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    Category: CleanTalk

    • Additional factors for estimating spam activity of IP/Email addresses in Anti-Spam/Anti-Fraud API

      Cloud Anti-Spam by CleanTalk in the process collects data on spam activity of IP/Email addresses. On the basis of these data, a database of spam IP/email is formed. CleanTalk provides several API methods for working with the data we have.

      We have recently added new parameters to the spam activity test method and launched two new API methods:

      • the first is getting the country code letter by IP address
      • the second – checking domain for participation in spam mailings

      But about everything in order.

      Get the country code letter by IP address.

      This API method returns a two-letter country code (US, UK, CN, etc.) or the full name of Russia by IP address. Read more on the use of the method ip_info.

      Checking the domain to participate in spam mailings.

      Allows you to check whether this domain has been used in spam mailings. At this point in CleanTalk database contains records of 383 1 062 domains.

      For example, you have a comment, it is on the topic of the article, with a very meaningful text and does not raise suspicions, but contains a link to a third-party site. We check the links and get that the domain is listed in the database, the links were posted on other websites and the date of their placement approximately coincides with the date of the comment. It turns out that the comment was used to place a link to a third-party resource.

      Using this method is useful when recognizing manual spam when all other checks are completed.

      You can check the blacklist manually on the website

      Read more on the use of the method backlinks_check.

      Update the spam_check method.

      Method allows you to bulk check IP/email against a database of blacklists CleanTalk. At the moment the database contains records about 2 808 344 IP and 990 835 Email. Also, the method allows you to make an IP check for a specific date.

      In addition to the main parameter, as a result of the issuance, showing the presence or absence in the database, additional parameters have been added:

      spam_rate – spam activity rating from 0 to 100%. The parameter is calculated for each IP or email record as the ratio of blocked requests to the total number of requests from a given IP or email. As an example, IP has a total of 100 requests, of which the service blocked 97 requests as spam, so spam_rate will be 97%.

      Why this is important, it gives you the ability to set your own request blocking logic. As the spammers change the IP and at the moment it can be a regular user.

      Following parameter:

      Each parameter shows the activity of the data being checked for the last 10 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours, respectively. That is, it shows the number of requests for a specific time from a specific IP or email. This is useful in cases where IP or email does not yet have BlackListed status in the database, but has a fairly high activity in a short time. About what other parameters you can use to protect against spam, you can read in our previous articles:

      Non-visual methods of protecting the site from spam Part 1

      Non-visual methods of protecting the site from spam Part 2

      Non-visual methods of protecting the site from spam Part 3

      Example of output of API data for test email *@cl*******.org. This email is for tests, so the “updated” parameter: “2019-03-28 22:07:19” is the date.

      {"data":
            {"*@cl*******.org":
                      {"appears":1,
                      "frequency_time_10m":null,
                      "spam_rate":"0",
                      "frequency":"999",
                      "frequency_time_24h":null,
                      "updated":"2019-03-28 22:07:19",
                      "frequency_time_1h":null}
            }
}

      Learn more about using the spam_check method.

    • Automating CleanTalk Anti-Spam Updates for WordPress

      Automating CleanTalk Anti-Spam Updates for WordPress

      If you serve a couple of sites, then updating the plugins does not cause any difficulties. Difficulties appear if you serve a few dozen, or even hundreds of sites.

      CleanTalk Anti-spam requires frequent updates (we have to release a new version every 1-2 weeks), there are many reasons for this.

      WordPress, as a designer, has a huge number of plugins, themes, widgets, etc. which are not always designed with WordPress Codex, have different architecture and event handling. Therefore, CleanTalk integration errors can occur with different components, especially rare ones.

      Each complex service that uses a large amount of data, changes backend, changes in logic and a lot of the rest, require changes in the plugin.

      At our update rates for the plugin, the auto-update option is required. If this option is done in the plugin’s settings, then the user will still need to go to each site in the plugin’s settings and install it. But what to do in a situation where the user does not want to include auto-update, but you need to update the plug-in immediately on one hundred sites?

      For the convenience of service management, the auto-update option was implemented in the Service Control Panel.

      Auto-update allows you to update the plugin one time at a single site, a group of sites, or enable auto-update on all sites.

      How it works

      Historically, we are monitoring the client version of the plugin, and when clients are contacted and feedback analysis, we need to know the version of the plugin that is being used. Each anti-spam plugin, with each request, sends its version in the parameters. The version number is compared with the number in the repository, and if the versions are different, then in the Control Panel we show a warning about the need for an update.

      Next, when clicking on a link, a modal window opens with options for updates.

      When the option is selected, the server makes a special request to the plugin on the client’s site.

      The plugin, having received the call, checks the parameters of the call for authenticity and starts work. Auto-update is implemented through a modified class of auto-update plugins WordPress. After the class is finished, the plugin checks the version of the updated files and makes a request to the site (itself). If the HTTP response code is 200, it reports this to the server by displaying it on the “OK” page and makes a special API call, reporting on the new version. If the response code is different from 200, the plugin does a rollback of the files to the previous version and responds north with a string with an error code and technical parameters.

      After a successful update, the status in the Service Control Panel changes to “App has been updated”.

      How to set up an auto-update

      Please, go to your CleanTalk Dashboard.

      • Choose a website that needs to update the plugin.
      • Click on the link Update app.
      • Next step, in pop-up you can choose:
        do a manual update and the plugin will be updated immediately. You can do this action for all websites
        or
        set auto-update, in the next time plugin will be updated automatically.

    • CleanTalk, the launch of WordPress security

      While developing the Anti-Spam service, we often encounter other issues related to the security of websites. The most common questions were about brute force attacks. In addition to problems with the selection of passwords for the administrator account, often brute force attacks cause a high load on the server, and users receive notification from the hosting about exceeding the allowed load values for the processor.

      We thought if we are receiving such requests, why don’t we solve them? Since tasks relate to security functions, the decision to launch a separate security service was obvious.

      At the moment, the Security service is developed only under WordPress, there are several reasons for this: the greatest demand, a large number of websites use this particular CMS, the complexity of the development of several CMS.

      Despite the fact that anti-spam protection is a part of security, we decided to split these two services. There are several reasons for this:

      1. Complication of the plugin, which leads to increased errors, compatibility issues with other plugins/themes
      2. Promotion by search queries
      3. Easier development and independent release of updates
      4. The interface of the plugin is not complicated by a bunch of additional options that are not needed if the user uses only one function
      5. A separate management interface and logging in the control panel CleanTalk

      We decided to start with the implementation of protection against brute force attacks and further gradually expand the functionality.

      Protection from brute force attacks – implemented by adding delays between incorrect authorization attempts. A delay of 3 seconds is set for the first attempts, for a subsequent one in 10 seconds. If there were 10 unsuccessful attempts of authorization within an hour, the IP address will be added to the FireWall database for 24 hours. To protect against hackers trying to find a password for your account, this is enough, since they significantly increase the time between attempts, and they can be tens or hundreds of thousands. All logs of access attempts are available in the weekly report and in the service control panel, which allows you to quickly add IP addresses to the FireWall blacklist. Protection against brute force attacks extends only to users with administrator rights.

      Traffic control – allows you to view information about visitors, such as:

      • IP
      • Country
      • Date/time of the last query
      • The number of allowed/blocked HTTP requests
      • Status-banned or allowed
      • The URL of the page visit
      • User Agent

      Another option in traffic Control — “Block visitor if the number of requests is greater than” – blocks access to the site for any IP that exceeds the number of HTTP requests per hour. The number of requests can be set in the settings, the default is 1000. If the IP is exceeded, the Firewall will be added to the Blacklist for 24 hours.

      This will help solve the problem of DoS attacks on the site when a large number of HTTP requests are sent to the site, because of which it stops responding or starts to work very slowly. This situation is possible because of a massive brute force attack.

      Audit log – allows you to monitor the actions of users in the admin WordPress, keeps a log of visits to pages with the date/time and length of stay. Allows you to monitor the actions of administrators and unauthorized access and in case of problems to understand where by whom and what changes have been made.

      Malware Scanner – scans WordPress files, plugins and themes for malicious code and changes. If the changes in the files were made illegally, it allows you to restore the original files.

      Automatic scanning takes place every 24 hours, and you can also start it manually.

      Security FireWall – blocks access to the site for POST/GET requests by IP addresses. Base IP addresses for the FireWall is generated from our database of blacklists CleanTalk. It is possible to get IP addresses that have a high spam activity or was seen in attempts brute force attacks. It is possible to use their own blacklists, both for individual IP addresses/subnets and by country. Due to this, it is possible to reduce the load on the website or to block a DOS attack.

      Ready to release:

      • outbound link scanner
      • checking links against a database of domains that are promoted with spam
      • protection from XSS and SQL injections

      Development notes

      Everything was written from scratch, not peeking at other solutions. This was done specifically to not to pick up other people’s mistakes and to develop your own vision for the application.

      Further development for other CMS is planned, so it was decided to develop a modular design. Use an object-oriented approach and everything like that. Of course, in the process had to solve various problems that do not fit into this concept and did not do without a workaround.

      As a result, there are several classes that without significant improvements can be used on other CMS (including self-recording), using a couple of wraps, for example for the database.

      Was written our own class Cron is not dependent on Cron WordPress. Still, the application for security and should not rely on functionality that may or may not work, or which may interfere with the work of third-party developers.

      To implement heuristic code analysis, we have written our own code minimizer parser, which will continue to develop. With it, you can track dangerous variables, functions, constructions. Not sure if other plugins/anti-viruses/applications use similar solutions (probably not), but this pros and cons of independent development, our approach may have turned out unique.

      Example of the “minimizer”:

      Source code:

      <?php
	//$some = 'n'.'o'.'t'
	$some = 's'.'o'.'m'.'e'; // String concatenation
	$stuff = 'stuff';
	
	$first = 'first';
	$func = 'func';
	
	$first_func = $some."$first$func"; // Variable replacement
?>
$some = 'n'.'o'.'t';
<?php
	// Variable replacement
	$i = 'i';
	$c = 'c';
	$o = 'o';
	$co = $c.
	// some obfuscating comment
	$o;
	$ico = $i/* some obfuscating comment */.$co;
	
	require($some.'_'.$stuff.'.'.$ico);
	require($some.'_'.$stuff.'.php');
	require($some.'_'.$stuff.'.p'.$ico);

	$first_func();
?>

      Result:

      <?php $some='some';$stuff='stuff';$first='first';$func='func';$first_func='somefirstfunc';$i='i';$c='c';$o='o';$co='co';$ico='ico';require'some_stuff.ico';require'some_stuff.php';require'some_stuff.pico';somefirstfunc();?>

      If you bring in a more understandable form:

      <?php 
	$some='some';
	$stuff='stuff';
	$first='first';
	$func='func';
	$first_func='somefirstfunc';
	$i='i';$c='c';$o='o';
	$co='co';
	$ico='ico';
	require'some_stuff.ico';
	require'some_stuff.php';
	require'some_stuff.pico';
	somefirstfunc();
?>

      Some things that it can do: do concatenation, substitute variables, track the origin of variables (let’s say if they use unreliable $ _POST and $ _GET), track and check the file connections (include, require) for various parameters and much more. We can say that this is the basis on which the functional will be added.

      Especially I did not like to support WPMS, because for each functional I had to make exceptions taking into account whether the main site is this, whether the user of the secondary site inherits the key from the main site or enters his own access key, whether the secondary site allowed to activate plug-ins and the like. Unfortunately, we had to remove part of the functionality for WPMS and secondary sites due to non-compatibility.

      In general, it turned out a beautiful application in places from the point of view of the code, which we will develop in the future.

      The plugin itself can be found in the directory.

    • 5 new anti-spam plugins from CleanTalk

      We continue blogging about our work and will talk about our work in it. To begin with, that will tell you about what we have done in 2017. Over the past year, we have developed several anti-spam modules for CMS, which I will describe in more detail.

      Why modules and not the API. First, they allow users to quickly and easily connect to the service. Second, not all users have the knowledge to connect the API. Third, the modules have a management interface, which makes it easier to use.

      A little about the service itself: CleanTalk is a cloud-based service to protect websites from spam, provides a simple and convenient form of comment/registration for visitors, which will not require the visitor to prove that he/she is a person that saves time and resources spent on moderation and verification of questionable users or comments. All requests are stored in the cloud, including blocked ones, which helps to prevent data loss.

      Additional features: SpamFireWall – “soft” blocking of POST and GET requests over IP and subnet masks (soft – if the user was mistakenly added, then after 1 second will be redirected to the page of the site).

      How it works: The anti-spam module installed on the website transmits the behavior parameters of the visitor, browser, IP / email and message text. These parameters are evaluated and the service decides whether to post the message or define it as spam and reject it. Based on these checks, the service creates its own list of IP / Email addresses used by spambots. In the blacklist are added not only to IP / Email, but also domains sites promoted through spam. All this happens automatically and does not require any action from the site administration.

      MODX Anti-Spam Plugin

      The module was developed at the request of several clients and provides protection from spam for registrations, comments, feedback forms.

      For the development of MODX, there is a fairly good documentation. For those who start developing and getting acquainted with MODX for the first time, it would be useful to add an example of creating the first simplest plugin (build your own first plugin) to the documentation, which greatly simplifies the process. The development process itself took 3-4 days, together with related tasks.

      Adding the module to the official catalog did not cause any difficulties, everything was quite simple and understandable. Moderation took about a week after sending the module, waited 5-6 days and wrote to the technical support to find out at what stage and how long to wait, and the next day the module was published. It is not known whether this is due to treatment or not.

      MyBB Anti-Spam Plugin

      There are no problems with the documentation, everything is clear and there are no questions. The same with the development.

      With the placement in the catalog, it is more difficult, it is necessary to understand the interface – it is not very convenient, but the worst thing is moderation of new plugins. Having sent the module for moderation in June 2017, we are still waiting for it to be published in the catalog. In general, the situation is similar to the directory phpBB, there also have to wait for months.

      We decided to follow the advice of one of the users and create a topic on the forum, in the plugins section, added a description, links to the module.

      OpenCart Anti-Spam Plugin

      With documentation for development under this CMS, there are problems, it almost is not present. Good documentation was found here, for which many thanks to the compilers. To develop, you need vQmod and understanding MVC. In the rest, there is nothing complicated.

      Quite a convenient interface for the marketplace, everything is clear and fast. Complexities with the addition did not arise.

      XenForo 2 Anti-Spam Plugin

      As for the developer documentation, even though XF2 is still a beta version, the documentation for it is one of the best. There were no difficulties with the development. The only thing is not entirely clear why automatic hash file creation (hashes.json) is done when the plugin is loaded and in the end each time you have to manually do this by the command.

      The interface of the marketplace is convenient. There is no plugin moderation before publishing, plugins are moderated after you publish the plugin. This is probably not very convenient, as the version may contain errors, while the plugin will have time to download. By our first version, we have received code comments and a notification that if we do not resolve, the plugin will be removed from the directory.

      Universal Anti-Spam Plugin

      Since the number of requests to connect the service to not very popular CMS is stable, besides, we regularly receive requests using the API integration. Since it will be expensive to develop each time a separate module, it was decided to make a universal plugin. Universal Anti-Spam plugin can be installed on any custom websites, content management systems and frameworks. If the user has no programming experience to connect the API to the site, this will be the best solution for protecting the site from spam.

      How it works?

      The CleanTalk installer adds its code to the index.php file. When the visitor fills in and submits the form, the plugin intercepts the form data and finds the email, the message itself and adds some other parameters to them and sends them to the CleanTalk cloud, except when the form has been found banned for sending data (they are stitched into the plugin and can not changed). After receiving a response from the server, the plugin skips or forbids further execution (displaying a message about the reasons for the lock).

      After analyzing the parameters sent, CleanTalk servers decide whether the request should be blocked or allowed. Since the universal CleanTalk libraries were used in writing, it was necessary to organize only the installation and interception of forms. To be honest, we had to rewrite the libraries so that they worked on pure PHP and add exceptions for some fields, such as registering or recovering passwords or paying with cards.

      For each client’s request, we do a test with its CMS, complementing the plugin to work specifically with this CMS. Therefore, at the moment we do not want to make new plugins, as it entails overhead costs in the form of loss of time to support versions up to date.

      The plugins themselves:

      MODX

      MyBB

      OpenCart

      XenForo2

      Universal plugin

      At the moment, we do not plan to expand the range of plugins, only support and development of the current functionality. We hope that the universal plugin will be able to close these gaps, as it is easier to modify one plugin than to do each time a new one.

    • Spam attack on the CleanTalk Service

      Good day!

      We must inform you that some days ago we have been attacked by spam on our service. Spammers used species emails xx**@cl*******.org to send spam comments/registrations / subscriptions. At the moment, the attack affected about 4,000 websites. This is not the first such attack on our service, just a couple of weeks ago we faced with a DDoS attack, which we are pretty well blocked.

      PS

      A little add the message to avoid misunderstandings.

      It was not a spam via SMTP and the substitution of the sender’s address. This spam is caused by the fact that spammers use your public email for subscriptions to news and stuff on other websites.

      The problem is actually much wider, we are a small company and we have not caused any difficulties. But for large companies, which business is tied to e-mail, receiving orders for example?

      Let’s say John Doe took for the example online shop, took them the email address for type orders or***@ex*****.com and signed up with this address on 10,000 newsletters at different sites. Every day, this address will be sent news and other mailings, the work of the sales department in this store can be significantly slowed down and cause losses for business, including reputation ones.

      There are several problems here:

      1. Websites are poorly protected from spam.
      2. The company may have problems because it starts receiving a lot of messages.
      3. Reputation losses. Site owners see spam from you, the visitors of websites can see spam from you.

      What do you think, how we can avoid it?

    • Auto-Update for CleanTalk Anti-Spam Plugin

      Updating plugins and themes on the site can be a problem for website owners. This is especially true for webmasters who support several websites, you have to go to every website and make an update, and it takes your time. We have released an update that will perform this routine task and will update CleanTalk Anti-Spam on all sites at once.

      CleanTalk Dashboard allows you to select several websites and update the plugin at once on all sites one click or you can setup auto-update for all websites or separate websites.
      Note: there is 24 hours delay before auto-update will do. This delay allows needing to avoid any issues. All updates that made through CleanTalk Dashboard manually will do immediately.

      How does it work?

      • Manual update on all or selected websites at once.
      • Auto-update on all or selected websites at once.

      Please, go to your CleanTalk Dashboard.

      • Choose a website that needs to update the plugin.
      • Click on the link Update app.
      • Next step, in pop-up you can choose:
        do a manual update and the plugin will be updated immediately. You can do this action for all websites
        or
        set auto-update, in the next time plugin will be updated automatically.

      In the end, enjoy you saved your time.

      Auto-updating system will work from CleanTalk Anti-Spam version 5.88

    • Changing SSL Policy Requirements

      Changing SSL Policy Requirements

      Hello,

      We want to inform you about changes in our SSL service providing.

      The Comodo Certificate Authority will make a change in Certification Authorities’ policy requirements, reducing the maximum lifetime for all TLS/SSL certificates to 825 days, which is just over 27 months. This is a reduction from the existing maximum term of 39 months, meaning the maximum validity for an SSL certificate is now two years, and not three.

      As a result, Comodo CA will adopt these new lifetime requirements effective March 1, 2018 and three-year certificates will be removed as options from all prices.

      So, you don’t have a much time left to buy SSL for 3 years and forget about re-insurance your SSL every year.

      Look at our SSL offer.

      Thank you!

    • CleanTalk Released a MOD for the Protection of XenForo 2 Against Spam and Spam Bots

      CleanTalk completed the development MOD for the XenForo2, to protect your online store against spam and spambots.

      The anti-spam MOD is compatible with XenForo versions v2.x. and approved on the XenForo official catalog.

      This extension allows users to quickly and easily connect to CleanTalk anti-spam service. Its service provides 100% protection from spam bots and provides a simple and convenient commentary/sign-up form for visitors.

      This MOD allows protection from automatically distributed spam, as well as from spam bots registrations. The protection method offered by CleanTalk allows users to switch from the methods that trouble the communication (CAPTCHA, question-answer etc.) to a more convenient one.

      CleanTalk saves time and resources spent on moderation and verification of questionable users or comments. Unnoticeable Protection from spam and registration forms, which does not require the visitor to prove who they are, increases the conversion in registration and is not annoying.

      CleanTalk is a cloud service, security module, installed on a website, which sends the behavior parameters of the visitor or spambot. These parameters are estimated, and the service makes a decision – to post a message or to define it as spam and reject.

      On the basis of such checks, the service forms its own list of email addresses used by spambots. Likewise, the registration of visitors is checked. The service adds not only email addresses to the blacklist but also IP addresses and domains of the websites that are promoted through spam mailout. The CleanTalk company developed unique algorithms to assess the behavior of the visitor, and with 100% accuracy, we keep spam messages at bay. All of this happens automatically and requires no action from the administration of the website.

      You can now download CleanTalk Anti-Spam from XenForo official catalog.

      The Company provides automatic spam protection services for popular CMS: WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, Drupal, DataLife Engine, IP Board, vBulletin, MediaWiki, SimpleMachinesForum and API for PHP, Perl, Python, NET.

    • 18 ways to improve Speed of your WordPress Website

      18 ways to improve Speed of your WordPress Website

      If your e-commerce website makes the customer wait for more than 3 seconds, don’t expect any sale; says a study. Things are very similar for the business and blogging websites, where website speed significantly affects conversion rate. If your site does not have a quicker approach to load and performs against the other available sites then it will automatically not deliver results you want. Therefore, you must always look for the ways by which you can improve your website’s speed.

      18 best tips to optimize WordPress website’s speed are mentioned here:

      1. Taking Pingdom Test

      One of the effective ways that you can try is doing the Pingdom Website Speed Test for your website. This test will help you in knowing the speed of your website along with finding the reasons that are responsible for the slow speed. This is the ultimate speed test that you can take for your WordPress site.

      All you have to do is to enter the URL of your site and then selecting the location before clicking on the ‘start test’ option.

      With this test, you can get the complete insights of your website with all the facility to access all the amazing features that it offers to your website.

      This performance metrics, in turn, will improve the speed of your website.

      From content to site structure, Pingdom will analysis everything from you.

      2. Select a good host

      One of the major reasons for the slow speed of the sites is due to the insufficient and incapable host provider. Thus to better up the speed of the WordPress website, it is important to hunt for the best host. Considering the shared hosting option may seem good in the beginning but with time it will eventually cost you way too much. The shared host will make the speed of your website really slow or may keep the site down most of the time. It, therefore, becomes a must to have a high-speed host for your WordPress. You may ask the other bloggers which host are they using or you can search the market with the good reputed names by yourself to get the best host that can make things easy, simple yet effectively fast for your WordPress website.

      3. Minimizing the widgets

      Having some amount of ads, widgets and badges are oaky for any blog. No doubt they add a little personality to the blog. Some of the users find the extra ads, widgets, etc. on the blog useful as they can get some beneficial information for them. But most of the users get really annoyed if there are too much of widgets, badges, and ads on your WordPress website.

      The users when encounters too many ads feel that they are being used for no reason. Also, your users are not interested in knowing from where the other visitors are coming on your site. Therefore you must try and keep these ads and widgets on a very minimal note.

      4. Choose a relevant theme

      Having the right framework, theme or template for the website – This may not get your attention in the beginning but sooner you will realize that the template you choose for your website is one of the contributing factors that affect the loading and response time of the website. Don’t go for too much of everything; rather be specific and limited in reaching to your customers with your vision.

      If you have chosen the template or theme that has a lot of extra factors that are of no use those factors will take a significant amount of time to load and hence will reduce the performing time of your site by reducing its speed. Thus don’t go for glitters but choose the real gold for your website.

      5. Image optimization

      All the marketers that work hard for attracting the customers know how important the role of an image is in attracting and retaining the customers. An image with clear and smooth pixels will speak and convey your message way louder than using many words. Thus you must be very specific in choosing the images that you will be uploading on your websites.

      Choosing only the relevant images will also help in reducing the loading time of those images. Unnecessary uploading any type of images on your site will enhance the overall loading time of the site by combining the loading time of all those images. Therefore you must use a minimum number of images that can be uploaded within a specified time limit.

      6. Remove excess buttons for sharing

      It is quite obvious that we all want our website to reach to as many people as possible and to achieve this we are always ready to experiment with a number of options, ways, and methods. In order to improve the visibility of our site, we often tend to do too much on the site. One such thing is using too many share buttons on the website hoping to reach a huge amount of people.

      Using too many sharing options on the website destroy the speed of the site like anything. With too many linking to the various other platforms, you cut down the loading and performing time of the website. Rather you can try and use only the sharing buttons of those sites from where you expect a huge amount of traffic and leads. After doing this, you can remove all the other buttons and can focus on optimizing the use of the available buttons on your website.

      7. Content management

      Website is not a place where you can put each and everything about your business or work. It is a place that gives an idea to your audience about the type of work that you are doing along with the manner in which you target it. Therefore, the role of content management comes into the picture. Knowing and managing the content that you are uploading on your website will help the audience to understand your business and working more effectively and easily.

      Content management will also reduce the efforts and time that you would have to invest for managing, balancing and correcting the data on your website. Along with this basic benefit, you also get the benefit of reduced uploading time of the content which directly affects the loading and response time of your website. Hence, you must only put the relevant data on your website to avoid the unnecessary delays in uploads.

      8. Reduced number of comments

      Your audience will be very much interested in knowing the information that you are putting on your WordPress site in the form of the article. Having some comments on your post is okay and acceptable but allowing any type of comment to be visible in your posts is not acceptable.

      Rather you must reduce the number of comments that appear on your post and manage it to only a relevant number with relevance to the post. This will cut short the time the post will take to upload and also will help the readers to get the genuine idea about the content of the post’s information.

      9. Compressed format

      Remember how easy it is to use the compressed form of data for uploading, transferring, etc. The same ease can be felt when you are dealing with your website. Compress the entire data that you are sending, uploading or transferring from the website. This will reduce the overall time that you require and thereby increasing the loading and response time of your website by making it perform better and effectively.

      10. Enable content delivery network

      It is a not so common fact but the speed of your website depends upon the two major locations. First is the location where you are locating and the second is from where the website is hosted.  If there is not a balance between these two then there will be certain delays in the performance of the website’s loading time.

      A content delivery network helps in managing all the data of your website and putting the files on the static servers which are located very near to the client side. Whenever the client request for any of the service from your site, these servers will help the files reach to the clients as fast as possible. It is just like reaching your destination via the shortest route.

      11. Homepage optimization

      The very first thing that the visitors will notice about your WordPress site is your homepage. The visitors will get the very first impression of your website from the homepage of your website. Thus you must always take necessary steps when optimizing the homepage for the website. Optimizing the homepage and making it relevant to your work will help it get loaded easily and quickly and thereby increasing its speed.

      One of the ways by which you can optimize your website is by removing the irrelevant and unnecessary data from your site. Only keep the data and things that contribute to the relevance of your work.

      12. Ditch hotlinking

      Hotlinking is the process when the other sites directly link from their articles the various links on the images which are available on your website. This direct linking to the various sites adds to the loading time of your website and thereby reduces your performance. This can also cause unnecessary scrap posts being linked with your site’s images that have no relevance to your site and this will downfall your reputation in the market.

      Thus, you must reduce the use of hotlinks as much as you can in order to avoid unnecessary of the linking of other sites to your websites. This will automatically increase your site’s speed.

      13. Optimize database

      This is something that most the people ignore and don’t take into account. As most of the people concentrate only on the outer side of the website and don’t really bother with what’s going on inside. But along with managing the outer performance of the website, it is equally important to balance the internal functioning of the site.

      Optimizing the database of your website is one of the tasks that you must take care when trying the various ways of improving the speed of your WordPress site. You can try the plugins like WP-Optimize or WP-Database Manager for enhancing the process of database management.

      14. Fix all broken points:

      One of the easiest ways to make your website work and load really fast is by fixing all the broken points that it has. For this you would have to analyze the website on regular basis and then to note down all the points where you find the performance of the website is lacking. This can help in fixing the damaging part and thus to make the website perform better on those fronts.

      15. Minify your CSS and JS files:

      You can make your website perform faster and better by minifying the various CSS and JS files available. The process to minify the CSS and JS helps in removing the white space, combining the various files along with reducing the number of unnecessary comments on the posts. This in return helps the site to get rid of the not so necessary complications and help it to load and perform at a much faster speed than ever.

      16. Try faster plugins

      To improve the speed of your website, it is recommended to use less number of plugins. No doubt plugins are important for the speed of the website but that does not mean that you have to use each and every plugin that you know or come across. Rather you should select and reduce the number of plugins to only those that actually contribute in the enhancement of the website’s speed.

      17. Disable trackbacks

      If your WordPress site is accessing the trackbacks, then it is obvious that it will interact with the other blogs and blogging sites that are equipped with the same. However, this interaction may not seem any trouble initially but will increase the loading time after some time. Whenever any of the other blogs and blogging site mentions your site anywhere, you will get a notification for the same. This will keep updating the data in the post. It doesn’t require much of an explanation that too much of data on the post can reduce its performing time by increasing the loading time.

      Thus to avoid any such problem, it is always advisable to turn off the trackbacks by making adjustments in the settings of your website.

      18. Use the best plugin for cache

      Plugins are one of the essential factors that help any site to reduce its loading time and enhance its speed. Just like the other sites, WordPress also uses a number of plugins for the same. However, it is always beneficial to use those plugins that are in the caching category. These plugins provide all the required benefits to the sites that it need to improve their speed and reduce the loading time.

      Out of the many, W3 Total Cache is the most popular one that is trending in the market and is being used by all the leading blogging sites. The other popular cache plugins that are used are WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, Comet Cache, etc. These can be easily installed along with offering easy and reliable use.

      These are some of the basic ways that can enhance the speed of your WordPress site along with delivering you better and optimized results. How do you keep your website speed and load optimized, any other way? So, CleanTalk optimizes their anti-spam and security plugins to improve your website speed and these plugins are one of the fastest.

    • 20 Tips for Effective SEO and Content Management for WordPress

      Undoubtedly, WordPress has immensely outgrown its inception image. WordPress has moved from supporting the blogs to be the best platform for high-end websites. Even today no other platform can beat the Content Management functions of WordPress. As a website platform, you can extend and expand a WordPress website functionally to a tremendous extent. Built-in search functions and SEO enables each page to be optimized right from inception.  

      The search engines get cruel with websites. The best WordPress theme and most creative content would fall flat if it is not optimized. WordPress powers you to build excellent websites do not let them get lost in the sea of websites without SEO and Content Management.

      SEO and Content Management tip for a WordPress Website:

      1.  Create Clean Permalinks:

      WordPress is notorious for creating irrelevant permalinks (URL structure). By default, WordPress inserts the day and name into the URL making it unreadable. Google and other search engines rank the URLs that are optimized. The title and keywords in the post URL are liked more by the search engines.  

      Check out the permalink setting and check the “Post name” option. It is clean and gives you the liberty to add the keyword in the URL. When you change the permalink after the posts have gone live and the links have been shared, you must redirect the preceding link to the new permalink. Now that the permalink has been modified you will not be able to direct traffic using the older links

      2. Always have a Focus Keyword

      Keywords are the indispensable part of any web content. Google and other search engines are merely algorithms (agree they are quite strong), and they rank your content based on the keywords. Insert the focus keyword naturally and never overstuff your content with the keywords.

      Publishing long content, well-researched content or regular post will not drive sustainable traffic unless they are keyword optimized. Extensive research is required to find out the keywords that are relevant to your content and will rank it higher. Avoid the occurrence of any negative focus keyword in the blog comments section. It is not in your control, but you can use CleanTalk anti-spam plugin to keep your website from ranking high in negative keywords.

      3. Optimize the Meta descriptions

      SEO ranking is not directly linked with Meta description but a keyword rich Meta description increases the CTR. Indirectly a good CTR brings you into the focus of search engines, and they alter your rankings. You can set the Meta description manually using the Yoast SEO plugin.

      Google allows a limit of 156 characters on the Meta description ensure you create and put pretty content with the focus keyword. The focus keyword is set to bold on the search engines producing even more engagement. You must include the power words or the words you see in competitor AdWords Meta description.

      4. Never miss the Header Tags

      Header tags are crawled by the search engines before they craw the entire content. A heading with proper tags is an excellent practice. The header tags H1, H2, H3, create a hierarchy as H1 is the most important. Ensure the H1 has your focus keyword and you can add multiple H2 and H3 in your content.

      WordPress automatically assigns the title to your post but make sure the header tags make the content more readable rather than confusing. Many WordPress themes do have the header tag insertion integrated, and you may not have to depend on any plugin.

      5. Focus keyword in title and first paragraph

      As discussed in point 2, Focus keyword is very important for your content. What makes the more significant impact is the position of the keyword. A focus keyword in the title and first paragraph increases the stay time and ranks your post higher in the search engine.

      The web crawlers check the content from top to bottom. When they find the focus keyword on top, they rank you higher. If you use Yoast SEO plugin, it intimates you whenever you do not follow this practice in the post.

      6. Content word count:

      Genuinely speaking, producing a high-quality content is best you can do for your website. More extended content work better than the short contents. The effectiveness of content length plays an important role in rankings. Long form content provides you the advantage of long-tail keywords. Experts have noticed that the traffic from all the long-tail variations will surpass focus keyword traffic.

      The average content length that helps rank well is more than 2500 words, and lots of stats prove long-form content works.

      7. Create short URLs

      Clean and structured websites are loved by the search engines. Short URLs are the best form of a clean website. A well-defined URL helps you improve the CTR.  A short URL gives you lead ahead of your competitors. A WordPress website automatically creates shorter URL’s, but you can also go ahead and shorten them.

      Always remember you cannot keep two URL names same, they have to be unique.

      8. Use optimized Image File Names

      Must admit this is not significant, but you must never do it wrong. A little boost this Smart image file names practice provides becomes substantial when the competition is close.

      Three points must be considered while naming the files:

      • Name them with actual words rather than the names they get from the device they were clicked from.
      • Use hyphens in the title.
      • Add the keyword in the file name.

      9. Add Interlinks

      Linking is important between your posts. Link to your landing page or another post by adding Interlinks in the content. It increases the stay time on your website when you provide useful and relevant links. Recommended is to keep at least 3-5 interlinks on your site.

      WordPress offers you a hyperlink option to insert interlinks and maximize your websites stay time.

      10. Add High Domain Authority External Links

      While interlinks increase the website stay time, you must consider adding some external links to authority sites. This strategy helps your WordPress SEO and puts your website across as one that connects to high-quality content with authority sites.

      Make sure you add two high domain authority website links in your content. You can start connecting to the other brand and try to get free traffic from their social media sharing

      11. Sitemaps

      Sitemaps do not directly assist you in SEO but using them assists web crawlers to utilize the hierarchy and structure of your WordPress site. Having a sitemap ensures your website gets crawled better. They are not a must for the site but did you know they help you with more detailed reporting data. You may utilize the data plugin the weak areas. The Yoast SEO plugin can automatically generate your website sitemap.

      Create your XML sitemap file and submit it to Google Search Console so that you can access additional data on the status of your WordPress site.

      12. Build backlinks

      Backlinks are an essential part of white hat SEO. Search engines use backlinks for passing link information from one website to another ensuring the authenticity. When a high domain authority website links to you, it earns you a lot of online credibilities. Backlinks are a significant factor for ranking.

      Search engines rank your WordPress website high if the number of referring domains is more. Developing more backlinks threatens your website for security issues. Phishing website tries and gets backlinks from your site to improve their site’s PageRank such websites tend to send spam and viruses and may damage your reputation online. CleanTalk security plugin protects your website from such attacks.

      13. Content that is always liked:

      Work hard to develop content that needs to be referred now and then. A strategy like this gets you sustainable organic traffic. Best practice of maintaining the content is updating it quite often so that it ranks high and is always offering more to its readers.

      Developing evergreen content works long term, and you can keep sharing it again and again over social media and get backlinks. Make your content long lasting by writing on topics that meet a need, high-quality unique content, readable, engage the audience for a long time and does not outdate quickly.

      14. Negative SEO

      It can be lethal to your years of hard work. You competitors or other websites might try to tarnish your reputation but create backlinks from your website or spam commenting on your blog bringing you the bad name.

      You must be vigilant and monitor any such attacks on your website. There have been instances when the site was attacked overnight and developed terrible backlinks that took years to clean. You may use additional plugins to stop negative SEO.

      15. Local SEO

      Never ever skip local SEO. Register your website in existing local portals like yellow pages and Google business to develop your own customer database from their rankings.

      As both such websites are free and provide you organic results, you may top their list and rank high while someone is searching for local services.

      16. Website Speed

      Did you know Google has openly declared the time it takes to load your website affects your ranking? Build a beautiful but heavy website may not work in your favor. Google bought this element into your ranking because they know visitors will not stay on a site longer if it is heavy. High speed is the better for SEO and helps you rank in search engines. You can help your website speed with CleanTalk plugin that has the function of Spam Fire Wall.

      The tendency of people, who use Google is to abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Optimize your sites, use plugins but never make it too heavy for the mobile or the desktop.

      17. Track Keyword rankings

      Never stick to one focus keyword. Keep checking the trend of relevant keyword that can bring you stable traffic.

      You must update your content or create new content if the focus keyword ranking has shifted down. Keywords are ranked on the basis of how many searches are made by web searches using these set of words.

      If you spend time enough time on creating optimized content, then you must try to use it for long terms. Updating the content on new keywords is an excellent strategy for long-term content.

      18. Comment management

      It may make or mar your website reputation. With the cutthroat competition, sledding other website reputation is very common. Competitor website may spam your site with comments, emails, and subscriptions. All this may work against you as nothing is hidden online. You cannot do anything about it once the damage is done. To control the spam of comments and content, you can use the CleanTalk anti-spam plugin that has the function of stop words.

      19. WordPress SEO Plugin

      What if we tell you that specific WordPress SEO plugins are inherently capable of creating SEO along with the website creation? Have a complete control on your website with Plugins like Yoast SEO or All-In-One-SEO pack that have end-to-end optimization potential.

      20. Title tags

      You must have your “focus keyword” in the title tag. Placing the Focus keyword at the beginning of the title is most recommended. It may not always be possible, but you must still put it somewhere in the title. The Google search engine can display only 65 characters of Title so make sure the focus keyword appears within that limit.

      Make most of the above tips to rank your website and content higher in the search engines and improve engagement. Some say SEO is dead but it is not dead has just changed. If you are starting with WordPress, you may be overwhelmed with the tips. SEO and content is a grey area, and you need to keep trying till your website hits the jackpot rank. The above tips have helped various websites go a long way, now it is your chance!!