitals?

2. What do Core Web Vitals mean for my Digital Marketing Strategy?

3. How do Core Web Vitals work?

4. How do I improve my Core Web Vitals score?

1. What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are made up of three metrics that analyse a visitors experience on your website. Loading time, page interactivity, and visual stability.

In other words, it looks at how fast your website loads, whether text and images dance all over the place and how quickly you can start using the website when it first appears on your screen.

Before we continue, we would recommend adding the Lighthouse Chrome Extension and generate a report by loading the extension in your Google Chrome web browser.

This report will give you a quick overview of how your website’s Core Web Vitals are looking, see below for an example of our website on a Desktop setting. You can switch it to score the Mobile experience too and it’s important that scores for both are as close to 100 and in the green as much as possible.

Alternatively, if your website is using Google Search Console you can see the results without the chrome extension. Look in the Enhancements section on the left-hand menu and you’ll find Core Web Vitals.

You can see the details it provides using the traffic light colours. Red of course means bad! The details section is really helpful and guides you straight to the issues, no guessing game here just identifying and fixing – if it’s all green, you are good to go.

2. What do Core Web Vitals mean for my Digital Marketing Strategy?

Google have identified that these three metrics are a vital part of a website experience. Simply put, Google does not want to send people to poorly coded, slow websites any more.

Their intention is clearly to improve the internet experience for everyone and they firmly believe that Core Web Vitals is the way to go. To be honest with you, we agree with them on this one.

Core Web Vitals became a key ranking factor in June of 2021. Since then, websites all around the world have taken a hit on their rankings.

Unless you want your website to fall way down on the search engine result pages (SERPs) – and stay there – you need to improve your Core Web Vitals. If you do, riches are to be made.

Netzwelt improved their Core Web Vitals and saw advertising revenues increase by 18% and page views by 27%. Likewise, when a website meets the Core Web Vitals thresholds, research showed that visitors were 24% less likely to abandon the page load. Results like these are game changers for most businesses.

Content generation is not King maker anymore

Given just how much Google are rewarding websites that achieve the Core Web Vital thresholds, our recommendation would be to focus less on heavy content-driven marketing strategies now.

Lots of unoriginal content that lack quality or context is bad for ranking anyway. But with the rise of Core Web Vitals, that approach is even more dated and likely to cost you in the long term.

Instead, focus on delivering a fast, smooth and responsive browsing experience with the content you already have.

A Core Web Vitals centric approach is much more likely to rank you ahead of your competitors who are still stuck in 2015.

This is not to say stop creating content, far from it, but if the content is being pumped out in huge volumes with the sole intention to influence ranking – it will all be for nothing without good scores on your Core Web Vitals.

3. How do Core Web Vitals work?

So what are the key metrics of Core Web Vitals? They include, the LCP, FID and CLS. We’ll explain exactly what these metrics are below:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The LCP metric looks at the overall loading time across your whole website. This means, the amount of time passed in seconds from the moment you land on the website until the largest image or section has loaded.

Naturally, this takes longer than your FID but you’ll want to get the overall loading time of your website down to 2.5 seconds or below.

After researching many websites over the years, we have come across some that take up to an extraordinary 30 seconds to fully load. In the age of ultra-fast fibre internet, that’s a lifetime and Google knows this too. Which is why they will start to make websites like that pay a heavy price by lowering their rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

First Input Delay (FID)

Do you remember a recent experience when you landed on a website and no matter how many times you press a button nothing happened? It was frustrating, right? This is why Google has made this a key part of the Core Web Vitals.

First impressions count, and this is no different in the digital space. When you land on a website, you want to be able to take action almost immediately.

FID measures the time in milliseconds that it takes from clicking on a link on the website (Button, Menu etc) to being able to take action on the webpage. The lower the number, the better the experience it will be for your site visitors and Google will reward you for this.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Don’t you just hate it when you’re reading an article on a web page and all of sudden, the text moves around? Or worse yet, when you’re banging your mouse furiously to close a pop up and you accidentally click it because it moved suddenly? Not a fun experience was it.

The CLS metric gives you an idea of how often, and how badly, this scenario is impacting the user experience. If text and/or images are suddenly dancing all around the page whilst someone is browsing it, then your Core Web Vitals score will be negatively impacted. The content which is doing this is considered an ‘unstable element’.

How much they move around the screen can be noted in percentages. i.e a popup moved down on my mobile phone screen by 25%. The CLS score however is calculated in fractions, granted this may seem complicated at first but it’s much easier to work out when you start in percentages and then just convert them into fractions. We’ll show you!

So how is the CLS Score calculated?

The CLS score is calculated from the impact and distance fractions of how much an unstable element has shifted on your screen (or viewport).

So, using an example, an unstable element moves 75% of the total viewport, so its impact fraction is 0.75. As the unstable element has moved by 25% of the viewport height, this results in a distance fraction of 0.25. So the layout shift score would be 0.75 * 0.25 = 0.1875.

From this example, the score would mean the webpage falls within the ‘needs improvement’ grade.

4. How do I improve my Core Web Vitals score?

Now that you have a better understanding of what Core Web Vitals actually are, why they should matter to you and hopefully had a look at your website’s overall score. You’ll want to know what you can do to improve them.

You are now at the stage when you’ll want to start discussing these things with your website developer. The solutions to many of these issues are quite technical, sure some are a quick fix but others might take time depending on the platform you use.

However, to make sure you’re prepared with the right information, we have covered a few things below which you can share with them to get started. If you don’t have a website developer on speed dial, remember that we would be happy to help so reach out to us for your FREE consultation.

How to stop things dancing around your webpages

There is nothing more frustrating than text dancing around a webpage whilst you’re trying to read it. To help you address this here are a few things your web developer should consider:

Add the exact height and width for all the images used on the website to the code. This will ensure the web browser knows exactly how much space is available to load the image and will prevent it from continuously determining it each time the page loads.

Use containers, these are basically designated boxes for Ads on your webpages to load in. We have seen so many times, particularly on news websites, where an article gets pushed down after we started reading it to make room for the display ads. It’s a common mistake to overlook these, containers really help to improve the structure of a webpage so nothing loads where it shouldn’t and then gets moved around afterwards.

Why is website loading time important?

The number one reason visitors will leave your website is if it loads too slowly. Think about it, would you be willing to wait upwards of 30 seconds for a website to load these days?

We wouldn’t and from our experience, most people wouldn’t either.

The worst part though is the impact this will cause to your Brand’s reputation in the long-term if the status quo remains.

Nearly 60% of visitors will abandon a website if they experience more than 3 seconds of load time, and the majority will not return either. With a knock-on effect they may share this negative experience with others and deter them from engaging with your brand too.

This is why slow loading times, especially the initial loading phase when your site visitors are most likely just staring at a blank white page – is particularly damaging for a business. In other words, getting that initial loading time down is intimately tied to succeeding online.

Famously Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, spent millions of dollars to get Amazon’s initial loading time to below 1 second because he knew it would cost Amazon billions of dollars more in lost revenue if he didn’t.

People just don’t have the time these days to wait so the chances they will jump ship to your competitors is higher than ever. Is it worth risking over something as simple as a few seconds? We don’t believe so and recommend doing everything you can to get that time down, just like Jeff did.

Make your website load faster

Reduce the time it takes for a visitor landing on your website to load all the images and text. So, here are a few things that either you or your web developer can achieve:

Images are more often than not the largest contributor to slow website loading times. You can resolve this in two ways.

First, by reducing their physical dimensions.

Images chosen for websites are rarely sized exactly to what is shown or needed, they are usually far too large and this is often caused by them being uploaded straight from a digital camera. As the megapixels have increased and cameras improved over the years, they now generate images with far more detail and clarity than you actually need.

No one needs a ‘6000 x 4000’ sized image on a website. At best, you’ll need a ‘1920 x 1080’ but often even smaller than that is perfectly fine. You can achieve all of this for free by using Image Resizer. Upload them, choose a smaller size, then download them – it’s as simple as that.

Resizing & Compressing images will improve your Core Web Vitals.

The second, is by compressing the images.

You can do this for free by using TinyPNG. Whether the image is a JPG or PNG they will compress it using a sophisticated algorithm that removes unnecessary code but retains the quality, in other words you can’t see any change to the image but the file size is now greatly reduced.

By resizing and compressing your images you can shrink images by up to 90% – that’s a big reduction which will reward you in a faster website loading time.

Next you need to consider implementing a Content Delivery Network or ‘CDN’. We have written an article about CDN’s already which we definitely recommend you read at this point. But just know, they work really well and will make your website load faster without even touching the code.

Time to get techie

Lastly, on to the more technical things. Ask your web developer to optimise your JavaScript execution, ideally either defer or delay any non-critical JavaScripts from loading first. It will greatly reduce the initial loading times.

Next we would recommend asking them to minify the CSS and HTML on the website. This removes any spaces from the files and shrinks the sizes down – it’s surprisingly effective.

Fortunately, it’s much easier to achieve all of these technical improvements if you’re on WordPress as a plugin named WPRocket can do it all for you whilst implementing sophisticated caching technology too which speeds things up even more. It’s a plugin that is definitely worth considering. But if you’re not using WordPress or just don’t want the hassle, we can help you either way so reach out to us.

Your next steps.

At VIEWFULE, we not only care about achieving top Google rankings for our clients but maintaining them too. Getting on Page 1 is tough, especially if you are in a highly competitive industry. So the last thing you want is to tumble down the rankings just because Google updated their algorithm one day.

Core Web Vitals are here to stay, they are undeniably in the interest of the customer experience as no one enjoys browsing on poorly coded, slow websites. So keep ahead of the game by winning at Core Web Vitals today, so you keep winning tomorrow. Remember to reach out for your FREE consultation and we can talk through implementing all of these improvements, and more, on your website.

HTTP security headers are a fundamental part of website security and should be of top priority to everyone who publishes anything on the internet. Once the headers have been implemented, they protect your website from the most common types of attack.

These attacks are: XSS, code injection and click-jacking attacks (amongst others).

The sad truth is, security headers are often overlooked in website audits and it’s a big oversight. They involve the security of your site visitors and your customers… how would you feel if the situation were reversed?

The fallout could be really damaging to your Brand in the event of a hack, especially if it were deemed easily preventable with an HTTP Security Header. But the good news is, security headers are relatively simple to configure and will provide another layer of protection to help keep your website, and its visitors, safe.

Read on to learn what HTTP Security Headers are and how to apply the securty headers to your website.

HTTP Security Headers make your website safer for everyone.

We encourage you to check your website free of charge right now by visiting Security Headers. They will grade your website from A+ to F. Prepare yourself, you might be in for a shock. 

This is a fast way of gauging how skilled your website developer is and how secure your web server and website platform is all at the same time. Your website should not score lower than a B these days, if it does it means your website is exposed to threats.

Why not type in your web developer or marketing agencies domain name and see how security conscious they are? For reference, here is our score:

How To Implement HTTP Security Headers

There are multiple ways to implement http security headers, and one popular way is with an .htaccess file. The benefit of using the .htaccess file in this case is because it saves a web developer from adding another plugin or line of code to the website.

It’s always best to avoid the plugin option. Poorly coded plugins can become a security risk in themselves, so minimising the number of installed plugins is always a wise approach. This is especially true in the case of WordPress.

But by using the .htaccess file method, it also avoids you adding lines of code to your website files which might be ‘reset’ in the event of an update. Hard code edits always carry this risk.

To find the .htaccess file. Simply login to your web hosting and open the file manager (you can also use FTP), and you’ll fine the .htaccess file present in your root folder in most cases.

The process of adding the security headers to the .htaccess file is really quite straightforward, it’s just adding lines of text after-all, but choosing the right security headers and then developing them specifically for your website – is what takes the time.

What do HTTP Security Headers look like?

For reference, here are the headers from our website. Granted, just an extract, but enough to see what they look like ‘in action’. 

Any modern web browser can reveal these ‘Response Headers’ by simply inspecting the page code and viewing the network information.

Take a look at another website, see what they show in the response headers section compared to ours. It’s probably a lot less information than this:

So, now you’ve seen your website’ grade, seen where the headers live and know how to add them using the .htaccess file method. It’s time to discover exactly what they are.

Here are five HTTP security headers that you should consider implementing on your website ASAP. There are many more security headers, but these cover the basics at least.

Please note, each one needs to be tailoured especially to your website and should not be copy and pasted from our examples. We encourage you to reach out to your website developer for them to be safely implemented – or just ask us.

1. HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)

2. Content Security Policy (CSP)

3. X-Content-Type-Options

4. X-Frame-Options

5. Permissions-Policy

1. HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)

The HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) header tells the web browser that the entire website should only be accessed by a secure HTTPS protocol. Most websites only implement a 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS which simply isn’t secure enough.

It’s very easy to intercept it with what’s called a ‘man in the middle’ attack. HSTS totally prevents this and forces HTTPS every time and for every session. This ensures the connection cannot be established through an insecure HTTP connection which could be susceptible to attacks.

All modern web browsers support HTTP strict transport security except for Internet Explorer and some lesser browsers so this is highly effective and widely compatible.

Here is an example of what the header looks like. You can include the max age, subdomains, and preload:

• Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload
  
  
  

2. Content Security Policy (CSP)

A Content Security Policy (CSP) helps prevent attacks such as Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and other code injection attacks. It achieves this by defining content sources that are ‘approved’ and by doing so, allowing the browser to load them.

All modern browsers currently offer full or partial support for content security policy and it won’t impact the delivery of the content if it’s loaded on an older web browser, it will simply not execute it.

There are many directives that you can use with Content-Security-Policy. The example below allows scripts from both the current domain which is defined by ‘self’ as well as AnaTrix the VIEWFULE Analytics Suite:

• Content-Security-Policy: script-src ‘self’ https://analytics.viewfule.com
  
  
  

3. X-Content-Type-Options

The X-Content-Type-Options header prevent the web browser from ‘sniffing’ a response away from the declared Content-Type. This helps reduce the danger of drive-by downloads and helps serve the content the way you intended.

Sniffing allows the browser to figure out what the element is (an image, text, etc) and then render that element. Hackers however will try to trick the web browser into thinking that a harmful JavaScript file is actually an image (for example), allowing the browser to download the file and then subsequently execute that file.

This is bad news for a site visitor, as it can lead to a ‘drive by download attack’. This is when there is an unintentional download of malicious code to your computer or mobile device that leaves you open to a cyber-attack.

Here is an example of what the header looks like with a simple directive to avoid sniffing:

• X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
  
  
  

4. X-Frame-Options

The X-Frame-Options security header helps stop click-jacking attacks. Click jacking is when a site visitor is tricked into clicking on a link or button (amongst others) which doesn’t do what they believed it would.

This hack can be used, for example, to steal login credentials or to get the user’s permission, completely without their knowledge, to install a piece of malware. Thankfully this problem is very easy to address with this security header and is compatible with all web browsers since Internet Explorer 8.

Here is an example of what the header looks like with a simple directive to use the same origin:

• X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
  
  
  

5. Permissions-Policy

Permissions Policy is a new header, formerly known as the Features Policy. It allows a website to control which features and APIs can be used in the browser. This is achieved by communicating whether or not features such as the Webcam, Speakers or USB access will be required as a part of the website experience (amongst others).

By clearly defining these on the header, you are able to broadcast your intentions and be far more transparent with your site visitors.

Here is an example of what the header looks like with a simple directive to avoid using the Camera, Speaker or USB ports:

• Permissions-Policy: camera=(); speaker=(); usb=();

Your next steps.

At VIEWFULE, we take our clients website security seriously. HTTP Security headers are one tool we use to achieve this and when combined with a Premium SSL Certificate – it shows confidence and skill that you know how to keep your website secure for visitors and customers alike.

Implementing HTTP security headers is specific to each website and impacts whether they use an online shop or make use of external sources. The web server that’s used also matters and varies depending on whether you’re using Apache, NGINX or Litespeed. So reach out for your FREE consultation and we’ll talk through implementing these security headers, specific to your use case, on your website.

VIEWFULE is Your Responsible & Trusted Web Services Company.

We are the Web Services Company that chose the responsible approach to business by putting Accountability, Community and Sustainability at the centre of our day to day operations. Asserting our Corporate Social Responsibilities, we proudly donate a percentage of our profits to organisations that champion sustainability and improve peoples lives around the world. We promote these 5 industry-leading commitments so you know you’re partnering with the right company:

You Own What We Create 100%.
Guaranteeing Ownership was one of our founding principles. You own 100% of your Website and any copy we write for you.

1 Tree Planted For Every New Client.
We partner with One Tree Planted, a non-profit dedicated to global reforestation. They help plant native trees within New Zealand.

We Are A Carbon-Negative Company.
Being Carbon-Neutral is simply not enough. We offset 50% more Carbon than we generate and aim for 300% within 5 years.

Percentage Of All Profits Donated.
We currently donate 2% of all our profits to causes the Sustainability Trust recommend. Improving homes and peoples lives every day.

‘Let’s Make It Right’ Policy.
This incorporates our Money-back Guarantee and Refund Policy. Please read our Terms and Conditions for more information.

We would love to help showcase your Brand online by championing your Website and we’ll get it found in major Search Engines too with our affordable search engine optimisation services. So reach out for your FREE consultation and experience the VIEWFULE difference today!

My new website is live.. now what?

Congratulations! Your new website is complete… There are many moving parts to a build, from coding to design and lastly to the content itself.

However, if you want to attract and retain customers, which let’s be honest… we ALL want. Then you cannot have a “set it and forget it” mentality. Marketing your business is not only about creating a presence on the web, it’s about maintaining it too.

It is therefore vital that you implement a ‘Website Update Schedule’ for your business.

Here are 4 reasons why a WUS is a wise decision:

1. Your business deserves to always shine in the best light.

Broken links, 404 pages, half-baked landing pages, slow loading times… your visitors will go elsewhere if they don’t find what they’re looking for… and FAST. The last thing you want is potential customers to become frustrated. It never ends well, and worse yet they’ll probably tell their family and friends not to come too.

Building trust is vital to operating a successful online presence. But at the end of the day, who’s going to want to enter their credit card or contact information when your website looks neglected? Ask yourself… would YOU trust this business?

Your website is the face of your organisation online, so invest the time and energy into keeping it current.

Actively monitor for bugs whilst simultaneously adding fresh content like blogs, articles, events and reviews. This way you kill two birds with one stone. We would recommend you do this at least once per week in order to keep your visitors engaged and to reap the long-term benefits of SEO.

2. Keep your website safe and secure for everyone.

You are not only responsible for protecting your own data, but you are also responsible for protecting your visitors’ data too. Security requirements are always changing, and nobody is safe – even big brands are targets for cyber-attacks and data breaches. To make this all the more challenging, if you are accepting visitors from countries within the European Union or US states such as California you are legally obliged to implement enhanced data security practices.

Towards the end of 2016, Uber announced the personal information of 57 million of their customers information and over 600,000 drivers had been hacked. To make matters worse, the company tried to hide the breach rather than report it.

In November 2018, Marriott International the hotel group came forward with information that cyber criminals had stolen the data of approximately 500 million of their customers.

Since hackers get smarter all the time, you need a program you can trust to keep your online assets safe.

Being proactive and protecting your website now is so much easier than dealing with the devastation, disruption and huge costs of a hacked site, lost data and destroyed Google rankings. And make no mistake, all of those negatives strike at once so it can be a scary time.

3. Secure backups, made regularly, will literally save your business.

A backup is a saved copy of your website, whether it’s from a day ago or a month ago. Backups are stored in files or in the cloud and can be restored if needed. There are two types of backup, full and incremental. They both have their benefits, but the full backup is the one you need to ensure is operating automatically and regularly.

If you don’t have a backup readily available and your website is hacked and wiped, you’d need to start over from scratch. You wouldn’t want all your hard work to disappear, would you?

4. Software updates are rarely automatic, but essential.

Software is ever-changing, whether it’s plugins and themes that need updating or security programs.

Your site isn’t going to run smoothly and will also be vulnerable to hackers if you don’t stay on top of software updates. The more often you update, the less likely you are to have problems.

Keeping your software updated also ensures your site loads quickly when visitors arrive; speed does have a direct impact on SEO.

Don’t miss vital leads or sales by neglecting content, security, backup and regular software updates.

Remember, spend a little money now and it will save you a fortune in case the worst happens tomorrow!

So, to recap. Ensure your ‘Website Update Schedule’ includes:

• Continuous state-of-the-art monitoring and “next-generation application firewall” protection against spam, malware and other malicious attempts. 7G firewalls are particularly effective.
• Ongoing automatic backups of your site in case it ever needs to be restored. Daily backups are expected these days as a minimum, in some cases hourly is recommended. Ensure the backups are stored away from the webserver itself and in a cloud location for further resiliency.
• Check every page of your website for broken images and links so it runs smooth and fast. As you intend for your visitors to experience it. Have your Web Developers’ phone number handy if you spot something amiss (in many cases quick fixes are free of charge anyway so why wouldn’t you).
• If you’re website is running on WordPress, make sure the ‘core’ is updated regularly (the latest is version 5.8 as of posting) and ensure your plugins are updated too for optimal performance and security. Make sure your webserver is running PHP version 7.4 or above. Many of our clients are now running on PHP version 8 for the enhanced security and performance benefits it brings.

A purely online based business with no ‘brick and mortar’ presence needs traffic in order to make sales and succeed. Essentially, traffic is the life blood of an online business. Without a reliable and highly targeted flow of traffic the business will surely fail it’s simply a matter of time. Therefore, acquiring and driving that traffic to your website should form a central piece of your marketing strategy. This has never been more important than in 2021 as there are more than 2 billion indexed websites out there… you need to make it clear why the visitor should choose you and FAST!

It is possible to buy traffic to your website, however there are many reasons why this is not a wise decision. We will cover this on another article but for now we’re going to delve deeper into 5 PROVEN METHODS that absolutely will drive more effective and targeted traffic to your website.

1. Write fresh and unique content REGULARLY.

Your entire website should be full of relevant, unique and well written content from front to back. When visitors find interesting content on your website, they will learn to trust your business. By doing so, they will spend more time on your website, favourite it/ bookmark it and eventually buy your products or services. It’s a virtual certainty.

By posting lots of valuable information on your website, regularly, you will be viewed as a subject matter expert (SME) in your field. We recommend that most of our clients post at least one interesting and unique blog/article per week and share it across all their social media.

2. Search Engine Optimisation or SEO – is KING.

Making your website visible in search engines, known as being ‘indexed’, is essential. You need to ensure your home page and ALL YOUR SUB-PAGES are indexed too. Google currently holds a 90% market share of all search engines globally, therefore it would be very wise indeed that you spend most of your time promoting your website in Google.

Being on the first page of the search engines results page (SERP) will make you very popular. Traffic will increase, this is a fact. Investigate and test niche keywords and phrases and place these in your titles and in the rest of the content on your website to increase their density. But be careful not to ‘overdo it’, if you are believed to be keyword spamming this will negatively affect your website (don’t use the same keyword more than 12 times per page).

Usually, visitors search using keywords or phrases and as a result this increases the chances of your website being found for those specific keywords. Take your time on this, test test test and do more testing. You will find the sweet spot in time.

3. Pay Per Click or PPC Advertising WORKS.

However, it costs. That being said, Google often provides sign up bonuses for its system ’Google Ads’ which can add up to $100. So, keep an eye out for these promos. Depending on your industry, you will want to start out with a budget of anywhere between $500-$2000. You can write your own ads or pay others to do this for you, although YouTube can be really helpful and teach you a new skill. Nail the ads, the targeting options, and the time of day they run and you could be making sales within hours.

4. Join Forums related to your industry – ENGAGE with them.

Joining Forums, talking with other likeminded individuals and sharing your knowledge can be very powerful for gaining more traffic. Once again, this takes us back to that topic of the SME I mentioned earlier. Engaging with fellow members and making it clear how knowledgeable you are within your field will result in others wanting to learn more about you.

Find appropriate forums on the internet (Google search your industry, country and the word ‘forum’ as a start) and participate in industry specific targeted forums. The topics you interact with should align with the topics on your website. We would not recommend that you directly write your Website URL on the topics or within responses. This may breach forum rules (remember to check them) but do capatilise on your username and avatar being related to your business and remember to link your website in your signature as this is usually permitted.

5. Videos increase engagement by up to 300% – CREATE them.

Create videos, as often as you can. Discuss in them your business, you and the products or services you offer. Respond to questions and emails from customers this way too by recording a Q&A session. They say a picture speaks 1000 words…. Well, a video speaks 300% higher than that! Make sure you share them on YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion etc too and tag them accordingly. Today, many businesses use video marketing to drive traffic to their website and the simple reason for this is… IT WORKS! Ensure you post your Website URL on the video description as this will make it easy to link visitors straight to your website.

At VIEWFULE, driving traffic to our clients’ websites is a passion. Irrespective of your industry, we would love to work with you and for you to drive your traffic sky high. So, remember to reach out for your FREE initial consultation today.

Welcome to VIEWFULE. We are new to New Zealand, having previously been based in the UK. We’re excited to share our global expertise with the local community here on the Kapiti Coast in Wellington.

My name is Oliver Corby and I’m the Founder of VIEWFULE. I bring 17 years of specialist Retail IT skills to the Kapiti Coast. Over the course of my career, I have worked for small right up to large billion-dollar businesses. Such as The Body Shop, The Estée Lauder Companies and Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessey Group (LVMH) amongst others. From these experiences, I intimately understand the many methods a company can connect with its consumers. Some very effective and some not so.

I founded VIEWFULE with the simple mission of giving back. The Kapiti Coast has provided me so much, a beautiful baby girl being one. There is so much potential in this region with an extraordinary number of businesses eager to be known on the global stage. With my skills and experience, I can help them achieve this goal.

I fully appreciate that no two businesses are alike and therefore each of our services are tailoured specifically to your business. Whether you need Retail IT Consulting services, guidance on choosing a new POS or CRM system. Or Web Design & Development work to draw out the most potential from your online image. We would be proud to work with you and for you to make your business shine in the best light.

One fine note, we also offer specialist SEO Services. Utilising a combination of ‘on page’ and ‘off page’ methods and the latest techniques for 2022 we can design a powerful strategy that will catapult your website to the front page of Google. Remember, if you aren’t ranking for your keywords then your competitors certainly will!

Once again, welcome and we look forward to working with you soon.

Ngā mihi,

Oliver Corby
Founder
VIEWFULE