Today’s message is a friendly reminder that the Internet is one of the most dynamic places in the world. Yes, we can realize that millions of people perform legitimate searches on it every second of every day, but the unscrupulous are easy to forget, and their malware is also by their side in significant numbers.

Keeping your website healthy and secure are the most essential marketing and maintenance issues in 2019, and a little preventative maintenance is worth curing.

Clients who come to me with a broken website or a site that is performing poorly are often surprised to learn that…

• your website has been hacked or otherwise compromised

• Lack of web server maintenance exposes security vulnerabilities

• web server updates often break site plugins, creating increased security vulnerabilities and performance issues

• Web server firewall configuration and updates have been neglected, which means your website is now exposed to vulnerabilities and direct attacks.

• Incorrect installation and configuration of the web server have made the site vulnerable to malware and direct attacks.

There are a variety of professional tools that web developers use to measure the specific health of their website. For website owners, HubSpot provides one of the most popular tools for getting a quick overview. Their website qualifier provides useful information on where improvements can be made regarding the health of your website in general.

As you review your website for security vulnerabilities and performance issues, take a few extra minutes and put on your marketing hat to ask yourself this question: What is my website’s search rank? In addition to being essential for obvious reasons, you may not realize that your website’s search ranking is determined in part by certain factors that are directly related to your overall health, so they are inextricably intertwined. Reviewing one without the other can quickly lead to a misdiagnosis of the overall health of your website.

Search rank is the best indicator of your site’s visibility for certain search terms and phrases that match your products and services. It’s not hard to tell if you have the right tool, and this tool is a free service we offer to all website owners, whether you’re a customer or not.

No doubt, the search ranking of your website is a very complex and dynamic process. Since Google has at least 80% of the search market in North America, what we are most concerned about is Google’s rank number, which is based on over 200 factors! It’s the best way to find out how likely your website is to be visible for any number of related searches. And since your website ranking is absolutely dynamic, your ranking at any given time is a snapshot according to current conditions. A high search ranking is the holy grail of search engine optimization (SEO).

If your search rank isn’t where you want it to be according to your SEO scorecard, don’t worry. Even if you rank low for certain keywords (<70), my SEO experts can help you improve your ranking month by month.

As mentioned above, some of the most heavily weighted SEO factors are related to your website’s performance, responsiveness, and security. This is how it is related.

For example, an experienced web developer can analyze and mitigate any performance and security issues related to,

• non-optimized programming

• Non-optimized page responsiveness (visibility on mobile devices)

• spam tricks

• slow host server

• Host server too far away (slow page load)

• Improperly sized image files

• Too many unnecessary plugins

• deprecated plugins

• unnecessary redirects

• outdated CMS

• …and we’re just getting started!

If any of the above reports or information motivate you to improve your website’s ranking (SEO), performance and/or security, please contact me for a no obligation consultation. I’m here to help you seize business opportunities using the best and most affordable website design techniques coupled with expert-level services in Kansas City and beyond!