Search Engine Optimization (SEO) might feel like a confusing game with too many rules to rank highly for any search terms you consider important to your business. And there are tons of websites all claiming they contain the best secrets to guarantee increased traffic and search rankings. But as with most things in life, SEO is best tackled one step at a time.

The first step? Putting Weebly's many simple and powerful SEO features to use.

Page Titles & Descriptions
Page titles and descriptions appear directly in search results when someone finds your site on a search engine, giving you a great opportunity to influence searchers to visit your site. These also provide you with the ability to use search phrases you'd like to rank for. For example, let’s say you own a business in Oakland called Rockridge Bakery that has been around since 1972.

Page title: About Rockridge Bakery: Serving Oakland since 1972

Page description: Rockridge Bakery is a family-owned bakery and cafe that has been part of the North Oakland community since 1972.

The option to add Titles and Descriptions can be found in the same place as the permalinks discussed next.

Page Permalinks
Every page on your site has a name that you provide (separate from the title noted above), and this name is used by default to both generate your navigation and to create links for each individual page. You'll generally want to keep these names short and to the point for navigation purposes: Contact, About, Store, etc. And when you do this it also means that you end up with very short links: mysite.com/about, mysite.com/contact, etc.

The thing about using these short names for your links is that you're missing a valuable opportunity to use those links to highlight how you'd want them to be found via a search, since search engines take those names into consideration when ranking your site.

So for your About page, you could be more descriptive for your permalink (about-the-rockridge-bakery-team).

To change your permalinks go to Pages and click the page you'd like to change. Then choose the SEO Settings options for that page and enter a Page Permalink in the provided box. You'll need to Publish your site for the change to take effect.

And don't go overboard. Still try to keep your permalinks to five or six words.

The Header & Footer Code
The header and footer code are for HTML or JavaScript code. A very important SEO step you can take that involves the Header Code is submitting and verifying your site with Google Search Console. See Weebly's detailed guide on how to do just that.

301 Redirects
If you're moving a site from another host to Weebly, ideally you don't want to lose all the search engine history and optimization you gained from your time with that site. And, thankfully, there's a way to redirect both traffic and search engines from your old pages to your new ones within Weebly using the 301 Redirects feature.

This option is found under Settings > SEO in the editor, at the very bottom of that page. All you need do here is enter the page permalink from the old site and select which new page that should point to in the new one. Then Save.

That's it. Once you Publish your site, all those old pages will redirect to the new ones so that you continue to get value from them. But note that this is only works if you're using the same domain with Weebly as you were using at your previous host. Weebly's article and video explain this in detail.

Once you get these basic Search Engine Optimizations in place, you'll be well on your way to seeing your site ranking much higher in search results. Next up, read a more advanced SEO guide like Are the Right People Searching for You? or How to Create a Perfectly Optimized Page.

Implement the best search engine optimization (SEO) practices to ensure your target audience can find your site/brand easily online. A website without proper optimization minimizes traffic and revenue. For those who are new to the online world of SEO it may seem like a complex and daunting task, because SEO is comprised of numerous on-page and off-page techniques that change frequently.
 
If you're undertaking the task of optimizing your website by yourself, use the infographic below for the top SEO mistakes to avoid to guide you to optimize your website for users as well as search engines. More importantly, this checklist can help you to steer clear from the redundant and black hat SEO techniques that can penalize your website.

Read the full article on "25+ Common SEO Mistakes That Are Killing Your Website" by Sudhir Brushan of Hosting Clues.

Sudhir Bhushan is a Tech & Social enthusiast. He is also a Web Entrepreneur by Profession and loves to write about latest trends on Social Media & SEO. You may also follow him on Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest 

15 Web Design Trends 2018 (Infographic)
by Raj Vardhman
September 11, 2018

Two great online photo editing apps in one.

1. EDITOR for those who are looking for a Photoshop alternative.
   
2. EXPRESS for a quick editing tool.
   

Create impressive designs quickly & easily.

We're sure you've heard a lot about GDPR recently and you've likely received many emails about updates and privacy changes in the last few weeks. Since GDPR obligations can seem a bit confusing, Weebly has created a document to help explain the responsibilities of website owners under GDPR.

Your Responsibilities Under GDPR
If you are doing business with or collecting any kind of personal data from individuals located in the European Union, you will need to be compliant with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect on May 25, 2018. To assist you with these changes, Weebly has added tools like an improved cookie notification banner and a privacy policy generator.

SSL is the backbone of our secure Internet and it protects your sensitive information as it travels across the world's computer networks. SSL is essential for protecting your website, even if it doesn't handle sensitive information like credit cards. It provides privacy, critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your users' personal information.

The primary reason why SSL is used is to keep sensitive information sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipient can understand it. This is important because the information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to. This protects it from hackers and identity thieves.

In addition to encryption, a proper SSL certificate also provides authentication. This means you can be sure that you are sending information to the right server and not to an imposter trying to steal your information. Why is this important? The nature of the Internet means that your customers will often be sending information through several computers. Any of these computers could pretend to be your website and trick your users into sending them personal information.  It is only possible to avoid this by using a proper Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and getting an SSL Certificate from a trusted SSL provider.

Why are SSL providers important?
Trusted SSL providers will only issue an SSL certificate to a verified company that has gone through several identity checks. Certain types of SSL certificates, like EV SSL Certificates, require more validation than others. How do you know if an SSL provider is trusted? You can use our SSL Wizard to compare SSL providers that are included in most web browsers. Web browser manufactures verify that SSL providers are following specific practices and have been audited by a third-party using a standard such as WebTrust.

Web browsers give visual cues, such as a lock icon or a green bar, to make sure visitors know when their connection is secured. This means that they will trust your website more when they see these cues and will be more likely to buy from you. SSL providers will also give you a trust seal that instills more trust in your customers.

HTTPS also protects against phishing attacks. A phishing email is an email sent by a criminal who tries to impersonate your website. The email usually includes a link to their own website or uses a man-in-the-middle attack to use your own domain name. Because it is very difficult for these criminals to receive a proper SSL certificate, they won’t be able to perfectly impersonate your site. This means that your users will be far less likely to fall for a phishing attack because they will be looking for the trust indicators in their browser, such as a green address bar, and they won’t see it.

In order to accept credit card information on your website, you must pass certain audits that show that you are complying with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. One of the requirements is properly using an SSL Certificate.

With so many advantages, why would anyone not use SSL? Are there any disadvantages to using SSL certificates? Cost is an obvious disadvantage. SSL providers need to set up a trusted infrastructure and validate your identity so there is a cost involved. This has been alleviated by increased competition in the industry and the introduction of providers like Let's Encrypt. Performance is another disadvantage to SSL. Because the information that you send has to be encrypted by the server, it takes more server resources than if the information weren’t encrypted. The performance difference is only noticeable for web sites with very large numbers of visitors and can be minimized with special hardware in such cases.

Overall, the disadvantages of using SSL are few and the advantages far outweigh them. It is critical that you properly use SSL on all websites. Proper use of SSL certificates will help protect your customers, help protect you, and help you to gain your customers trust and sell more.

Weebly provides directions on how to add an SSL Certificate to your Website.

Using a clear, well-thought-out, and easy to find privacy policy establishes trust with customers. Why? Because once they know you'll protect their data, they may be more likely to buy — and to tell their friends to buy, too.

It's also the law. A good privacy policy should ideally include some explanation for why you're using the data you're using, the steps you take to protect such data, and how a customer can contact you if they have questions or concerns. To help you get started, Weebly has created a privacy policy template. Here's how to do it if you take the tougher road of writing it all yourself.

What's Required
Let's start with the sorts of data that's personally identifying:

• Names
• Email addresses
• Location (city, town, state, street address)
• A Social Security number

States and foreign countries can also have additional privacy requirements, so make sure that your policy is comprehensive. Spending an hour or two studying the requirements is better than suffering a fine; TermsFeed has a free privacy policy tutorial if you've no idea where to start.

Best Practices to Put in Place Today
Once you've studied the requirements and have an idea for what you have to say to meet legal requirements, take these steps to make sure your customers know they'll be well-protected when shopping at your eCommerce site:

1. Create a new page to include your policy. Including privacy policy text as "fine print" at the bottom of your store's home page won't do anything to engender trust. Choose instead to have a distinct page where your policy is spelled out in plain language.
   
2. Link to it from your homepage. You can use the homepage of your store to highlight your privacy policy, just don't do it in a way that leaves shoppers squinting. Instead, include a link in the navigation to your new page. Make it obvious and easy to click.
3. Use reassuring language. Once readers arrive, greet them with language that's respectful and reassuring. Here's an overly simple example: "Thank you so much for shopping with us! We're glad you're here! Please let us know if you have any questions, and in the meantime we want you know that we collect some personally identifying information such as [list everything here] to better serve you. We take the responsibility of protecting your data very seriously, which is why we [list steps taken to protect data here]. But again, if there's anything you need to know more about or simply have questions [include specific instructions for getting in contact here]. Thanks again for visiting!"

Does your site have a policy yet? Getting started on one is easier than ever with Weebly's new privacy policy generator tool.

Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. Please consult our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and our Privacy Policy Generator Disclaimer before using the templates.