You’ve probably heard of 2048-bit encryption, or seen the HTTPS markup in your address bar indicating that the site has an SSL certificate. Have you wondered “Do I need an SSL certificate on my site?” or “Will an SSL certificate help my Portland SEO in any way?” Using an SSL certificate helps your users know that their information is safe. Using an SSL certificate provides two important things:

• Encryption of sensitive data like credit card numbers and personal information
• Some assurance to your customers that you are trustworthy (the process of getting an SSL certificate can’t guarantee this, but it can make it more likely which is part of the reason why visitors have this perception)

These are very important benefits and, while not all websites require an SSL certificate, it is essential for certain types of sites. To find out if you need an SSL certificate for your site, answer these questions:

Is my site an e-commerce site that collects credit card information?
For most e-commerce sites, you absolutely need an SSL certificate! As an online merchant, it is your responsibility to make sure the information you collect from your customers is protected. This will shield you and your customers by making sure that no one can intercept and misuse their credit card information.

Your customers are providing you with very important and personal information that allows access to their hard earned money. If an identity thief gets access to your customer’s credit card information because you didn’t take the necessary precautions, it can be devastating to you and to your customer. Your customers need to know that you value their security and privacy and are serious about protecting their information. More and more customers are becoming savvy online shoppers and won’t buy from you if you don’t have an SSL certificate installed.

If you accept credit card information and store it in a database so you can process it using an offline POS machine or charge it manually on your merchant account’s website, then you definitely need an SSL certificate to secure the credit card data as it is transferred. You also need to be very careful with the data when it is stored on your servers. Learn more about PCI Compliance and SSL and the requirements of protecting stored credit card information.

Do I use a 3rd party payment processor?
If your e-commerce site forwards your visitors to a 3rd party payment processor (like PayPal) to enter the credit card information then you don’t need an SSL certificate because your website won’t touch the credit card information. Just make sure none of the credit card details get entered when the address bar still shows your domain name. Note that PayPal allows you to accept the credit card information on your site or forward visitors to their site. If you accept the credit card information on your site, you need an SSL certificate.

Do I have a login form?
If your users enter a username and password to login to your site without an SSL certificate, an attacker can easily see their username and password in clear text. This would allow someone else to impersonate your visitor, but it allows for a far more dangerous possibility: Because users often use the same password on many sites (including their bank accounts), an attacker can potentially compromise many other accounts. If you let people store a password with you, you must take responsibility for protecting it, even if the security of your own site isn’t critical.

It is true that most login forms don’t currently use SSL. This means that most login forms are vulnerable. With the number of cheap SSL certificates available, it is becoming more and more worthwhile to secure login forms. If you want to forego the SSL certificate without having to worry about securing the login information, you can also use OpenID, Facebook Connect, or another technology that lets users log in on a another site and return to your site. Learn more about creating a secure login form.

In short, if your website is a collection of pictures of your pet slug “Flash” with a small blog and doesn’t require visitors to log in, you probably don’t need SSL. If you have a login form or send or receive private customer information, then you need SSL. If you run an e-commerce website where people provide you with credit card information directly on your site, you absolutely need SSL.

Google has announced that going HTTPS — adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site — will give you a minor ranking boost.

Google says this gives websites a small ranking benefit, only counting as a “very lightweight signal” within the overall ranking algorithm. In fact, Google said this carries “less weight than other signals such as high-quality content.” Based on their tests, Google says it has an impact on “fewer than 1% of global queries” but said they “may decide to strengthen” the signal because they want to “encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.”

Google also said based on their tests for the past few months, the HTTPS signal showed “positive results” in terms of relevancy and ranking in Google’s search results.

As you may remember, at SMX West, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, said he’d love to make SSL a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. Well, less than five months after that announcement, and while he is on an extended leave, Google is making it a reality.

Portland SEO Concerns With Going HTTPS

Should you be concerned when switching from your HTTP to HTTPS site for SEO purposes? Not so much. Google has been telling webmasters it is safe to do so for years. But you need to take the proper steps to ensure your traffic doesn’t suffer. That means make sure to communicate to Google that you moved your site from HTTP to HTTPS. Google promises to release more documentation in the future, but for now has provided the following tips

• Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
• Use 2048-bit key certificates
• Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
• Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
• Check out our site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address
• Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
• Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.
• Google has also updated Google Webmaster Tools to better handle HTTPS sites and the reporting on them.
• One last thing: You will want to make sure to track your HTTP to HTTPS migration carefully in your analytics software and within Google Webmaster Tools.

For the past several months you have likely heard digital marketing, internet marketing and SEO used more or less interchangeably. However, the three terms are not synonymous for each other.

Digital marketing is a broad term that describes a set of marketing processes that utilize all available digital channels to promote a product or service or build a digital brand. Digital marketing has come to succeed traditional marketing and the transition from paper and newspaper ads to Facebook and PPC campaigns.

The channels that make up digital marketing include: Web sites, Social media platforms, Banner placement, email marketing, mobile marketing, SEO, pay per click campaigns, Web TV, SMS, billboards and anything else with a digital foundation.

Internet marketing is a subset of digital marketing. It is in fact the most important component since the majority of digital marketing activities fall within the boundaries of Internet marketing. We will see below how digital marketing budgets are spent and their relationship with Internet marketing.

A very simple breakdown is as follows:

Digital marketing includes internet marketing and internet marketing includes SEO. Here’s how it looks in a hierarchical breakdown:

1. Digital Marketing

• a. Internet Marketing
• a1. SEO

A sampling of digital marketing activities are:

• Web presence (website)
• Social media marketing
• Digital advertising
• SEO
• Online AV advertising

Many people who hear the term Digital Marketing think that immediately they are talking about Internet Marketing After years of experience in the arena, we feel that Digital Marketing includes all marketing that is not print. Whereas Internet Marketing (a component of Digital Marketing) is just that marketing on the Internet only, including SEO.

During 2014 top digital marketing investments will be made on ecommerce, social media marketing, content creation and mobile marketing.

According to a recent study by Gartner Research, the majority of digital marketing budgets is spent on internet marketing components, such as SEO.

In particular the most important findings are:

Marketing budgets represent 10% of total company revenues and this is expected to grow by 6% in 2013
Digital marketing represents ¼ of overall marketing spend 50% of digital marketing activities are outsourced (if you are thinking to outsource, make sure that you do it correctly without spending a fortune).

Digital Marketing includes Internet Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Email Marketing. Using the Smart Phones to deliver your message is a great way for lots of kinds of businesses to have immediate gratification with their marketing. For example imagine your a restaurant and every Monday you are slow, but Thursday, Friday, and Sunday you really pack them in. How do you think you can get some of those people who normal wait an hour or so on Friday night to come in and enjoy your great food on Monday? The answer is mobile marketing. First you have some very tasteful signs you can put on table or at the hostess station. asking people to text a few number to a 5 digit code. Offer them a free appetizer or to win a I-PAD. Then on Monday around 3 0r 4 in the afternoon hit them with a text saying something like 2 for 1 special or some other creative giveaway to come in tonight and eat that great food with little to no wait. now lets say that you have a few hundred to a few thousand on your Mobile marketing list. You only need a very small percentage to come in and your terrible Monday has turned into a profitable night that the servers are happy to work. Because Smart Phones would receive this message from the restaurant while people are getting ready to leave for the day, a few might just call their partner and say , “Hey let go to that great restaurant we love , they are having a 2 for 1 special”. That is POWERFUL.

Now when we are talking about Internet Marketing by itself, that is what people usually mean when they say things like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Local SEO (LSEO), SEM, Social Media, and Display or Banner Advertising. They all take place on the Internet in some form. SEO, SEM, LSEO all take place on the search engines, more likely Google. The SEO is in the main area of Google, this area is commonly know as the organic section. LSEO is the area next to the map on the first page of Google. SEM or commonly know as ADWORDS or Pay Per Click. It is the area on the very top of the page in the shaded area and along the side of the first page of Google. Social Media is using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blogging, and many more. I like to think of Social Media as word of mouth on crack. It is the ultimate word of mouth advertising. When a friend has “liked” or +1 a site or product, you are more likely to also like or +1 it. Display advertising is more of a branding effort and it is harder to calculate ROI, but if your budget will allow it is quite effective. For example if you go to a site, then it tracks you where you go and places Display or Banner ads on sites that your then visit.

In conclusion, Internet Marketing and all of the kinds of ways to go about doing Internet Marketing falls under the Digital Marketing agenda.

Keeping up with what your fans and followers do as they move from one screen to another has sometimes been difficult. For Google Analytics users, this process will get a bit easier with the launch of Universal Analytics in public beta. Originally available only to paying customers, Universal Analytics is now available to all users.

Google announced the availability of Universal Analytics in public beta on Friday. Universal Analytics was originally offered to paying customers but everyone can now get access via their free Google Analytics account.

What Google’s Universal Analytics Offers

If you’re new to this terrain, Google Analytics offers a free way to find out what’s happening on your website by simply adding a simple code to each page. Often this process is automated by blog platforms and webhosts so that you can just add your account code via your control panel.

You’re then able to track a somewhat overwhelming array of information about how many visitors you have, how many visits are made, what countries they come from, how long they stay on the site and what devices they use to view the site. There has been a mobile element available but Universal Analytics should improve this process, according to Google Analytics help, via:

• New data collection methods
• Simplified feature configuration
• Custom dimensions & custom metrics
• Multi-platform tracking
• Newbies will have the choice of Universal Analytics or Classic Analytics when they set up their site. You can also choose to track Android and iOS app activity but that’s separate from desktop and mobile web activity.

Old timey users will have to set up a new web property to use the new features. They say there’s going to be some kind of migration guide which may mean they’re going to introduce an easy way to switch over your old web property records to the new system but you’ll still need to add the new code to your site to get new features.

Visualize Your Google Analytics

Google Analytics isn’t the most user friendly tool for quickly grasping the big picture. Visual.ly recently introduced a free Google Analytics Report. This will make it not only easier to get a quick overview of what’s happening but will also be useful in creating reports for presentation.

Here’s more from the official announcement:

A typical consumer today uses multiple devices to surf the web and interact in many ways with your business. For most large businesses, already swimming in many sources of data, it’s an enormous challenge, but also an incredible opportunity.

Back in October, we announced the limited beta release of Universal Analytics as a way for businesses to understand the changing, multi-device customer journey. Today, we’re excited to welcome and invite all Google Analytics customers to try Universal Analytics.

The benefits of using Universal Analytics to businesses are:

• Understanding how customers interact with your businesses across many devices and touch-points,
• Insights into the performance of your mobile apps,
• Improvements of lead generation and ROI by incorporating offline and online interactions so you can understand which channels drive the best results,
• Improved latency on your site by reducing client-side demands.

Let’s discuss how to make those links you’re developing look totally organic and natural to search engines. This is a cornerstone to good Portland SEO.

Link Anchor Texts — What It’s All About

First things first. Link anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink that you click to visit another Website or page. In HTML terms, link anchor text is the text placed between the anchor tags (<a> and </a>), hence the name. Here goes an HTML code snippet of an anchor text:

<a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>Anchor Text</a>

And on your page this code will look like this:

Anchor Text

Since the Google “Florida” update (rolled out November 2003) link anchor texts have become hugely important from the SEO perspective. Here’s why.

The Hilltop Algorithm (patented Google’s algo effective since the “Florida” update) states that Google will associate your Website with the anchor text of incoming links. What this means is that if you use “blue widget accessories” in the anchor text of your incomings links, Google will assign a higher relevancy score to your site for “blue widgets” as well as “blue widget accessories”, and rank it accordingly in its search results.

Currently, this is one of the fundamental aspects behind the way Google works and ranks its search results.

Always Do It The Natural Way

Now, one of the commonest mistakes Webmasters make is take their keyword phrases, stuff them into link anchors and then email people with link exchange offers asking everyone to use the exact same anchor text by all means.

This is not the way to go. Allow me to repeat that: This is NOT the way to go! This is the way Google seriously frowns upon. Why? You guessed it — it doesn’t look natural, it doesn’t feel natural, so it’s not natural, and you are asking for trouble if you do that because Google will think you are trying to manipulate its search results.

Think about it. If people linked naturally to your site, would they use all the same anchor texts? ‘Course not! The anchor texts would be all different.

So the answer to the “How do I make my anchor texts natural?” question is “Vary them!” Yes, vary them, and you’ll be well on your way to making Google love the links pointing to your site and rank your site higher for the keywords you target.

For example, you could use a slightly different anchor text every once in a while to achieve that. So instead of putting “blue widgets” into each and every anchor text, try to get your incoming links to look like this:

Blue widgets company
Comprehensive info on blue widgets
Blue widgets discounts available!
How to choose blue widgets wisely
Cost-effective blue widget services

…and so on, you get the idea.

Link Descriptions — Always Provide Natural Context For Your Links

If you want to benefit from your incoming links, you want to make sure your links appear on a page that has other (relevant) text. If a page consists of links and nothing but links, chances are it will look like a link farm to the search engines, which, of course, is a bad thing.

So make sure your link appears in the right context — surrounded by relevant text that includes your keywords. When you email other Webmasters asking to place a link to your site, give them a link description to use.

And yes, you guessed what I’m about to say: The right way of doing things is to avoid recognizable patterns and vary your link descriptions every so often so it looks perfectly organic to Google. Again, instead of using a description stuffed with your keywords such as “Blue widget company selling blue widgets!”, make it look natural by varying the description and making it sound natural:

“XYZ company is a recognized leader in the widget technology. The company’s primary specialization is blue widgets. Follow the link above to find out more.”

“XYZ offers value-added blue widgets to hundreds of happy customers from around the world. Find out more about our widgets by using the link above.”

Put some effort into writing at least several proper link descriptions, and not only will you provide more value to the human visitors, you will also make search engines rank your site higher in their SERPs, because your linking strategy will look more natural.

At the risk of sounding boring, let me emphasize this one more time. Don’t think varied link anchor texts and descriptions are not that important and don’t underestimate the power of Google. Use the same anchor text for a thousand of links and the new Google will simply devalue or even disregards your incoming links at all. You have been warned.

So when developing your backlink campaign, come prepared. Create several link anchor texts and descriptions (the more the better, actually), and use different ones every once in a while for your Portland SEO.