Having a polished and secure website should be your top marketing priority.
Your website is one of the most important pieces of your marketing strategy. Your web presence tells your brand’s story, guides users to a specific call-to-action, and, ultimately, converts new visitors into returning customers. Because a website is central to all marketing efforts, it can feel like a nightmare when new updates cause plugin crashes, or your digital security fails.
As a business owner, your area of expertise is likely within the realm of your industry, and you probably don’t have time to do extensive research on website building and hosting. You know that having a reputable website is essential to building trust among your target audience. You may realize your current site has gotten a little stale, and you also aren’t sure where or how to start improvements.
This is where the Leverage Marketing team comes in. We are experts at creating bold brands, polished products, and refreshing tired designs through innovative ideas. We can design and host your website or switch your existing site over to our hosting platform hassle-free.
What is website hosting?
In the simplest terms, website hosting allows your site to go live on the internet and remain accessible to the public. Your web host is responsible for a number of other tasks, including:
- making sure the server stays up
- maintaining digital security
- providing a safe place to store all your data
- making sure your site pages load quickly
Your website host may provide your domain name as well (Leverage, for example, provides clients with a domain name).
What sets Leverage’s hosting capabilities apart from other agencies is that we source and manage our own servers to stay on top of the latest security threats and performance upgrades. Most other agencies supply hosting through third parties, such as Go Daddy, SiteGround, or WP Engine, and are not able to automate security and web maintenance tasks.
What is a domain name?
Your domain name, or URL, is your website’s address. Domain name systems or domain name servers translate the address to a user’s IP address so their browser can access your site. An IP address is a unique code given to each electronic device. This conversion makes it so that instead of having to enter a number, a user can go to yourcompanyname.com. Your domain registrar provides this name. While you don’t need to get your web hosting and domain hosting from the same source, it’s much easier if you do.
Keep it simple.
WordPress is the most popular website creation software. It has many plugins, which are essentially apps you can install to aid in your web design process. While this is handy for web design novices, it comes with a downside. WordPress plugins require compatibility with the latest version of WordPress, and the plugin’s creator must keep it updated. Not only can the neglect of plugin updates result in some wonky web performance, but it leads to vulnerability in security. 98% of WordPress hackings are related to outdated plugins.
Our team has knowledge of custom coding and can build features into a website from scratch. This means we don’t rely on a multitude of plugins for our web design. Keeping things simple with minimal plugins greatly reduces the risk of an unwanted party accessing your website. We also avoid using themes, another tool that requires constant updates and is the source of 29% of WordPress hackings. We enable automatic updates for plugins and versions of WordPress so the plugins we do use run smoothly. We also incorporate automated plugin vulnerability scanning to know if any existing plugins are at risk.
How does our website hosting ensure security?
SSL Certificates
Our hosting includes SSL certificates. SSL certificates encrypt private data so that it cannot be intercepted by a third party. This is especially important for websites that utilize e-commerce and store customer transaction information, as well as medical facilities that handle sensitive patient information and must remain HIPAA compliant. The SSL certificate gives your site an HTTPS:// prefix and a padlock icon by the address bar so visitors know their information is secure. It also helps a site appear in search results.
DDoS Mitigation and Cloudflare
We utilize DDoS mitigation to protect websites, which consists of blocking malicious website traffic before it can impact site performance. Another layer of protection we use is Cloudflare, which hides the true IP address of our hosting servers by filtering traffic through Cloudflare’s servers. To be fully prepared and cover all bases, we include daily backups of websites as part of our web hosting services. While the average hacking results in twelve days of downtime to resolve the issue, we can reinstall a previously saved version of your site and have it live within a day or so.
Why is website security so important?
Many underestimate the cost of recovery after a hack. 60% of companies that are victims of hacking will go out of business within six months. Small businesses are especially vulnerable, as they often lack the financial resources, PR, and backup systems on hand. As many as a quarter of small businesses experience hacking. Much like a bodyguard, your host’s job is to protect you against vulnerabilities and watch your blind spots. 41% of all website hackings are due to insecurity in their web hosting provider. That’s why choosing a reliable host is essential. We install firewalls to make your site secure against malware.
Let us tell you about our website hosting plans.
All our hosting plans are highly secure and vary based on a client’s needs and preferred content-building platform.
Our WordPress Hosting package provides your site with 24/7 security monitoring, access to our team of hosting experts, and is completely hassle-free for you to implement. We do all the work for you!
- 24/7 website monitoring
- WordPress migration services
- Automated backups and plugin updates
- Security audits
- Spam protection
- SSL certificates
- Content migration
- Domain Name Service (DNS) management
- Software updates
Ready for a relaunch? We are here to help! If you’re unsure about what hosting plan is right for you, we would be happy to consult with you and figure out your needs together, free of charge.
Send us a message with any inquiries! Happy hosting!
