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any paid and organic initiatives that previously hinged on the keyword “adwords” or ancillary keywords related to it will need to be tweaked.

And last, but not least, the site still hadn’t moved to https. Now, https is a lightweight ranking factor, but it can be the tiebreaker when two pages are competing for a spot in the SERPs. Also, http sites can turn off users, especially with the way Chrome (and other browsers) are flagging them. For example, there’s a “not secure” label in the browser. And Google can pick up on user happiness over time in a number of ways (which can indirectly impact a site rankings-wise). Maybe users leave quickly, maybe they aren’t as apt to link to the site, share it on social media, etc. So not moving to https can be hurting the site on multiple levels (directly and indirectly).

This also leads me to believe that if Google is using reputation, they are doing so in aggregate and not using third-party scores or ratings.

What Site Owners Can Do – The “Kitchen Sink” Approach To RemediationMy recommendations aren’t new. I’ve been saying this for a very long time. Don’t try to isolate one or two problems… Google is evaluating many factors when it comes to these broad core ranking updates. My advice is to surface all potential problems with your site and address them all. Don’t tackle just 20% of your problems. Tackle close to 100% of your problems. Google is on record explaining they want to see significant improvement in quality over the long-term in order for sites to see improvement.

Summary – The March 12 Update Was Huge. The Next Is Probably A Few Months AwayGoogle only rolled out three broad core ranking updates in 2018. Now we have our first of 2019 and it impacted many sites across the web.

Don’t just cherry pick changes to implement. Instead, surface all potential problems across content, UX, advertising, technical SEO, reputation, and more, and address them as thoroughly as you can. That’s how you can see ranking changes down the line. Good luck.

The biggest problem for SEOs is the missing organic traffic, but it is also the fact that current methods of tracking organic results generally don’t show whether things like Knowledge Graph, Featured Snippets, PAA, Found on the Web, or other types of results are appearing at the top of the query or somewhere above your organic result. Position one in organic results is not what it used to be, nor is anything below it, so you can’t expect those rankings to drive the same traffic. If Google is going to be lifting and representing everyone’s content, the traffic will never arrive at the site and SEOs won’t know if their efforts are still returning the same monetary value. This problem is especially poignant for publishers, who have only been able to sell advertising on their websites based on the expected traffic that the website could drive. The other thing to remember is that results differ — especially on mobile, which varies from device to device (generally based on screen size) but also can vary based on the phone IOS. They can also change significantly based on the location or the language settings of the phone, and they definitely do not always match with desktop results for the same query. Most SEO’s don't know much about the reality of their mobile search results because most SEO reporting tools still focus heavily on desktop results, even though Google has switched to Mobile-First.  As well, SEO tools generally only report on rankings from one location — the location of their servers — rather than being able to test from different locations. 

The only thing that good SEO’s can do to address this problem is to use tools like the MobileMoxie SERP Test to check what rankings look like on top keywords from all the locations where their users may be searching. While the free tool only provides results with one location at a time, subscribers can test search results in multiple locations, based on a service-area radius or based on an uploaded CSV of addresses. The tool has integrations with Google Sheets, and a connector with Data Studio, to help with SEO reporting, but APIs are also available, for deeper integrations in content editing tools, dashboards and for use within other SEO tools.

Fraggles and Fraggled indexing re-frames the switch to Mobile-First Indexing, which means that SEOs and SEO tool companies need to start thinking mobile-first — i.e. the portability of their information. While it is likely that pages and domains still carry strong ranking signals, the changes in the SERP all seem to focus less on entire pages, and more on pieces of pages, similar to the ones surfaced in Featured Snippets, PAAs, and some Related Searches. If Google focuses more on windowing content and being an "answer engine" instead of a "search engine," then this fits well with their stated identity, and their desire to build a more efficient, sustainable, international engine.

chances are, you’ll need to build your brand first, then slowly dip your toes into advertising, likely starting with re-targeting audiences that have already visited your site via organic channels or given you their email.

most of the time with new ventures, local businesses, and small organizations, neither the ranking authority nor the audience are present yet. Thus, content and SEO become long-term, slow-investment channels (and, tragically, most give up on them long before they start paying dividends).

“Influence Marketing,” is what I’m calling the process of finding sources of influence (blogs, websites, email newsletters, social accounts, podcasts, YouTube channels, events, webinars, etc) that already reach your target audience and pitching them for coverage, publishing opportunities, or sponsorship.

With shared web hosting, there may be thousands of different businesses, individuals, and organizations all serving their website files to the public from the same computer.

The web hosting company employs systems administrators to manage the server software installation and security updates. The hosting clients use file transfer management tools to host web pages in HTML or other programming languages which serve the files to the public through the browser. The hard disk space on the remote server can be used for other purposes than web hosting, for example remote file storage, email accounts, sandbox web development, mobile app support, or running software scripts online.

Shared web hosting accounts can cost as little as $1 – $3 dollars per month and rarely cost more than $20. It is estimated that over 90% of the websites on the internet use shared web hosting to keep their information online 24 hours a day. Shared web hosts never turn off their services and offer seamless hardware upgrades in the data center that can keep a website online for years. Most of the available web development tools will integrate easily with a shared hosting account.

The main disadvantage of shared web hosting is that it is not able to scale effectively to support the traffic of large websites and usually includes strict limitations on the use of CPU processing power because of the pooled resources. Shared web hosting does not typically support the user installation of server extensions through the command line that are important for custom web development and mobile app support.

There is still no opportunity for advanced systems administration and custom server configurations on most shared hosting plans. Security on shared web hosting frameworks is not considered robust enough for sensitive corporate information and government accounts. There can also be performance issues that develop on a server if one domain is consistently consuming shared resources or hit with a DDoS attack. Because systems administration and root server configuration control is taken out of the hands of shared web hosting users, they are often overly reliant on the service company for tech support.

Shared web hosting is recommended for self-published websites and small business networks.

Managed web hosting is a version of shared hosting where the service company specializes in platform-specific products that support custom development frameworks. Examples of this can be seen in Pantheon and Acquia Cloud for Drupal, Nexcess for Magento, or WP Engine for WordPress. Managed host companies provide optimized server environments that can speed up website performance and page load times for high-traffic, CMS-driven websites.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are a web hosting solution designed to give more power and flexibility to website owners for custom developed software requirements and complex applications. Technically, a VPS will operate in the same manner as a dedicated server while operating on a partitioned hardware framework that allows for the use of only a fraction of the resources of the host machine.

Understanding which virtualization platform the VPS web hosting company is using to manage data center resources and client configurations is important.

Developers often prefer VPS accounts because they can custom configure the server with the choice of operating system and install whatever additional server extensions are required for programming web applications

The main benefit of VPS hosting is that website owners can “dial in” the exact amount of server resources that are required to optimize the performance of a complex website.

The main disadvantage of VPS web hosting is the complexity of systems administration required to install and manage the server software, which requires a lot of command line knowledge and background in web server configuration.

Inexperienced users can leave security holes in the environment that hackers using automated script bots and known server or database exploits can easily detect and target. Using a standardized cPanel, CentOS, & WHM environment or administration panels like Webmin and Virtualmin can help simplify the server administration process considerably by adding a GUI layer to access common tasks

VPS web hosting accounts are best suited for developers who need to custom configure the environment with server extensions that shared web hosts will not support. Typically these are related to the use of database frameworks other than MySQL, programming languages other than PHP, and server frameworks other than Apache.

Dedicated web hosting is the most expensive and flexible of all of the service plans offered by companies in the industry, as site owners are able to directly rent or lease a complete rack-mount server in a data center.

Dedicated servers are required to host the largest sites by traffic on the web, as well as by mobile apps which require elite performance

The main disadvantage of a dedicated server is that it is costly compared to shared hosting or VPS plans, and expensive even when compared to the price of the underlying hardware itself. With dedicated servers, the client is paying not only for the use of the server, but also for the trained technicians who manage it, the overhead costs of the data center, and access to the internet backbone. Data center costs include not only rental of office and warehouse space, but also the electricity required to run all of the servers and keep them cool. Data centers must also have back-up power generation facilities in case the local electricity supply is cut. All of the residual costs are included in the annual price of a dedicated server plan. Nevertheless, it is still often much cheaper then what would be required to manage a data center for a single business independently.

Cloud web hosting provides solutions for websites that need more processing power and require more than a single server instance because the amount of online traffic, including the number of queries to the database and resource files, is too high in volume for a single machine

Cloud web hosting is defined by the deployment of server clusters that scale automatically with the user traffic and processing power needs of a website, including advanced software applications for elastic load balancing, file storage, and database optimization

Cloud web hosting is similar to content delivery networks (CDNs) which use distributed global servers, advanced page caching, and file management software to optimize website performance for large websites. Many cloud hosting companies will offer the ability to choose the operating system, database framework, and geographic location of the server itself as part of the configuration options.

Cloud web hosting is designed for remote computing applications and required by large web sites whose user traffic exceeds the limits of what a single server instance will provide. Cloud web hosting is particularly designed to meet the needs of websites with large database requirements.

Not every website will require cloud hosting, but small businesses and start-ups who scale their traffic and user communities often find managed cloud services a reasonable option over dedicated servers because of the ability to “pay-as-you-go” for only the amount of server resources used and for the ability to keep sites online through cluster scaling at the times of peak user service provision.

The major downside to cloud hosting is the uncertainty involved with the variability of costs with sites on the “pay-as-you-go” model. Another problem can be associated with “hype” in the industry, which can lead to over-pricing and over-billing for unnecessary services or introductory plans.

Cloud web hosting can be similar to VPS or dedicated server frameworks where the systems administrator has the ability to custom configure the installation of the operating system with software extensions that are not available in shared hosting environments. Some managed cloud hosts simplify this process by offering optimally configured solutions with a proprietary base software package.

Some of the main features to look for in any web hosting account are: Server Architecture Operating System Version Domain Management Tools Systems Administration Tools Bandwidth & CPU Limitations Free Offers & Promotions Data Security Technical Support

Before purchasing any web hosting account, it is essential to verify the server hardware being used on the platform. Currently there is a wide variety of difference between the different versions of Intel Xeon, Atom, Itanium, and AMD Opteron servers deployed in data center use.

The version of Linux installed, for example CentOS and Cloud Linux, can also come with licensing restrictions due to the use of WHM and cPanel. The use of other Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, FreeBSD, etc. in web servers is mostly related to developer preference for systems administration

Many hosting companies claim to offer “unlimited” bandwidth and data transfer. However, if a website uses too many CPU resources, it may still be throttled or taken offline at times of peak user traffic.

A web hosting company should provide a guaranteed uptime of at least 99.9% as part of the service plan.

Website owners should make sure that any web hosting plan will be configured securely, including firewalls and monitoring software to prevent intrusions by automated script-bot attacks. Check whether the web hosting company offers DDoS attack protection and auto-alerts for unauthorized logins. While shared web hosting plans include the company services related to upgrading the installed operating system and server software with the latest security patches, VPS and dedicated server accounts will need to be responsible for this through a qualified systems administrator. Web hosting companies that provide automated site file and database back-up tools like raid disk mirroring on advanced accounts provide an extra layer of site security in case of a server crash or technical error that leads to data loss.

Managed hosts have the advantage of experienced technical support teams with platform-specific knowledge

Small business website owners and independent publishers should start with a shared web hosting account, then upgrade to a VPS or Cloud hosting plan if the traffic scales beyond what the server will support.

While shared hosting under cPanel and CentOS remains the industry standard, innovations in cloud computing are changing the web hosting landscape quickly. Many web hosting companies are now offering “hybrid” approaches that combine the best features of cloud and shared hosting into a high-performance, low-cost retail plan that offers integrated load balancing, page caching, and CDN services on elite server hardware configurations.