Custom WordPress Sites

Why “Admin” Is Never A Good Idea For Your Custom WordPress Site

Hacker

When it comes to the security of your Custom WordPress Site this needs to be a top priority for any WordPress site owners. I’ve talked in the past about the importance of keeping your site up to date to keep your site secure, but today I want to talk about the other major reason most sites get hacked.

Too many times when you are using a hosting solution with a 1-click WordPress install option, the default username is set to Admin. Unfortunately, if you don’t customize the username from the default Admin setting, you are placing your website at a much greater risk of someone hacking your site. Take a look at this screenshot I received in my inbox from a weekly report of people trying to log into my site.

As you can see, by far, the most popular username that hackers try to use to log into your account is admin. In the last week it was tried 680 times in comparison to the next closest attempt of 10 tries. So, if you own a WordPress site and your username is set to admin, I highly recommend getting that changed immediately.

You can change usernames a few different ways. If you have another email account that you would like to use for your account, you can simply create a new administrator level user on your account and then simply delete the old user. However, if you want to use your current user email address, this option wouldn’t work and you would need to edit the files via PHP MyAdmin. It’s not a difficult task, but if you are concerned about breaking something I’d highly recommend letting someone else handle it.

If you need help, you can always contact me and I will do what I can to help you get this fixed quickly and help make your Custom WordPress Site safer immediately!

Photo credit

Is Your Website Mobile Ready For April 21st?

Custom WordPress Sites

By now it is no surprise that mobile friendly websites are no longer just an add-on option when building your website, but rather a necessity to how well your Custom WordPress Site ranks in the search engines. Google has been dropping hints for years on how important the mobile version of your site is. In fact, I wrote about it back in 2011 here. Back then, we would simply install a WordPress plugin and it would create a somewhat clean mobile version of your WordPress site.

Since then, Google is looking for more when it comes to the mobile version of your website. No longer will a plugin version of your website suffice. Google has made it clear that they are wanting a mobile responsive version of your site that can serve up the information to consumers in a clean and clear way based upon whatever device they are using. Responsive means that the text, graphics and other elements automatically resize and change size based on the screen size and resolution of the particular device to deliver the same experience to each visitor no matter whether they are visiting on a 27 inch iMac, an iPad mini, or on a mobile phone.

On April 21st, 2015 Google will take the importance of a mobile responsive website to the next level. Sites that do not appear mobile friendly to Google are in major trouble. The Algorithm is about to see a “signficant impact.” Don’t take my word, here’s a quote from a post on Searchengineland:

This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”

Significant? I don’t know about you, but when I hear that, I listen in closely and pay attention. It’s not often you hear Google talk this way.

How to Prepare

So you might not be sure if your WordPress site is ready for this major algorithm change. Well, luckily Google has made an excellent guide and testing place to check. Here’s a link to Google’s mobile friendly test to see if your site is ready for the the change. Now, the system can be a little glitchy at times, so if you get a negative response back from it or do not trust the results, feel free to email me and I will gladly check your site for you to see if it is mobile friendly.

If you know that your WordPress site is not yet mobile friendly, there’s still time to get your site fixed. Email me today and we can discuss getting your site mobile responsive ready so that when the significant impact changes come on April 21st, your custom WordPress site will not be affected. If you are reading this post after April 21st and are wondering what to do to get your website back in good graces with Google, do not think twice, contact me immediately and let’s get started on your new redesign that will make the search engines happy again.

Handling Bluehost Status Alert 7308

Custom WordPress Sites

I received an email the other day from one of my custom WordPress site clients in a mad panic. She had received an email from her hosting company Bluehost, that stated there were errors in her site. (See the screenshot below.)

Bluehost Error Code

Seems like a rather legit email right? I mean it shows the email coming directly from Bluehost.com and even has the correct phone numbers to contact. Because of the technical terminology in the email, Anna immediately contacted me to get things fixed.

The first thing I did before clicking the link in the email, I went over to Sucuri and did a scan of her site. The scan came back showing that there were no current errors listed for the site. I then went to Google to search for “Bluehost Error 7308” and to my surprise I found nothing. I then visited Bluehost.com and started searching through their support database and found nothing there either.

From lack of information found, I concluded that this email was indeed spam or a phishing scheme trying to get her login information. Another thing that made me come to this conclusion was that the email address is was supposedly sent from had a major typo in it. I highly doubt that a company as large as Bluehost would use the email “supports.” I know from years of working with the company that their correct email address is support@bluehost.com.

Since I wasn’t 100% sure, I did recommend that my client at least call Bluehost and confirm my suspicions. After a quick phone call, they replied to me saying that it was indeed a spam email trying to phish for login information. If you get an email in the future from Bluehost with error code 7308, you know that it is nothing to be concerned about but that you can simply delete the email and carry on with your day.

How NOT To Increase SEO On Your Custom WordPress Site

Custom WordPress Sites, SEO, Social Media Speaker

We all realize by now the huge importance of having a good search engine presence for your Custom WordPress Site and the many benefits it can bring to your business by ranking well. Normally, when I take on a new client, I try to explain up front to them that there are no magic bullets to getting good rankings, but hard work, dedication to creating good unique content, and some time will bring them the results they want.

Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is willing to put in the effort, or give it the time that is needed for the results to come, so they look for shortcuts, quick fixes, and other ways to achieve good rankings without having to do the work.

As we all know, one of the major factors to good SEO is backlinks to your site. When someone links to your website, it is like their domain is giving your domain a vote of confidence. In the beginning, the easy shortcut was using link exchange directories. You would visit a domain that listed a few thousand links to everything from Myrtle Beach Real Estate to places to buy Thomas Kinkade paintings. In this process, you add the thousands of links to your site and in theory, they will add you back giving you thousands of backlinks or votes.

STOP KILLING YOUR SEO

These sites are not truly giving you SEO value anymore. Once Google caught on to these techniques, they started making changes to their algorithm to not give the credit anymore to reciprocal links where one site links to another just for a link back. So then the focus shifted more to using programs that will mass email hundreds to thousands of people at a time asking them for a link. While both of these strategies don’t necessarily hurt you, they also no longer help. If you don’t believe me, here’s a quote from Matt Cutts of Google regarding link exchange emails:

“The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails–the best links are earned and given by choice.”

Unfortunately, this tactic is still being tried by people. Here’s an example I recently received (click to view full size):

As you can see in the email above, the text for mass link exchange might have changed, but the scheme and results are still the same. They just don’t work. So when you get these emails, probably the best thing you could do is simply hit the spam button in your inbox.

3 Ways TO Build Good Backlinks

Now that I’ve told you how bad an idea link exchanges are, I thought I should probably give you some tips on what should be done. Luckily Matt, already summed it up pretty well in once sentence. The best links are earned and given by choice. I believe what Matt was saying by this statement is that if you want to build links to your site, create good quality unique content that compels readers to want to share with their audience instead of trying to buy or trade with others.

Here are three simple tips I’ve used over the past several years that work well for me:

1. Pay It Forward- Whenever I’m out speaking to an audience about blogging and SEO, I share a story about a blog post I wrote on my favorite restaurant in Myrtle Beach. I wrote about why I love to go there and what makes it so awesome. That simple post which was all about them and nothing about me, brought me tons of traffic for my real estate business. When I finished writing the post, I emailed a link to the restaurant just letting them know how much we enjoyed our visit and share the link.

The restaurant then shared it all over social media, emailed it out to the other restaurants in their franchise, and the CEO even replied back saying how much he appreciated me writing that post and that he was constantly transferring management in and out of the area who would ask him who to go to for real estate needs in Myrtle Beach. He said he now knew to send them to me.

The simple post that took me 15 minutes to write brought tons of traffic to my site through them sharing and also some good SEO as they had shared on their site.

2. Provide Content People Want- If you are a restaurant, why not share some posts on how to make your signature dessert or your famous appetizer? Include a few yummy photos and people will share it everywhere. Don’t just spit out whatever thought you had that day that brings little to no value to your audience.

3. Become The Expert- If your specialty is small business planning, then write about it constantly, become the small business planning expert. Share expert advice with your readers and give them something more than the rest. Share easy ways to apply the information to their own personal lives that will benefit their own lives as well as others and before long you will be the expert that others reference in posts, on social media and the links will grow almost exponentially.

So if you are looking for ways to build strong backlinks, try using these three types of content and skip out on all the link exchange sites and link email systems.

Using Max Buttons In Your Custom WordPress Site

Custom WordPress Sites

Call To Action Buttons for WordPress Each day I speak with potential new clients about their current websites and what can be done to increase the number of leads their sites generate. As we begin to discuss building their new custom WordPress site, I normally have to have a good thirty minute conversation with them around the importance of having call to actions on their home page, and above the fold. For example, if you are a real estate agent, the most important thing to have on your home page is the ability for a potential lead to search the current homes for sale in your area. Therefore, when I visit your site, I need to see an easy and clear way to search homes loading up immediately.

While the theory is easy to understand, generating these call to action buttons inside your custom WordPress site on your own can sometimes be a rather daunting task. To create visually appealing buttons you need a good knowledge of graphic design and also some basic coding skills to know how to install them into your WordPress site. You might end up having to spend several hundreds of dollars to purchase programs like Photoshop. Or, you can always hire a designer to build them for you, but that too could cost a few hundred bucks to get them made. While it used to seem either an expensive option, or one that involved technical know how, that is no longer the case. Now, by using a great plugin called Max Buttons (affiliate link) you can create and add call to action buttons almost anywhere throughout your site for under $30 if you purchase the pro version.

Here’s a quick demo of how I made some really basic call to action buttons for a client the other day using Max Buttons:

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What’s great is that you can quickly and easily change these buttons and insert them into any page, post, or text widget within your site. Also, with their copy functions, you can duplicate the designs of buttons very quickly and easily. This plugin is a great addition to any Custom WordPress Site to help increase the number of leads your site can generate.

Adding Links to a WordPress Site Using TablePress

Custom WordPress Sites

Tables I recently was working on a client site in which they used TablePress to create a three column table for one of the pages inside their Custom WordPress Site. She was a real estate agent and had made a table with various cities within her area.

After she created the table though, she was having figuring out how to transform her cells into hyperlinks. She wanted to link each city to a custom search she created within her home search function of her site.

So, I created this quick video to walk her through. I hope it helps others as well.

If you need help with your Custom WordPress Site, feel free to contact me for assistance.