Malware Scanning Is Now Part Of Our Technical Support Agreement

Daily malware scanning is now included for no extra cost with our technical support agreements. This means your entire website files and database is scanned every 24 hours for known malware signatures.

Further details of our technical support agreement can be found below.

 

 

 

 

Website Technical Support Agreement

You may remember that not too long ago, a well-meaning but poorly thought-out law was passed making it mandatory to add a cookie banner to each and every every website. They’re those annoying things you have to click and accept every time you visit a new site. Cookie banners inform the visitor that the website uses cookies and they ask for consent although some websites have it set up so that cookies activate before asking for consent.

Well, things may be changing yet again, but hopefully, for the better.

Elizabeth Denham, the current UK information commissioner has met with her G7 counter parts to discuss technology problems they believe can be solved with closer co-operation, and this includes the use of cookie banners.

“No single country can tackle this issue alone,” Ms Denham said. “That is why I am calling on my G7 colleagues to use our convening power. Together we can engage with technology firms and standards organisations to develop a coordinated approach to this challenge.”

Pop-up cookie banners are widely disliked by internet users and businesses. They are known as an annoying obstacle and privacy advocates believe they are dark patterns to trick people into accepting their privacy invasions.

MS Denham also believes people get frustrated with cookie banners so accept them without really knowing what they are. The information commissioner office (ICO) said it would pitch a vision for the future to allow people to set lasting privacy preferences of their choosing rather than having to do it every time with cookie pop ups. This will also ensure the public’s privacy is respected. The ICO believes this is possible to do as technology is already possible and compliant with data protection.

Achieving this will require co-operation from different technology firms.

The debate on cookies is already out there with people believing they are being tracked but some companies like Apple have already limited them by default in their software. The ICO believe this can easily be resolved if the various organisations involved pull together to make it happen.

We hope this blog has given you some information into cookies banners and the possible impending changes to them and if you’d like any advice on your website or its compliance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

What Are Core Web Vitals? Back in May 2020, Google announced its intentions to start phasing in a new ranking factor as part of its page experience. That new ranking factor is called Core Web Vitals (CWV) and its main objective is to ensure that the ranking of websites and web pages provides a great user experience.

Page experience is a quality rating for a page, and it considers various factors such as speed, performance, security, and the content of the web page. Google uses algorithms that constantly monitor pages to determine if they have a good user experience or not.

If your website has an excellent overall user experience (UX), there’s a higher chance of ranking well in Google.

Metrics that make up Core Web Vitals (CWV)

These three metrics measure loading performance, interactivity and visual stability:

– Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
– First Input Delay (FID)
– Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

It’s worth noting that these metrics are per page, not per website, so you could find several pages having a good score, while others need improvement. You can read more about it here.

Will Core Web Vitals affect your rankings?

One of the main characteristics of Core Web Vitals is that your website will need to have a good user experience and high-quality content for you to rank highly, so yes it will.

Many SEOs were unsure if they should act or not. If your current website already provides a great user experience in line with LCP, FID and CLS above, you most likely won’t see any negative impact on your site rankings.

Google Page Experience Was Fully Rolled Out by September 2021

CWV has received numerous updates in 2021 that have made metrics fairer and more accurate, meaning that your website will be judged on how well it performs for users.

If your site doesn’t meet their standards, you could lose rankings in search results which is a big deal for businesses trying to get ahead of the competition and drive more traffic to their web sites.

You can use this guide to make an informed decision about what steps are necessary to improve the SEO performance of your own site.

If you need professional help with your SEO, we can assist so please get in touch.