Don’t put content spam on your website.

Read this article from Google to understand what constitutes content SPAM

>>>>Google is now treating a lot of content as SPAM<<<<

In Google Speak:

“We’re enhancing Search so you see more useful information and fewer results that feel made for search engines.”

Key points:

A lot of people have been generating a ton of content that in most cases is just reversioning (spinning) content that has already been published and is already available via search results (generic content). They are now using AI to generate even more generic content.

In most cases, AI does not generate “original” content.

More often than not AI just generates generic content faster.

• Google is now labeling that type of content as SPAM

In Google Speak:

“Google is working to combat SPAM, which is anything that is low-quality, unhelpful, or unoriginal.”

Google is also working to combat content generated at an unusual rate that is also low-quality, unhelpful, or unoriginal—even if a human made it.

Google does not want you producing content that does not add additional value (over what has already been published) or is not as in-depth as a really good article.

Bottom Line:

It is vital to publish HELPFUL, UNIQUE/ORIGINAL, IN DEPTH, and or unique OPINION-orientated articles.

• ONE REALLY GOOD ARTICLE IS DEFINITELY BETTER THAN TEN OKAY ARTICLES.

People new to e-commerce often underappreciate how many images they should upload to their stores. Using an example on Amazon, this video provides some simple product merchandising advice associated with how many and what type of images they should create and add to their store.

Peefilter Principle It’s easier to spend money than learn, change or listen

Peefilter Principle

Derivation – The PE Filter Principle (Passive Expertise Filter) – Pronunciation “peefilter”

Definition:

A person hires an expert but does not listen and make use of their advice

• People passively filter out ‘paid for’ expertise because it is hard work to learn and change
• Often only 10% – 20% of the advice absorbed
• Paying for advice is a lot easier than making use of the advice

A person purchases a training course but does not complete it

• People passively filter out ‘paid for’ expertise because it is hard work to learn and change
• Often only 10% – 20% of the training absorbed
• Paying for training is a lot easier than making use of the training

When people get stuck in a business rut they often look for ways to dig themselves out. Sometimes they will hire an experienced specialist or purchase training so they can better understand the problem area. However, when push comes to shove, they do not listen to the expert and or do not take the time to complete and understand the training.

This is Because:

Listening, understanding, and changing behaviors are high-effort activities. As a result, considerable dollars are often spent on experts and training courses, however only a small proportion <10% are actually attended to. It’s easier to spend money than learn and or change behavior.

Why do less than 10% of people who purchase an online course, complete the course?

How to Get SEO Success, SEO Talent & SEO Execution

Why is it so difficult to hire a good SEO specialist?

If someone has real SEO talent, they are likely to be a bit like me.

You cannot afford me AND besides, I’m not looking for a job anyway. I do not want to be limited to working for one company. I know I can rank any site and have a track record in doing so. As a result, I know what I am worth. I can earn a LOT more contracting for multiple companies. So, you get the wannabees, the mediocre people who need a job so that they can get paid while they try to learn the trade.

You cannot identify the talented from the average. I’ve interviewed a lot of ‘alleged’ SEO specialists who were plain hopeless. In almost all cases they knew a lot of buzzwords, they knew the jargon, but they were ultimately easy for me to tear apart. However, for a non-SEO expert, they can sound great. The result? You hire them, and they just don’t live up to your expectations.

You need to be an SEO expert to interview an SEO specialist. These people are very few and far between. I’m an SEO expert and I have trouble hiring people who are any good. They are very rare commodities. What I have to do is hire someone with ‘potential’, then spend the next 18 months training them to the point where they can really do it. To the point where they can rank sites repeatably and think creatively.

So, what’s the answer?

Let us help you. By working with us you will gain:

•    Real SEO Talent
•    It Will Cost You Less Than Hiring Another Full-Time Employee
•    You will get the benefit of multiple people with multi-disciplinary talents brainstorming on your business’s web presence
•    If you want to ultimately hire your own SEO specialist, we will help you recruit, interview and train that person.

Why would we help you hire your own SEO Specialist?

It probably sounds a bit contradictory to you for us to provide SEO services AND help you hire someone in-house as well? It’s simple really, it’s a question of scale.

When we work with a company improving their visibility through SEO, they get more business. When our clients get more business they do not say, “okay that’s enough we do not want to grow any further”. What actually happens is that their question becomes, “how can we grow faster, how can we get even more done?”

One way to do this is then for them to have someone in-house that we can work more efficiently with. Someone we can train for them.

Next Step?

Let’s chat and discuss your needs.

www.holisticwebpresence.com
Tim Barrie +1 (801) 349-8226
tim@holisticwebpresence.com

“I recently discovered that one of the contact forms on my website is not working. How can I make sure they are always working correctly?”

Short Answer

Testing them yourself on a regular basis is the only surefire way to do this.

Background:

The following talks about websites that are specifically built on WordPress. However, most of the detail applies equally to websites built on any platform.

Most forms on a website are a source of some type of lead for the website owner. While this can vary by market, form fills average between 20% – 30% of total leads. The remaining 70%-80% of leads come from phone calls.

There are many things that can go wrong with forms on a website, both directly and indirectly.  The most common include:

• They just stop working because the form plugin fails, it gets old, and or the vendor stops support for it
• An update to another unrelated plugin causes a conflict with the form plugin
• A core WordPress update causes incompatibility issues with existing plugins
• A change is made to some other part of the website that affects the form plugin
• Completed forms suddenly start going into the junk folder of the recipient
• The site is hacked

All these issues are common and can be fixed; however, the problem is that there is no reliable way to know if they have occurred in the first place, other than to test the forms manually.

Bottom Line

If your business relies on completed forms from your website, we strongly recommend you test them on a regular basis. We recommend doing this on at least a monthly basis.

Most clients know quickly if their forms stop working because incoming completed forms suddenly stop. Also, sometimes their clients will let them know when they experience a problem with the form.

We also test plugins on a website whenever we do some development work that we think might impact other plugins.

Additional Services

At Holistic Web Presence, we do everything we can to ensure that all software on a website functions consistently. However, it is nigh-on impossible to test all forms, on all sites, all the time. Further, no web development company can test all functionality on a website all the time.

While we will always go ahead and fix issues whenever we spot them, we still rely on our clients to let us know if something on their website is misbehaving. We then take action to resolve any issues as quickly as we can.

Mission Critical Website Functionality

For those clients that have mission-critical functionality on their website and require proactive measures to test specific aspects of that functionality, we offer additional services.

Regular proactive form testing can be relatively straightforward. For example, we provide simple form testing once a month at a rate of $50 per month — two forms at $70, three at $90, and so on.

However, things can get more complicated with more complex forms, forms behind a password, clients that require more frequent testing, clients that require testing that a specific recipient actually receives the form fills, and so on.

In addition, there are many other aspects of a website that can be proactively tested, such as basic site availability, load speed, and user login or account creation processes.

If you have a mission-critical aspect of your website and want to initiate some form of proactive testing, please call us so we can discuss viability and potential costs.

How to create awesome videos for SEO, with minimum budget, time, and effort.

This article is written for our clients who want to create their own videos to enable us to add the most effective form of fresh content to their website.

We have used one specific niche for our examples. We have done this to help you understand how the different formats look and are implemented. These concepts do, however, work for all types of niches, products, and services. To date, we have not encountered a niche where these same concepts cannot be applied.

Your Clients Are Your Best Sources of Content

Showing pictures, creating videos, and generally creating case studies like articles of your clients using your product or experiencing your service can become an endless source of extremely effective content. And content is the foundation, the starting point of all forms of effective digital marketing.

Video Types, From Effective to Extremely Effective

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On-Camera Client Interview, Show and Tell – Extremely Effective

On camera, show and tell style videos where the client is a participant, can be one of the most effective types of videos. Potential new clients are often most convinced by being able to see and hear what some of your other clients have to say. Do not confuse this with testimonial-style videos which often look contrived. The difference is that the video should be unstaged and focus on the detail of the client’s experience and not just be a blatant and shallow commercial for your business.

Examples

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mhoeQT9wZw
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=242&v=plv0FWnAFHs
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCfVsN2LmAA

How:

• Use a video camera

Tips:

• Don’t just have the client say how great you are, or something is. Instead have them talk about the detail, the features, why they like it, and how they came to want it. The more detail, the more they tell a story better.
• Provide high-quality images to back up your video
  • Before and after images, the more the better.
  • Include detailed close-up feature pictures, not just general pictures.
  • Make sure you have pictures from every angle.
• Sound is important.
  • It does not have to be professional quality, but it does need to be clear and audible.
  • Use throat microphones if there is any background sound.

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On-Camera Show and Tell – Very Effective

It is not always possible to get your clients in front of the camera. In that case, consider simply filming yourself or whoever knows the project the best, providing a straightforward tour of the project. Even if your client does participate in the video, it is a good idea to do this as well. Try to avoid “selling” in these videos. Instead, try to make the tone of the video more educational and informative. Talk about the detail of the design. The more informal and unscripted the video appears, the more effective it is likely to be.

Examples

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b42yzlNMnH8
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4yHjdlHY_c
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=80&v=uGJZ_6X-glM

How:

• Use a video camera

Tips:

• Talk about the details, the thought process that went into the project.
  • Describe all the features, their benefits, and the story behind the project.
• Provide high-quality images to back up your video, before and after, the more, the better.
  • Include detailed pictures, not just general pictures.
• Sound is important.
  • It does not have to be professional quality, but it does need to be clear and audible.
  • Use throat microphones if there is any background sound.

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Screen Recording Videos – Effective

Examples

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfcwThvogS4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrIZxXgmeQs
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUke6-_f-8o

How:

• Use some screen recording software

Tips:

• Make sure you have a good number of high-quality images, including design drawings, sketches, and any other resources to talk through on your video.
• Before and after pictures, pictures of your client enjoying your service.
• If you provided service within a client’s house, consider including pictures of the house and the neighborhood in which it resides (although make sure the address is not visible).
• Talk about the details, the thought process that went into the design, and the project in general.
• Describe all the features, their benefits, and the story behind the project.
• Sound is important.
  • It does not, however, have to be professional quality, but it does need to be clear and audible.
  • Buy yourself a decent microphone, don’t rely on the microphone that comes with your laptop.
• There are lots of different software applications that allow you to record your PC’s screen.
  • The one you are most familiar with and comfortable using is probably the best one.
  • We recommend TechSmith’s Snagit

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The Recorded Conference Call – Effective

Examples

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4njrXKUaYo&feature=youtu.be
• https://www.youtube.com/embed/RJ-uj0DBFvE
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAI6PxiV9cE

How:

• We set up a screen share conference call with you, ask you questions, and have you show and tell.

Tips:

• This process makes it easy for the less experienced client to get a similar effect as a screen recording video.
• It enables those clients to do so without needing to learn how to:
  • Purchase and use a video camera.
  • Install and use screen recording software.
  • Think too much about what to say.
  • Get the whole thing done with minimal time invested in the process by them.
• They should be prepared with images of their product or service.
• While this process usually works very well, the sound quality can become erratic as we are at the mercy of the quality of the internet connection at the time of the call.

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How NOT TO DO IT (How to create videos that do very little for SEO & CRO)

We have provided four good ways above to create videos that can be used to dramatically boost your visibility online. This article would not be complete though without also providing at least one example of how not to do it.

Example

• https://vimeo.com/183917360

How:

• Pay someone to create a nice-looking video for you.

Tips:

• Make sure they use lots of slow pans.
• Apply boring music to it with no narration.
• Provide no descriptive detail, explanation, or call to action.

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General Tips:

When Creating Videos for Ranking and conversion (SCO & CRO)

• Don’t waste time while editing and producing your video, trying to make it perfect.
• Don’t worry about making mistakes or repeating yourself.
  • Just send us the raw recording, we will edit and do the rest.
• Send us as many images as possible that relate to your video.
  • To make images effective for SEO, it is vital to include detailed descriptions for each image.
• The point is not to try to make a high-quality professional polished video.
• The point is to make an interesting video that is detailed and informative.
• The point is not to create the best video and spend a lot of effort to make it perfect.
• The point is to create a regular flow of videos that are interesting and good enough.
• The point is to create a video for every key phrase you want to rank for and every page that is designed to rank for it.

Most important of all, it is vital to understand that it is the detail, the narrated content, that makes the videos effective for SEO and CRO. The more detail, the better. The videos become the starting point for content generation: rich articles, optimized pages, social posts, and much more. If your goal is to beat your competition, this is how to do it!

Objective Tests

We’ve run quite a lot of paid advertising campaigns for clients on Yelp, Houzz, and others over the last 2-3 years. We did them mostly as tests to see if we could identify significant ROI-orientated results from the investment.

The bottom line is that if we saw our clients get more back in business profit than they spent, we would recommend doing them.

The results, however, did not produce any significant upswing in business on any of the test campaigns we ran. Therefore, in most cases, doing paid advertising campaigns for ROI purposes on platforms like Yelp is generally not something we recommend.

That is not to say that it never pays to advertise on any of these platforms. The trick is to test their efficacy very carefully. Most people, unfortunately, do not take the time to measure a campaign’s results, so they just keep spending, hoping it is doing something for them.

The Bigger Picture

Nowadays a pretty standard business model on the web is to offer a free service, such as the ability to list your business on a platform like Yelp, Houzz, Angie’s List, and many others. Then as the platform builds a bigger and bigger list and their listing platform gains general visibility, they monetize the platform by trying to upsell the people using their free service into paying for some kind of enhanced listing.

When you think about it, this model applies to not just the companies mentioned above but to Google itself. Google index and list your site in Google Search for free, but what they really want is for you to pay for an enhanced listing, namely AdWords. Google is simply the most successful with the model.

How To Win The Game

There is no question that utilizing these free services, i.e., listing and optimizing a business’s visibility on all of these platforms produces big benefits for any business. The trick is to use and leverage their free service as much as possible without getting sucked into paying for their upsell service. When played that way, the listing business wins the maximum. If the listing business, however, pays for an enhanced listing, the listing business incurs a cost, and the listing platform makes money from them. Google makes billions of dollars every year from JUST this model. 90% of Google’s revenue comes from AdWords.

In my mind, it’s a bit like the way credit cards work. Banks give people credit cards for free. It’s a free service. All the time the credit card owner has the discipline to pay off their credit card in full every month, they win the maximum benefit with zero cost. However, as soon as they leave a balance, the bank charges interest, the user incurs a cost, and the bank makes money from them.

When It Makes Sense Fund The Up-sell

• Periodic and very specific tests.
  • Sometimes for very specific keyphrases, where there is no current organic visibility, AdWords can be a useful test to see if people who search on a particular phrase will actually buy. If they do, then it is a no-brainer to invest in organic visibility. Organic visibility will typically return a 5 to 6 times result over AdWords.  However, it is a LOT more work and takes time. AdWords can be a great tool in this way as the results are instant.
• Brand awareness
  • There’s no question that participating in enhanced listings will help with general brand awareness. When your company name or brand shows upfront and center everywhere, people will better recognize your brand.

Turning the Tables – Really Winning – Winning Big

To really win, the trick is to leverage the platform to its fullest extent and to do it better than your competition. Doing this is usually a combination of adding content and getting reviews.

• Content
  • This means generating and posting a continuous flow of good, highly optimized content.
• Reviews
  • Most platforms, Google, Yelp, Houzz, and others allow your customers to post reviews about you and or your products. Look at it this way, a continuous flow of good reviews on Yelp will outperform tens of thousands of dollars in paid advertising with Yelp.

Continuously adding great content and causing your customers to leave reviews is, however, a lot of work. In the long run, though, it is our experience that doing these two things will reap benefits orders of magnitude higher than participating in paid advertising campaigns on those platforms.

Related

When to Advertise on Yelp and Make a Killing

Standard hosting packages that come with very low-cost subscriptions from hosting service providers such as GoDaddy, HostGator, Bluehost, and many others are completely different from the services we provide.

Standard Managed Hosting – Cost

Our managed hosting charge for most WordPress sites is just $47 a month. Clients that pay annually upfront, get a one-month discount, so you only pay for 11 months.

This rate applies to most straightforward websites that have a limited number of static pages. Usually, this means less than 50 pages. If you have a larger website and or one with an e-commerce store, rates may vary based on the scale and complexity of the site.

See below a list of what is included with hosting.

If you have other sites that use a different back-end (CMS) to WordPress, we can still probably host it however we would need to look at the site first, so we know what we are dealing with before we could commit.

Migration and Initial Security Set-up

You may also have an initial (one-off) cost which can range wildly depending on the size and complexity of the site. This is for the process of migrating your site from wherever it is now, to our managed hosting platform. Clients on marketing plans usually have this cost covered within the plan.

This charge includes resetting up the site and checking every aspect of the site to make sure it is consistent with the original version of the site. In addition, it covers the initial security setup, plug-in review, setting up the off-site backup system, and adding or checking Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA). We also look closely at what GA & GSC are telling us about your site and if there are problems, we will either go ahead and fix them or make recommendations as to possible changes that might improve the performance of your website. If you have more than one website, discounts may apply.

Our Standard Managed Hosting Charges Include the Following

Maintaining the site

• Keeping the site consistent with changes in the way sites need to present, such as mobile optimization
• WordPress updates
• Plugin updates
• Advanced security
• Spam protection
• Offsite backups (and restore if needed)…
  • This means that if your website was to get hacked or encounter some other major problem, we can restore it quickly without incurring any additional charges
  • Offsite back-ups
    • When we run back-ups, we save the backup to a separate location away from the server where the site is hosted. This is because it is not uncommon that when a site is hacked the backup on the same server can also be infected.
    • Sometimes the entire server including the backup of your site can go down. By saving copies of your site to a completely different location we increase the likelihood that we can get the site back-up quickly and reliably regardless of the reason for the outage.
• Monitoring the site for problems
  • Note, even the most stable site, with zero changes or content added to it, can experience problems over time
    • This is because while the site may not change, many changes occur within the software environment that it sits in
    • For example, server software gets upgraded, the browsers that are used to view your site, change
    • Another example is that while it is important to keep the WordPress updated on your site. If you do, there is a risk that one or more plugins also installed on your site, may not function properly with this new version of WordPress
      • This is one of the most common conditions that cause problems with websites
      • When you have a managed hosting plan, all you need do is ask your assigned developer to implement updates on your site and check for compatibly problems
      • This will usually be done within the hosting plan, without any extra charges

Minor edit requests are included i.e.

• Address or phone number changes, text corrections, that kind of thing
• If you want a simple navigational change or have a form go to a different email address, we also take care of that at no extra charge
  • This applies provided that you know exactly what you want, can communicate it clearly to the developer and the developer can take care of it with just a few minutes of work
  • If you need help to figure out what you want, the best way to do something, or the change you want will require a significant amount of development time, extra charges may apply

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Advanced Managed Hosting

Clients on marketing plans with us receive more advanced hosting services as part of their hosting plan. This includes many proprietary technical enhancements and performance-boosting techniques that help to cause the site to be more competitive and help it to outrank its competition.

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DIY Enthusiasts and Self Hosting

Standard hosting packages that come with very low-cost subscriptions from hosting service providers such as GoDaddy, HostGator, Bluehost, and many others are completely different from the services we provide as described above.

When we provide ‘managed hosting‘ you get an assigned web developer who will take responsibility for the site. This means that if there is a problem, they will fix it for you. In most cases, there will be no extra charges for this process. We will keep the site up to date with the latest technology, security tools, and security methodologies. We will back up the site regularly and restore the site if needed, without you incurring any additional charges.

When you ‘self-host’ using a personal plan with providers like the examples mentioned above, this means you are placing your site in a non-secure, non-commercial grade environment and also taking responsibility for managing your own website. Should a problem occur, you will need to work with the support department at the hosting provider yourself.

For personal blogs and most non-commercial sites, this can be a great way to minimize costs.

However, we recommend that if you have a website that you depend on for income or one that is critical to your business, you consider a ‘managed hosting’ service.

• It is very common that a company starts out with a ‘self-hosted’ solution, then when something goes wrong with the site
  • They do not realize this for an extended period of time – they only find out when a potential customer informs them
  • They wrestle with the support department of their hosting provider
  • They learn that they have to find a web developer to fix the problem, incur extra unexpected charges along with all the delays associated with working through the above process
• At best, this can result in opportunities lost, at worst, there will be extra charges and loss of income

Be smart, if your business depends on the continuous availability and smooth function of your website, make sure you have a ‘managed hosting‘ solution

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What About SSL?

We can also implement SSL for you. The cost of that service is $285 annually.

Nowadays SSL is a necessity for all professional business websites.

When SSL is implemented on your website, this means all traffic between your site and a user accessing it, is encrypted.

All the URLs change from Http:// to Https://. Most browsers will also highlight the fact that your site is ‘considered secure‘.

Google has also indicated that its ranking algorithm advantages sites with SSL

What we do

We get and install the SSL certificate, use one that we are familiar with, get good support for ‘Comodo‘ test and fix the site as needed.

We also add the appropriate trust badge (and enhance it) to the homepage (this helps with conversions). We also make sure the canonical tagging (HTTP v HTTPS URLs) is set up optimally for SEO.

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Learn More About Implemented an SSL Certificate on Your Website

• See:
  • https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
  • https://searchengineland.com/https-setup-causing-seo-issues-254236

What a lot of people do not realize is that when you install an SSL certificate it can often break pages and functions on a website. Forms suddenly stop working, images don’t load, PHP functions become erratic.

For further insights into SSL implementation challenges, you may find these articles helpful

• https://www.globalsign.com/en/blog/top-ssl-certificate-errors-and-solutions/
• https://www.digicert.com/ssl-problems.htm
• https://www.digicert.com/ssl-support/certificate-not-trusted-error.htm

What Happens If I Decide That I Want a Different Web Developer to Host My Website?

If we currently host your website and you decide to work with a different web developer, we will provide you with a full backup of your website.

There are now tons of TLDs (Top-Level Domains) like .vegas .realty .realestate and so on. In general here is what we find.

• Funky TLD’s are often associated with spam emails or spammy type sites
• .com seems to be taken more seriously by both people that search the web and the search engines.
  • We suspect that those two behaviors are interrelated
• There is no evidence that a keyphrase orientated TLD provides any ranking benefit
  • What evidence there is, the suggestion is the opposite – it seems to be harder to rank non .coms

In general, we recommend companies stick with the following, at least for now…

.com (commercial),

.net (originally intended for Internet service providers, but now used for a variety of purposes),

.org (non-profit organizations),

.gov (U.S. government agencies),

.mil (military),

.edu (educational organizations).

Opinion

We think the primary benefit of new TLDs is that they are a way for domain registrars to make more money.

• Example: Canon HAS to buy .canon (just to protect their brand), result – instant dollars for domain registrars

Technically when we say “domain registrars” we mean the whole food chain. The food chain comprises the registrar (the store you purchase the domain from), the registry (the whole-seller of the domains), and ICANN (the regulator of the domains). Who makes the most money? The whole-seller does by far.

For a better insight into how this all works see What actually happens when you buy a domain name?

Theoretically

Over time we may see more TLD usage consistent with business types, i.e. .attorney, .plumber, .hvac though this is far from certain. We think it is more likely that companies will have to purchase the business type TLD in addition to their .com.

Example:

• JoesPlumbingService.com has to also buy JoesPlumbingService.plumber AND JoesPlumbingService. plumbing in order to protect their brand.
• On the other hand, if ” JoesPlumbingService ” was a new business could he really afford to just purchase JoesPlumbingService.plumber and risk someone else purchasing JoesPlumbingService.com then redirecting it to their site?

Related article:

https://www.cmdsonline.com/blog/the-looking-glass/top-level-domains-brand-building-agency/

A common reason we see these problems is that they get hacked. The most common reason they get hacked is that people insist on continuing to use extremely easy-to-hack passwords!

Your Email Password Is Much Easier To Hack Than You Think

Don’t take our word for it, read these two very good articles:

Why Your Passwords Are Easy To Hack

35% of Users Have Weak Passwords

Your Email Password Is Much Easier To Hack Than You Think

There is in fact a whole industry that produces email password cracking solutions. This includes standard off-the-shelf hardware which can cycle through as many as 350,000,000,000 guesses per second. Still think your password would be hard to guess? Think again. This technology is flaunted, see this PowerPoint presentation, “We can use VCL for password cracking!” for an example.

Secure Your Password

If you follow our recommendations you will go from an estimated one day to hack your passwords (as they are today) to an estimated six months to hack them. So while there is probably no password that would be impossible to hack you can make it a lot more difficult. And it’s actually pretty easy to make it extremely difficult.

Change The Password On Your Email Account To A “Complex” Password

Make sure everyone in your company does the same.

What is a “complex” password”?

A Complex Password Will Have:

• no real words in it
• upper and lower case letters
• special characters
• numbers
• At least 12 characters long (the longer the better)
• Not the same as any other password you use

An example of what a secure password looks like is, scF2#L159n:w

Next problem, how to remember all these funky passwords?

Don’t even try, we recommend using a password manager and never allowing your browser to “remember your passwords”.

Recommended password managers

• Lastpass
• Roboform