Tag Archives: google

WordPress HTTPS Everywhere

- Posted by to Publishing WordPress

https_everywhere
“I always feel like somebody’s watching me”, the 1984 hit song from Rockwell sums it up…and he might just be right! At the Google I/O Conference back in 2014, Google introduced (or at least endorsed) the principal of HTTPS Everywhere. Where as traditionally HTTPS was only used on login and credit card pages, during the conference, Google suggested that HTTPS be used on all pages on all sites, EVERYWHERE!

Why

Not interested in the “Why”, skip to the “How” below.

Before we get into the “why”, it’s important to note that it’s not just Google. Over the last couple of years, most major sites have been moving towards this concept of HTTPS Everywhere as well. Now Google, Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times and others only serve pages over HTTPS. Last month, AdPlugg followed suit and switched to 100% HTTPS as well. We still allow you to serve your ads over HTTP but anytime you are viewing a page on our website, it will be over HTTPS.

In 2017, Google has gotten more serious about this initiative and it is no longer just an option, now there is a penalty! Beginning last month (January, 2017), Google Chrome now displays an exclamation point in the search bar any time you are viewing an HTTP page. This is designed to alert the user to the fact that they are not on a secure page. Where previously the norm was HTTP and only some pages had HTTPS, Google now wants all pages to be HTTPS and to alert users when they aren’t on HTTPS. In addition, Google is now using HTTPS as a ranking factor, favoring sites that are on HTTPS to those on HTTP for Google’s search results.

The reason Google is doing this is interesting as it represents a shift in what is considered “sensitive” data. In fact, as I am writing this article, I wanted to describe passwords and credit card numbers as “sensitive data”. Google is suggesting that all of our activity online be considered sensitive, and it makes sense. Any time you are browsing over HTTP, a man (server) in the middle somewhere on the internet (or your own ISP) may be spying on what you are doing. In some cases ISPs even alter the content that you see. For instance, if you were to request http://www.example.com, your ISP could easily change what is returned to you since it is being transmitted in plain text. If however, you were to access https://www.example.com, your ISP and servers in the middle can’t read the request or response and you know that not only are you not being spied on but that no one has messed with the information that you are viewing. This can be especially important when you are using public WIFI. If you are on public WIFI over HTTP, the hotel, coffee shop, airport might be spying on what you are doing, if you are on HTTPS, you know that no one in the middle can see anything.

There are some concerns for the publisher however, HTTPS is costly. First of all, you need an SSL cert and your server needs to be configured to support HTTPS. You need to be aware that every page requested must be individually encrypted by the server and not just once, it needs to be individually encrypted for each user. This can cause quite a bit of additional load on your server and result in additional hosting costs.

However, Google has spoken and publishers would be wise to listen. For Google to remain popular, the user must have a good experience using the Google Chrome browser and Google search engine. Google has decided that the user will best be served by viewing pages only over HTTPS. It’s my belief that 10 years from now, Google won’t return HTTP results at all and Chrome will turn red with alerts any time you are viewing an HTTP page.

Because of Google’s initiative, blogs are now recommended to use HTTPS only as well. In this post I’ll be explaining how to set your WordPress site up for HTTPS only.

How

Now that you know why you should move your WordPress site to HTTPS only, in this section, I’m going to tell you how to do it.

Get an SSL Certificate

If you don’t already have one, first you are going to need and SSL certificate. SSL certificates are used to encrypt the data that is transmitted between your WordPress site and the user’s browser. If you are already feeling like you may be in over your head, you may want to just contact your hosting company. They can provide you with an SSL certificate and install it for you. However, if you think you can do it on your own, you can save some money.

I recommend ssls.com for inexpensive certificates that work just as good as the pricey ones. Go to www.ssls.com. For the average WordPress blog, their Comodo Positive SSL for $8.95 for 1 year is a great deal. SSLs.com provides instructions for how to create a private cert and CSR (Certificate Signing Request). Once you checkout, they will provide you with your SSL/TLS cert.

Install the SSL Certificate

How you install the SSL certificate is going to vary based on your host. Check your host’s help for details. You can also contact your host for help, once you have your own cert, most hosts will help you install it for free.

Configure WordPress for SSL Only

Once your SSL cert is correctly installed you should be able to view your site over http or https.

Now we want to configure WordPress and Apache so that they know that your site is only on https and to redirect all http requests to https.

Update Your WordPress Settings

  • Log in to your WordPress admin.
  • Go to Settings and then General.
  • Update the “WordPress Address (URL)” and “Site Address (URL)” fields to use https (ex: “https://www.example.com”).
  • Save the Changes.

Update your internal links (Optional, but recommended)

Most likely, you have links throughout your site that link to other parts of your site. And likely, these links all say “http://”. In the next step, we are going to redirect all http bound traffic to https. So while these links will continue to work, for SEO reasons, it’s a good idea to update all of your internal links to https so they point to the real page and not to a redirect.

The easiest way to do this is using a tool called wp-cli. In order to use wp-cli, you will need to have command line (SSH) access to your hosting account. Once you have wp-cli installed, issue the following command (update example.com to your own domain).

wp search-replace http://www.example.com https://www.example.com

If you don’t have SSH access (or don’t feel comfortable using it), you can do the search and replace using the WordPress Search and Replace Plugin.

Redirect all HTTP Traffic to HTTPS

We can update our internal links to use https instead of http but we don’t have any control over backlinks from other sites, google, etc. The last thing that we want to do is to break all of those links. What we should do instead is 301 (moved permanently) redirect the http request to https.

You can redirect all http traffic to https by adding the following to the top of your .htaccess file:


RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Conclusion

You now know both why you should move your WordPress site to HTTPS only and how to do it. Have something to add or need help? Post to the comments section below.

Also note that AdPlugg can serve ads over HTTPS in both our Free and Pro versions.

Blog Ideas: 9 Tips for Coming Up With Your Next Hot Blog Post

- Posted by to Blogging Publishing

blog-ideas
We’re bloggers. In addition to that, we work with thousands of other bloggers. We work to help them to make their blogs profitable and that requires having great content. In this post, we are going to share our 9 best tips for coming up with great blog ideas. Hopefully, by reading this post, you will be well on your way to coming up with the topic for your next hot blog post. So without further ado here they are.

1. Read the News

Take a hint from talk shows. What do they talk about on the Tonight Show, Late Night, etc? They talk about the latest headlines. You can do the same. Following the news, allows you to post info that is relevant to the latest that is going on

Though, there’s another benefit to this strategy as well. It can be difficult to get to the top of the results for existing topics, it’s much easier to get there by jumping on a topic early.

This doesn’t have to be the front page news headlines, it could just be the headlines for your industry. So if you have a blog about weddings, follow the style section of your favorite newspapers, etc. Then take the latest styles and apply them to ideas for weddings.

2. Use a Feed Reader

Tip #1, and several of our other top tips, require following news sources, blogs etc. The more news sources you follow, the better of an idea you’ll have about trends, hot topics, etc. However, following lots or sources can become expensive in terms of your time.

To get through it all quickly, you should consider using a feed reader such as feedly. In addition to a unified interface, feedly shows the most favorited results from any news feed at the top. This lets you know what articles/topics are the most popular. This is incredibly helpful when trying to decide what you should consider writing about.

3. Follow your Competitors

You want your blog to be unique but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use your competitors to help get the wheels turning. Figure out who your competitors are and what they are writing about. You don’t have to write about the same topics but looking at what they are writing about (and their share counts etc) will be invaluable in helping you decide what you want to write about.

4. Follow Related Blogs

No matter what your blog is about, there will likely be other blogs out there that provide content that is related. To continue on with the wedding blog example, if you write a wedding blog, follow blogs about flowers, celebrities, etc. to get great ideas for new content.

5. Watch for Trends in Reader/Customer Correspondence

Readers/Customers are a great source for blog ideas. Run back through your emails, blog comments, etc. and see what people are contacting you about. Do you keep getting emails and comments about wedding invitations, it might be time to dedicate an entire blog post to it.

6. Keep a List of Ideas

The above tips suggest keeping up with a lot of different sources for blog ideas. Don’t try to keep these ideas in your head and don’t try to go through them all everytime you sit down to write a post. Instead, anytime you have an idea for a blog post, jot it down. You may never use that particular idea but your list will quickly become a great source of ideas and inspiration when you sit down to write.

7. Use Keyword Tools

Keyword tools can be an excellent source of inspiration. If you have keywords that you are already targeting, you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest to get more ideas. These tools let you enter in a search phrase and will then return a list of related search phrases.

8. Check the Search Volume

As part of your blog topic brainstorming, you should be checking the search volume for each idea.

Thinking about writing a blog about “wedding discounts”? It might not be as good of an idea as you thought once you check the search volume.

You can check search volumes with tools such as the Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends.

9. Keep it Interesting (for Your Readers)

As well as checking the search volume, you need to ensure that your idea is of interest to your readers.

Are you dying to write a blog about your second cousin’s unusual wedding? We’ll, your readers likely don’t know your second cousin and if you can’t tie the story back to something that is of value to the reader, they may quickly lose interest in the post. It may be better to mention it as an aside to a post that has a larger appeal.

Conclusion

Using the tips above, you should have no problem coming up with a plethora of great blog ideas. Once you get the hang of it, you should get to the point where you are picking from several great options instead of struggling to find anything to write about at all.

Have more tips, suggestions or things that work for you? Do you know of any other tools that should be mentioned? Please contribute in the comments section below.

WordPress AdSense: The Ultimate How-To

- Posted by to Blogging Publishing Uncategorized WordPress

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Making sense of AdSense on WordPress

In this blog post we are going to talk about how to use AdSense with WordPress. We’ll go though what options are available, best practices and more.

Ad What? Word Who?

WordPress is the largest CMS (Content Management System)/blogging platform in the world and is used by more than 60 million websites. AdSense is Google’s advertising system for publishers allowing publishers to place google ads on their sites. It’s estimated that over 1.5 million sites use Google AdSense.

Getting Started with WordPress

WordPress is totally free and setting up a WordPress site is incredibly simple at this point. The easiest way to do it is to get a free hosting account from a host such as GoDaddy or BlueHost. Once you have your hosting account, both of these hosts have automated systems for installing WordPress into your account.

Getting Started with AdSense

Getting set up with AdSense is a bit more complicated. The first step is to sign up for an AdSense account. The steps are pretty straight forward so I’ll just give you an overview here (For more info, see the AdSense Help). This is what you do:

  • Go to the AdSense Signup page.
  • Sign in (using your existing Google Account) or create a new account. Tip: if you have an account with your domain in it (ex: bob@yourblog.com) using it can speed up the approval process.
  • You will then need to fill out info about your self, site, business etc.
  • Lastly you will need to agree to the AdSense Terms of Service.

Once you have finished the signup process, you will be given access to your new AdSense account. You may not however be approved yet. The AdSense approval process can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of months depending on your site, geographic location and application info. Again, using a domain specific email address can speed up the process.

Once you’ve completed the signup process you can start placing ads on your site. They won’t however start to show until you’re account has been approved and activated.

WordPress AdSense Integration

WordPress AdSense integration can be done in a number of different ways. Basically the goal is to place the ad tags that you receive from AdSense on the front end of your WordPress site. Once your account is approved, AdSense will automatically inject ads into the tags. These are the most common ways to add AdSense tags into your WordPress site:

  • Serve them with AdPlugg or other AdSense compatible WordPress plugins
  • Add the tags into a Text Widget
  • Add the tags into your WordPress theme

Note: we plan to go into these options in more detail in a follow-on post.

Once the ad tags are serving to your site (they will be invisible at first), Google will review your site and hopefully approve it. Once approved, you will start to see ads on your site.

If you have any questions or have something to add, please use the comment section below.