Michael Johnson

Google Speed Update Is Now Out.

What Does This Mean for You?

On July 9th, Google began rolling out the Google Speed Update that they first announced in January 2018. So why is Google’s new speed update important for you if you have a business website?

Bounce Rates Affect Search Rankings

According to Google data, a 3-second load time increases the bounce rate by 32%. Bounce rate is an Internet marketing term used to evaluate web traffic. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave (“bounce”) instead of remaining to view other pages on the same site. What’s more startling is that if your site takes 5 seconds to load, it can increase your bounce rates by 90%, according to Google. To put it in laymen’s terms, every bounce could mean a prospective customer lost.

Since 2010, Google has determined that site speed is a direct ranking factor. Google sees a bounce as a strike against the site in their rankings. At the time, in 2010, this was a desktop-only search update, but the new update includes mobile sites as well.

Google now suggests that website creators embrace a mobile first attitude to accommodate a large number of people now using mobile devices to browse the web. This means that pages should load in less than a second, as slow sites will pay the price in terms of lower search rankings.

While this new update only affects a small percentage of queries and has no precise sign of percentages, according to Google, it’s still important to investigate how Google’s speed update affects you.

What Pages Will Google Speed Update Affect?

The speed update will only affect the slowest pages; the ones that Google states, “deliver the slowest experience to users”. If you already have a site with pages well optimized for speed, this update is not exact enough for you to troubleshoot ways to lower your load time by milliseconds.

However, if you do have pages with poor load times, the update should cause you to sit up and take notice. Many companies depend on consistent organic traffic to push their business, so poor load times should be a big concern.

How Can You Determine Your Page Speed?

It’s important to determine how fast your site loads and where the holdups are. There are several tools you can use to do this. Here are some helpful tips you can use to measure and troubleshoot website speed and page load times.

Google Page Speed Insights

A good place to start for measuring website load times is Google Page Speed Insights. On this site, type and enter the URL of the page you want to check. You will get a report evaluating page speed and user experience, as well as tips on ways to make your website faster.

Pingdom

Pingdom has a website speed test tool similar way to Google Page Speed Insights, but it gives you a report divided into several sections. These include page analysis, a performance grade and a waterfall analysis, helping you identify the most vital causes of website slowdown and how to fix them. It also does a great job of explaining its analytics and testing using a color-coded system.

GTMetrix

GTMetrix combines information from other online page speed tools. After you enter your URL into the on-screen box, it generates a report highlighting tons of different aspects of website load times, and it grades each one from A to F. This grading system lets you take a peek at the areas of your site that worked well and the ones that need your help. Also, GTMetrix ranks the serious issues first, in order of importance, so you know what needs the most attention.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows you which pages are underperforming and gives tips on how to identify significant trends as to whether things are getting better or worse. It does this by including site speed in its reports, which can be found in the Behavior section. The Page Speed Suggestions link shows how individual pages could be improved, allowing you to focus on the most important pages first.

How Do You Fix Website Page Speed Issues?

Once you have identified the holdups on your site, the next move is to fix them. All of the tools listed above make suggestions.

Here is a list of the most common recommendations you find on these tests:

• Reduce the size of your images
• Refine your hosting
• Optimize your code
• Use a content delivery network
• Compress your site
• Use caching
• Optimize scripts
• Reduce the number of external services you use

After you make the recommended fixes, it’s a good idea to test your site to establish a benchmark and re-test at regular intervals.

Any Other Suggestions?

One last tip that Google gives about the speed update is, “The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.”

Although speed is important, it should not take precedence over the strength of your site’s content. Bad content that loads fast will not rank well. Good content is always going to make your site stronger.

However, if you have great content that is performing well, but your site speed is slow, you might as well take the steps to improve your speed to ensure the best rankings.

 

5 Security Questions You Should Be Asking Your Team

Cyber threats are continuously advancing with new and more complex threats rising to the surface around the globe. In order for a business to meet its objectives and deliver its product and services, it has to be increasingly dependent on technology, including the Internet. While this increases cyber risks that could cause a disruption to your company, it is a manageable risk with the right cyber security solutions in place.

Businesses face a multitude of cyber threats, some with severe effects that will require strict security measures. As a business leader, you may not need a clear understanding of the technical details, but in this new age, you should know exactly what your IT team is doing to protect your company from cyber threats.

Your team may have security protocols in place, but have you looked deeper into your cybersecurity lately? Where are your biggest weaknesses?

This article provides key questions to guide you in your discussions about cybersecurity risk management with your team.

5 Questions Leaders Should Ask About Cyber Threats

How Is Our Top Leadership Informed About Cyber Risks to Our Company?

Consistent communication between the company head and those responsible for

managing cyber risks provides constant awareness of current risks affecting the company and the impact it can have on a business. Since the buck stops with you, the CEO is responsible to manage and oversee the business’ risk management. This

oversight includes the on-going evaluation of cybersecurity budgets, incident reports, risk assessment scores, and policy improvements.

What Is the Present Business Impact of Cyber Risks to Our Company, and What Is Our Plan to Address These Known Risks?

Cybersecurity does not necessarily mean applying a checklist of requirements.  It is ensuring that your company is managing cyber risks to a satisfactory level. Managing cybersecurity risks keeps a strategic framework in place for your team that evaluates and manages cybersecurity risk throughout the company.

Identifying critical data and its impacts from cyber threats are crucial to understanding a company’s risk to exposure of a cyber-attack.  Whether you look at it from a financial, competitive, reputational, or regulatory point of view, risk assessment outcomes and team feedback is important to identify.

Is Our Cybersecurity Program Applying Best Practices and Industry Standards?

An across-the-board cybersecurity plan leverages industry standards and best practices

to protect systems that house your company’s important data. Your plan should uncover impending problems before they arise. This proactive strategy enables your team to initiate a timely response if an attack were to occur. Keep a strong recovery plan in place that prevents you from making rash decisions due to panic.

Establishing a good baseline for compliance requirements helps to address specific vulnerabilities, but they do not sufficiently speak to new and active threats or sophisticated attacks. Using a risk-based approach to apply cybersecurity standards and practices will result in much more cost-effective and comprehensive management of these risks than simple compliance activities alone. Consistently asking “what if” questions will help you stay ahead of the attack.

What Types of Cyber Threats Does Your Security Team Identify Each Week?

Your IT department should be able to calculate how much malicious traffic is being stopped by your current security protocols. Awareness of your business’ cyber risk situation needs to involve the timely detection of data breaches, and an awareness of current threats and vulnerabilities to your company. Your IT staff should be consistently analyzing, gathering, and integrating risk data from different sources and participating in threat information sharing with your team.  This will help you identify and respond to threats rapidly. The best scenario is to safeguard your network from attack in the first place.

How Far-reaching Is Our Cyber Incident Response Plan? How Often Do We Test It?

Do you have a network operations center reporting to you? They can provide real-time and trending data on current cyber threats. What about a manager who can identify deliberate risks, such as risks to the supply chain generated by third-party vendors? A high number of cyber-attacks involve third-party vendors who get careless.

An early response can constrain or even prevent an attack on your network. A significant piece of the puzzle includes your company’s cyber incident response preparation. Planning should be carried out in conjunction with other important entities that you interact with day-to-day.  This includes incorporating cyber event response procedures with your current policies. A strong disaster recovery and business continuity plan should already be in place.

Some key players in this security planning could include the following:

• Chief Information Officer
• Chief Information Security Officer
• Business Partners
• System Operator Partners
• General Counsel
• Public Affairs

Wrap Up

When you go through these 5 questions with your team, you will be able to better measure the condition of your current security and ensure you have a plan to proactively manage cyber security for the future. Revisit these questions often to accurately address new cyber threats. Cyber security is a dynamic, ever-changing field that requires vigilance.

A business continuity plan is one that ensures continuous delivery of products and services to clients, especially after critical operations have ceased, as often happens after a major disaster.

How exactly does a business continuity plan work? This system is put in place to ensure that if your operations are disrupted for any reason, there are mechanisms in place to get things back up and running as quickly as possible. Years ago, this was not considered necessary by most business owners. However, with the number of severe disasters America suffers each year, it has become essential.

From one end of the nation to the other, disasters do strike. California now experiences more severe fire seasons than ever, not to mention earthquakes. All coastal areas, especially in the south and along the east coast are prone to floods and hurricanes. The mid-section of America is known as “Tornado Alley.” There’s seemingly nothing we can do to stop Mother Nature, but we can be prepared. As a business owner, this is a must.

The Role Played By IT Organizations In A Business Continuity Plan

Nowadays, most businesses depend wholly on their computer and networking systems for everything from customer service and shipping to billing.

Any type of disruption to your business operations can be costly in more ways than one. Often, the disruption turns out to be an IT issue. Certain industries are even more vulnerable. These include health organizations. They provide critical services to their patients. The whole nature of healthcare is providing excellent patient care. That means on-time, dependable services. In this sector, lives literally are at stake, so a business continuity plan is vital.

A Business Continuity Plan includes setting up, running, and maintaining backup systems for all data and applications.  Most include onsite and offsite data backup and recovery initiatives.

Important Aspects Of An Effective Business Continuity Plan

Any plan must be well-thought-out and well-orchestrated so that it works correctly and quickly to restore access to files and apps. Below is a simple checklist with guidelines about how to create a Roadmap to your own customized Business Continuity Plan.

• Conduct A Business Impact Analysis

This establishes the core mandate of the business. From this analysis, a business owner can derive the importance of the most critical services offered by that specific organization. The impact analysis should also be aimed at discovering the internal and external impacts that any disruption would cause. Once the critical services and products have been identified, they must be put on a priority list. The priority list should be based on other factors such as additional expenses, loss of revenue, and even intangible losses.

Some of the identified threats in a business include natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and tornados depending on the geographical area where your business is situated. Other general threats include fires, cyber-attacks, and even terrorist attacks. Each of these may have different impacts and so the recovery plan must be able to address each of these threats separately.

• Designing The Continuity Plan

In designing your plan, you must also identify the specific person or department that will be responsible for its implementation in that area. In most instances, the IT department will be a big part of this, whether you’re using in-house personnel or IT managed services. Public Relations might also come in handy, especially in the event of a natural disaster. It’s important to keep your customers or patients calm during the crisis. Customers need and want to know what’s going on. Try to be as transparent as possible. This can help you avoid the loss of customer trust and brand reputation.

• Facility Resources

What resources have been set aside to help in the recovery process? Your budget should include an allocation for unexpected negative events. Whether your office is flooded because of a plumbing leak, or the roof is torn off by high winds, you need monies in your budget allocated for just this type of incident.

For instance, cyber-crimes are becoming almost commonplace. In the case of a cyber-attack, are you prepared? What would you do if today, one of your employees clicked on a bad link and a ransomware virus was downloaded into your computer system? Do you have IT experts on staff who would know what to do? Are you prepared to pay a ransom of thousands of dollars to restore access to your database? Cyber-crimes are occurring with much more frequency. They can bring a business to a standstill in a moment’s time.

Testing Your Business Continuity Plan

This is the phase that comes immediately after implantation of the plan itself. Testing your plan is so important. You may have missed something critical during the planning stages. Now is the time to find out where the gaps are. This is your golden opportunity to fix those gaps and address all those issues. If you wait until a real disaster strikes, it could end up costing a lot more money to deal with the evolving circumstances.

Why Executives Work With IT Consultants

Tragedy strikes when least expected. Those who survive are the ones who adequately prepared for every contingency. Most business owners are simply not experienced enough to do all this legwork and planning on their own. It takes a specialized team of people to design, implement and test a Business Continuity Plan. That’s why so many of today’s savvy business executives hire IT consultants who specialize in this field.

A good IT consultant will come in and asses your current IT infrastructure. They will help you understand what your strengths and weaknesses are. They will put together a plan that fits your budgetary requirements. In the end, you should be able to institute a much stronger business continuity plan for less money when you work with a professional IT consultant. They bring value to the process of planning for the unforeseen.