Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

The 2Cubed Web Design Wexford & Dublin Blog contains blog post content with valuable information such as website tips and tricks to improve your website.

Free SEO Audit

Category: SEO Tips and Tricks

Would you like a free SEO Audit for your site? Fill in the SEO Form or email content@2cubed.ie to get started!

If you’re interested in building traffic and increasing leads and customers, you should consider an SEO audit followed by an SEO strategy.

SEO Audits are a review focusing on discovering the strengths and weaknesses of your website from an overall SEO perspective. SEO Audits when done correctly, can provide you with valuable information such as the following:

Gives you an insight into the technical health and crawl-ability of your website

Provides you with data which will help to inform your planning when it comes to developing SEO strategies

Helps to identify issues to resolve which will aid towards generating a better overall user experience for visitors to the website

Highlights areas for improvement that will lead to improving your search visibility on Google and other search engines

To compile a complete, thorough and accurate SEO Audit report one would usually focus around examining three key areas which would be Technical SEO, On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.

Technical SEO is the part of the audit from which the information gained will actually help you to find out just how healthy your website is overall from a technical point of view. The Technical SEO aspect of the audit can also help you to make improvements to the website as while doing it you can end up discovering issues that need to be rectified such as crawl issues, 404s, orphan pages, server errors, etc…

On-Page SEO is the part of the audit where you review how you can further optimise content that is visible on the pages of your website. This literally means everything that you can see on a page on your website so images and text. The information gained from the On-Page SEO aspect of the audit provides us with really helpful information such as information regarding keywords like which keywords you are ranking for. By using this information gained from your in-depth keyword research you can use it to inform your strategy in the future when it comes to incorporating keywords into future content.

Off-Page SEO is the part of the audit which allows us to review how off-site activities can be improved such as link building, anchor text etc.. Off-page SEO primarily is about SEO which can be done outside of your website by you elsewhere on the internet to improve your presence online. Any effective SEO strategy for your website should include at least one element which addresses off-site activities. Strategies such as when you reach out to other websites to develop link building is a perfect example of an off page SEO strategy one can take.

Performing an SEO Audit is something that is a must do for any website who wishes to further enhance and improve their business through using the information gained to develop a robust strategy. By clearly discovering and identifying problems, you can form a strategy of actionable steps to take which can help place your business on a positive trajectory which will lead to long-term growth. It’s in your interest to do an SEO Audit today!

To find out more about excellent tools and strategies to use to improve your website Contact 2Cubed today!

You can also contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie

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Core Web Vitals – Page Experience Ranking Update

Category: News Tips and Tricks

As far back as 2012, when web technologies were far behind what they are now, it was estimated that just a 1 second delay could cost Amazon $1.6 billion in sales each year. Slow loading webpages can cause a host of problems including higher bounce rates and lower conversions and can have a negative effect on business success overall.

In today’s busy world, nothing frustrates us more than having to wait. Whether it’s a bus, a train or a website, we expect everything to be instant nowadays.

When we look at website speed from the outside, it’s a very complex issue. The amount of variables taken into consideration just to load a webpage are considerable and this varies for each and every website. The technologies in place, the hosting setup, optimisation and much more are all factored in to this.

On top of this, speed and mobile usage should be optimised fully to enhance Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). By keeping on top of this, you can ensure that you are maximising one of the factors that go into your search ranking.

Core Web Vitals – June 2021 – Google Update

The upcoming Google Pagespeed Experience update has now been pushed to roll out in mid-June gradually rather than in May as previously announced. Page Experience Signals will now play a huge part in search rankings. The purpose is to ensure end users have a great experience when visiting pages on your website. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/11/timing-for-page-experience

Update: this initial rollout is now complete –

The June 2021 Core Update rollout is complete as of June 12, 2021.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 15, 2021

New Technologies for a Faster Web

Clunky, old websites can and will most likely cause havoc for SEOs and keen web traffic analysts once this new update is released. Our resident speedster Scott Kennedy has been spending hours upon hours researching solutions for a faster web! Scott’s project WPGridsome (https://wpgridsome.com/) is available for viewing and describes the technology that’s gone into it. Running a Google Pagespeed Test gives some hugely impressive results – https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/.

There’s also a fantastic explanation of the overall process and infrastructure here – https://gridsome.org/docs/fast-by-default/

Using the Jamstack architecture can help enormously and can take your website to the next level performance wise. This modern technology offers a wide range of benefits and is just one of the ways that can help – https://jamstack.org/

Other ways to improve Google Pagespeed Insights scores?

Some tips for improving your score without an entire new site architecture are as follows:

Image optimisation
Serving images in a next gen format
Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Remove unnecessary plugins
Improve your hosting package
Implement website caching
Optimise your database

Tools for Testing Speed

Google Pagespeed Insights
Pingdom
GTMetrix
Think with Google
LightHouse Metrics

Some FAQs on this topic can be found her – https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075/core-web-vitals-page-experience-faqs-updated-march-2021

Get in touch now to discuss your options! 2Cubed can help you to improve your website speed giving your users a far better experience. You can call us at 051-440425 and ask for Stephen or follow the link below:

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eCommerce VAT Changes – July 2021

Category: News Tips and Tricks

On 1st July 2021, new rules concerning VAT on eCommerce transactions in the EU come into effect. It’s important to understand how this may affect your business. The main purpose of this initiative is to simplify VAT obligations in relation to eCommerce activity.

How will the 2021 eCommerce Vat changes affect me?

If your business facilitates sales or deliveries (distance sellers) within the EU then you may be affected. As it stands, the current thresholds for distance sale of goods in the EU will be abolished and replaced by a €10,000 threshold across the board.

Online sellers can now register for VAT obligations in one EU Member state which can then be used for declarations on all goods and services sold within in the EU. It’s important to note that all orders sent to the EU are now subject to VAT.

What to do next?

If you have any questions on potential implications, please review the following resources:

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/vat-e-commerce_en

https://www.shopify.ie/blog/eu-vat-changes-2021

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/telecommunications-broadcasting-electronic-services/

For more information, contact us today!

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Website Security – Protect Your Website From Malware

Category: Tips and Tricks

The recent security breach of the HSE systems in Ireland highlights the chaos that can occur when such an event happens. This particular cyber attack has had a huge impact on a national health service and will take weeks or months to resolve at an enormous cost. On top of this, over 700GB of data has been breached which opens up a whole other can of worms.

The majority of websites are quite vulnerable from a security point of view and should take action to address this and protect data now before it’s too late.

Website Security

Cyber Attacks are not going away, in-fact they are now more prevalent than ever before. The groups behind these attacks are extremely sophisticated and they are also practically untraceable. This we cannot control. What you can control however is your website’s security. Think of website security as the health of your site, when your website security is strong your site is in good health, when your website has poor or no security your site is in bad health, and just like human’s, when you are feeling weak, it’s harder to protect yourself from dangers. Hackers thrive on sites who are in weak health and vulnerable.

How do I protect my website?

In order to ensure your website is secure, you should get into the habit of regularly performing a health check or penetration testing to see how it’s performing and reacting. Some basic ways of increasing your website security and keeping it in good health are switching to HTTPS and having a firewall / brute force protection in place. Tools like Sucuri and Wordfence Pro are great for this.

In order to switch to HTTPS, you will have to acquire and install an SSL certificate. Normally, older websites are hosted and indexed on just HTTP, this is a problem because HTTP is not secure and hackers can essentially ‘listen’ in on any data that is being passed between your site and a visitors browser. This data could be of a severely sensitive nature such as card details or login credentials such as username, passwords etc..

HTTPS provides an encrypted connection between your website and a user’s browser. This ensures that any data can not be intercepted or “listened” on by hackers. Google have also made it clear that HTTPS is a ranking factor in their algorithm. Google favours websites who use HTTPS over HTTP.

To inquire about getting an SSL certificate for your site get in touch with us today!

Malware Protection

As well as switching to HTTPS, another way of drastically improving your website security is by having a malware protection tool such as Sucuri or Wordfence (as above). This is a security feature that monitors your website and it looks for things such as malware in particular. You can think of this as being like anti-virus for your website. This constantly works in the background and monitors your files and activity and if it comes across malware it will notify you so that you can remove it and keep your site safe.

Website Maintenance

Having your hosting, website security and maintenance looked after by a professional company is simply the smart decision, it will not only give you peace and mind that your site is being looked after by experts but you will also now be able to focus your time on your business and your customers.

By having a maintenance agreement in place you won’t have to continually pay each and every time you need an update done, you can rest easy in the knowledge that it will be automatically covered by your agreement, it will save you money in the long run compared to having to go it by yourself.

Once you think you have done all you can in relation to improving your security then it’s time to actually test your website security and give your site a health check. The most effective way of doing this is via the use of some website security tools, often referred to as penetration testing or pen testing for short.

Website Maintenance

For more information about increasing your website security and making sure it’s in good health contact us today!

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Website Redesign or Website Reskin?

Category: Tips and Tricks

There comes a point for every website when they are faced with a crossroads. The website may have been around for awhile, it may have become outdated and stale or perhaps it simply just isn’t performing like it use to anymore. It’s at this point where you the website owner will have to make a decision on how to rejuvenate and breathe new life into your website so it will hopefully perform well again.

Reskin or Redesign? Making the right choice

It’s at this point where you will decide whether your website needs a reskin or a complete overall website redesign. Think of your website as a house, sometimes a house simply needs a fresh coat of paint to improve it however if the issues are deeper, simply painting over the cracks won’t solve the issues in the long term and thus a reconstruction would be required, your website acts much the same.

Redesign

A full website redesign refers to overhauling all, or nearly all, of the code and look of a website and would generally require a lot of programming work to give the website a brand new distinguishable look. Using the house metaphor from earlier, in this case, by doing a full website redesign we would be tearing down the old house and building a brand new improved one in its place.

Reskin

A website refresh (commonly known as a website reskin) is akin to as we mentioned before giving your house a fresh coat of paint to improve its overall look and make it more appealing.

The huge difference between a website redesign and a website reskin is that a website reskin won’t necessarily change your website’s core functionality at all but it will give it a new look. You are changing the external aspect of the website so visually it’s different but the internal remains the same whereas with a website redesign the external and the internal both change drastically.

Factors to Consider

When you are deciding on whether you should have your website redesigned or re skinned there are a few factors in particular you should take into account such as:

Budget

Sometimes a website only needs a reskin instead of a complete redesign but this is something you need to be sure of because if you pay for a reskin and then a complete redesign 6 months later it was a waste as you should have just went straight for the redesign.

Time

The time involved in doing a full comprehensive website redesign would require a lot more time and effort than just a reskin. Therefore, since a website redesign will take more time, it will come down to budget as more hours will equal more cost. If time and budget is too much of an issue for you then a reskin may be a more fitting option for you than a full redesign.

Security

As well as budget and time, the security of your website can also be a mitigating factor in your choice. When your security is poor on a website you can experience a whole host of issues. These include slow load times, errors and even risk of viruses all which will drive customers away. Often these issues can be easily solved and rectified through correctly and efficiently optimising the existing code and content.

However, if the actual platform that the website itself is running on is an insecure or unstable platform then in this case doing a full complete website redesign and enhancing or changing the website platform would be the best course of action.

It is generally recommended that a website goes under a full website redesign every 2-3 years and a reskin or refresh every year or so. By implementing consistent website redesigns and reskins this will ensure that your website will always look modern, user friendly and will help increase success for your business.

To find out more about getting your website redesigned or re-skinned Contact 2Cubed today!

You can also contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie

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7 Reasons Why You Should Hire 2Cubed

Category: News Tips and Tricks Website Design

When choosing a website provider, there are many things to consider. For many people this will take them outside of their comfort zone and can be an entirely new experience and choosing a provider you can trust is essential to help ensure your web design project goes as smoothly as possible. Whether it’s website development, design or SEO, 2Cubed are here to assist you along the way!

1. Trust

When you choose 2Cubed, you can be confident that you can place your trust in us to help you along the way. We are here to offer guidance and assistance for any questions you may have along the way from project conception to completion. We are focused on helping you achieve your goals and vision.

2. Expertise

With many years of experience in the broad field of website design & development, we are perfectly placed to tailor and execute even the most complex of projects. We have many years experience dealing with web design & development in many industries, API Development, connecting complex systems and interfaces and much more. You can view our broad range of services here – 2Cubed Web Design Services. Our graphic design process allows you to tailor your approach and we are here to help along the way step by step. Your design will only reach programming once you are fully satisfied!

3. Transparency

When you sign up to commence a partnership with 2Cubed, we remain fully committed to be open and transparent along each phase of the project. When we create your project plan, we will ensure that the steps listed within your plan are fully transparent for both parties. This helps to keep the working relationship open and clear. If we feel like your expectations are unrealistic then we will challenge the reasoning behind this and come up with a solution as to not impede or restrict you moving forward.

4. Due Diligence, Process & Care

We aim to exercise caution and care when you approach us for a working partnership. Before commencing, it’s important that both parties are on the same page in terms of the scope of the project. Open and honest communication is at the forefront of our principles. Our carefully planned process is built on years of experience and serves as a valuable tool – https://2cubed.ie/our-process/. This is a core part of our business and one that helps you to fully understand the steps along the way in a simplified manner.

5. Fully Managed Service

At 2Cubed, we offer a wide range of services ensuring that you don’t need to worry about items such as:

Hosting
Backups
Security
Domain Management
Updates, ongoing maintenance and much more

By taking care of this, we make sure to take the stress and hassle of doing so away from you, allowing you to focus on your own business!

6. Training

When your new website is ready to go-live, we offer an option to have training on using the CMS; adding products, pages, posts and much more. This gives you the flexibility to allow your team members to keep the website up to date with the latest information. Whether it’s adding / editing product data or amending content on page to writing a blog, we will guide you through each and ensure you are comfortable using the new site.

7. Aftercare and Support

When your website is pushed live to the world, you can rest assured that you won’t be left in the lurch. We aim to support you fully in the weeks after the launch and moving forward beyond this. We provide Website Maintenance for hundreds of websites across Ireland and we offer a fully managed support system for each of these. This gives you the comfort that you can reach out with any questions or issues after go-live and will be fully supported.

At 2Cubed Web Design & Development, we can assist you with any of the needs above, helping you to build your online presence. We offer a number of services to help you grow your online presence. Check out our list of services here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

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LEO Online Trading Voucher – 2021 update

Category: News Tips and Tricks Website Design

Financial assistance for businesses to build a presence and trade more online
Up to €2,500 available with just 50% of this coming from your business
Businesses that have already received an online trading voucher previously are eligible to apply for a second voucher

The LEO Trading Online Voucher scheme has been in place for a number of years and has offered thousands of businesses the funding to start or help with trading online. The good news is that the scheme is continuing on into 2021.

With Covid-19 hitting many businesses last year, the 2020 scheme was a fantastic way to build online platforms as many businesses looked to get an eCommerce element in place. The vouchers are worth up to €2,500 or up to 50% of the total (whichever is less).

In order to apply and be eligible for the scheme this year, you must:

– Be trading for at least six months
– Employ between 1 and 10 staff
– Attend a Trading Online Seminar with your Local Enterprise Office

More information on the scheme can be found here – https://www.localenterprise.ie/Wexford/Financial-Supports/Trading-Online-Voucher/

You can download the LEO Trading Online Voucher application form by clicking here.

Contacting us

If you have any questions on this scheme, please reach out to us in the same channels as you normally would:

Technical Support – support@2cubed.ie

General Enquiries – by using our contact form or by emailing hello@2cubed.ie. You can also avail of the LiveChat service on our website.

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Cookie Compliance – GDPR

Category: News Tips and Tricks

We’ve heard so much over the past few years about GDPR and protection of personal data. In May 2018, the European GDPR regulation came into force and caused many businesses to re-evaluate how they process and store customer information.

Cookie Compliance

More recently in Ireland, the Data Protection Commission have undertaken audits of a number of websites in varying industries to gain an understanding of compliance. For the most part, a high number of websites are not compliant. The full guidance can be found here – https://dataprotection.ie/en/guidance-landing/cookies.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small files stored on your browser when visiting a website. They essentially track your movements throughout the website to improve browsing experience by storing specific information each time you visit a site. They can also be used for may other purposes such as;

Necessary for the function of a website
To track data for Analytics tools (Allowing webmasters to track traffic and behaviours on the website)
Used for Advertising in order to tailor relevant ads to a user

Earlier this year, the European Data Protection Board issued guidance regarding the use of such cookies. The main finding from this report, which you can view here – https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/ was to allow users more freedom over the use of cookies. This means that a user must clearly give unambiguous consent when they land on a website. Implied consent is no longer a valid method.

Solutions

From the 5th October 2020, the DPC will be carrying out further audits and may even issue fines where compliance is not met. 2Cubed can help you to ensure you are compliant. We have been working with a company called OneTrust to help with this. You can read more here – https://www.onetrust.com/products/cookie-compliance/. Don’t delay now, protect your website. Please contact us for more information or to get started – https://2cubed.ie/contact/.

***Please Note***

The information in this article is not intended to be legal advice or guidance. It is simply to inform you of the upcoming deadline and what you may do to help to achieve compliance on your website. Each and every website is different and therefore requires analysis individually. You should seek legal advice for all matters concerning GDPR or cookie compliance in your area of jurisdiction.

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10 Pieces of Advice for Getting Better Search Results

Category: News SEO Tips and Tricks

We’d all love for our websites to rank as efficiently as possible with minimal effort; but unfortunately it just isn’t that simple. Our guide below should give some insight into what’s involved in getting your website ranking well.

Review your current standing

This is a big deal. Instead of blindly going full steam ahead with changes / amendments to your search strategy, we suggest that you review your current site in its present standing. That way, you’ll get a greater understanding of what’s required and will give you a greater chance of success ongoing. Check your current rankings and try to understand the bigger picture in terms of how you are ranking compared to your competitors. Tools such as SEOptimer can help provide a good level of insight from a broad SEO perspective.

Understand how Search Engines work

Understanding the fundamental purpose of search engines and how they index and rank websites is also key in ensuring you obtain and sustain successful search results ongoing. Information to help with this is readily available for free! For example, the Google SEO guide contains lots of helpful and insightful information – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en. Doing this, you’ll get a greater understanding of best practices moving forward.

Develop a keyword strategy

Think about the key terms you would want your website to be found for. Make a list, use an Excel sheet to list these out and then prioritise them in order of preference. Utilise long-tail keywords and gradually narrow down to more generic search terms that are more difficult to rank for. Some keywords are of course, more more difficult to rank than others. Tools like WordTracker can help with this.

Content

One of the most important elements, if not THE most is content. Content plays a huge role in how your website ranks. Using your list of keywords, try and develop and broaden your content to include these terms. You’ll want to make sure that your content is user friendly, easy to read and relevant to your business. Avoid black-hat strategies such as keyword stuffing. The Yoast SEO tool is very good for helping to score and evaluate content based on what you have added to your pages / posts / products.

Utilise your Blog

A blog is a great way to tell a story, to get a news post out to your audience and much more. Using your blog frequently allows you to implement your keywords within the content and is a great way to build your online presence and get found online.

Performance / Speed

The speed of your website can have a huge bearing on user experience and conversions. On top of this, speed is now a crucial ranking factor when it comes to Google. Here’s a great article explaining this in detail. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads-speed. Use tools like Pingdom, GTMetrix and Pagespeed Insights to audit your site speed and find out what’s slowing it down.

Mobile / User Experience

Since the majority of users will visit your site on a mobile device, we can’t stress just how important it is to have a fluid, responsive and user friendly mobile layout in place. Without this, your organic positioning and traffic may be hugely negatively affected. Ensure that your content is easy to find, easy to read and not blocked by annoying pop-ups etc. Mobile optimisation is absolutely essential and should never be overlooked.

Link Building

Once you are happy with your website in terms of performance, mobile responsiveness and content, performing your link building strategy will supplement these greatly. We recently wrote a post on link building which you can find here.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the place to measure your website’s performance / errors / reports and more. Here you can submit your sitemap, check for any pages with mobile errors and see your performance on Google for a particular period. On top of this, keep an eye out for any algorithm updates and changes to understand whether or not you are being penalised in any way – https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

Google Analytics

Without measuring your performance and metrics, it’s going to be difficult to improve. Google Analytics provides a huge amount of data for doing so. Even if you are to just looking to measure organic performance ongoing after following the above recommendations then this is your go-to tool. Google run free online classes for beginners to familiarise yourself with Analytics and can be really beneficial! https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/

Conclusion

To conclude, spending time and effort on the points above will no doubt help to increase your search rankings and results. Take your time and make sure you are doing things the right way rather than looking for a fast fix.

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Why You Need A Website Maintenance Plan

Category: News Tips and Tricks

You find out website has been hacked. Your customers cannot access important information or your users cannot purchase your goods or services. What do you do? Panic!

You don’t have a website maintenance plan in place and don’t have a point of contact to help resolve the issue. This is just one of the many issues you are likely to encounter without a professional website maintenance plan in place. Websites are more vulnerable to breaches and hacks nowadays more than ever. Sophisticated systems are always targeting sensitive information and vulnerabilities.

why do i need a website maintenance plan?

What’s involved in a website maintenance plan?

Ensuring your site is fully up to date and patched ongoing is one the fundamental purposes of a website maintenance plan. Along with this, some of the other key purposes a plan may include are as follows:

Speed Optimisation / Performance
Server updates
Content addition / general updates and support
Health Checks
Broken links etc which may harm SEO performance

2Cubed offer a number of website plans, tailored for you. This allows you get the most out of your plan while being safe in the knowledge that your online business is safe and secure.

Find out more about our fully managed website maintenance and management services here – https://2cubed.ie/services/website-management-maintenance/

You can use our dedicated ‘get a quote’ form to get a quote based on your requirements – https://2cubed.ie/get-a-quote/

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