An Update on Spam Filtering at DreamHost

Two and a half years ago, we started a series of improvements to our email service to make it more reliable. Our email service hadn’t received as much attention as it should have over the years, and it was starting to show. Customers, friends, family, and even DreamHost team members regularly saw emails delayed or rejected because of blocklists, email client connection timeouts and errors, and various issues with webmail. Once we realized the impact we could have, we set off to fix it, and the results have been dramatic.

We’ve made a lot of progress but still have a ways to go!

Our current project is to migrate our spam filtering service to a new provider for incoming messages. Unfortunately, we’re discovering that it tends to be overly aggressive and sends some messages to your spam folder that clearly don’t belong there. Spam blocking is a bit of an art form that requires careful attention to get the balance just right, and we’re working on that balance to get acceptable results. Our new provider is working closely with us to solve the problem and prioritize development efforts that will improve incoming mail filtering at DreamHost.

One method we’re using to resolve the problem is to train the spam filtering algorithm in bulk. Some customers have written to our tech support team for help and have been asked to provide examples of messages that have been mis-filtered. Thank you to everyone who has done so; these messages have been extremely helpful in training the filtering algorithm quickly.

As we monitor the reports of incorrectly filtered messages, we’ll also be safelisting known good senders at the DreamHost level. While training the filtering algorithm can take some time, these changes will have immediate effects. We are adding well-known domains to our global safelist when they have a valid DMARC configuration. This is a manual process and is similar to the allow and blocklist settings you have in the control panel and mailboxes interface. We’re also working to improve the interface in our customer control panel to make this even easier going forward.

We have seen progress in the functionality of our spam filters over the last two weeks. We’ve seen fewer legitimate emails getting caught by the spam filter, and customer complaints are trending downward. Our spam filtering partner has further updates planned to improve its capabilities, and we are continuing our manual safelisting process. We hope to meet your expectations (and our own) very soon.

Enhancements So Far

One of the first improvements we made was to completely refresh the hardware we use for email service. Our previous generation of email hardware had reached the end of its practical life, and it struggled to keep up with the growth in email users and the amount of storage they consumed. The new hardware is faster, easier to maintain, and highly scalable. This has brought improvements to our email service speed and stability along with fewer errors for customers in their email clients.

Next, we took on the challenge of rejected customer emails due to our email servers appearing on blocklists. The unfortunate fact is that spammers are relentless and will use every method at their disposal — legal or not — to send their junk messages. That includes breaking into our customers’ email accounts and using them to send spam. The activity on these compromised accounts leads to our mail servers being placed on blocklists and, unfortunately, legitimate emails are often blocked as a result.

We implemented a third-party service to filter outgoing emails and reject sending fraudulent messages or spam. We immediately saw our email servers’ reputation improve, and their appearance on email blocklists is now a thing of the past.

Earlier this year, we changed our webmail system to use the popular open-source software, Roundcube. While this may appear to be a simple software change, there was a lot of work to migrate existing data from the old webmail system to Roundcube. We also took the opportunity to modernize the infrastructure and deployment process behind the scenes making it easier to operate going forward. When all was said and done, we had gained a more performant webmail system with a beautiful and responsive design.

Future Plans

We have several more projects we want to complete to further stabilize and improve the reliability of our email service. The next project will be a change invisible to email users. We will be updating the architecture of our email back end so that it is more manageable and fault-tolerant. This isn’t an exciting project from a “cool new features” perspective, but it will result in less downtime and errors for the service.

Looking further ahead, we plan to improve the deliverability of messages sent from our hosting machines and customer email forwarded outside of our service. These services are also affected by compromised accounts, blocklists, and spammers. Our aim is to ensure those legitimate messages are delivered to their final recipients.

We have lots of ideas to further improve the email experience once we get past these crucial initial projects. To name a few, we want to improve the email user experience in our control, provide better options for spam handling instead of simply moving it to the spam folder, and provide better integration of features in webmail.

The list may be long, but we are excited to build it!

We appreciate your patience while we work to continually improve our email offering at DreamHost. Please don’t ever hesitate to contact us to share your thoughts about email — we truly value your feedback.

The post An Update on Spam Filtering at DreamHost appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

source https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/update-spam-filtering/

The Best Tech Horror Movies to Watch This Halloween

It’s that magical time of year again when spooks and spirits abound. And what better way to celebrate than watching some scary movies alone in the dark. Mwahahaha!

Evil laughter aside, horror films have a storied history, beginning in the silent era with stars like Lon Chaney and Max Schreck up until present-day hits like Get Out. Audiences can’t get enough scary cinema. And a common theme running throughout the horror genre?

Technology.

Think about it: high tech and horror go together like tricks and treats. History’s horror catalog is filled with countless mad scientists, killer robots, and imaginative technologies that come with unintended — not to mention terrifying — consequences.

So armed with a bucket of popcorn and a fair bit of hubris, we decided to combine our love for technology (we’re a web hosting company, after all) and horror films to find out which ones deliver the biggest tech scares.

Fair warning: this isn’t a list of family-friendly flicks. Many of these are down-and-out, shock-and-awe, blood-and-gore horror films so use discretion if you’re screening around young ghosts and goblins, okay?

Now turn off the lights, grab a flashlight, and back up your website — it’s going to be a spooky ride.

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Science Gone Mad

Our first category features films that revolve around a single scientist or scientific goal. These films definitively prove why clinical trials are a *very* good idea.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Dir. James Whale — 1h 15m

In the sequel to Whale’s own 1931 classic, Frankenstein, a new mad scientist, Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), shows up to continue Dr. Frankenstein’s work, who now wants nothing to do with his disastrous experiments. Pretorius finds The Monster (Boris Karloff) and promises him a mate.

What unfolds is an amalgam of creepy imagery, religious symbolism, and psychological games, as you realize, despite his brutality, The Monster is a deeply sympathetic character. Pretorius eventually does create a mate for The Monster — The Bride of Frankenstein (Elsa Lanchester) — and you guessed it: it doesn’t end well.

Fiend Without a Face (1958)

Dir. Arthur Crabtree — 1h 14m

The constant outpouring of nuclear power from a U.S. Air Force test facility causes one of the neighboring town’s retired scientists, R. E. Walgate (Kynaston Reeves), to covertly reroute some of the power to his own lab, where he’s secretly conducting telekinesis experiments.

Through these experiments, Walgate ends up inadvertently creating a race of invisible “thought” monsters that attack the townspeople and suck out their brains in order to multiply. These creatures are completely invisible for much of the film until they finally appear as slimy brains that slither around via their attached spinal cords. Suspenseful with an incredibly high “ick” factor, this horror movie is a fantastic watch.

Altered States (1980)

Dir. Ken Russell — 1h 42m

Professor Edward Jessup (William Hurt) is an abnormal psychologist who experiments with hallucinogens in a sensory deprivation tank. By doing so repeatedly, he begins tapping into a previously undiscovered part of the human mind.

His wife, Emily Jessup (Blair Brown), desperately tries to calm him down from his infatuation with this alternate reality, but Edward insists that he’s about to find the next big breakthrough in the field of evolutionary science. The results of his obsession are very unexpected and truly horrifying.

Complete with disturbing hallucinogenic sequences and a mind-altering musical score, this film is one heck of a ride.

Re-Animator (1985)

Dir. Stuart Gordon — 1h 26m

Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a medical student who attempts to reanimate the dead using a special serum. During his experiments on both animals and people, he uses especially high doses that result in the subjects behaving insanely violent.

As West starts to become obsessively self-consumed, more bodies are reanimated and wreak havoc, and the film becomes an all-out gore fest.

Honestly, this has some of the most unique — and utterly disgusting — makeup effects in film history. It’s gross, irreverent, and funny.

From Beyond (1986)

Dir. Stuart Gordon — 1h 26m

Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) — yep, another Pretorius — and his assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs), develop a device called the Resonator, which emits a frequency that enlarges the brain’s pineal gland allowing those within range to see a reality beyond normal human perception.

Pretorius becomes obsessed with the machine’s power and crosses over into a parallel dimension, leaving his lifeless physical body behind. Tillinghast and a new scientist, Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), conduct further research on the Resonator to discover what happened. What unfolds is a series of grotesque sequences and haunting visuals that scream 1986.

Scanners (1981)

Dir. David Cronenberg – 1h 43 min

This cult classic definitely has some Stranger Things vibes — at least where offspring-with-mind-numbing-superpowers content is concerned. In this case, a fictional drug causes pregnant test subjects to bear children with altered neurological functioning — specifically, with telepathic and telekinetic ability.

These individuals, called Scanners, are now an underground channel of curiosities, locked in an unconventional good versus evil tug-of-war between those Scanners who are learning to control their abilities and those wanted for use as weapons in building a new world order.

This thought-provoking flick is especially well-suited for gore-hounds — yep, that much-talked-about head-explosion scene is only the half of it.

Tech Gone Awry

Each of the films in this category focus on a single type of technology. Someone should have QA’d this ish.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Dir. Tommy Lee Wallace — 1h 38m

Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy), the owner of a Halloween mask manufacturer, is gearing up for his biggest sale of the year. Meanwhile, Dr. Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins) is investigating a mysterious death that seems to be connected to the masks.

Unfortunately, detailing the technological aspects of the plot would spoil it for you, so you’ll just have to watch it. I promise it’ll surprise you.

Though audiences disliked this film when it was released (mainly due to the fact that it didn’t have anything to do with the series’ iconic antagonist, Michael Myers), it’s a uniquely interesting take on the Halloween horror franchise.

The Fly (1986)

Dir. David Cronenberg — 1h 36m

This remake of the 1958 classic film is centered around Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), an eccentric scientist who is in the process of building a set of telepods capable of instantaneous teleportation. Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), a science journalist, is invited to Brundle’s lab to document his process.

After several attempts with inanimate objects and animals, Brundle is convinced the telepods are ready for human trial and uses himself as the guinea pig, not realizing that a housefly snuck into the pod prior to the experiment. Brundle’s human DNA and the fly’s DNA become intertwined, and we witness his methodical and eventual transition into a human-fly hybrid.

Combining impressive effects with humorous and compelling performances, this film is a modern sci-fi horror classic and an absolute must-watch.

eXistenZ (1999)

Dir. David Cronenberg — 1h 37m

Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a world-renowned video game developer, famous for her virtual reality games played on biotechnological VR gaming consoles that connect directly into human spinal cords. Geller demonstrates her newest game, “eXistenZ,” to a focus group where she is shot by a member of a counter-VR group called the Realists. Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a marketing trainee, rushes to her aid, and the two of them embark on a harrowing journey through what may or may not be part of the “eXistenZ” game narrative.

You’re never quite sure what is real or what is virtual reality, and that’s one of the reasons why this film is so darn compelling. It’s also inherently eerie and will leave you scratching your head — in a good way.

Pulse (2001)

Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa — 1h 58m

Several people in Tokyo discover ghosts entering the living world — and consuming lives — via the internet. Well, that’s the simple explanation. Kurosawa weaves a complex narrative with a lot of plot points happening beyond what we see on the screen.

The themes of death, suicide, depression, love, isolation, despair, and hope are all present in the film. Let’s put it this way: this film will sit with you for a while. It’s easily one of the creepiest and most compelling horror films made in the last 20 years.

The Den (2013)

Dir. Zachary Donohue — 1h 21m

Elizabeth Benton (Melanie Papalia) is a grad student who is conducting sociological research on a video chat service called The Den. She ends up video chatting with a number of people from all over the world until she witnesses a live murder. After looking into the murder, the killer’s focus turns on her and her friends, resulting in a grizzly and unexpected series of events.

The entire film is made up of spliced together computer and phone footage, but this isn’t just another stale, by-the-numbers found-footage gambit. The suspense is palpable, and it results in a twist that is both surprising and terrifying. It’s an underrated horror gem.

Ghost in the Machine (1993)

Dir.  Rachel Talalay — 1h 35m

Karl Hopkins (Ted Marcoux), a serial killer and local computer technician — because hey, even murderers need a day job — is hunting down his next victims when he crashes his car in a storm. While undergoing an MRI, a lightning surge transforms his mind into electrical energy, which he then uses to continue his reign of terror, infiltrating electrical grids and computer networks to kill.

Even with this cringeworthy, trainwreck of a horror flick — featuring a ‘90s view of the most overblown ideas of what tech of the future could look like — you might still, after watching, be a little hesitant to microwave that popcorn.

How to Make a Monster (2001)

Dir. George Huang – 1h 31m

The return of the deadly power surge. (Has anyone in these films ever heard of a surge protector? Just wondering.) This time, a lightning strike and an AI chip bring a frightening video game, Evilution, to life. Crafted for a new level of terror by three renowned game designers, the monstrous — and now real life — game confines the developers alone in a building and targets them as prey.

A video game-themed storytelling of what could happen when your creation turns against you, this film ranks pretty high on the cheesiness factor but is a good pick for when you don’t want your horror getting too heavy.

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Robots Gone Bad

Last but certainly not least, when it comes to thrills, these films focus on the dark side of advances in modern robotics and artificial intelligence.

The Stepford Wives (1975)

Dir. Bryan Forbes — 1h 55m

Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) is a freelance photographer who moves from New York City to Stepford, Connecticut, with her husband Walter Eberhart (Peter Masterson), only to find that all of the women in the small town are vapid, seemingly contented housewives. Joanna befriends a fellow newcomer, Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss), with whom she begins to unravel the sinister plot.

Joanna eventually realizes that the self-obsessed husbands of Stepford are replacing their wives with androids, programmed only to keep house and support their husbands implicitly. Though this social satire is soaked in transparency, it’s an entertaining and suspenseful viewing experience. Plus, the ending is a masterfully executed exercise in psychological chills.

Demon Seed (1977)

Dir. Donald Cammell — 1h 34m

Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) is the creator of Proteus IV, a particularly advanced AI software that was built to solve the world’s biggest problems — think disease and famine. His wife, Susan Harris (Julie Christie), feels estranged from Alex, and the situation is made worse by Alex leaving her to focus more on his research.

Proteus IV becomes self-aware and motivated to procreate. Susan gets unintentionally caught up in the AI’s plan, and what follows is an experimental science fiction film that tests the boundaries of what is morally right and wrong. It’s a fascinating watch.

Alien (1979)

Dir. Ridley Scott — 1h 57m

Though this timeless sci-fi horror film primarily deals with the eponymous “alien,” one of the most chilling and unexpected parts of this thriller is the reveal of the AI character. For those of you who still haven’t seen it, we won’t give away exactly who it is. But trust me, it’s a solid twist.

After a commercial resource-gathering mission, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the crew of the spaceship Nostromo are returning to Earth when they intercept a distress call from the planetoid, LV-426. And that’s when the excrement starts hitting the fan at a methodical and spine-shivering pace.

The film does an immaculate job of familiarizing the audience with the social environment of the Nostromo crew, so when the android character is made known, it’s a very effective reveal. If you haven’t seen it already, do it. It’s a classic for a reason.

Chopping Mall (1986)

Dir. Jim Wynorski — 1h 17m

The Park Plaza Mall has recently installed a brand new team of high-tech security robots to patrol the complex at night and make sure there are no intruders. Unfortunately, a group of teenage mall employees is planning an after-hours party in the mattress store — if you know what I mean.

Of course, the security robots malfunction and go on a killing spree. This film is pure 1980s schlock at its finest. The acting is terrible, the action is laughable, but the entertainment value is 100. It’s a genuinely great piece of trash cinema.

Hardware (1990)

Dir. Richard Stanley — 1h 34m

Moses Baxter (Dylan McDermott) is a scavenger in a futuristic urban wasteland. He buys an old robot head off a mysterious trader and gives to his on-again, off-again lover, Jill (Stacey Travis). Jill installs the robot head to an android body that she’s already been working on — as one does. But soon, the robot develops a tenacious bloodlust and starts terrorizing everyone in its path.

Auteur director Richard Stanley is a controversial figure, admired by some and panned by others. The world he creates in this film is engrossing and admirably executed, but you’ll have to be the judge of whether or not this is cinema gold. For our money, it’s worth a watch.

Related: Your Website Downtime Survival Guide

Jump Scares Ahead

Well, there you have it: 15 fun tech horror movies to watch this Halloween. Sink your claws into as many of these films as you like, and let us know if we’ve missed one of your horror cinema favorites.

Here’s wishing you all a safe and happy Halloween! Just remember, technology can be a real killer.

The post The Best Tech Horror Movies to Watch This Halloween appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

source https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/best-tech-horror-movies/

7 Web Design Mistakes That Could Be Scaring Away Your Visitors

What is keeping internet users up at night? It could be that scary movie they just watched, or worse yet, it could be your website. 

If you’ve got a digital presence decked out in a ghastly design, it’s likely robbing you of precious clicks, driving away potential customers, and sabotaging your chances of building a well-ranking, authoritative brand. 

The good news? You don’t need to be a web designer or an expert in web development to improve a weak website!

In this guide, we’ll detail seven scary web design mistakes that could be spooking your visitors —  and how to fix them quickly — so you can make sure your website is all treats and no tricks.

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1. Scary Slow Site Speeds

For consumers browsing the internet, nothing is more spine-chilling than a slow-loading site. Before you can say “Boo!” they’ve abandoned your page, leaving you with irritated audiences and suffering engagement. 

In fact, page speed can be the make-it-or-break-it factor for the success (or failure) of your website, dramatically affecting everything from sales to sign-ups to search traffic. 

Visitors have high expectations: 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 49% abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. Plus, 79% of online shoppers who have trouble with site performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again. 

Ouch. That’s a lot riding on your site’s load time and overall performance. 

Is your site (creepy) crawling? Use a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to clue into your site’s performance and discover needed areas of improvement to achieve lightning-fast load times.

We’ve also got a few tips to speed things up: trim down bulky code, patch up caching issues, optimize your site’s CSS, and perhaps most importantly, choose a quality web host. 

2. A Haunting User Experience

Now let’s take a trip in the way-back time machine, you know, before COVID-19 changed everything.

 Think about the last experience you had at a brick-and-mortar store. Did the floor layout, decor, and atmosphere invite and engage you? Or did tight aisles, overly-intrusive sensory elements, or labyrinth-like setup negatively affect your shopping experience? Whatever your experience, we’ll take a guess that it largely determined whether or not you wanted to visit that store again. 

It’s the same with your website. 

The kind of experience users have on your site (from the second they land there) will affect how — and if — they engage with you. If your site contains nightmare navigation, unsavory design elements, or poor performance, visitors won’t stay long. 

To craft and cultivate a positive user experience, make your navigation and drop-down menu intuitive so users can find what they’re looking for. Then follow aesthetically-pleasing design principles and keep site operations fine-tuned. If your visitors have an enjoyable experience on your site, not only will they be more likely to come back, they’ll engage with you and help you find site success.

Related: How to Build an Awesome Online Store with the OceanWP Theme

3. An Unresponsive Layout

Ready for some hair-raising facts? Based on data from January 2018, the global population of unique mobile device users reached 3.7 billion — yep, billion. What’s more, 52% of web internet traffic in 2018 was mobile, and the mobile-only audience is expected to grow to 55 million by 2022. 

Mobile internet usage is gaining significant traction, and will likely overtake desktop internet usage in the future. That means if your website is not optimized for different types of screens, including smartphones and tablets, you’re going to lose out on meaningful engagement from your target audiences. 

Related: How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices

Plus, having a responsive site isn’t just important for user experience; it’s a critical element of your SEO strategy. Google operates on a mobile-first indexing policy, meaning the search engine predominantly uses the mobile version of website content for indexing and ranking. So, investing in a mobile-first approach to your web design is essential when it comes to optimizing for search engines and, ultimately, driving traffic to your site. 

Responsive design also affects your brand image. A whopping 89% of people are likely to recommend a brand after a positive experience on mobile. On the other hand, 46% of people say they would not buy from a brand again if they had a less-than-stellar mobile experience. What’s more, 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site. 

The key takeaway here?  

Prioritize a website optimized for mobile and responsive across devices and different browsers.

4. Terrifying Typography

You might not think the fonts on your site matter, but utilizing type haphazardly or without thoughtful intention is a major design flaw and affects the experience your visitors will have, even if just subconsciously. 

Just like with other elements of design, typography follows rules — dictating what text combinations, colors, font size, and layouts are aesthetically-pleasing and effective. Well-established typography can increase your conversion rates, build your brand authority, encourage action, amplify your message, and create a positive sensory experience. 

Consult our guide for typography to-dos, and plan your font strategy with meticulous consideration or else you risk interrupting usability and cognitive fluency. 

Related: How to Build a Lead-Generating Landing Page with WordPress (3 Steps)

5. Ghostly Calls to Action

When you enter a haunted house, you never quite know what you’re going to get. Zombie up ahead? Hidden skeletons behind the door? Unidentified noises behind you? As you’re feeling for the exit in the dark, you’re going to face a host of unexpected and spooky mysteries. 

Your website visitors shouldn’t feel like they’re having a haunted house experience when they type your URL. 

When internet users land on your site, it should be free of mystery ghosts and ghouls. Meaning, visitors should know what to expect. They should know where to find a contact button, how to navigate your menu, and above all, what you want them to do — whether that’s read a blog post, subscribe to an email list, follow your social media platforms, or purchase a specific product.

Having a clear call-to-action button helps users know how to engage with you, vastly increasing the chances you’ll find success (and those boosted analytics you want!). Guide potential customers to a specific action with a clear, prominent, and well-distinguished icon or button and include it on all your pages and content.

Related: 7 Tips for Writing Winning Calls to Action for Your Website

6. Spine-Chilling Safety Oversights

Online users worry (a lot) about online safety. In fact, 73% of Americans who use the web are concerned about online privacy, so your website needs to be a safe space, free from creepy-crawly web demons and malicious malware. 

First, outfit your site with an SSL certificate, giving your visitors the peace of mind that your website is secure. Even the presence of a safety badge or security can do wonders. 

Then, tighten security by using a quality web host, upgrading to HTTPS, utilizing secure plugins, configuring file permissions, and backing up your site regularly to keep site terrors at bay.

Related: How to Back up Your WordPress Website — A Complete Guide

7. Cloak–and–Dagger Content

The fact of the matter is, you need to offer your website visitors value or else they have no reason to stay. 

With quality content, you provide users with a way to engage with you, helping drive traffic and build a following. But if your content is hard to find, sub-par, or (gasp!) nonexistent, you’re sabotaging your chances of success. Use the following tips to make sure you’re creating top-notch content. 

Embrace Your Niche

Whatever field or industry you occupy, keep your content consistent for your target audience. Relevant content will build your brand and help establish your site as an authority amongst your competition, distinguishing you from the rest.

Proofread

Error-ridden content will brand you as an amateur. Stay professional by taking the time to edit and polish your content before hitting “Submit.” Clean content will go a long way toward establishing your brand.

Related: How to Create a Brand Style Guide for Your Website

Offer Value

Not only are attention spans shorter than ever, but often, visitors need a good reason to even engage with your site. Entice potential customers with incentives — whether that be free e-books, blog posts, printables, or insider tips — to get their eyes on your content.

You don’t have to post content on your site every hour, but you should be posting regularly. Your visitors should know when to expect new content from you. This will build their trust — and your authority. Use a content calendar to plan, schedule posts ahead of time, and keep yourself organized. If you want a few pointers, check out our guide to creating a content marketing strategy.

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Fix Those Eerie Web Design Errors

Don’t give your audiences the heebie-jeebies with poor website design. Offer them the best of online experiences with the virtual treat (we’re talking king-size candy bars here) of a well-designed website. 

Fixing those pesky web design mistakes will prime you for top-of-the-line placement in search engines, improve user experience, boost conversions, enhance site usability, lower your site’s bounce rate, and establish your online presence — plus, they won’t leave screaming. 

Sounds good, right? 

If you’re ready to makeover your website, trick-or-treat yo’ self to a professional web design. Our talented designers can create a polished, professional website (and brand) to reflect your vision at an affordable price. Learn more about our professional design services today!

The post 7 Web Design Mistakes That Could Be Scaring Away Your Visitors appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

source https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/scary-web-design-mistakes/

How to Find, Monitor, and Beat Your Competition

Everyone wants to get ahead of their competition. But there’s far more to love about monitoring the competition than just the satisfaction of beating them in the search results.

In short, you can learn a lot from your competitors.

What they’re doing right. What they’re doing wrong. Or simply, what they’re doing.

And you can use all this information to your advantage, especially as a small business owner.

But first, you need to find out who your competitors are (or check that those you think you’re competing against, are actually your competition).

In this post, we’ll walk you through how to identify who your competitors are, the tools and tactics you can use to track them, and the opportunities for you to use that information to beat them.

• How to Identify Your Competitors
• The Tactics You Can Use to Monitor Your Competitors
• Tools to Track Your Competitors

Ready to take your website to the next level? Let’s dive in!

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How to Identify Your Competitors

Your obvious go-to is Google. Just search for your most important keywords, and see who’s ranking for them.

Bear in mind, however, that depending on the size of your brand and the Domain Authority of your site, those at the top of the search results aren’t necessarily your “realistic” competitors. You can still analyze them and learn from them, but your focus should be on companies you share a (more or less) level playing field with.

For that, you might have to step off the first page of Google’s search results. You might also have to look up some slightly less competitive search terms.

Businesses with a local presence have another thing to consider.

Your closest competitors are those that are not only close to you in terms of the products they offer but geographically, too.

Discovering them, thankfully, is easy. Just adapt your search terms to include the location (or locations) of your premises.

Other ways to uncover your competitors are included in some of the tools we’ll talk about below, so stick with us to learn about some of the best tools for finding and monitoring your competitors’ marketing activities.

But first, let’s talk about …

The Tactics You Can Use to Monitor Your Competition

Wondering how to monitor your competitors? And how you can get started with competitor analysis? We can help!

There are countless ways you can track your competitors and what they’re up to — for example, the strategies they’re employing, the keywords they’re targeting, and the results they’re getting.

Just looking at their site (specifically their title tags) should give you a good idea of the keywords they’re targeting. Tools like SEMrush, Sistrix, and others listed below can be used to view some of the keywords they’re ranking for. You can also use the FATRANK Chrome extension to instantly discover where a site ranks for any given keyword.

In addition, you can look at their current links and monitor their sites for new links. Pay particular attention to industry-relevant links, and links to content they’ve created (you may well be able to target those links too.)

Another tactic for monitoring your competitors involves researching and analyzing their most shared content.

• Why’s this content getting shared?
• Who’s sharing it and where?
• And how can you create something similar (but better) to try and replicate their results?

Just simple things like checking in on their social activity, reading their blog content, monitoring their brand name with Google Alerts, and signing up (and paying attention to) their mailing list can give you valuable insights into your competitors’ tactics and the quality and strength of their marketing strategy.

Related: How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Tools to Track Your Competitors’ Ads

What Runs Where

What Runs Where is designed solely for competitive analysis of the paid ads market.

In short, it removes the guesswork and reduces the time you spend testing, so you can start pushing out more effective ads faster.

Sistrix

Sistrix covers most of what you need in a digital marketing tool. Included in that is a nifty little feature that brings up heaps of data for any site — perfect for sites you want to keep an eye on.

All you need to do is login and head to the More section. From there, you can click Ads and access the dashboard.

Next, populate the search bar at the top with the domain you want to look at, and you’ll be presented with all the data Sistrix has on that domain.

You can see:

• Their paid keywords
• Their profile
• Their display URLs
• The word count of their ads
• The display position
• The strength of the competition
• Their top ad copy
• The history of their paid keywords
• Their best keywords

You can even see and look at the banner ads they are using.

Handy, huh?

SEMrush

SEMrush has been in the digital marketing space for years, and if you want the most bang for your buck, it’s a good bet as your go-to SEO tool.

Their competitive research for ads kicks butt and is invaluable when it comes to spying on your competition.

Navigate to the Advertising Research section, and you’ll get a wealth of data, including:

• Number of keywords
• Estimated traffic for the competitor
• The estimated traffic cost

Changes over time can also be viewed in simple — but super helpful — graphs.

In addition to this, you can view position changes, competitors, ad copy, ad history, pages, and subdomains.

Pay special attention to the Competitors tab. It’s extremely useful.

For one, you’ll get a cool looking competitive positions map.

You’ll also get a list of all potential competitors and their data. In the example below, we can see that Walmart has over 15,000 competitors in its ads market.

The amount of data you can collect on your competitors from SEMrush is — in short — amazing. Trying to collate this data by hand would take weeks or months, but in SEMrush, you can grab it with the click of a button.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, we’ve worked out a free trial with SEMrush for our readers, so you can see if the tool is a good fit for your site without a long-term commitment!

Spyfu

Founded in 2002 and originally called Googspy, Spyfu is one of the original players in the ad monitoring tool space.

While Spyfu has since evolved into a more complete marketing tool, its ad competitive intelligence alone makes it worth investing in.

To access it, head over to the PPC Research tab and enter the name of the domain you want to research.

From there, you get a nice clean dashboard that includes a lot of data. You’ll see:

• Monthly paid keywords
• Estimated monthly PPC clicks
• Estimated monthly PPC budget
• Overall market research
• How long Spyfu has been collecting the domain’s ads
• Buy recommendations
• Worst performing keywords

This can also be exported to a handy PDF.

If you want more, click on the Competitors tab in the main menu. Spyfu will then pull the data for the sites it believes are competing for ads for that domain.

If you believe Spyfu’s picked the wrong competitors or you have a particular competitor in mind, you can add a custom domain.

The tool also lets you graph PPC keywords, paid clicks, and ad budgets over time. Handy.

Another powerful feature in Spyfu is Kombat.

The name might sound a bit intimidating, but don’t let that put you off. It essentially lets you compare the keyword universe of three domains to see which ads are competing and which ads are exclusive to a particular competitor.

This will help you spot where your competitors are outdoing you because you don’t currently have ads in those areas.

Beyond this, Spyfu can help you supercharge your PPC research and account with other features like Keyword Groups, PPC keywords, Ad History, Ad Advisor, and Adwords Templates.

Related: The Top SEO Tools to Optimize Your Website for Success

Backlinks

If you’ve been working in Digital Marketing for a few weeks or even a few days, you likely understand the importance of links. They’re pretty much the heart of SEO and still today remain one of the biggest ranking factors.

Related: How to Create a Link Building Strategy

But how do you find out who’s linking to you, and more specifically, who’s linking to your competitors?

Here are a few tools to help.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs was a bit of a latecomer to the backlink research tool market, but it quickly established itself as one of the big players thanks to its massive index of links and ultra-smooth interface.

Once logged in, head over to the Site Explorer section.

From there, just pop in your own domain or the domain of a competitor.

Ahrefs will start doing its magic and pull in data points for the domain, including:

• Ahrefs rank
• Number of backlinks
• Number of referring domains
• The number of keywords it ranks for
• Organic traffic
• Traffic value
• Crawled pages
• A breakdown of the kind of sites linking to the page
• Referring pages, IPs, and subnets
• New and lost referring domains
• New and lost backlinks
• The distribution of links by country
• How the links are distributed across Ahrefs URL rating

That’s a whole lot of data!

Everything is exportable to Excel, so you can easily chop and change the data and focus specifically on what you want to dig into.

One of Ahrefs’ best features for competitor research is their Link Intersection Tool.

Simply add in your own website and a handful of your competitors’ sites.

Click Show Link Opportunities. Go and make a cup of coffee. And wait for the magic to happen.

When you return, you’ll find a list of backlinks that your competitors have and you don’t. You can then target some of the strongest sites from the list yourself.

Link Explorer

Founded in 2004 by Rand Fishkin, Moz is arguably one of the best-known SEO tools in the market.

Until a few years ago, their link index was, let’s say, a little underwhelming. That changed when they launched a brand new version of Link Explorer. It blew the old version out of the water and regained Moz its position as a legitimate competitor in the backlink analysis market.

So how do you use it?

From the PRO option in the main navigation, you need to locate the Link Explorer. As with other tools, you then need to put in your website (or a competitors’ site) to grab the data.

You should then see a dashboard that looks like this:

Like with the other tools listed above, you’ll get a wealth of data, including:

• Domain Authority
• Linking domains
• Inbound links
• Ranking keywords
• Discovered and lost linking domains
• Domain authority, page authority, and linking domains over time
• Nofollow and follow over internal and external links
• Top follower links to the site
• Top pages on the site
• Top anchor text for the site
• Linking domains by DA

Moz also has a couple of features that can help you compare your site to your competitors’.

Look on the left-hand side of the navigation and you will see an option called Compare Link Profiles. Click it.

Next, drop your competitors into the boxes provided.

Click Analyze, and grab a twinkie while you wait.

If you’re looking at the root level data you will see:

• Domain Authority
• Spam Score
• Total links
• Internal followed links
• External followed links
• Internal nofollow links
• External nofollow links
• Total linking domains
• Followed linking domains

The results will look a bit like this, and in no way should we be surprised that Amazon has ALL THE LINKS!

This is also super useful if you’re looking at exact pages on your site and similar pages on a competitor’s site. Links could be the reason your really awesome page doesn’t rank as well as a competitor’s not so awesome page.

You can also compare Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Linking Domains over time.

Majestic SEO

Majestic is the grandfather of all backlink tools. It’s probably been around since before the Internet was invented. Heck, they even sent a 3D model of the Internet into space.

Much maligned for its poor UX, Majestic more than makes up for that with its data.

Dropping your URL (or a competitor’s URL) into the search box will give you data on:

• Trust Flow
• Topical Trust Flow
• Link Profile
• Citation Flow
• External backlinks
• Referring domains
• Referring IPs
• Referring subnets
• Link Context
• Crawled and indexed URLs
• Types of backlinks
• Incoming languages and site languages
• Link density of inbound links
• Backlink history
• Anchor text

And so much more.

You also get some (not so pretty) data visualizations.

If you want to do a more competitive analysis, then head over to the Related Sites tab and Majestic will give you a breakdown of all the sites it thinks are related to your own. You can then look at who you believe to be your closest competitors and analyze their Link Trust Flow and Citation Flow.

Super useful. And so much data that it will keep you busy for ages.

Majestic also has a pretty cool Compare feature (you can compare one site to yours in the Lite version of the tool, and up to five in the Pro version.)

Simply pop your domain into the search box and then click the compare button.

Add a competitor into the second URL box.

Click the search button, and you’ll get backlink comparison data that covers:

• Target type
• Title tag
• Primary Topical Trust Flow
• Trust Flow
• Citation Flow
• Majestic Million (the top million sites in Majestic’s index)
• Referring domains
• Referring IP addresses
• External backlinks
• Indexed URLs
• Average total outlinks per page

That’s a lot of data (which is exportable by the way) for you to dig through. Happy analyzing.

Content

We all know about the importance of great content. Google’s been telling us to create “great content” for years. So how can you spy on your competitor’s content? How can you see what’s working for them and what isn’t? There are many great tools for doing this, but here are two of the most powerful.

BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo was one of the first content analyzing tools to enter the market, launching back in 2012. It has become so ubiquitous in the space that many other tools base theirs around the features and functionality of Buzzsumo. We’re not sure how Buzzsumo feels about this, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Buzzsumo’s handiest competitor content analysis feature is the Content Web Analyzer. You fill this in the content section of the navigation.

Simply drop in a topic that you and your competitors are likely to cover, and let the tool do its magic.

It will return results like this:

As you can see, it locates the top-performing content for that topic and gives you the following metrics:

• Facebook engagements
• Twitter shares
• Pinterest shares
• Reddit engagements
• Number of links
• Evergreen score
• Total engagement

You can also dig deeper to find out where on the web this type of content is most popular, its word count, and what sort of content gains the most traction for a given topic.

During this, you’ll identify some of your competitors’ most successful content. If you want to learn more about it, Buzzsumo will let you search by domain.

This is extremely useful for uncovering the strategies they’ve used and to what success.

Ahrefs Content Explorer

Ahrefs initially launched as a tool for analyzing websites’ link profiles. Over the years, they’ve added more and more tools to their suite. One of those tools doesn’t get talked about as much — which is a shame because it’s awesome.

Want to try it out?

Log in and head over to the Content Explorer section.

As with Buzzsumo, you just enter the topic you’re looking to analyze and pop it into the box.

You’ll then see a dashboard that brings back loads of data.

• The title of the content
• The author
• Word count
• Twitter shares
• Facebook shares
• Pinterest shares
• Domain rank
• Referring domains
• Organic traffic
• Traffic value

If you’re looking to discover new competitors, then head over to the Websites tab and you’ll see a list of 100 domains with the top-performing content for that topic.

If you know the domain of a competitor, you can also search for their site specifically.

And you’ll get to see their top-performing content.

That should keep you busy for some time.

Related: Take Your Content Strategy Up a Level with a Content Audit

Keywords

Solid keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO campaign — but where’s the best place to find keywords — and more importantly, your competitors’ keywords? Here are some of the most powerful keyword research tools and some of their features.

iSpionage

This is a comprehensive competitor analysis tool that will help you uncover your competitors’ most profitable (paid) keywords, as well as their most successful ad copy and landing pages.

In other words, iSpionage offers deep insights into what’s working best for your competitors in the digital ad space, so you can go one step further and get two steps ahead of them.

Sistrix

Head over to Sistrix’s SEO tab and pop in a keyword that you want to rank for. Sistrix will then search its index and return data, including:

• Competition
• Search volume
• Global search volume
• Similar keywords
• Related keywords
• SERP features
• Top ranking domains

The top-ranking domains will help you surface some of your competitors in the search results.

SEMrush

SEMrush works in a similar way. Simply dropping your keyword into the search function of the Keyword Explorer section brings back all the metrics you might expect, such as:

• Volume
• Keyword difficulty
• Global volume
• Trends
• Related keywords, variations, and questions

Dig a little further and you’ll see the actual search results for that keyword. You’ll also be able to find competitors to analyze.

Want to find keywords that your competition ranks for, but you don’t?

Head over to the Keyword Gap tool and pop in your domain and the domains of your competitors.

In only a few seconds, you’ll have data relating to keyword opportunities for your site, as well as an overlap that shows which keywords the domains have in common, and which are unique to each site.

You can even see where your site ranks for a given keyword and where your competitors are outranking you.

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Bonus Tools To Add To Your Arsenal

Unfortunately, no one tool covers everything you need when discovering and analyzing the competition.

With that in mind, here are a few bonus tools to check out too. 

• Website Review from WooRank. A free website and SEO checker.
• Ubersuggest. The free version of Ubersuggest brings together metrics that you would see in a site like SEMrush.
• Answerthepublic. A free or paid tool that helps you unearth the questions your target market is asking.
• Screaming Frog. A desktop crawler that can help you establish the SEO tactics your competition is using. This tool can also be used to discover broken links on your own site.
• Sitebulb. Another desktop crawler that offers insight into how the competition has set up its website. You can then benchmark, pinpoint, and prioritize your SEO efforts in the areas where your competitors are not doing so well.
• Feedly. A handy tool that enables you to monitor all your competitors’ content in one place.
• Monitorbacklinks. A tool dedicated entirely to monitoring your own and your competitors’ keywords and backlinks.
• Website Grader. Primarily a tool for figuring out how to improve your site, it can also be used to grade your competition.
• Social Mention. A real-time social media and analysis tool that will help you unearth even more of your online competitors.

Another Great Tool? DreamHost SEO Services

Now that you have a bevy of tools to track your competition, it’s time to dive in. Whether you want to monitor ads, backlinks, content, or keywords, you now have your arsenal to get informed and get ahead.

If this is all a little too much to take in and you’d rather leave the nitty-gritty to someone else, why not talk to us about our SEO services? You’ll get your own SEO team, new content every month, regular on-site optimization, and much more — all from just $399 a month.

The post How to Find, Monitor, and Beat Your Competition appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

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