How to Redirect HTTP to HTTPS

You can’t control whether someone goes to the HTTP or HTTPS version of your site in some situations. Old links to your site may still point to the HTTP version. You also will have some people specifically typing in the HTTP version.

The easiest way to force someone to go to the HTTPS version is with a redirect, and the easiest way of how to redirect HTTP to HTTPS is using your site’s .htaccess file.

This is a file which instructs web browsers on how to open and engage with your website. Adding a simple line of code here will tell the web browser to automatically reload to the HTTPS instance of your site when someone goes to the HTTP.

Whether you use an FTP client locally or go through your host, locate the .htaccess file for your website.

It will be located in the root directory of your website. If you don’t see it, click the “Settings” icon in the top right and make sure the “Show Hidden Files” is ticked.

You should now see the .htaccess file. Click on this file and select “Edit”.

Go to the bottom of this file and paste in the following lines of code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R,L]

Replace “Example” with your website’s address (change the extension if your site is not a .com), and click “Save Changes” in the top right.

That’s all you have to do in how to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. You can test it now by trying to open the HTTP instance of your website. It should redirect you automatically to the secure version and you should see that coveted lock in the browser destination field.

This is important not just for security but for tracking purposes, as well. Now you don’t have to worry about your reports leaving out traffic to the HTTP version or checking two instances; everything should be funneled to the secure version of the URL.

Again, if you don’t have an SSL certificate for your website, grab one for free now as I detail in how to get an SSL certificate for free.

Congrats, all traffic is now being sent to the HTTPS version of your site!

Thankfully, the fix is incredibly simple, so let’s cover it now!

The Website is Undergoing Scheduled Maintenance Fix

You know how it goes. You log into your dashboard and see it’s prompting you to authorize one or more ready updates. You run the update, and while it typically resolves within seconds, it gets stuck on the loading icon. You refresh the page or go to any other URL associated with that site and you see this message:

It doesn’t matter which URL you go to, how many times you refresh; the site will only display this. Note that sometimes if you wait long enough, the update will resolve. I’ve had this issue where I’ve waited 20 minutes and the update eventually completed/refreshing the page reverted the site back to the normal display.

For many webmasters, having their site essentially down for that amount of time isn’t an option.

At this point, there’s only one resolution.

We need to get to where the files are stored for our website.

You need to open the root folder for the website at this point using either the FTP program you use or simply by accessing the cPanel account associated with the website via your host.

In the root folder, below your typical “wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes” folders, you’ll see a file labeled “.maintenance”:

Simply delete this file, then refresh your website and it should go back to normal.

WordPress will create a new instance of that file, so no worries about losing important files associated with your WP installation.

Check back in your dashboard to see if the update(s) took or not. Occasionally they’ll have resolved, other times you’ll need to run them again which will likely update without issue.

How to Avoid the The Website is Undergoing Scheduled Maintenance Error

The easiest way to avoid running into this lockout “website is undergoing scheduled maintenance” error is to avoid running too many updates at once.

Try to stay on top of your updates. Setting your plugins to update automatically is a good way to minimize the number of updates you need to run when you log in, especially if it’s infrequent.

Still, occasionally this error will still crop up.

If you don’t feel like waiting it out or if waiting it out isn’t resolving it, simply take matters into your hands by deleting the “.maintenance” file from your site’s root folder.

Bringing this home and getting right to the point, Google has begun testing an AI supplemented version of their search engine results called SGE (Search Generative Experience). While at the time of my writing this, Google’s only featuring this for a select few who use Chrome or the Google app, but we can expect this to expand to their conventional SERPs for everyone in time.

This begs the question, how will this effect search engine optimization. Will AI replace SEO?

Will AI Replace SEO

AI will never fully “replace” SEO, but it will impact it with increasing significance the more sophisticated it becomes.

Its impact on SEO should be what the conversation should be about.

Let’s first take a look at what it’s going to look like, at least early on, using an example from Google itself about its generative AI search.

Here’s their first example, with someone’s informational query being an uber specific and focused question regarding local national parks.

Appearing above the traditional organic SERPs listings we see a sizable block of generative AI search results.

Quite cleverly, the AI has plucked the most relevant information from other websites, essentially poaching clicks, website visits and, perhaps most interestingly, ad revenue for Google and the site owner, from the websites themselves.

It’s also supplanted the informational type blogs which deal in hiking/national parks in this case below. It’s not just that the AI block is first; it’s bigger and colorful, easily drawing the eye to it over anything else on the page.

The AI block even offers a space for follow-up questions and suggests a couple relevant questions alongside it.

Google would likely be quick to point out that the block does include a couple links to relevant websites as part of the block.

How Will AI Affect SEO

Google’s AI is mostly designed for these very specific search queries which I’ll admit Google itself (or any search engine for that matter) doesn’t do very well at serving results for to begin with.

The one wildcard throughout all of this is Google’s reliance on ad revenue. According to this insightful article from Oberlo, more than half of Google’s 2022 income came from ads appearing on their platforms.

By increasingly discouraging people from clicking through to websites, it’s effectively stealing from its own pocket.

Unless a serious revenue shift develops, Google is still heavily reliant on driving traffic to websites.

At the same time, they want to deliver the best experience over their competitors in the other search engines. This is why the inclusion of websites as part of the AI block will likely continue to be a focus.

Here’s a second example of Google’s AI generated search results for someone looking for a particular bike based on certain conditions.

This format of AI results integrates Google’s existing sponsored ads or at least image/price links which you’d find if you just searched for “commuter bikes”.

The difference is you get more information than you once did for each ad listing.

Also note that once again, we get a few websites listed on the right as kind of “sources” or resources for further information on the subject.

It’s hard to say whether someone would click on one of those websites or go straight for one of the listings below; it would depending on the potential consumer.

In Conclusion – Will AI Replace SEO

While there’s a lot that is still unknown and will need to play out before we truly understand its effects, one thing is certain, AI will not outright replace SEO.

It will undoubtedly affect SEO, as I believe we’ll see a continuation of how SEO was already evolving.

More than ever before, content is king (it’s my best SEO tip, afterall).

You or whomever writes the content for your website now more than ever should be making sure that your content (and website itself) offers something unique. Your content should continue to work in relevant long tail phrases to your main keyword as voice and personalized/more specific search continue to dominate the average query in Google like the examples Google gave.

This will keep the pages of your website relevant in Google’s eyes to where you’ll find your content becoming a part of their AI generated results.

Yes, it’s certain that some “genres” of websites will take a hit over others, especially early on.

But it’s important to point out one last time that it’s still in Google’s best interest to serve up the best content to its users, and while its AI will be working to better identify what is objectively the best content, make sure that its your website and content which qualifies.

If you’ve been using Hootsuite’s free plan then you likely know that they’ve been quietly phasing it out for years, first by limiting what you could do with it, then just about making it impossible to actually find the free option when creating a new account.

If you’re currently using Hootsuite’s free plan, I doubt you have intentions of staying on considering their CHEAPEST plan is $100 A MONTH. I can’t imagine they’re going to retain many or any of their free members at that price, but I digress.

Let’s talk Hootsuite Alternatives which are free so that you can stay on top of your social game without spending a dime. And note that unlike OTHER articles on this subject, I’m not covering services which offer free trial periods. That’s cheating.

These Hootsuite Alternatives are actually free, so let’s get into the list.

Hootsuite Alternatives (Free)

Best Twitter Managing Service

First let’s get to Twitter considering that’s the service which through a monkey wrench into not one but multiple social media management services I tried using.

Due to Twitter’s change to their API, what once was free to services like Hootsuite is now extremely expensive. As such, part of that cost has trickled down to the consumers of Hootsuites and other services of the like.

I jumped to another service (which I’ll cover later) when Hootsuite made the announcement only to be hit by a similar message a few weeks later on that platform.

At this point the best service for managing your Twitter profile(s) is Tweet Deck.

What was once an independent service for managing your Twitter accounts is now owned by Twitter so it has everything built into it. You can see all of your feeds in one place, schedule messages in advance, and much more.

Also you can conveniently switch between multiple profiles within the interface without remembering login details for each account you manage.

It’s what I use now and it’s completely free.

Best Facebook Managing Service

For some of my small businesses I exclusively use Twitter and Facebook. Knowing I couldn’t group them together with one service with the changes to the former, I looked for a good stand alone Facebook managing service.

Meta Business Suite is the best service for managing Facebook exclusively.

Similar to Tweet Deck, you can access all of your messages and comments, make and schedule posts, and very importantly it also lets you transition between different pages you manage just as easily.

It also features an “insights” tab which show the engagement with the content you put out on Facebook so you can make informed decisions about what your audience likes and responds to.

As an added bonus, because Facebook owns Instagram it also features complete built in support for this platform, as well.

So if you’re primarily using some combination of Facebook, Twitter, and or Instagram, I recommend using these two services. On my desktop browser I have both services in a folder on my bookmark toolbar so I can open them all together when I need to send out a new tweet/post.

Very handy and completely free.

Now let’s get into some other services for managing multiple networks BESIDES Twitter.

Social Champ was the service I jumped to after HootSuite was no longer an option.

It’s my favorite HootSuite alternative (for everything EXCEPT Twitter) in terms of free social media management software.

It features:

• No limit to scheduling posts
• User friendly interface for posting/scheduling content
• Analytics on the posts you make and how people interact with them
• Engagement tab for replying to messages across the platforms
• A decent number of platforms to include:

Again note that Twitter is only for the pro members, but everything else is included in the free plan.

All in all, it’s a great supplement to Tweet Deck if you have a need for several of the networks listed in addition to Twitter.

Buffer is a nice free Hootsuite alternative which offers a competitive number of social networks they integrate with:

Unfortunately you can only use three networks at a time with your account, though you could create a second account if you needed more with a different browser to get them all going at once.

One of my favorite things about Buffer is that when creating a message on a specific network, typing @ allows you to quickly find another account you might want to mention or connect with. It’s a nice time saver.

While there’s no analytics included with the free plan with Buffer, the ability to have up to 10 scheduled posts per network at once is nice, and I love the interface.

If you liked Hootsuite, Buffer will certainly feel familiar in that regard.

Later are Buffer are similar in that they both limit you to 10 posts PER NETWORK to schedule in advance.

The problem with Later is the additional limitation of just giving you 10 for the entire MONTH per network.

So once you schedule 10 posts for Facebook, you can’t do anymore for the rest of the month. This limitation admittedly will not work for those post frequently. It also only features Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn:

Later does offer some very limited analytics on the content you post, but you need to go premium to get the full picture.

It’s not a bad free Hootsuite alternative, but between the two I’d go with Buffer.

Simplified is a bit different in that it’s not strictly a social media management service.

In addition to that, it offers tools for content creation which could be worth your time, but that’s a topic for another day.

With a free account, it’s kind of in between Buffer and Later, the reason being that they offer the option to attach three networks at a time and 10 scheduled posts, like Buffer.

Here’s a look at the networks they cover, but note the Twitter comes with an asterisk.

A nice detail is that you can stagger your posts to make it look less automated rather than posting the same message to everything all at once.

I also like that they let you create the message you want to send to the various networks, then give you an option to tweak each one individually if you want to make any changes before you send.

They also have a calendar which, in addition to using it to schedule messages, comes stocked with all of the national and international holidays including a number of obscure ones. This gives you extra fodder to create lighter content around.

There’s quite a few options out there to replace Hootsuite, but with the Twitter shakeup you need to be aware of the limitations to that platform with most of these services.

Like me, your best bet is to probably create a combination plan of a couple services to cover all bases and fill in the gaps.

And again, like me I just recommend putting them all in an easy to access folder on your bookmark shortcut tab to open them all at once then copy and paste your content accordingly around.

You might think nothing of it or assume it’s not an important error warning, so you go ahead and finish writing a lengthy post. You save it as far as you know, then come back to it later ready to publish and it’s gone.

This potentially extremely frustrating error can cost you a lot of work and time. Fortunately it’s an easy fix, so let’s talk about how to fix an invalid JSON response in WordPress.

Invalid JSON Response – How to Fix It

An invalid JSON response message essentially means that there’s a disconnect in the communication between your site and its server.

There are many different causes to trigger this response, so let’s go through each one.

Permalink Issues

Your site’s permalinks dictate the URL structure of your entire site.

Sometimes the quickest fix for resolving an invalid JSON response is to go to your site’s “Settings”, selecting “Permalinks”, and clicking “Save Changes” without making any changes.

If the permalink structure has changed from what it should be, set it back to what it should be and click “Save Changes”. This can fix your site’s .htaccess file which can be causing the communication issue.

If this still hasn’t worked, log into your site’s hosting account’s cPanel and go into the File Manager.

Delete the .htaccess file (while copy any unique information to it you might have created in it before), then click “Save Changes” in your Permalinks to create a new .htaccess file which should resolve the JSON error if it’s permalink related.

WordPress Site Address Settings

Another cause of the miscommunication which generates the invalid JSON response stems from a problem in your site’s address settings in WordPress.

In the “General” section of your WordPress settings, you’ll see two fields near the top for your site’s URL address and its WordPress address. If either if these is different from the other, then update them to be identical.

Both of these should begin with HTTPS (assuming you have an SSL certificate) and should feature the same prefix of either WWW or without WWW.

Getting these on the same page can resolve the JSON issue, as well.

Plugin/Theme Issues

Lastly, a very common cause of the invalid JSON response message is a conflicting plugin.

In my most recent case, I had an issue with the W3 Total Cache plugin on one of my sites after migrating it to a new host (see how to transfer web hosting from one company to another).

Caching plugins affect your site’s .htaccess file because they instruct browsers in how to engage with your site.

I say this to establish that if the previous tips on fixing your site’s .htaccess file didn’t work, it could be due to a plugin (or theme if it has access to make changes).

This is the very plugin I’d try disabling before trying to replicate the error in creating a new post.

I swapped out W3 for another caching plugin on my site and just like that it was able to begin autosaving again and the JSON message disappeared.

Invalid JSON Response Tips

• An invalid JSON response message indicates a disconnect between your site and its server.
• There are a few different causes of this error, so try them one by one, then try replicating the error to see if the fix(es) worked.
• First try clicking “Save Changes” on your site’s permalinks structure in WordPress even if you see that it hasn’t been changed from what it should’ve been.
• If this doesn’t work, try deleting your .htaccess file via your site’s host’s File Manager (copying any unique data you need from it) and clicking “Save Changes” in permalinks again to generate a fresh .htaccess file.
• Check your site’s listed URL addresses in the general settings. Make sure that they match one another (http vs https, www or not) and update if not.
• Like with so many errors in WordPress, oftentimes they can stem from a conflict from a plugin. Caching plugins in particular can cause these errors due to their control over the .htaccess file, so try disabling yours first and try replicating the error.

How to Transfer Web Hosting From One Company to Another

Let’s go through the full process, including all the small easy to forget things you need to do, step by step.

Step 1 – Purchase a New Hosting Plan

Obviously before we can transfer our web hosting from one host to another, we need a new host to migrate our site or sites to. OBVIOUSLY let your existing hosting lapse before you have a new host. Specifically I recommend making this switch a week or so before your existing host term ends at the latest.

If any issues arise, you’ll still have everything intact (files, database, etc.) with the old host so you can adjust on the new host accordingly.

There are plenty of good hosts out there. I currently have sites being hosted via HostGator, InMotion Hosting, and CrocWeb so I can actively recommend all three.

Step 2 – Backup and Download Website’s Files and Database From Existing Host

We now need to grab all of the files (HTML, CSS, PHP, image uploads, etc.) which make up our existing site. If your website utilizes a content management system like WordPress to run it, you’ll also need to export its database. This is where the content for your posts, pages, meta information, etc. is all kept.

Nearly every popular hosting company offers some version of cPanel which features the same tools for managing the backend of your site.

The two tools we want to use here are “File Manager” and “phpMyAdmin” to download the website files and database, respectively.

First, open File Manager on your old host, find the website you want to move, and right click on its root folder and select “Compress”:

It will prompt you to select a type of file compression, name, and location for the compressed file. The default format type, name, and location is fine. In my case, this creates a zip compressed format file of my entire Angry SEOer website. Every file of my site is contained in that.

Click “Reload” if you don’t see this compressed file, then locate and select it, and click “Download” at the top. This will download your entire site to your hard drive in one convenient to move folder.

Now we just need the database.

Back in cPanel, open “phpMyAdmin”.

On the left, you’ll see a list of any and all of your databases. Simply click on the database for the site you want to migrate to the new host.

This will open all of the many tables which make it up on the right. These tables are where your posts, pages, categories, plugin settings in some cases, etc. are stored.

It can look overwhelming if you’re not familiar with databases or SQL, but fortunately all we need to do is click “Export” at the top.

This automatically downloads every table which makes up your database into one convenient file.

Step 3 – Lay Groundwork for Site on New Host

We’re roughly halfway there, though there’s a bit more work involved on the new host to get your site going properly.

You should now have two key files: a compressed folder of all the files of your site, and a .sql file containing your site’s entire database.

Before we can upload and/or import these files on to our new host, we need to lay a bit of groundwork, all done in the cPanel of your new host.

First, find and select “Addon Domains” in your new host’s cPanel and enter your site’s URL:

This creates a folder in the “File Manager” tool of your new host’s cPanel for your website.

Now let’s move on to getting the database on your new host, which requires us to create a database on the new host.

To do this, select “MySQL Databases” from cPanel and create a new database, using the same name as the last one:

Note that the prefix for the database is locked in and is unique to your host. This means that technically the overall name of the database is different than it was on our last host, so we’ll need to make a short adjustment in a second to reflect that and ensure everything works.

We need to create a username:

… and grant that username access to that database:

Make sure to grant them all the privileges when prompted.

Now we should have the database name, the username which has access to that database, and that username’s password all written down. Write them down if you haven’t already as we’ll need them soon.

Step 4 – Move Files and Database Tables to New Host

Now that we’ve done all that groundwork, we can do the satisfying part of moving our stuff to the new host.

First, let’s move the files/folder via that compressed folder we downloaded in Step 2.

Open File Manager and open the new folder for your domain which we created in Step 3 via the Addon Domains part. This folder should be empty in your file manager.

Click “Upload” and select the compressed file which contains the files for your website from the old host. Depending on size and speed, this might take 30 seconds or so.

Click “Reload” if you don’t see the compressed folder, then select it and click “Extract” at the top of the page choose the top level of the domain as the destination. This will take a few seconds at least to unpack all of your website’s files and folders into the domain folder on your new host.

Now let’s move the tables of our old database to our new database.

Open “phpMyAdmin” on your new host and find and click on the new database you created in Step 3.

It should be empty on the right, so let’s fix that.

Click “Import” at the top, click “Browse”, and select the .sql file we created in Step 2:

The default options on the page should be fine, so scroll to the bottom and select “Go”.

This might take a minute or so depending on the size of your database. When it’s finished, you should see all of the various tables of your old database assembled in your new database.

Step 5 – Update Config File(s)

I alluded to this earlier, but there is one difference in the names of your database and username on your new host: the host specific prefix.

The config file(s) that we uploaded in File Manager on our new host will reflect the old database name, which means our site’s files and folders won’t successfully make the connection to the new database name as is, and so the site won’t work.

Therefore, we need to make a quick adjustment to this file via “File Manager” on our new host.

Open File Manager once again and open your site’s folder.

If your site is running WordPress, the file we need to adjust is called “wp-config” and should be in the root of your domain’s folder:

Click on it and select “edit” at the top of the page in File Manager.

This opens up a text editor. You’ll see just a few lines down where your database name, the username which has access to it, and its password are located:

Now simply replace what it has between the quote lines for each of the sections pictured above using the database information you used in Step 3.

Step 6 – Loose Ends

I call this step loose ends, as it’s just a few small things to check or consider before the next and final step. Let’s cover each one briefly:

Email Accounts – If you have an email account associated with your domain and you access your email through your host, you’ll need to create that same email address on your new host. This is easy to do, simply navigate to “Email Accounts” in cPanel and create a new one using the same name@yourdomain. You can even use the same password to make things easier. Once we do the next and final step, all emails will now instead get directed to the new host. Make sure you check out my post on how to setup SPF and DKIM to make sure that your emails from that address are verified as coming from your domain.

PHP Version – I recommend setting the PHP Version associated with your website as the same as it was on your last host to avoid any issues. The various configuration files associated with your website which we migrated in an earlier step CAN adapt to a different PHP version, but in my experience it’s safer to first inherit the same version, then adjust it after you verified that the site works on your new host. You can check and change the PHP Version of any website on your hosting account in cPanel via “Select PHP Version” or “MultiPHP Manager” (it varies between different hosts’ versions of cPanel).

Final Step – Update Name Servers

The last thing to do is to tell your domain registrar for that website that the website is being hosted on a new service.

Once we make this change, the site will load from the new host when you try accessing it in your browser.

As such, make sure that you’ve completed all of the other steps, otherwise the site won’t load and no one will be able to access your site.

To do this, simply go into the account for the domain registrar your site is registered with and input the nameservers your new host gave you.

Typically this information is included in their welcome email or can be found in your cPanel with them.

Once you put the new namservers in, save or update the page. At this point (although it will tell you it can take up to several hours), web browsers will begin pointing any traffic your website receives to its new home on your new host.

If everything went without a hitch, you won’t notice any disruptions and everything should load as normal, although it will be loading from your new host!

How to Transfer Web Hosting From One Company to Another Review

• Transferring your website from one host to another is as simple as copying and moving the necessary files and making a couple other small changes.
• Begin by having a new hosting account started. I again recommend you do this at least a week before your old hosting lapses in case there are any issues so you have time to fix them.
• Backup and download your site’s compressed files and folders using “File Manager” in your old host’s cPanel. Do the same for your site’s database when applicable using “phpMyAdmin”.
• Create an Addon Domain for your website in your new host’s cPanel.
• Upload and extract the file with the files and folders in it to the empty folder in File Manager on your new host for your site.
• Create a database via “MySQL Databases” for your site if applicable and import the .sql file into it.
• Update your configuration file or files to reflect your new database information.
• Check on the php version of your site and create any email addresses you had associated with that domain on your old host.
• Point your nameservers to the new hosting account.

All in all it takes twenty minutes if you know what you’re doing and have everything ready, and just like that you know how to transfer web hosting from one company to another so you can repeat the same process for any other sites you had on that old hosting account you want to migrate.

What is a DMARC Record?

There are three email “standards” in place designed to authenticate an email from your website to your recipient.

In other words, these standards are in place so that when you send an email from your site to someone with say a Gmail account, Gmail can verify that the email did indeed come from your website and not some scammer or spammer who is pretending to be you.

The three email standards are SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance).

I recently did a tutorial on how to setup SPF and DKIM to help you avoid the spam folder, so refer to that for the first two pieces of the puzzle.

By creating a record of each of these with our website’s host, the Gmails and Yahoos of the world can verify that messages which we send from our site are legit.

Just as importantly, without these records the Gmails and Yahoos of the world can and might mark messages which claim to be from our site as spam. In other words, once these records are created, it makes it much more difficult for spammers to successfully exploit/spoof our site for their scamming purposes.

How to Setup DMARC in cPanel

cPanel is a software most hosting providers use to allow clients to interact with their websites behind the scenes.

Among the many things you can do in cPanel is setting up a DMARC record for your website.

Log into your personal cPanel using the login info your hosting provider gave you, and find the Zone Editor icon.

You can just search for “Zone” in the search bar at the top to find it quickly:

Here you’ll find a list of all of your domains. Navigate to the domain you want to create a DMARC record for and click the “+ A Record” button:

Next, fill in the boxes like shown (replacing the domain with your own).

Here’s a sample DMARC record (feel free to paste this in, updating the email with your own):

v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; sp=quarantine; rua=mailto:dmarc-youremail@yourdomain.com;
pct=100; aspf=s; adkim=s

The language used in this record essentially says:

• First, it’s a DMARC record.
• That emails which don’t pass the authentication checks of SPF and DKIM should be quarantined.
• That you show get a report sent to your email address letting you know if and when emails which claim to be from your domain are quarantined.
• That this policy should be in effect for 100% of emails from your domain.

Click “Save Record” and the DMARC record is in place.

Again, do not do this until you’ve created SPF and DKIM records and have had them properly working for at least 48 hours.

In Summary

• Setting up a DMARC record on your website shows that you take authentication seriously in the eyes of your clients’ email service providers.
• This helps to ensure both that your emails end up in your recipient’s inbox, and anyone trying to spoof your website, IE sending emails from your website who aren’t you, will fail.
• Setting up a DMARC record is easy to do in cPanel using the information above, so get on it after you’ve set up your SPF and DKIM records!

Happy spoof-proof emailing!

How to Transfer Domain From GoDaddy to NameCheap

First, let me vent my frustration at GoDaddy not making it easier to transfer your domain from them to another registrar.

If you go to the “Transfers” page in your GoDaddy account, you’ll see these two options:

Nope, neither of these are what I want to do. Unsurprisingly, both options serve GoDaddy.

GoDaddy’s not unique here as making it obtuse to see how to cancel some aspect of your service is something a lot of companies do. It’s still frustrating nonetheless!

Instead, you need to click on “Domain Portfolio” which will give you a listing of all of your websites. Next click on the domain you want to transfer and scroll all the way down to the bottom where you’ll finally see this:

They’ll fire one last sales pitch at you, but confirm you want to transfer it away.

Next, they’ll give you a checklist of things you need to do, and you’ll need to confirm a couple more times but it’s all pretty straightforward. They will likely prompt you to input a one-time password they’ll send to the email associated with your GoDaddy account to ensure that it’s you authorizing this transfer (which I appreciate).

Once you’ve done this, open a new tab in your browser and go to your NameCheap account and under “Domains” select “Domain Transfer”.

Funny how it’s so much easier to find what you’re looking for when you’re trying to bring business TO a company.

This will bring up a field where you need to input your domain’s URL. Don’t worry about the HTTPS or WWW. In this case, it would be “angryseoer.com” and nothing more.

Note that if you haven’t already gone through the earlier steps in your GoDaddy account to mark your domain for transfer, NameCheap will tell you it’s locked.

Assuming you already did everything on GoDaddy’s end correctly, NameCheap will tell you your domain is eligible for transfer:

You’ll simply need to enter your authorization code that should be back on the GoDaddy page. There’s a copy option as it’s a random string of characters, so click on that and paste it in the “Authorization Code” box on NameCheap’s page.

Click “Verify Auth Code” and you should be good to go. Click add to cart and you’ll be taken to the checkout page where you can go through the motions to complete the registration with NameCheap.

Note that you don’t lose any time by transferring your domain well ahead of its expiration date with GoDaddy.

In other words, if you transfer a domain and it’s not set to expire for 6 months, when you transfer it to NameCheap with a 1 year/12 month registration term, that domain is good for 18 months before it needs to be renewed.

In fact, it’s a good idea to transfer your domains sooner than later.

If you wait until the last minute, there’s always the chance that you’ll forget or the domain’s registration will fall into limbo and go offline for a time or even lapse to where someone else jumps on it. Or GoDaddy will just charge you for the automatic renewal like has happened to me many, many times.

On checkout, you’ll see that domain privacy is free as is standard with NameCheap, but they’ll try to charge you on additional services like SSL certification. Incidentally, this is a good time to mention to check out my article on how to get an SSL certificate for your site for free.

After the payment has been confirmed, you should look for an email to the admin email associated with the domain to approve the transfer one last time.

Alternatively, you can also go into that domain in GoDaddy again, specifically “Transfers Out” and approve the transfer there.

Once this is done, if you refresh things back on the NameCheap side of things you’ll see confirmation:

Typically the domain will fully transfer within 24 hours.

While the domain name servers (DNS) which point to your host will transfer without issue most times, it’s a good idea to refresh this page on and off until it’s fully transferred and keep an eye on the site itself to make sure there’s no breaks in service.

Assuming the DNS information transfers without issue, you shouldn’t have any problems with the site going down at any point.

That’s it though, your site’s registrar has now been changing from GoDaddy to NameCheap!

Therefore, a series of standards have been put in place to help these email service providers authenticate the source of an email. SPF, or Sender Policy Framework, is one such standard. DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail, is another. Setting up SPF and DKIM authentication on your website enables you to verify that your website is authorized to send emails.

Let’s talk about how to setup SPF and DKIM for your website which is a huge step you can take to keep your sent emails out of your client’s spam folders.

What is an SPF Record

Once again, SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. Creating a record of this for your website via your hosting provider essentially informs Gmail, Yahoo, etc. that your website is allowed to send emails.

Without this record, you can understand why your emails might be finding their way into your client’s spam folders. Someone’s Gmail account gets an email from your domain, and Gmail does a quick check to see that your domain has no SPF record.

In this case Gmail might say, “this domain has no authorization to send emails from it, so this email could likely be from a scammer.” and it gets flagged.

It’s also a slippery slope. The more emails from a domain which find their way into the spam folders of Gmail accounts, the more likely any email you send to a Gmail recipient will be marked as such.

If you are sending emails from your domain, meaning you have an email address tied to your domain which you use, you absolutely need to setup an SPF record.

What is a DKIM Record

Similar to the SPF record, a DomainKeys Identified Mail or DKIM record also is used to prevent spoofing.

This attached an encrypted digital signature to emails you send so that they can be verified on your recipient’s end.

This means that scammers trying to send emails which appear to be from your website have a much harder time as they can’t offer the same verification on their emails as you can.

Gmail, Yahoo, etc. can scan their emails and see that they’ve been modified in some way/aren’t legitimate from your site when you have DKIM enabled.

This is why it’s so essential to set up both SPF and DKIM: to thwart the efforts of scammers trying to use your domain and improve your own inbox delivery rate.

How to Setup SPF and DKIM

The easiest way for how to setup SPF and DKIM is to use your cPanel portal from your hosting provider.

cPanel is a relatively user friendly software designed to let you interact with everything on the backend of your websites.

This includes creating both an SPF and DKIM record for your website.

In the older (meaning a few years ago) days, it was much more complicated to set up SPF and DKIM. Now there’s a specific Email Deliverability link in your cPanel to automatically generate and enable SPF and DKIM if it’s not already on.

Step 1 – Log Into Your cPanel and Click “Email Deliverability”

The first thing to do is log into your cPanel using the link your hosting provider gave you and ID and password you set up.

Once in, you can navigate to the “Email” section or just search for “Email” in the top search bar. This will filter out non-email related apps and you’ll find “Email Deliverability”.

Click on this to see the status of email deliverability for your various domains on that hosting account.

Step 2 – Find Any Domains Which Say “Problems Exist” and Click “Manage” or “Repair”

Look for any yellow in the columns which say “Problems Exist”:

The text will specify what the exact issue is. You’ll see options to click “Repair” or “Manage” to the right.

First try clicking “Repair” as this typically resolves the issue, creating whichever records are needed.

Step 3 – Click “Install the Suggested Record”

If you clicked on “Manage” in the last step, you’ll see the SPF and DKIM record areas separated so that you can individually fix each one.

Under to the record you want to fix, click on the “Install the Suggested Record”:

If you do this on the DKIM record, you’ll get an additional warning message that you need to use this key if you send email from another server:

We’ll talk about this next.

Step 4 – Verify/Authenticate With Email Marketing Software

This is an additional step which only applies if you send emails from a third party, ie email marketing software.

In my case, I send emails to clients directly using my website’s email protal, but I also use MailChimp to send email blasts, automated email series/funnels, etc.

If you do this, you need to both verify and authenticate your domain with whichever email marketing software provider you use.

I’ll be showing the process with MailChimp, though it’s not too dissimilar no matter who you use.

First, navigate to the “Domains” section in the sidebar and click “Add/Verify Domain”.

This will prompt you to enter a valid email address associated with that domain which it can send an email with an verification link to:

Click the link in the verification email they send and you’ll verify that you have access to email for that domain:

Lastly, click “Start Authentication”. You’ll be given information to make a CNAME record back in the “Zone Editor” section of cPanel.

Select the domain you want to make the record for/you want to send emails for. Click “Add Record” and create it using the information MailChimp has given you to create the CNAME record.

Now back in MailChimp, click “Start Authentication” and if you’ve done it right, it should display as below:

Give a few minutes to detect the record if it doesn’t work right away.

And there you have it, how to setup SPF and DKIM so your emails avoid the spam folder and to crack down on scammers using your domain name in their emails.

What Is Above the Fold

In website terms, above the fold refers to the section of a web page which is visible when someone first opens it. In other words, it’s the visible bit of a web page without any scrolling down.

This is the most important part of any web page, because unless someone sees what they’re looking for as soon as that page loads (which hopefully loads quickly – check out my easy guide on how to increase website speed in WordPress), they’re going to leave that page.

Not only have you lost a potential customer or reader in that case, but Google and other search engines will note their quick exit and take that as a sign that you shouldn’t be ranking for the keywords which brought that person there in the first place. This can cost you rankings and traffic.

So even if you have the content that person is looking for, if it’s not apparent to them above the fold on that page, it’s doing you no good.

Fortunately the solution is simple enough.

Above the Fold – Website Tutorial

The number one rule in above the fold website design is to be sure that every page of your site has everything your visitor needs without having to scroll down.

By default, most of the most important content on your site is at the top, including your logo and your menu.

As an (albeit obvious) aside, your menu should feature the most important pages on your site you want to drive traffic to. Whatever your reasoning for having that website, it needs to be well represented here.

Your website should also be easily navigable by way of this menu. Including a search bar in this area or at the very least above the fold ensures that someone can access virtually every page of your site from every page of your site with little effort.

If you have an email signup field, you should also include it above the fold so again, it’s visible on every page without any scrolling necessary.

Now, with regards to content, you obviously can’t always feature it above the fold.

In other words, the “meat” that people want on your page when they click through from Google can’t always exist at the top of the page/above the fold.

This is why it’s essential that you create a table of contents for your post or page featuring anchor links at the top of your page. This is especially important for longer posts which cover a lot of different content.

This TOC should be clearly visible above the fold regardless of what device someone is viewing your page on.

These anchor links are live links which, when clicked, take you instantly to that corresponding part of the page.

How to Make Same Page Links

I did an entire tutorial showing how to easily make an anchor link in WordPress, so refer to that for a more detailed explanation.

Suffice to say, though, it’s a two step, very easy to do process.

You simply create an anchor tag for the section you want to link/jump to, then create the link from the word(s) you want to jump to that section, like in your table of contents.

The best way to use this navigable TOC on a page is to write a very short intro paragraph confirming what that page is about, promise the resolution the user is looking for, then offer the TOC before getting into the content.

There’s a good example of a TOC in action on my SEO for YouTube guide:

It looks clean, it divides the content in an effective way, and it’s convenient. It allows the visitor to quickly skip to the specific part of the page they’re looking for rather than having to wade through lots of content they don’t want.

Most people use Google with the intent of quickly finding what they’re looking for, and this helps them do that once they get to your site.

Consider the Browser

One last thing to mention is to keep in mind that your pages will look different in different browsers and on different devices.

This means that what is above the fold on your website will vary from user to user.

While you could check it using your various devices manually, you can get a much better idea using a free cross browsing tester.

Not only will this show you any above the fold website issues, it can show if certain elements of your website aren’t loading properly in a particular browser or on a particular device.

In Conclusion

Above the fold website design is something to keep in mind as you’re creating your website or even a specific page.

Designing your site or a page so that everything someone might be looking for is accessible without any scrolling will earn you more time on your site.

This will in turn improve your rankings as Google sees this user behavior as a sign that you’ve got good content worthy of ranking well (see 6 types of user engagement in Google Analytics that can make or break your rankings).

Just put yourself in the shoes of someone coming to that web page every time you create a new one and think of what they are looking for. Once you know that, just make sure it’s easy to access from the start.

You’ll be amazed at the effect this can have on your bounce rate, the amount of time people spend on your site, and your Google rankings!