4 COMMON WEB BASED APPLICATION SECURITY ISSUES TO AVOID
Today and unsurprisingly, web security issues are on the rise. Many reported cases of infiltrations and cyberattacks on numerous websites and web applications. On one report by Verizon, web application attacks accounted for 26% of all breaches, thus making such an attack the second most common web security breach.
Also, the loss from cyberattacks reached about $4.2 billion in 2020 alone. These stats show that security issues regarding web-based applications should not be taken lightly by business owners, core users, and other interested parties. In this article, you’ll discover four of such threats.
Injection
Injection is when untrusted or unfiltered data penetrates a server or browser as a part of a query. Injections can come in different forms, such as SQL, NoSQL, LDAP, etc. However, SQL queries tend to be the most common target of mal-intent.
When unfiltered data is sent through SQL query, attackers access important application data. They can then proceed to perform administration operations access user private information and credit cards, among other things.
A seasoned developer can help you avoid this issue by validating inputs, preparing statements with parameterized queries, and introducing limited user rights.
Sensitive Data Exposure
Many users have fallen victim to this security breach, and it’s a messy situation to deal with. With security data exposure, the customers’ sensitive information, including phone numbers, account information, and more is revealed to uninvited third parties.
When data is exposed, it can also lead to grave consequences, such as broken authentication, injection, man-in-the-middle, phishing, etc. Preventing sensitive data from getting exposed can be achieved through improved data protection using encryption for stored and transmitted data and stringent security protocols.
Broken Authentication
Authentication is used to verify user identity by affiliating incoming information with credentials like biometric data and passwords. When authentication is broken, it implies that session ID or user credentials were hijacked. Some causes of this problem include insufficient protection of user credentials, weak passwords, login, etc.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one way to prevent this from happening, while weaker passwords should be outrightly rejected. The session length can also be monitored to improve safety.
Security Misconfiguration
Security misconfiguration is one of the lingering issues besieging web based applications. Like others, it’s related to a lack of security control implementation or security errors.
Many applications have this vulnerability due to incomplete configurations, overdue and unchanged default configurations, unencrypted files, and much more. It can significantly affect your business or company and often leads to substantial financial losses.
One of the best ways to ensure this never happens is to hire competent and experienced developers to handle your web based app development. Also, ensure your app’s systems are up-to-date.
Wrapping Up
These security threats might seem benign to some, but they have seen the ruin of many apps and, to some extent, businesses. If you want to have a competitive edge, you should engage an expert to develop your web based applications and implement the latest security measures. They can also help you make crucial changes to your web and data security with key updates with time.
WHY YOU SHOULD OUTSOURCE YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN AND THE RISKS TO AVOID
There are multiple important factors to consider when it comes to UI design if you must have a competitive website, especially if your rivals aren’t sleeping on their achievements. You, too, can have a site that delights visitors and repeat users when you get the suitable designs implemented for your brand. That’s where a company built for that purpose steps in.
There’s often a battle between outsourcing your UI construction to a proven team and creating an in-house team for that purpose. While both have advantages and disadvantages, this article showcases why outsourcing makes more sense and the risks to avoid when choosing a company.
Benefits of Outsourcing Website Designs
Availability of Resources
Developing a UI for your website isn’t a walk in the park. It’s a process that meets a lot of resources and the brains behind it all. When you outsource such a creative and innovative part of your business, you get some of the best teams around looking to help you make your thoughts a reality. To that end, you can narrow down your goals along perimeters like specialization and experience.
Choosing a specialized company means you get to save your time on forming a team that implements your ideas. There’s no need to coordinate a team with the resources available to a professional. That’s because time is vital to modern software development, so outsourcing gives you much-needed speed to actualize your plans.
Cost-Benefit
One of the most important benefits of outsourcing your UI development is how cost-effective it gets. Instead of having employees you have to pay regularly, you can find a talented specialist and get a real cost-benefit at the same time. What’s more, the specialist you hire can live anywhere in the world and still work on a credible UI design that matches your ambition. Stats show that up to 52% of users won’t return to a website due to aesthetics.
Whether you hire a programmer or developer, you can outsource your designs to specialists with high skills.
Technical Expertise
Development companies usually have the expertise to create a product you can be comfortable with. When you hire them, they become responsible for the development based on their experience.
Their technical abilities also cover projects they’ve executed or ones they’re working on. Either way, it’s a huge advantage when you can trust a proven company to handle your web development, thanks to their technical know-how.
Tips to Avoid Risks
Learn About the Company’s Technical Expertise:
The company you want to hire must have the experience and expertise to handle your requirements. A more experienced company will know how to identify the pitfalls and help you avoid them. After all, about 75% of users judge a website based on design alone.
Study Reviews
Reviews are essential, and if you want to work with a design company, you’d best check out what previous users think of them. It’s a normal part of business to ask for feedback and customer opinions, so you should do that with the company you wish to hire.
Wrapping Up
Getting your UI design right is a big step in the right direction. It sets the tone for your business and lets users know what to expect from the services you offer. That’s why you need competent hands on the project by outsourcing it to specialists with a track record of success. You’ll be saving your time, money, and other resources.
3 USEFUL IMPROVEMENTS LOCAL SEO SERVICES CAN BRING TO YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
If you’re searching for proven, long-lasting local SEO solutions, your small business probably needs more than a couple of tune-ups. But that’s a good thing because there’s a giant race to rank higher on Google and other search engines.
Your SEO strategy may not be enough for your small brand. However, you have a fair chance of being among the 82% of marketers that will notice a rise in SEO effectiveness with local SEO services working for you. Here are three improvements local SEO companies can bring to your business.
Boost Keyword Ranking Performance
With the right team providing SEO solutions for your small business, your website will begin to rank higher, thanks to both local and long-tailed keywords. Your business will make it to the local search results because your website or landing pages visibility increases traffic flow into your website. As a result, the search engine will provide more relevant results for your business.
It’s much easier for people to find you and your services when you have keywords leading to relevant results for your business.
Improve Organic Traffic
Your website will witness an increase in organic traffic when you implement local SEO. It’s a no-brainer! Thanks to top-ranking content, about 67.6% of all clicks go to the first five organic results. Local SEO can help your website rank higher on local and long-tailed keywords.
The search volume on local searches may be low, but that’s not a problem. The main thing is that your business gets shown on local search results since the visibility of your landing pages can increase your chances of getting clicks and constant traffic. With that, you can expect an improvement in organic traffic to your site. People will easily find you online from organic results.
Improve Your ROI
Local SEO services are digital marketing options worth spending on. That’s because it’s a long-term marketing strategy, and unlike paid search, it does not require you to spend on each click from website visitors that go to your website.
Also, it doesn’t require immediate attention to updating trends like social media marketing. This makes it an excellent tool to improve your ROI. With local SEO, up to 78% of location-centric mobile searches result in an offline purchase.
You’ll get to the top of search engine results, more website traffic, and conversions with qualitative methods. The PPC will be cheaper and improve your website’s quality score. It’s more worthwhile than its social media counterpart, which only guarantees short-term results and minimal ROI. What’s more, you don’t need a whole lot of money for Google Ads PPC with the perfect SEO marketing strategy.
Wrapping Up
If you’re after top-quality local SEO solutions for your small business, you’d best hire a local SEO service near you. Such a service will provide a background to help you gain more traffic, relevant customers, and healthy ROI. Ensure they can meet your digital marketing needs and provide improvements outlined above in the long run.
4 SIGNS YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS A CUSTOM SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Every business experiences ups and downs. However, maintenance is the key to producing growth, and some features are vital to that, including software development.
With any software, staying updated is a necessary part of the process, especially if you want to scale up your business with reliable solutions. The fact is that with rising customer expectations, you wouldn’t want to fall foul with mediocre services. To that end, here are four reasons why your business needs a custom software solution.
When Your Business Lacks Organization
Your business may experience faltering times or alterations that make it lose its organization. While that’s not uncommon to you or the niche of your business, you can make some adjustments to get back on track. A business that loses some organization can also be a sign of growth.
In most cases, the inability of your business to move in the right direction is down to ready-made software applications. The perfect answer to this challenge? Get custom software developed for your business. Your custom software will bring adaptive features that respond to the organization of your business.
Customer Dissatisfaction
Another sign that you need custom software is customer dissatisfaction in complaints and bad reviews about your services. It is challenging for any business to grow without satisfying its customer base. Moreover, many businesses exist because of their customers since the brand value is tied to customer growth, which is a crucial pointer of satisfaction.
So how can you be up to date with customers’ perception of your business? The answer is a custom software upgrade. Your application should have a section that takes customers’ feedback and suggestions. Analysis of these reviews is essential for improvement and business growth.
Matching the Competition
If you wish to remain competitive, it’s essential to embrace technology and the trends that come with it. Your competitors will take over the market with the latest software development and technological advancements.
One of the trends to follow to remain competitive is adopting custom software in your niche. Your customers will see your business efforts become more efficient and build up more interest in your products. Lagging behind such solutions for your brand means you’ll get trounced by the competition and lose vital customers.
Data Security and Management
Data breaches have increased over the years, especially in this era of improved and agile software development. As such, you have to do anything to protect your business, and that includes understanding patterns and stories in data that can help you improve the services you provide your customers.
Since storing data manually is out of the question and ready-made apps have limited functionality, you can secure your business data using custom software.
Customized software will improve data safety and analytics to upgrade your business operations. Also, since it’s solely for your brand, attempts to compromise it are limited or can quickly be dealt with.
Wrapping Up
Getting custom software is one of the trending needs in business, irrespective of the niche market. With so many challenges from the competition, markets, and data breaches, it’s best to have a good software development company develop technology unique to your brand and services.
WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT: 5 BEST PRACTICES TO WATCH OUT FOR
Technology covers different fronts and is here to stay. A wide range of industries and markets have needs for technological growth, hence the need for web application development teams.
However, it’s not relatively easy choosing a team to work with since millions of experts are out there. Instead, you can observe the commitment to the best practices that create products that align with industry standards and user expectations.
Irrespective of the type of project you want executed for your business, take note of these five best web app development practices before engaging any professional team.
Web Accessibility
Accessibility is an integral part of any web app. When hiring a professional to handle your web app development, you should watch out for that. That’s because many websites fall short of meeting modern accessibility standards. What does accessibility mean? It means your site and apps are comfortable enough for everyone to use.
Over one billion people worldwide have some disability impeding them from accessing the web. Statistics show that about 70 percent of the websites contain “accessibility blocks,” or quirks.
Compatibility on Multiple Devices
Compatibility across multiple devices is a huge consideration. Users employ different devices to access web apps with phones and tablets leading the line. To that end, ensure that the company develops web apps and pages that can be displayed accurately on screens of different sizes. That will give your apps more audience.
Faster Load Times
Many factors could affect load speeds, such as poorly optimized scripts, caches, lazy page loading, large page sizes, too many redirects, bad hosting platforms, etc. When your web app is slow, expect users to abandon it for others that work seamlessly.
Nearly 80 percent of users who have had poor performance experiences avoid the pages permanently and never return. To that end, businesses must speed up their web applications to get organic traffic and prevent user abandonment. Part of that includes testing web page loading speed and implementing steps like caching and compressing front-end resources.
A Plan and Purpose
Going head-first to code and develop won’t bode well for any brand. With any web application development project, identifying the end goal is a big step in the right direction. It helps development teams know what you want and how to accomplish it. Clear targets produce precise results. Seasoned developers work better and more efficiently when there’s a plan and a purpose attached to your demands.
Building a Progressive Web App
Progressive Web Apps are the way to go. They also help businesses bridge the gap between web applications and native mobile apps. Besides, many new generation apps are developed with popular web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. However, progressive web apps improve conversion rates and deliver a native personalized user experience when it accesses the native features of the underlying mobile platform and device.
Wrapping Up
On a general note, these are some of the best practices businesses must look forward to during their web application development. A keen focus must be on user experience and strengthening the brand’s online presence for more positive and frequent conversions.
5 SEO MISTAKES A PROFESSIONAL ORLANDO SEO SERVICE WILL HELP SMALL BUSINESSES AVOID
The mere thought of SEO marketing can be an intimidating prospect for many small and medium-sized businesses. Such businesses have to set the tone by dominating their local areas, such that the scope of their marketing exploits is narrowed to focus more on attracting local customers.
However, this is easier said than done because the wrong steps can see mistakes creep in. Thankfully, a professional Orlando SEO service can help you avoid many mistakes, including those discussed below:
A Poorly Optimized Website
Your SEO journey must start with a well-optimized website. If you lack one, an SEO service that knows more than a thing or two about optimization is essential. Don’t expect to rank in relevant local searches without a properly optimized website.
An Orlando service for SEO will help you optimize your site with targeted geo-specific keywords, including on-page content, blogs, and images. They will also help you handle the technical aspects absent from your pages, such as page titles and product descriptions.
Terrible Mobile Optimization
A projection by experts suggests that by 2025, nearly 75% of internet users will access the net solely through mobile devices. The fact is that more local online searches are being done on smartphones and mobile devices than on laptops and other types of computers.
For this reason, your website must go all out to properly optimize your display and functions for mobile devices.
Since Google gives preference to mobile-optimized websites, a professional SEO service can help you make changes to rank well. A mobile-friendly website is a necessity.
Poor Content Quality
Another mistake an Orlando SEO company can help you avoid is poorly produced content on your website, such as texts and blogs crucial for your rankings. Google has assessments for the quality and value of content included in web pages and blogs and generates its rankings from them.
A professional will help you produce quality, keyword-focused content that adds value to your audience. Also, they’ll help you avoid stuffing your content with irrelevant keywords or using them for the sake of it.
Lacking a Google Business Profile
Formerly called Google My Business, it’s a platform small startups can’t do without because listing is an essential aspect of local SEO. You’ll rank better in organic search results and on Google maps when you have a well-optimized Google Business Profile listing from a pro.
A professional Orlando service will ensure it carries all your vital details and business information to rank well in local search results or Google Maps.
Ignoring Customer Reviews/Complaints
Do you know that about 83% of people think a business with a user-generated review on its landing page is trustworthy? Generating customer reviews should be a priority, but few get it right—many people who make a purchase read customer reviews before making a buying decision or trusting your business.
Ignoring reviews and complaints is a death trap for your small business. Address complaints and resolve your customer’s concerns with professionals by your side. An Orlando SEO service can help you figure out how to respond to negative reviews and boost the positive ones.
Wrapping Up
These mistakes might seem insignificant, but they can mar your chances of drawing more committed customers to your small business. The good news? An Orlando SEO company can help you avoid them using proven skills discussed in the article.
TOP 4 BENEFITS OF OUTSOURCING SEO SERVICES FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Businesses are usually tempted to hire employees to handle Search Engine Optimization (SEO) projects. However, it may be more beneficial to contract these services out to third-party agencies. You would need more than enough marketing budget to hire an in-house team to handle SEO programs.
Whether you are a large multinational or small business, outsourcing SEO services appears to be the best option. Below are the benefits of subcontracting such services:
Saves The Resources That Would Have Gone into Training And Hiring
When hiring employees to handle your SEO projects, you should consider the resources you might use in the process. You have to pay their salaries and ensure they have access to computers, licensed software, and other work benefits.
Proficiency in search engine optimization is formed by constant practice and more experience, which can be gotten from undertaking training courses. An SEO expert did not become one by enrolling in a single course. Since SEO is an ever-evolving field, you also need to pay for their training.
A business owner who contracts out SEO services to a third-party agency will save time and money. This is due to eliminating training costs and the payment of a lump amount in salaries and benefits.
Produce Faster Results in Lesser Time with An Increased Expertise
Years would have passed before anybody could become adept in handling SEO tools and implementing best practices. As beginners spend more time in the field, they encounter new challenges that test their skills.
A company that wants to hire employees to manage SEO should be expected to spend considerable time before reaching an expert level of proficiency. Besides, time is of the essence when handling SEO projects. Employers have little time to wait for a staff to become a skilled SEO specialist.
Similarly, it is uncommon to see an accomplished content creator great at SEO. Content creation and SEO services may be complementary, but they are never the same. Hence, businesses should endeavor to outsource SEO to experts who can produce great results in a short time.
Avoid Working with Amateurs
Untested SEO personnel may likely assume that Google’s mobile-first indexing model is unconnected to a company generating most web traffic on desktop. Only SEO experts know that mobile-first indexing shows no discrimination when dealing with websites.
When you engage the service of an inexperienced professional, you risk having poor organic search results and a weakened SEO strategy right from the start. Hence, hiring an SEO agency will help you eliminate these issues associated with putting untried people in charge of your SEO strategy.
Ensures That SEO Programs Scale Effectively
Search engine optimization is a labor-intensive field that requires more than one expert working on a project. When you decide to go solo on an SEO project, numerous difficulties will be encountered while trying to scale. Besides, it is draining trying to conduct keyword research, SEP content generation, backlink building, and on-page SEO all by yourself.
Therefore, scaling SEO programs requires the services of a team of experts. This can quickly be sorted by subcontracting the project to a specialized SEO agency.
Fortunately, outsourcing to a third-party team is more cost-effective rather than attempting to build your team from scratch.
Conclusion
SEO agencies usually boast an array of skilled professionals in various SEO niches, including SEP content, on-page SEO, backlink generation, and keyword research. If an organization decides to outsource such services, it will save many resources.
SEO agencies offer an excellent opportunity to spend less time, money, and resources for great SEO results. In addition, they will enjoy faster results from an expertly-ran SEO program. Hence, small to medium-sized business owners should consider outsourcing their SEO projects.
3 IMPORTANT TIPS TO REMEMBER BEFORE HIRING A WEB DEVELOPMENT AGENCY
Many business owners have fallen into the trap of hiring anyone to put a website on the internet. In numerous cases, the project never goes as planned, and they end up on the losing end.
You might have been tempted to google “web designer” on the internet. The local search will reveal some web development agencies near you – both the inexperienced and the veteran.
However, you must take care to consider certain factors before hiring anyone for a website development gig.
Decide The Style of Website That Will Suit Your Business Needs
Big tech industry players like Google, Amazon, and Facebook have several data centers worldwide that power their websites. For a small business, building a highly sophisticated website like those of the big tech companies is practically unnecessary. Hence, small business owners need to decide the purpose of their websites and the audience they are serving.
Having a newbie web developer build an e-commerce website is counterintuitive, especially if you plan to upscale. Besides, there are several functionalities that an e-commerce platform must-have.
These features are usually difficult for an amateur in website development to implement. In such cases, the business owners need to opt for an experienced professional.
Some small businesses use websites to inform their audience about their product or service. You can decide without any professional input if a content management system like WordPress or Drupal would serve your purpose.
Determine If the Agency Is Compatible with Your Interests and Needs
Before hiring a website development agency, you should ensure that you have found a long-term partner in them. It will save you much money in the near future.
When you engage the services of different agencies across various timelines, money and time are being wasted. Hence, business owners should ensure that their hiring agencies will represent their interests. This can be achieved by finding out about their values, work processes, and the level of staff friendliness.
Also, credibility is an essential feature every web development company should have among their previous customers. You can determine how credible they are from testimonials and reviews gathered from the internet.
Decide How Much You Can Invest in A Website
Every business owner has a different budget for a website. In most cases, the amount of money you are willing to invest in a website determines the quality of the website. Fortunately, some agencies have payment plans favorable to business owners.
You should consider other fees aside from the design and development costs. These charges may include hosting fees, which vary from one platform to another.
If you pay a significantly lesser amount for hosting, be your website will likely experience many downtimes. The cost of redesigning your website from time to time should also be considered. Although the cost of designing a good website does not come cheap, consider it to be an investment for sustained business growth.
Conclusion
Hiring a good website developer can be challenging. Despite the difficulties attributed to choosing a good company for your website project, you must not be too quick to make a decision. Hence, your budget, business needs, and the agency’s compatibility should be rightly considered when choosing a web development agency.
4 VITAL TRAITS YOU SHOULD LOOK FOR IN AN SEO COMPANY
It’s the Era of digital marketing with so many mediums to get your campaigns flowing. One of such mediums is through SEO services. SEO or Search Engine Optimization helps you generate more traffic, leads, and conversions for your business.
Accordingly, most of that is only possible when you hire seasoned SEO consultants and experts to handle your marketing needs. With brands spending billions of dollars on SEO, it’s only normal to look for these four traits before hiring any SEO company.
The SEO Company Understands What You Want for Your Business
Generating SEO content is only half the job. The real question is if developed results follow your set SEO goals and objectives. To that end, you need a company that understands your dreams and how to satisfy them. They need to work with custom variables and online opportunities to promote your brand.
You can start with a detailed observation of the company’s feedback or a demo of their processes. When you meet a reliable SEO company, they’ll dig into their inner pool of resources and expertise to ensure your brand gets the leads and conversions it deserves.
Transparent Operations
Transparency is one of the cornerstones of any business, and the SEO service you choose should have that in spades. The company should have the experience, testimonials, genuine contact information, social media presence, and samples for your assurance.
Avoid a company that promises heaven and earth to deliver the best results for your business. The fact is that things can go south even with the best services, but they should be realistic about your chances of earning leads and positive conversions.
The company should also understand how to work with and explain methodologies, uncertain variations, backlinks, and ranking fluctuations during the optimization process.
A proper outline of the required budget will also hint at their methods and transparency.
Ability to Deliver Measurable Results Within Certain Time Frames
Experienced SEO services know how to deliver measurable results within a committed time frame. They’ll assign a team to go over every aspect of your website, how to perform against your competitors, and more before working out strategies to improve them.
With upward changes in traffic, conversion, and sales, you’ll be able to generate a healthy ROI. Also, expect such a company to share reports and other data with you to know how well your SEO campaign is going.
Custom Packages for Each Client
One brand is different from the next, even if they operate in the same niche. Moreover, not all brands work with the same budget or need the same marketing. That’s why it’s pertinent that you choose an SEO company that offers unique services to its clients.
Ensure the SEO service offers services unique to your business needs. While some brands might need on-page SEO, others would prefer to build backlinks and other strategies. Also, charges for these strategies are typically different, coupled with their need processes.
Wrapping Up
SEO services are increasingly important with the vast opportunities the internet and social media offer. Hiring the right SEO company to promote your digital marketing campaign in Orlando is possible when you actively seek out the abovementioned traits. A dedicated, transparent, and experienced SEO company can make all the difference for your business.
3 GREAT WAYS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY USING LOCAL SEO
Do you own a local business and have high hopes of dominating the local search results of your niche? That’s possible when you provide content tailored to fit your local audience and promote your business. Local SEO services can help you achieve that by helping you come up with your regional SEO content marketing strategy.
Here are three ways to get more from your local community:
- Write a Blog
You can make content related to your local business and region. For example, if you run a furniture store, your content must revolve around furniture and what your store offers. If you want to rank higher in the local search results, writing a blog post is one way to put your business out there.A blog is a great content strategy to help you target a group of people. Make your content relevant to them while showcasing some of the products and services you offer. When people are satisfied with your services, they will likely leave a review on your page or include testimonials about how you treated them. Your content should also be optimized with keywords and titles related to your local business and community.
- Optimize for Google My Business
Do you know that about 46% of all Google searches are seeking local information? If you want relevant information about your business to pop up on Google searches, set up and optimize your Google My Business page. The best part? Google My Business (GMB) is free! It’s a beautiful, easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google packages, including Search and Maps.When you optimize your account on the platform, you’ll have the opportunity to curate many more searches and recognitions towards your local company. A local SEO service can help you use My Business to improve your business’ visibility through local SEO. For example, you can add your location, website, hours of operation, and contact information to the platform. This way, it’s easier for your audience to find you when you search locally.
- Utilize Social Media
Tools like Facebook and Instagram can provide the local SEO solutions you crave for your business. You can make them part of your regional SEO strategy to connect with those far away and others living near your business.You can keep your local audience informed with relevant posts on Facebook, Twitter, and the likes. Write about things unique to your business and how it works in your community. Let potential customers also share comments on your products and services. Such platforms are great avenues to advertise. If you have issues posting exciting content, you should hire a local SEO company for professional assistance.
Wrapping Up
Using local SEO services to boost your brand’s appeal in your local community is a step in the right direction. The truth is that humans interact better with those around them. Think of your local community as an immediate family you want to serve with the best products and services.
