Robert Fisher recently asked a question over at Moz regarding the use of CDNs to potentially hide a link network. In the past, there has been (and currently is still) an issue regarding linking websites together that are hosted on the same Class C Blocks of IPs. Essentially, if you own several websites, they’re hosted on the same server, then they will be on the same Class C Block of IP addresses. So, the search engines can easily see that you most likely own all those sites linked together by looking at the sites’ IP addresses. [Read more…]
Search Results for: cloud flare
All Domain Names Need SSL: Parked Domains Are Losing Traffic, Revenue
Many popular web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are now notifying users when they try to load a website that is not secure. If you try to go to a domain name that has no SSL certificate set up, you’ll get a warning message telling you the website you’re about to visit is not secure. This is a big deal for anyone who owns a domain name, especially if your domain name is just parked and doesn’t currently have a website on it. [Read more…]
Web Hosting Services Market to Grow to $254.86 Billion by 2029
The global web hosting services market was valued at $78.44 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $254.86 billion by 2029. Data Bridge Market Research has recently published a report titled, “Web Hosting Services Market”. [Read more…]
RankSense Acquired by SEOClarity
RankSense, a company founded in 2015 by the late Hamlet Batista, has been acquired by SEOClarity. SEOClarity is an enterprise SEO platform that combines world-class data, AI insights, and execution. [Read more…]
Email Deliverability, Setting Up DMARC, DKIM, and SPF on Your Domain
In episode 46 of the Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer podcast, I talked about Email Deliverability. If you send or receive email from your domain name, it’s important to make sure you have DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records set up in your DNS. This will help make sure that your emails are delivered when sent, and no one can spoof your domain name. [Read more…]
Microsoft to Start Blocking Emails Without Records Set up on Domains
By Bill Hartzer, April 7, 2020 at 6:29pm CST.
Starting sometime this month (April 2020) Microsoft will begin blocking any email that does not have SPF and DKIM alignment for email sent to Outlook 365 domains. What that means is that if you send an email from your domain name and you have not properly set up the proper email records on your domain name, people using Microsoft Outlook 365 won’t receive your email. To make sure that they do receive your email, you need to make sure that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are properly set up on your domain name. [Read more…]
Kobe Bryant Dead – TMZ Website Down
Certainly no one expected this.
A Sunday morning helicopter crash with NBA star Kobe Bryant aboard. TMZ, the entertainment news service that first broke the news of Kobe Bryant’s death, did not expect this either. The website is getting so much internet traffic that the TMZ website appears to be down, as well. [Read more…]
Google to Require TLS 1.2 or Higher on SSL Websites
Starting in January 2020 (this month), Google Chrome will start warning users when they visit websites that are not using TLS 1.2 or higher on their secure website. This is a change in Google’s policy about SSL secure HTTPs websites, as they previously have said that it did not matter which type of SSL certificate that a website uses as long as it was HTTPs. We are now learning that it does matter, and the server and the SSL certificate must support at least TLS 1.2 or higher. [Read more…]
Google Organic Search Listings Can Now Look Like Ads
Google’s organic search engine listings can looks like Ads, but they are not actually Google Ads. Instead, the site owner has updated the favicon on their website to display an Ad logo. That Ad logo image similar to the black and white Ad symbol Google currently displays to designate that a search engine result listing is a sponsored Ad. As an experiment, I updated the favicon on this website to display a graphic that I personally created–which looks similar to Google’s Ad graphic they display next to Google Ads. An example of my site appearing in the Google organic search results on a mobile phone is shown below: [Read more…]
Does Google Prefer Domain Names Registered For a Long Time?
Does Domain Name Registration Length Affect Search Engine Rankings?
This has been discussed time and time again, but since Epik is now offering Forever Registrations of domain names, I thought that I would ask Google’s John Mueller if domain registration length is a search engine ranking factor. Or, whether or not Google prefers domain names that have been registered for a longer period of time. I asked John on Twitter, and here’s what he said: [Read more…]
Does Google Have a Date Problem?
That’s a really good question. Does Google have a date problem? Well, Garry Illyes (@methode on Twitter) tweeted, kind of admitting that he doesn’t like dates. That was back on September 5th, and looking at that tweet, and knowing what he’s really referring to, yes, it appears that Google still has a date problem. [Read more…]
Is It OK to Use Website Cloaking?
Note: Don’t always believe everything is posted on Twitter, or any other social media website. In this case, DejanSEO and John Mueller from Google were joking about rogue bots and cloaking. Parts of this post have been edited.
There was a recent Tweet from DejanSEO to John Mueller from Google about technical SEO. Apparently DejanSEO has rogue crawlers that disobey his robots.txt file. They crawl the website even though the robots.txt file says that they can’t crawl the website. Dan Petrovic asked John how to deal with rogue crawlers. [Read more…]
Google Removes View Image Button in Image Search Results: What You Should Do Now
Google has announced that they have removed the view image button from the Google image search results. That means that in order to view the images in Google’s image search results, searchers need to click through to the website in order to view a larger version of the image. [Read more…]
Google Must Fix their Timestamp Issue
Photo courtesy @kr4ydnb on Twitter.
Google has a big issue with the timestamps on articles, posts, and news items, and it absolutely needs to be fixed. This week, the timestamp issue has been more visible to the public in light of recent news events. People have pointed out to Google that their timestamps were horribly wrong on news article posts. Despite ongoing breaking news, Google timestamped article as being posted 2 days prior. [Read more…]
Splitting a Website Into Two Websites: Part Two
As you might recall, I decided to split my website into two separate websites. I moved content (mainly my services pages) over to Hartzer.com, leaving my 1000+ blog posts here on this blog. I’ll continue to blog and write news articles here on BillHartzer.com. The goal is to make BillHartzer.com more of a blog and news site–while moving my SEO Consulting business over to Hartzer.com and Hartzer Consulting. [Read more…]
Moved To HTTPs? Get on the HSTS Preload List for Chrome
As you are well aware by now, I moved this site to HTTPs (a secure SSL site) back a few years ago when Google announced that HTTPs is, in fact, a search engine ranking factor. Google has announced that they’re making HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) the default on all of the Google-owned TLDs, starting with .dev and .foo. This is really good news, as any domain name on those TLDs (Top Level Domains) will be secure and using HTTPs URLs. [Read more…]
Denied SSL Certificates Because of Their Domain Names
For the second time in a row, one of my domain names has been denied an SSL certificate because of it’s domain name. But, this second time, the website went down without warning, despite being on CloudFlare. [Read more…]
Chrome Will Show Security Warnings on HTTP Websites
Starting October 2017, Google Chrome (version 62) will show a “NOT SECURE” warning when users enter text in a form on an HTTP page, and for all HTTP pages in Incognito mode. If your website is not HTTPs, and you have not moved your website to HTTPs from HTTP, then your website’s visitors will start to see this warning. [Read more…]
SEO Agencies Receiving Emails Threatening Negative SEO, DDoS Attacks
A group calling itself the Lizard Squad is sending SEO Agencies and Digital Marketing Agencies threatening emails, which sound very much like blackmail. The emails, being sent to SEO and Digital marketing agencies’ public email addresses, claim that a negative SEO campaign has been started against their website and their clients’ sites. If a certain amount of Bitcoin is not sent, they will continue the negative SEO campaign, as well as DDoS attacks on the agency website and their client websites. [Read more…]
Using Google AdSense Hurts Mobile User Experience, Violates Google’s Own Guidelines
Adding Google AdSense to your website hurts the mobile user experience on your website and violates Google’s own suggested guidelines.
I have been working on my own site, this site, to optimize it for page load speed. Using Google’s own Pagespeed Insights tool, I found that there is one particular section of the results, under User Experience, that gave me a score of 99 out of 100. That problem is Google AdSense. [Read more…]
One Year after Moving to HTTPs
About one year ago, last August 2014, I moved this site from HTTP to HTTPs, and several weeks afterwards I updated the status of traffic, page views, and time on site. Several weeks after moving I some pretty good results, which I believe was a result of my moving from HTTP to HTTPs. A year later, let’s look at what I’ve accomplished over the past year, and if we can tell if it was worth it to move. [Read more…]
Cutting Your Page Load Time in Half with WordFence Performance
Ever since I’ve started using Wordfence here on my site, which has been at least for a year or so now, I have been a big fan. I use the paid option, and am very happy with it. But since I’ve been making major enhancements on the site lately, like upgrading the site from HTTP to HTTPS, and starting to use Cloudflare, I’ve seen improvements all around.
Today, though, I decided to test out the Wordfence Performance Setup option, called the Wordfence Falcon Engine, which apparently is supposed to increase the performance (load time) of your pages by 30 to 50 percent. Seriously? Up to 50 percent faster load times with this enabled? Even for an HTTPS site? I thought I’d give it a try. [Read more…]
Google Search Query Impressions Going Down Drastically?
In Google Webmaster Tools, there is a useful report called the Search Queries report. This report shows your website’s impressions in Google organic search, the clicks to your website, and the average position (of your ranking). Typically, I review this repor from time to time, but I don’t necessarily look at it as often as I look at Google Analytics. What should you do if your impressions and clicks go down drastically? Perhaps like this:
