As any SEO expert will tell you, your title tag is one of the most important on-page SEO elements for your webpage. Why? The title tag tells the search engines what your page is about and can be a big factor in a web searcher clicking on your site instead of someone else’s. In today’s post, we’ll talk about what title tags are, what they look like, and some important considerations in how to optimize them.

Read more: Increase your search traffic by optimizing your title tags

I was recently engaged by a client to write a couple of payment plugins for the VirtueMart e-commerce system. VirtueMart is a Joomla-based shopping cart that is pretty popular. I love writing code, but to be honest, this was a really difficult experience for me. Not because the code itself was so hard, but because of what I found once I got started.

Read more: A "Cowboy Coder" could cost you a lot of time and money!

We’ve touched on the importance of local search listings in a previous post. This week we’re going to provide a practical tool to help you keep your local search listings consistent and make it easier to do the updates.

Read more: Increase your local traffic by updating your local search listings

Do you want increased traffic to your site? No! All traffic with no conversion is just an expense with no benefit to you. What you want is traffic that converts. Google Analytics Goals is just the tool to help you achieve those greater conversions.

Last week, we discussed what Google Analytics Goals are, the 4 different goal types, and how they can benefit your online business strategy. This week we’ll cover the basics of how to actually set them up.

Read more: Increase Your Conversions By Setting Up Google Analytics Goals

If you're following along with our "Love Your Website" series, this one is really easy. You should test your forms on a regular basis. If customers or prospects are trying to contact you, you need to be sure that your forms are working, so that their messages get through.

Read more: Review and test your forms

If you are not using Goals in Google Analytics, you are really missing the power of your analytics and knowing how well your website is working. While it is important to increase your site traffic, that is only part of the picture. High traffic is great, but all traffic and no action is not exactly what you had in mind and it isn’t going to help your business. There is a solution.

Today, we’re going to give a basic introduction to Google Analytics Goals to help you learn what they are and how they can help you in growing your business through your website.

Read more: Google Analytics Goals: How To Know If Your Website Is Working

Have you ever clicked on a link and gotten this ugly error message: saying “This page cannot be found?” How did you respond? If you are like many people, you got a little frustrated, hit the back button and went to a different website. If you are the website owner, that kind of sucks for you, because that represents lost business and maybe even a little lost reputation.

Read more: The 411 on 404 Errors: Finding and Fixing Broken Links

The entire reason that you are backing up (and storing your backup offline, of course) is in case your website gets hacked, or the server crashes, or one of the million reasons you might need that backup. But your backup is only valuable if it works. There’s nothing worse than needing the backup, thinking you’ve got one, and then seeing it fail when you need to restore it. Been there, done that, no fun!

Read more: In a Time of Crisis, Its Too Late To Test Your Website Backup

Why is keeping your content management system (CMS) up-to-date so important? We’ve touched on this in previous posts. But the short answer is Security, Security, Security! Of course, it also helps to keep up with bug fixes and new features. Those are definitely benefits. But if you really want to protect your site from hackers, the first and most important step is making sure you are applying all of the security updates. You need to update both the core system as well as any extensions. Fortunately, if you are using a current version of Joomla or WordPress, it is usually a pretty easy job.

Read more: How To Update Joomla or WordPress

Here are 9 tips for choosing the right domain name, how to find out if it is available, and how to register and renew your domain.

Choosing the right domain name for your website is a critical component to your website success. It is the first thing people will experience with your site, so you want to make a good impression that is easy to remember and makes sense to your visitor.

Read more: Top 9 Tips for Choosing and Managing Your Perfect Domain Name

I had an enlightening and eye-opening experience the other day I thought I’d share with you. It was one of those light-bulb moments, you know, where something suddenly becomes clear.

I was sitting in a hospital waiting room checking email on my iPhone and talking to another guy who happened to be a police officer. As I was talking to him, I was looking through my server emails at the most recent hack attempts.

Read more: My Enlightening - and Eye-Opening Experience

Have you ever tried driving with your eyes closed? Well, I wouldn’t recommend it. You most likely will end up in a place that you don’t want to go, such as into a ditch or another car. But the funny thing is, that is how most website owners drive their website… with their eyes closed.

Of course, as website owners, we can’t look over every visitor’s shoulder to watch what they are doing on the computer screen. But we do have tools at our disposal to help us see our direction, speed, and some other vital information to make your website really work for your business.

Today, we’re going to look at 3 Top Google Analytics reports that will help you see where you are going and allow you to make the right course corrections to reach your targets.

Read more: 3 Google Analytics Reports Every Website Owner Should Pay Attention To

Believe me, the last thing you want to do is wake up one morning and discover that your website crashed and you have no backup, no way to get back, no way to retrieve all of those files. You have to start all over. NO fun! And NO good for your business! Maybe your web host provider has a backup... maybe your web developer has an old copy that doesn’t have the recent changes... Maybe. But do you want your business riding on maybe? Join us as we explore some easy ways to backup your website.

Read more: Why It’s Critical To Back-Up Your Website Regularly

We’ve all experienced it. You know what I’m talking about. Slow loading pages! It can be so frustrating. I like to think I’m a patient person, but not when it comes to viewing web pages. If a page takes more than a few seconds to load, I’m outta there... on to greener pastures. Apparently, I’m not alone. According to a 2012 infographic from the Online Graduates Programs, around 25% of people say they would abandon a webpage that takes more than four seconds to load. Are you losing visitors due to slow loading pages?

Read more: Improving your page load speed

According to a recent article in the New York Times, security experts say that there are two types of companies in the U.S.: those that have been hacked and those that don’t know they’ve been hacked. In last month’s post, we discussed five basic security precautions that can help keep you from becoming a hacker’s next “low hanging fruit.” But what if you have already been hacked? What do you do? Join us as we take a look at ways to know if you’ve been hacked, how it happens, and what steps to take in getting your site running again.

Read more: 5 Critical Steps to Take If Your Website Has Been Hacked

This week’s post isn’t one of those “earth shattering, mind-blowing, if you don’t do it all is lost” kind of posts. Really, it is one of those basic, good-to-do type of posts that can help you keep your site in tip-top shape and make sure your site visitors have a great experience. What are we talking about? Cross-browser testing. Cross-browser what? What is that? Well, let’s take a look.

Read more: Cross-Browser Testing: Optimizing your visitors’ experience

In last week’s post, we discussed the massive WordPress attack and some common reasons why hackers do what they do. Needless to say, no one likes to have their website hacked. So this week we'll focus some of the most basic precautions that can help keep you from becoming the next “low hanging fruit.”

Read more: How Can I Protect My Site?

Meta descriptions are a hidden - yet important - jewel in your webpage. While the search engines don’t use them in ranking your page, the search engines will often display them as a part of the search results page. Think of them as a mini-advertisement that can greatly improve or harm user click-throughs to your site. In today’s post, we’ll talk about what meta descriptions are, what they look like, and some important considerations in how to optimize them.

Read more: Increase your click-through traffic by optimizing your meta descriptions

With last month’s major hacking attack on WordPress sites, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss website security. I know, I know... exciting topic, right? It isn’t too exciting until you’ve been hacked. So, stick with me for a few minutes and we’ll cover some of the basics to help keep you and your website safe.

Read more: Why Would Anyone Want To Hack My Site?