Hello Happy Site Owners! This week’s tips include an absolute must read post on what you need to know and do to get ahead of the tidal wave of bot attacks that are already starting to hit, a video with a quick and easy way for you to check and fix a setting on your site to avoid Google aggressively penalizing authorship markup abuse, an important A/B split test to see if sliders kill conversion rates, and a gaggle of G+ tips, including auto-posting, and ways to increase search rankings. So let’s dive in. Listen to the podcast.
Absolute Must Read
Bot and Hacker Attacks are Escalating – Protect Your Site
Yesterday I made a post on the coming tidal wave of botnet attacks. Most folks focused in on the word hacker. But it’s not really about that. It’s about the huge botnets that are clogging up bandwidth and chewing up your site resources to the point that nothing can get in or out.
We’ve already had three major attacks in the last eight months. And it’s only getting worse.
There are three types of attacks happening.
One is a Brute Force Attack. That’s where one of these big botnets hits a server and tries to break the login of sites to gain access so they can either hack it, and/or gain access to the server through a back door.
Yesterday, around 10:00 am ET, WordFence reported the beginnings of the biggest brute force attack they had ever seen. And it’s still happening today and probably will continue for the next few days.
The second type of attack is a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service). This is where a massive botnet chokes sites and servers with so many requests that it has to deny all requests. That means nothing gets in or out. And it chews up the resources on your site so much that you hit your hosting limits, which means your site is unavailable for a while. Some of these botnets are 90,000 computers strong.
The third type of attack, and the one that is so scary, is new. It’s a DrDoS (Distributed reflective Denial of Service). Basically, one hacker can amplify a loop that makes him able to choke a site or server at the same level as a 100 computers. Folks, that’s going to bring the Internet to its knees.
And they are not just using computers in the attack. They’re also using cell phones and even smart refrigerators. Anything that is connected to the Internet can become a weapon.
It’s time you get serious about cyber security and resource issues on all of your sites and all of your devices. The tidal wave is coming.
Go read the post.
And also read this post. Improve Site Performance Case Study – On Sutton Place
We did a lot of clean up on this site. And way too much of it was a security issue too. All of it would have brought the site down if a botnet attack hit.
Here’s what you have to understand. Hosts are going to have to crack down on shared hosting customers who don’t care about security and resources. They have no choice. They can’t keep the servers running in the face of these attacks without help from the folks using the service.
One way or the other, they’re going to lose business, either from the servers going down or hassling the customers. So, why not lose folks who aren’t really serious about site security and resources. Know what I mean?
Featured
Google Penalizes Authorship Markup Abuse
Okay, I put out a post on Sunday with a video you need to see that will show you how to check a setting on your site to avoid a Google penalty for authorship markup abuse. It’s an easy thing to find and fix and you need to do it right away, especially if you’re using an HTML5 compliant theme or you use the WordPress SEO plugin and haven’t checked your settings in a while. Google is aggressively issuing penalties to folks who didn’t head their warnings over the last few months about fixing this. They’re serious about these settings, so you need to be too.
Conversion Tips
Do Sliders Kill Conversion Rates? Test Your Designs With Google Experiments
Sliders – some folks think they are one of the best design changes to ever come along, and some think they are just a passing design fad. But on his Intertwine marketing site +Darren DeMatas asked the only question about them that really matters and that is, do sliders kill conversion rates? In this post, he actually shows you how to set up a real split test to see. And he gives you the results of his tests. And it shows a 75% drop in conversion with the slider. Folks, that will kill your business. So, how pretty do you think that slider is now?
G+ Tips
Links in your G+ Profile are now nofollow
Ben Fisher originally shared this post on G+, but I saw the reshare from +Mark Traphagen. And if you haven’t figured it out yet by how often I mention him on Tips Tuesday, Mark is one of the folks who is a must-follow on G+.
It looks like all of the links in your G+ profile section are nofollow now. Some may have been for a while already, but now all of them are. That means you don’t get PageRank juice from G+ to your site through them. That’s okay. The real way to get Google juice is to write authoritative content that gets shared. So, don’t let this bug you too much. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
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3 Ways to Use Google+ to Increase Search Rankings
I’ve been telling you for some time now that being active on G+ is good for SEO. In this super post from James Thomas on Social Media Examiner, he tells you how to do it in three sections.
#1: Optimizing Your Google+ Page for Search Ranking
#2: Posting Content
#3: Connecting the Dots
Now it’s time to pull all of your efforts together and start tracking your results. You can track every piece of Google+ content you distribute or just a chosen few.
Each one of this sections is loaded with how tos. So do go over to the post and get busy making it happen.
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How to Schedule G+ Posts – The Complete Guide
+Mike Alton has outdone himself again. He’s put together THE guide on all the ways you can auto-post to G+. And that’s a rich resource because there is no official API from Google to make auto-posting happen. So, all these are hacks in a way, but they are a good way, if you absolutely have to auto-post.
Wrap Up
That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday podcast. Please jump on over to iTunes and leave a review for me. I sincerely appreciate everyone has been doing that. And, feel free to leave a comment here on the blog or on G+. I love hearing from you. Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.
You're reading Tips Tuesday – Big Brute Force Attack, Sliders and Conversion, G+ Rankings, originally posted on BlogAid - WordPress for Non-Geeks and copyrighted by MaAnna Stephenson.
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