Hi there folks!

Creatives Meet Business is an event and podcast series based out of Austin, Texas for creatives of ALL disciplines to get from zero to one in thinking of themselves as business owners (in the creative sector).

This episode features Alyssa Scavetta with Masonry. You'll find that she leaves no stone unturned when it comes to website admin. Topics include: domains, hosting,  SSL certificates, 301 and 404 error messages and more. If website lingo confused you before this episode, you'll walk away with a spring in your step and a better vocabulary for chatting about the web. Because there's so so much that's exciting about this episode - let's hop in and hear what Alyssa has to say!

• 0:00 to 1:55 - Ashland Opening Remarks and Intro of Alyssa Scavetta
• 1:59 to 4:01 - Anecdote about aiding a brand after their original domain included the number 1 at the end of it (name wasn't on brand)
  • Google Domains - find alternative domains and search misspells 
  • Domains - roughly $10 to $12 a year
  • SEMrush - finding misspellings - shows what people are searching for when looking for your brand or site so you can see how they're misspelling it
• 4:02 to 4:36 - Domains and Hosting
  • Domain - basically the address
    • Roughly $10 to $12 a year, unless it's unavailable and someone else owns it
  • Hosting - basically the house - server space you buy so the domain can live there
• 4:37 to 5:40 - HTTP vs HTTPS
  • HTTPS - ALWAYS use with e-commerce. Necessary if you're collecting other people's personal, private data. 
  • Technically, Google favors HTTPS sites (but it's not going to hugely increase your site traffic)
  • It's a certificate that talks to browsers and says the site is secure
  • You'll see a green lock next to the domain
  • Usually purchased on a one year or three to five year basis. Usually $100.
• 5:41 to 6:11- Security Updates
  • Look for updates once a month
  • Save the current version of your website before the update in case something isn't compatible
  • Wordpress automatically updates sites
• 6:12 to 7:30 - 301 and 404 Messages
  • 301 - Permanent redirect 
    • When building a new website based on old site, you'll want to redirect all of your old links
    • Masonry uses reroute module in Craft CMS
      • Keeps SEO value, visitors going to the right place
      • Put new link in as related content 
  • 404 - Page not found
    • Put a landing page, decreases bounce rate
      • Customize your landing page to be on brand
• 7:31 to 9:08 - Domain Authority
  • Scale from zero to 100 that grades your website based off of backlinks that it has (and internal links it has). Based on the quality of the content.
  • Research your domain authority and your competitors as well
  • Hard to influence your domain authority, taking these actions can influence your domain authority:
    • Install Google Search Console tools - take snippet of code and it tells you where your errors are being received by the crawling bot, 301s / 404s and more
    • Getting rid of 301s and redirecting old or missing content to content that's alive
    • Mitigate 404s that you find in your crawl report
• 9:09 to 10:24 - Ashland Closing Remarks

If you like what you hear, share the podcast with your friends, rate and review. To stay in the loop - follow us on Twitter, Facebook or subscribe to the newsletter.

We'll be sticking around the world of websites for just a couple more weeks and have some pros that we can't wait to introduce you to. After websites, we'll be moving over to PR, so start getting excited. Stay tuned for more!

Thanks!

Ashland, Creatives Meet Business