How Did These E-commerce WordPress Site Attacks Happen?

Hackers and lax security measures are to blame for most of these e-commerce WordPress site breaches.

Late last year, companies started finding out that there were attacks that allowed the cybercriminals to use brute force to get into their websites via the administrator’s account. The hackers then changed the main index of the entire site file to inject malicious code. The virus code acted as a web proxy to redirect income web traffic to a control server that allowed the hackers to do their magic. This server is where all of the attacks ended up taking place on the unknowing victims. And it’s all still happening today!

Were There Many Stores?

There were thousands of e-commerce WordPress sites that have been attacked and compromised in the past year.

Believe it or not, there were over 7,000 e-commerce WordPress sites that were run by these horrible hackers. This was extremely dangerous because victims would insert their payment details when they ended up providing them. Needless to say, the damage to these companies’ credibility and reputation was negatively impacted. These companies noticed that the victim admins of the websites ended up losing their Google and other engines’ SERP (search engines results page) rankings, therefore harming the entire rankings and SEO of the website. They do this by injecting XML-generated sitemaps that have a mixture of the site’s authentic pages with the cybercriminals’ fake stores.

How Is This Dangerous for You?

You wouldn’t leave your doors unlocked at your home when you’re not there or are asleep, would you? Then why would you leave the backdoor wide open on your network just waiting to be breached?

For starters, many companies host their own websites on a central server when it comes to the corporate or small business level. This can be extremely dangerous and allow attackers further backdoor access to hijack more data, insert ransomware, and do a wide world of hurt to the companies they’re trying to deface. At the same time, it allows them to use a tactic that extorts the SEO of a company’s website (which is nothing new when it comes to the business world) for malware and hijacking. While it’s been said that there are cyber attacks on competitors for businesses that are similar, this isn’t done by completely taking over their website.

How Can I Protect My Business Website That Is Not an E-Commerce WordPress Site?

To find a reliable web hosting partner, you may want to ask your IT specialists since they should have experience with the pros and cons of each hosting service.

If you host your website online, the first line of defense is to either find a reputable web host that can provide this or use a local company of professionals that has web hosting packages with the highest cybersecurity possible. You can end up having lower fees this way and add an all-in-one security solution to enable more defense for your company to be safe and your business website’s pages.

If a hijacker ends up getting into your system, there may be more accounts that can be compromised too. This can end up getting you in legal trouble with customers, competitors, and even your employees if their information gets stolen due to the data breach. You can also put yourself at risk for further discrepancies, which can destroy your business.

Our Final Thoughts

Infinity Solutions has an all-in-one security solution for businesses, but many people don’t know that we also provide a web hosting service. Customers rest assured knowing that all of their website data is protected at the highest security level. No matter if you are running an e-commerce WordPress site or a regular, we have your back. We offer flexible solutions to give you whatever you need and even allow you to back things up in case of an emergency (one of the biggest defenses against hackers and ransomware). You can give us a call and speak to one of the representatives, or you can always choose one of the other hosting providers we mentioned in one of our previous posts.

After all, was said and done, more than 700K websites were affected by the WordPress File Manager plugin vulnerability.

However, on May 5^th of this year, version 6.4 of the plugin ended up having its test version uploaded for installation rather than the final release version. This caused a lot of havoc, and the attackers didn’t wait to start taking advantage of it. Hundreds of thousands of websites were affected and ended up getting flagged by their hosting providers for having malicious content.

Are All WordPress Sites Affected? What Does This Do?

The WordPress, File Manager plugin vulnerability occurred because someone the script above from a .php-dist extension and renamed it to a .php then added it to the project without realizing it. Reinforcing the adage that if you’re not careful and let even one small file slip through the cracks, it can cause a critical vulnerability for hundreds of thousands of users.

Fortunately, no, not everybody’s site was affected. Still, if yours was one of them, you probably received an email from your hosting provider that stated that it indeed had a virus injected into it. The WordPress File Manager Plugin had a bugged script that allowed any user to directly access the plugin’s file and upload anything they wanted. The cyber attackers quickly realized how easy this exploit was and took serious advantage of it.

Just after the first attack on a website was discovered on Aug. 31^st almost immediately, more than a thousand websites were attacked every hour. The next day, nearly 2,500 websites were attacked, and then the attackers worked tenfold – injecting malware into websites at a rate of about 10,000 every hour by the end of the day on Sept. 2^nd.

Is the WordPress File Manager Plugin Vulnerability Fixed?

Even though the plugin has now been fixed with an update, most WordPress site users were caught unaware of having the file manager’s older version on their system and haven’t updated their plugins. This means that your website has been more than likely open to compromise. The older version of the plugin allows users to exploit this zero-day vulnerability and execute remote code by uploading PHP files containing web shells. This could be potentially harmful when a user goes to the website, and the code automatically injects malware onto your viewer’s computers, leaving them open to remote attacks.

A WordPress, File Manager plugin solution came quickly, but not before 100’s of thousands of sites were affected. By deleting the unused .php-dist files in the WordPress File Manager, you can fix the problem.

If you’ve used this plugin for your website, the first thing you may want to do is make sure that you find any files that are flagged as malware by your hosting provider and upgrade your plugin to version 6.9. You may then want to get rid of any other of the plugin’s .php-dist files (which aren’t meant for final release anyway). Another alternative that you can do is completely uninstall the plugin, but you may need to do so manually via logging into your hosting provider’s FTP account. To do this, you need to delete the file manager folder from your wp-content/plugins folder, then reinstall the plugin to your website.

How a Managed Service Provider Can Help

If you have a managed IT support team hired on, this can be a valuable time for you to take advantage of their services. Many larger businesses and government websites were affected by this exploit, and it has even been flagged as medium risk for smaller businesses and entities. With nearly a million websites affected and injected with viruses, this was a severe ordeal. And many companies don’t have the time to sit there and go through all of their files manually, let alone help keep your business, files, and customers protected.

Working with an MSP like Infinity Solutions will allow you to focus on what matters most, your business. When problems arise, such as the latest WordPress File Manager plugin vulnerability, Infinity Solutions will be there to make sure you’re prepared and protected before anything happens.

That’s where an MSP can come in and help – they can do the work we mentioned above for you so you can focus on your business and work as needed while being completely transparent. More importantly, an excellent IT team can help you save money by only charging you for the services you need (you don’t have to worry about payroll, insurance, and all of the other stuff).

Final Thoughts

The WordPress File Manager plugin vulnerability took the world by storm in only a matter of days. Having the right team of professionals can fix your company’s website and protect it against future attacks. This exploit and millions of others discovered since the light of the pandemic are being thwarted by the best security solutions that only a real IT pro can fix for you. You want your business to be local, so you can have open communication to get the right solutions and data protection.

What’s an XML Sitemap?

Think of a sitemap as a guide for Google’s spiders to crawl over and navigate your site as quickly or as tricky as you make it. The easier you make it, the happier Google’s spiders will be.

This file in an XML format often has a list of every page, blog post, and other items (even images) seen on your page by Google and other search engines. It’s a way that the search engine can index your page and show it as a list. Have you ever searched for a website and saw the main page link, then a few sub-pages listed directly below that? That’s what a good sitemap does for a company.

In the past, WordPress used to use a robots.txt file, which often gets flagged by search engines for malicious content. By generating a sitemap, you can avoid this flag and also make sure that you have a crawlable website – meaning search engines can spider your page to ensure you’re always on the top results.

What Does a Sitemap Do for Business?

By deploying a well thought out sitemap, you could push your site over the hump and onto Google’s first page.

Having a good sitemap is extremely professional and can differentiate between a good ranking and the best. Also, it makes people searching for a service your company offers will see other things your company may offer. This could mean potential revenue increase and an improved sense of performance and client (customer) conversion. That alone is an excellent reason, but there is more to it.

If you have pages like member’s only pages, you can point out that you want to exclude those sections in the sitemap. That means that once a user is logged into a secure portal, their information isn’t going to be leaked or distributed or spidered into a search engine that people can search for. If you’re not a social media company, then this can help you protect vital information and still increase website traffic just by someone clicking your company’s page from their favorite search engine.

Do Sitemaps Improve SEO?

A sitemap will undoubtedly help improve your site’s SEO and web ranking. It also allows you to see if you have any broken links, negatively affecting your website’s SEO.

Having a good sitemap can improve your website’s ranking regarding search engine optimization and even social media optimization. No matter if you have it hosted with a primary provider or your local IT company (many offer website hosting packages as well that offer you just what you need and nothing more), you can still grow your online persona and web presence, thus improving your customer service and search engine rankings. As we mentioned, you can use a sitemap to include particular items that can boost sales.

Do I Have to Have a Sitemap?

The short answer is no, you do not need to have a sitemap, but you should because it will only help your company and SEO rank.

The real answer to this is no. You don’t have to have one. And WordPress used not to have one. But they ended up throwing it in there because this way, people don’t have to jump through hoops and rings of fire to create one and get their page indexed by search engines. There have been many plugins out there, from Yoast, and a few others that offer features like this – but you have to pay for them. For WordPress to include this feature for free will allow businesses to make faster and easier improvements to their SEO endeavors.

We highly recommend that companies avoid the hassle of doing this themselves (as many ISP’s are against running servers like this unless the company is approved and contracted to do so). Still, it’s unavoidable that companies may want to save. However, there is considerable debate on what kind of operating system is the best to use for local website hosting.

You have a few options, Linux (and many distributions of it), Windows, and of course, Mac servers (we don’t encourage Mac though, and many people don’t often use them for website hosting either).

Windows Servers: The Beasts and the Burdens

When it comes to business servers, many companies swear by Microsoft Windows Server. Based on Windows 10, and featuring a plethora of services available, such as the Windows Admin Center, a decent Desktop Experience, Insights to various analytics, Hybrid Cloud functionality, Windows Defender’s Advanced Threat Protection, Storage Migration Services, Virtual Hosting capabilities, and the ability to run Linux containers.

You also get network encryption, as well as network performance that is unmatched compared to regular Windows. Many users can also get Hyper-V VMs and use those on Windows Server (just like Windows Pro, but not Home).

That goes to say there are some downsides to choosing Windows Server for hosting. Their plans are expensive (and the cost continuously rises, and just like Windows 10 Home and Pro, you get the same “versions” (and all the bugs that come with them – such as v1903). Therefore, unless you’re a major corporation, you may not want to use a Windows Server due to the price alone to run your locally hosted website. Also, users have to install the WAMP Server to host a site on a local device.

The Penguin is the Most Popular

Many people use Linux for their hosting services. From website hosting, all the way down to locally hosted sites for your VoIP/PBX system. You may benefit from using Linux. Ubuntu is one of the most popular servers now that Red Hat has dropped off of the face of the earth. You can host your own VPN’s. Everything’s open-source, and you have a specific set of features that are only available on Linux. While some things can be similar to Windows Servers, others are not.

Hosting on a Linux platform requires the LAMP server (Linux Apache, My-SQL, PHP), but it’s relatively easy to install. Of course, that is if you know what you’re doing on Linux. On the plus side, one doesn’t have to install any actual third-party software to do this easily.

Linux is also ten times more secure than Windows in essentiality. In Windows, the default user is the administrator automatically. In Linux, you are not the super-user unless you make yourself one. While there are viruses out there for any operating system, Linux and Unix systems have better protection against these types of attacks.

Linux is also much more secure than Windows.

So Which is Better?

Another great option is that Linux has more flexibility, and there are tons of open source solutions. Of course, there are premium packages for both. If you’re willing to work with Linux and learn it, it’s well worth it. On another positive note, Ubuntu is FREE. Unlike Windows, you are the one who has the ultimate authority and control of everything in and on the system. People have noted that Windows is taking control of everything in their operating systems, and they aren’t happy.

Linux is also better for security and privacy. They are an excellent gateway to a file backup service if you use one to increase protection. All you have to do is set up your Linux server to run locally hosted sites. Anyone can do this! You can even use an Ubuntu Desktop as a server and host their website.

Not bad for a free operating system, right?

Other sites out there claim to have the ability to make it easy on people by letting the business owners choose from templates and then tweak it to their liking. These “site-building websites” are handy, but let’s look and compare them from what you could end up getting compared to you building it yourself!

The Sites that Claim to be the Best

Here are some of the most popular sites that claim to be the very best when hosting a “site builder” site – Many people have heard of them.

·         WordPress

WordPress is the most used website builder in existence, and there are many reasons why.

This is one of the first big websites that was originally a blogging site. It’s by far one of the oldest and the most flexible. It does take some getting used to if you want to customize things, but there are a ton of free, freemium, and premium plugins and functionalities that you can add to it, not to mention themes. Some companies pay for premium themes, but there are a few little secrets and tools that you can use to simply fully customize and design these themes yourself.

If you want to host it on your hosting server, many companies allow you to have these automatically installed and managed, or you can host it directly on wordpress.com, as well as do everything manually (installation, MySQL, etc.) yourself. The primary downside is that there is no automatic drag and drop builder. You can still easily learn how to use Beaver Builder, MotoPress, Elementor, and some of the more popular building plugins.

·         Squarespace

Squarespace has some cool pre-made templates, and it’s straightforward to use.

Squarespace is one big smorgasbord of an editor when it comes to being geared towards business. You get responsive, mobile-friendly designs, as well as have the ability to customize things on your own. They have a strict codebase that is their own, so that it may get a little confusing at times, and you don’t have a lot of options to choose from when it comes to finding custom templates. They also don’t have a free version (although you can build your “site” for free) to publish your site, and they are pretty expensive when it comes to their monthly costs.

·         Shopify

Shopify is a pretty easy website builder to use if you are looking to sell goods online.

Shopify just really boomed over the past few years, but in terms of creating a custom online e-commerce business (or dropshipping) website, they are unmatched in competition. While they, too, have a handful of themes to choose from, they are pretty standard in their layouts. Aside from being expensive for businesses (even though they do offer a free 14-day trial), they charge the standard 2.9% plus $0.30 for every credit card (which, on a positive note – they accept almost all of them) transaction, and even more for using payment providers that aren’t “Shopify-based.”

·         Wix

Wix is an OK website builder if you’re a beginner.

Ah yes, the kings of advertising are known as Wix.com. We’ve all seen the commercials on YouTube, banner ads, Facebook, and even television! Wix is a top-rated source for those “do-it-yourselfers” that don’t have a lick of design or website building sense. They have a ton of site gadgets and even have an option to have your website on there for free, but they don’t allow you to change templates once you’ve created a site… Yes, you have to start all over from scratch. You also don’t have any analytics to see how your site is doing, and you aren’t always mobile-friendly – a humongous pitfall for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

So Who’s the Winner?

WordPress is the winner in terms of site-building. With numerous options to choose from, you may be like a kid in a candy store, but why not? You can have total flexibility and make your website look great, plus get the right SEO out there. There are even plugins that allow you to run an entire e-commerce store on your WordPress site. No, we’re not affiliated with them in any way; they’re just so much better and easier to manage. If you get the right hosting from an IT provider, you can even use it to host on your company’s intranet as well!

AI of the Future – Controllable by Us

People commonly confuse what a chatbot is. The truth is that chatbots are an integral automated intelligence built by programming it, and we have to program them. Fortunately, many of today’s chatbots don’t require programming languages. You practically program them to respond to questions and give them the answers they are to say. This is exceptionally useful, though, because while we have ultimate control of the bot, you can personalize one any way you choose.

Why a Business May Want to Consider Using One

Chatbots offer a plethora of support on their own, but most importantly, what you put into your bot is what’s important. Some people like talking to bots when they’re bored. Don’t believe me? Just ask the people who like to ask them to tell them jokes, as people constantly do with Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and even Google Assistant. People hate talking to robots and automated text. But they love talking to ones with personality! This brings us to our next topic.

Using a Chatbot the Right Way

You never want to use a chatbot in the sense of sales so that you’re like, “Hey! Buy this product!” and BAM, you get slammed with an advertisement to buy your product. However, subtle suggestions go a long way. There are ways that a business can succeed with chatbots. For example, did you know that almost all businesses on Facebook use bots to answer frequently asked questions? This exceptional support is something that you can do to make the business show that you care about your customers.

At the same time, you can push the envelope with your bot because people like testing them out as well. For example, if you want to be a marketer, you can appropriately integrate Facebook and Google ads into your chatbot and make your customers enjoy talking to them.

Speaking of using a chatbot the right way, here’s a good tip. Do you type with an instant answer to people’s questions or comments? Or does it take you a second or two (or thirty)? In this regard, you can help your business succeed by adding timing delays (which makes it appear like your chatbot is “typing”). This brings a little humanity to your bot so your customers can feel like they’re talking to a person. Using things like animated GIFs and more can help. Want to know something even cooler? Keep reading!

They Help Conversion Rates and Marketing Strategies

This sounds silly, right? Well, fortunately for you, a lot of chatbots have ways to collect data from the people who talk to them. For example, a chatbot company called ManyChat has incorporated a way to generate leads based on the information you collect from your Facebook users that talk to your bot. Not only that but since the majority of the world is online these days, let alone on Facebook, you can even incorporate e-mail marketing into the mix and program your bot to collect e-mail addresses so you can contact people.

Another way that chatbots fix conversion rates, especially if you have an online product or store, is that people often go to a store and abandon their cart, leaving it for months without ever visiting your site again or just continuously adding things. By integrating social media and bots with your website or web store, you can use tools to help fight cart abandonment, as many people do with their Shopify stores.

Do I Have to Have a Chatbot?

The true answer to this question is no. Not every business is going to need one. Some people would rather have a team of individuals ready to answer anyone’s questions and have helpdesks to support their customers. At the same time, despite the bandwagon of chatbots out there, if you search about them telling you that you have to have one, you need to realize that with any fine-tuned machine, you need to have your chatbot fully developed before you decide to launch it.

If your chatbot’s not made right, then you may be in for a heap of trouble because as soon as you launch it, all heck will break loose. The fact of the matter? Even though many businesses can succeed with a chatbot, people still would rather talk to other people.

Well, there are many out there that claim one hundred percent uptime, fantastic security, the highest speed, unlimited traffic, etc. – we could go on and on with the marketing ploys and sub-platforms like dedicated hosting and more. They all offer spiels like “free domains” and our personal favorite “Only so much per month.” Whatever you do, don’t ignore the asterisk, though. This means they’ll bill you for the entire year at once, and you only get the discount for your first year most of the time. Either way, let’s get into how you can find the best web hosting no matter what your needs are.

Step Number One: Know How Much Flexibility You’ll Need

Choosing the right web hosting service to host your site will depend on many factors based on your business and the reach you want to achieve.

This is a crucial factor. Of course, you can generally get excellent customer service when you pick the right host, as well as email support or phone support and good turnaround. You do, however, want to know just what you’re needing. If you’re going to have a managed website or have the flexibility to do your own thing, this is extremely important to consider. Do you want a hosting-managed WordPress site? Or are you wanting to download a manual install and have a web design team do it? Do you want a custom HTML website? All of these factors, when discussing what you want in your web hosting choice.

Step Number Two: Be Honest About How Much Traffic You’ll Need.

If you’re a small local business, you won’t need to purchase the enterprise web hosting package. On the flip side, if you’re an enterprise, you wouldn’t want to buy the web hosting package for SMBs.

Of course, if you’re designing a new website, you need to know that you’re going to have a small amount of traffic, sure, but if you are paying for too little, then you’ll be expected to pay for more bandwidth over time. If you want to have a basic site, you may need to know about the different servers you can choose. On shared servers, you’ll end up having to worry about bandwidth being exceeded, whereas, on dedicated servers, you’ll have a little heavier bandwidth allowed and a lot more freedom since you’re not sharing with others.

Step Three: You Need to Know Your Servers

It’s essential that you know your servers and how much bandwidth and storage you’ll need for web hosting.

If you’re serving a local area, then you’ll know that you’re going to have to share that bandwidth. Therefore, you need to know just what other websites on the server are doing. If you’re worried about things like page load speed, etc., and have a little bit less flexibility on what exactly you can do, then you want to avoid this at all costs. However, we will say that many small businesses and entrepreneurs benefit from shared web hosting as well, so don’t shy from those if you’re on a beginner’s budget!

Next up is the VPS hosting, a virtual machine (out of many) on one server. While it’s essentially similar to shared hosting, there are fewer competitors, and you can get higher performance rates. Dedicated servers are one of the top tiers of hosting to allow you flexible options. It’s you paying for your whole server. Of course, you can always also opt for cloud servers. The last two are often higher priced (a LOT higher than shared hosting), so you need to consider it.

Remember Those Unlimited Offers? Stay Away!

Unlimited bandwidth and storage web hosting teaser offers rarely work out, and we suggest steering clear of hosting services and plans that do this.

Some web hosts say if you pay so much, you can get unlimited bandwidth. Don’t fall for this trap. You’d rather pay for a service that you have to pay a little for extra bandwidth compared to one in which they’ll just cut you off after you’ve met your bandwidth threshold. Other sites will lower your website and server performance if you go over.

As a Business, Always Get a Backup Host

To keep your website up 24/7/365, you’ll want to look into backup hosting. Failure to do so could lead to your site being down, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Many people often have their web hosting plans on one server, but believe it or not, many people have “offline” versions of their website on backup hosts. This is how they always maintain uptime.

Some of the Best Hosts

HostGator is our choice for web hosting services, but many other choices are almost as good as HostGator.

Of course, you need to register your domain (which you can choose when you sign up). Your best bet is to get one that isn’t used, of course, so that you can own it. Once you do this, you’ll want to set up your web hosts. We won’t get into that here, but you can choose some of these top hosts that can provide the highest-rated services out there:

1. HostGator
2. IONOS
3. BlueHost
4. GoDaddy
5. SiteGround

What We Think

While many web hosting companies, as we’ve mentioned and provided some of the best ones on the market out there, you also have to know the prices vary. Always consider the bandwidth as what you’re going to need when it comes to your server because it generally varies and what you are going to pay for is what you are going to get, except in the case of HostGator and IONOS, who offer some very exceptional deals when it comes to bandwidth and flexibility.

Whatever host you choose for your company’s website, you also want to ensure that you incorporate the right tools, as this matters as well. To make sure you’re not missing out on any critical tools, please send us a message.

No matter what, though you can increase your network speeds with some great tips on hardware, and then we’re going to point you in the right direction to give you some excellent ways you can boost your browsing experience as well! We’re also going to provide you with insights into what many people who have slow internet do to cause their connectivity problems.

Problem One: Too Many Obstructions

One of the biggest problems that people have today is having way too many firewalls. What?! Yep! We said it!

Almost all of the antivirus software out there to date has a firewall attached to it, and should you be on a Windows system, guess what? There’s another firewall there. Most of the time, this can be turned off so you can use just your antivirus software, but even then, some people still have problems. Want to know what the culprit is? You still have a firewall that you often forget about.

If you’re in a workplace environment, you’re going to have a main network modem that is connected to whatever connection (if you have corporate T3 or even fiber), you can end up getting slower speeds because not only do you have your computer’s firewalls on, but you have your router’s firewall on.

While you should have at least one firewall, then you’re fine. However, you often don’t need to have more than Windows Firewall and your router’s firewall on at the same time. This can cause multiple problems with connectivity as well.

Problem Two: Your Antivirus is Just Mean

Having the wrong antivirus installed can slow network speeds considerably. That’s why it’s crucial to choose the right antivirus solution.

Aside from the firewall thing we said earlier, you may benefit from uninstalling and reinstalling your antivirus. Most of the time, though, people prefer one over the other, and then over time, an update will break your connection. When this is the case, you’ll want to disable this quickly and restart your computer. There are some great hacks that you can do yourself back online if you remove your antivirus before you re-install/re-enable it. Another thing you have to realize is that for every single file that is popping up in your web browser, your antivirus is scanning it.

Therefore, if you go to media-heavy websites frequently, you can slow your connection down as well. However, you also want to scan for viruses regularly and be safe when browsing.

Wi-Fi Gone Wrong? Check Your Modem Placement

If your Wi-Fi signal is obstructed or on the other side of your office or business, your network speeds will be slower.

Many people choose one spot in the house and then expect to connect throughout your home. While you may have a good signal, many things may cause interference diminishing your network speed.

For example, if you have your modem in the kitchen as some people do, you may end up experiencing internet interference due to things like running the microwave, having multiple televisions on, and other things that may cause congestion in your connection via the airwaves. This is when the signal gets congested in between the modem and your actual device. If all else fails, you may end up suffering a lot less if you use Ethernet cords instead-but; believe it or not, this can have its downsides too.

Use Shorter Cords

Using cords that are unnecessarily long could hurt your network speed.

We know what you’re thinking. How in the world can this affect connectivity and network speeds? Well, fortunately, you’re not losing momentum. However, having a hundred-foot cord on your computer when you’re 10 feet away from your router is not only silly. It causes many cable management problems, but you’ll also be increasing your latency, which will ultimately appear to be loading slower. The data is transferring just as fast, but your computer and server’s communication will be a little delayed, thus affecting your network speed.

Try This DNS Hack

What is DNS? It stands for Dynamic Name Server. All of our internet connections have one. Aside from resetting your DHCP settings, firewall, and other areas, you can change your router’s DNS or even your computer’s (if you have a direct connection to the internet) by just simply changing the DNS to a designated name server. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can cause more problems than good unless you use one of the most popular DNS’s out there. There are currently two: Google’s DNS servers and Cloudflare – a close second.

Log into your router/modem, and change the primary DNS and second DNS to the following:

• Cloudflare

Primary Name Server: 1.1.1.1

Secondary Name Server: 1.0.0.1

• Google DNS

Primary Name Server: 8.8.8.8

Secondary: 8.8.4.4

Just changing your DNS to one of these can significantly increase your page loading and network speeds and even help with your latency problems a little bit, as they’re swift.

If You Want the Best Networking

When you’re hoping to get the most out of your ISP, you may want to consider hiring a professional if you should have any problems. This includes having all of your services inspected and includes building reliable and secure networks in your home or place of business. By hiring the right networking solution for your needs, you can create an unstoppable force and even then apply the hacks we showed you to increase your network speeds and lower latency levels as much as possible!

You may be surprised, but there are ways that you can greatly improve your web traffic and generate more revenue, more customers, and more unique visitors every day. We’ll show you how if you keep reading.

Perform Your Audit

First, to boost your web traffic, you’ll need to perform an SEO audit on your website.

If you have spare time on your hands, you’ll want to do a full website audit. This means that you’re going to check the analytics and see where your website is lacking. Usually, it’s just with the content itself, not having enough of the right content where it needs to be. Keywords are still important, but so are links as well. You can use websites like Ahrefs and Screaming Fog to see how your website fares with backlinks and SEO. You can also use websites like Pingdom’s Website Speed Test to ensure that you have good speed – nobody likes a slow loading website.

Improve or Redesign?

Believe it or not, your website design affects your web traffic. Outdated design, slow speeds, and poor user experience could negatively affect your web traffic.

When it comes to some companies, especially the local ones, you’ll notice that they have had the same website design since 2005. Nearly 15 years later, this can be an issue, not just for SEO purposes but also because it won’t keep people engaged or help them spread the word. Please give your website a refresh to make sure they load fast and that it is completely optimized.

Content is the Number One Issue

Content is undoubtedly king when it comes to driving web traffic to your site.

As we said before, having the right content on your page is better than having too much content. You’ll want to optimize your links to keywords, use keywords in your image alt tags, and most businesses have a blog these days. Be sure you stay on top of it, though, as regular content gets better results and gives you more backlinks, which we’ll get onto next.

Backlinks and Social Media

If your business isn’t utilizing social media to its advantage, you’re missing out on valuable web traffic.

More than half of the world is on Facebook today, and so you should be too. Create a business page and keep it updated with things like blog posts and more. If you want to advertise, please use Google Ads and Facebook Ads if you have the revenue for the expense, but it’s not even needed. Use social media, including Twitter, LinkedIn, and others, to create stunning backlinks and professional business profiles that can drive people to your site.

Don’t want to use a chatbot? Even Facebook has some excellent automated features that are free to help generate backlinks, web traffic and keep you in touch with clients and customers.

YouTube is No Longer Just for Creators

While numerous YouTube content creators post random videos about random things, you can use YouTube to your advantage. If you want to create videos that will only appear on your website and embed them, all you have to do is flag them as unlisted, and then you can still embed them on your website. This gives your website even a more professional and personable experience for your users.

Don’t Make Your Website Confusing.

If you want to increase your SEO, web traffic, and decrease bounce rate, you’ll want to make your site a bit less busy than LingsCars.com.

Some websites are tough to navigate, whether it be menus, header and footer links, and sometimes just the overall layout. Your web design, graphics, and links should all be easily ready for people to use so they can navigate your website quickly. Most importantly, since phone and mobile design prioritize website search results like Google, it doesn’t hurt that in your audit, you make sure your site is designed and optimized for phones. The downside to this is that you may need a designer (or hire one) if you can’t do it yourself, so you can ensure that all different types of phones can load your pages.

Here’s What You’ll Get

If you follow all of the above steps in this guide, you’ll notice that you’re going to be doing better on your page rankings and get more web traffic. Here’s a little secret – It’s a dog eat dog world out there. If you still lack under your competitors, go to their pages and see what they’re doing to improve their SEO so you can go one step above them.

Another thing you can do is get a VoIP service for your offices to put on your website. This protects a lot more professional and personal data so that you can list these rather than list personal or cell numbers. With the right services, you can have numerous features like unlimited calling and even call forwarding to those phones when choosing a good VoIP provider.