Google recently announced it has started to use HTTPS as a ranking signal in order to “make the Internet safer more broadly.” HTTPS is a language code that secures the information being passed back and forth between web servers and clients.

Many websites are accessed by HTTP, which means that these websites are talking to your browser using the regular 'unsecure' language. In other words, it is possible for someone to "eavesdrop" on your computer's conversation with these websites that are served via HTTP. This is why you would never want to enter personal or financial information into a website unless you notice that the web address begins with https://.

First off, what is a top-level domain (TLD) or generic top-level domain (gTLD)? These are website suffixes such as .com, .net, .org. These top-level domains are managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which is run by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). We are all familiar with the few suffixes we see every day, but there are hundreds more out there, and new suffixes being applied for all the time.

When you are searching for a domain for your business or blog, you will want to use your company name and/or most relevant key terms in your domain name. But what if your ideal name has already been registered with the .com suffix? Will choosing a .net or .guru TLD hinder you within Google’s search results?

Eureka! Since the upsurge and continued enhancement of content management systems like Joomla! and WordPress, individuals and businesses are now more than ever in a position to create and maintain their own websites. This is great news for small and medium size business owners who can gain access to the important tools of the online marketplace to enhance their business without the need for specialized coders or programmers. But hold onto your chair for just a minute before you decide to jump in without the assistance of a web design company! Maintaining your own website is often a lot more complicated and time consuming than most people initially assume.

Let’s face it, in this day and age, in order for your business to have a successful online presence you must be engaged in multiple social media channels. But managing all of your social media accounts for your business can be daunting as well as time consuming. Who has time to log into Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, etc. multiple times a day to interact and engage with your followers while creating posts for all of these accounts? You can’t be online 24/7!

Before you start pulling hair out or pull all-nighters, enter the world of social media dashboards.

Everyone has been waiting in rapt anticipation, in some cases paralyzing fear, to learn of the fallout of Google’s April 21^st rollout of their mobile friendly algorithm changes. So has all the buzz been warranted? In many cases, absolutely.

In a few studies we looked at, the results are not surprising. Mobile friendly websites kept moving up in the search engine results pages (SERPs), while websites that have not been made mobile friendly are slowing dropping. Some industries seem to be getting hit harder than others. According to some sources, many law firm websites have not updated to being mobile friendly and are therefore dropping in the rankings, possibly more so than some other industries as a whole.