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Tips for Improving Website Traffic

by Admin February 23, 2023

In today’s digital age, having a website for your business or personal brand is essential. However, having a website alone is not enough to succeed online. In order to make the most of your online presence, you need to generate traffic to your website. Increased website traffic can lead to better visibility, more leads, and an expanded customer base. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some effective strategies for improving website traffic.

Optimize your website for search engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). By improving your website’s visibility in search results, you can attract more organic traffic to your site. Some ways to improve your website’s SEO include using relevant keywords in your content, optimizing your page titles and meta descriptions, and improving your website’s loading speed.

Create valuable content

Creating valuable and engaging content is one of the most effective ways to attract and retain and improve website traffic. By providing high-quality content that resonates with your target audience, you can establish yourself as an authority in your industry and build a loyal following. Some effective types of content include blog posts, videos, infographics, and whitepapers.

Leverage social media

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be powerful tools for driving traffic to your website. By sharing your content on social media and engaging with your followers, you can increase your brand visibility and attract new visitors to your website. Make sure to include social sharing buttons on your website to encourage visitors to share your content with their own networks.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is another effective way to drive traffic to your website. Reach out to websites in your niche and offer to write a guest post. In return, include a link to your website in your author bio. This not only helps you get traffic to your website but also establishes you as an authority in your field.

Use email marketing

Email marketing is a highly effective way to promote your website and keep your audience engaged. By building an email list of subscribers who are interested in your brand, you can send targeted messages and promotions that drive traffic to your website. Make sure your emails are well-designed, personalized, and targeted to your audience. Be sure to include links to your website in your email campaigns and track your results to optimize your strategy.

Advertise online

Paid advertising can be a powerful tool for driving targeted traffic to your website. By using platforms like Google AdWords or Facebook Ads, you can reach your ideal audience with targeted messaging and drive traffic to your website. While it can be expensive, it can also be very effective if done right. Research and target your audience carefully, use compelling ad copy and images, and track your results closely. Be sure to monitor your advertising campaigns and adjust your strategy as needed to optimize your results.

In conclusion, improving website traffic is essential to achieving online success. By optimizing your website for search engines, creating valuable content, leveraging social media, using email marketing, and advertising online, you can attract more visitors to your website and grow your online presence.

February 23, 2023 0 comment

Web Hosting

Why You Need A Domain Name For Your Business

by Admin February 1, 2021

A custom domain is a unique branded name that identifies a website. For us at Leanstack for instance, our custom domain is leanstack.co. When we think of it, it’s like our own apartment on the internet. We currently have it to ourselves and we don’t share. Think of the guys at Jumia, as well. Their custom domain is jumia.com.

We use these custom domains every day to navigate around the web and you probably have some memorized or bookmarked. They’re not like WordPress or blogpost sub-domains and they’re more direct.

It is very important for businesses to think of having a custom domain, especially in this day and age. Here are some reasons

Professional Credibility

Having a custom domain name helps you make your business more trustworthy and this is good especially with the high increase in phishing and scams out there. This instantly gives you an edge over competitors and separates you from the millions of websites.

Also, with your domain name, you get email addresses for your business that allows you look professional. You can get emails like hello@leanstack.co and not leanstack@gmail.com which already doesn’t evoke trust from a business.

Visibility

Everything is going digital today and you never know where your next customer may come from. Having a domain helps you reach out to more people organically, get some traction and awareness for your business and lead to conversions as well.

Get your desired domain name and create your online presence today

Brand Building

Your business having a customizable domain sets it out as forward-thinking, savvy and helps you with your reputation management online. Imagine referring your family members to save on Piggyvest if it had a WordPress sub-domain. That already sounds very fishy and not trustworthy.

New Customers and SEO

Once you develop and feed your website with content, your website becomes recognizable in search engines like Bing and Google which draws more eyes to your website. For this, it will need excellent quality content, backlinks, and inbound links.

Control and Security

With custom domains, you are in control of the data for your business. There are more security measures put in place for you and permissions can be created as you deem fit.

These are some of the reasons you need a custom domain for your business. Let us help you get a new domain name today. You can as well transfer your existing domain names to us. To get started, click on this or send an email to support@leanstack.co

February 1, 2021 0 comment

Product Updates

How To Earn Referral Bonuses On Leanstack

by Admin November 3, 2020

Here at Leanstack, we’ve always emphasised on spoiling our customers with enjoyment and just allow them to relax and enjoy the great customer support that we’ve promised. So it’s very reassuring when customers refer their friends and family to use our platforms. Whether it’s domain purchase, or cloud hosting or even web hosting, we always enjoy receiving new customers that were recommended because it means we’re doing something right. (And that’s why we’re introducing referral bonuses)

Today, we’re announcing a robust referral program that allows you to earn some commission when you tell your family and friends about us. It makes sense that all the good publicity you do for us doesn’t go unnoticed and definitely not unrewarded.

What Do You Get When You Refer Someone?

When you make a referral on Leanstack, you get a whopping 10% of the referred purchase capped at N2000. So, take for example, your friend buys the small teams plan that goes for N12000 annually, you’ll get 10% which is N1200 in your account towards your next purchase on Leanstack.

What Does The Referred Get?

Obviously, we won’t leave you out to dry so we’re offering another 10% to your friend when they make a purchase. All they have to do is make use of your promo code so that you can get the bonus.

How Do I Get My Bonus?

Every Leanstack user has a unique referral link that has been generated for you. This link can be accessed via our web app. All you have to do is

Login to your Leanstack dashboard
Go to ‘referrals’ and you’ll be able to find your referral code and the invite link
Send it to your family and friends.
Once they sign up, you’ll be able to see them from your dashboard. You only get the referral bonus once they make a purchase.

Terms and Conditions

To earn your bonus, the referred has to make a purchase. If they don’t, you’ll be able to see that they used your code but haven’t made a purchase.
Please note that your referral bonus is capped at N2000
In the event that there is already an existent promotion for new users, the referred will be offered the general discount for new users

Now that you have a full understanding of our new referral program, what are you waiting for?

November 3, 2020 0 comment

Web Hosting

How To Pick A Good Domain Name

by Admin October 9, 2020

One of the most important decisions you have to make as a business, especially in Nigeria is picking a domain name. It sets the tone for a lot of things – how your business is perceived and on a bigger scale, the kind of brand you’re looking to establish and have your customers see. Because your domain name is one of the first things people see, it can affect how people look at your brand. A well-chosen domain name for a business in Nigeria can help build user interest and push web traffic, while a negligently chosen one might do the exact opposite.

Here are some good tips to help you with picking a good domain name:

Make It Short

As with every other thing, less is more when it comes to creating a domain name. Why you may ask? It is easier to remember and type. For example, Shola’s Sweets and Confectionaries can prefer to be called sholacakeslagos.com as opposed to writing the full name. Think of it, Facebook that’s just eight characters bought the fb.com domain as well for users to be able to type the shorter form.

Keep it simple

Using Shola’s business earlier, confectionaries is a popularly misspelt word and even if it were shorter, it’d be better for Shola to keep it off her website. Words that are complicated or hard to spell are better to stay off so they don’t return a 404 error page.

Remember the brand

We’re guessing that by the time you want to decide to pick a domain name, you already have existing social pages, or you have an idea of what your brand should look and feel like. Your domain name should reflect this. For example, someone who runs a personal brand like commercial photographer, Anny Robert can decide to use his brand name for his website. This sticks to his existing branding and helps him stand out.

Pay attention to keywords

Especially for businesses, keywords can help you with search results and better optimization for search engines. Words that give a user a feel of the business help. Back to Shola’s Sweets and Confectionaries, her website says sholascakeslagos.com and it’s so easy. You know she is in Lagos, she makes cakes and her name is Shola.

Stay away from hyphen and numbers

Your domain name should be easy to spell and pronounce and hyphens and numbers break the flow. Imagine saying you’re from Face9book? Nope. Ensure that your domain name is punchy, and stick to the letters.

Check for affiliations with other businesses.

You have to ensure that whatever name you end up with is unique to you and your business. Search, and see if there’s an existing brand or business that makes use of it.

What Next?

Now that you probably know what domain name to use, the next thing is to choose a TLD (top-level domain). There are a lot of TLDs and what that means is that you and your business can now create a distinctive domain name that quickly communicates the purpose and value of their offering with the plethora of options. There are TLDs like .design for designers, and .lawyer for lawyers and these TLDs are more customised for the use case.

At Leanstack, we’re able to help you buy a new domain name or transfer your existing domain names to us. Stop wasting time and create your online presence.

Visit this page to start picking the domain you like.

October 9, 2020 0 comment

Product Updates

Cloud Hosting With Leanstack

by Admin September 2, 2020

When we describe web hosting to new users, we use an example of a building complex to make it easier for them. Think of a building complex with twenty apartments for example. You’re looking for a new apartment, maybe because you’re tired of the services you’re getting from your former provider or just because you want a fresh start. We provide you with a flat in our apartment and you get to share common resources with them and have some of the coolest neighbours. Curious about what cloud hosting is?

However, you may want to take over the entire complex and have it to yourself. That way, you have more access, full control and no more shared resources to go. That’s why we’re announcing this new product which allows you to do all of this. Let’s call this cloud hosting.

With cloud hosting, you’re able to get control and flexibility when your business needs it. You are also able to spin up your choice of a virtual machine as fast as possible. Apart from these, the standard configurations provide flexibility for you to build, test, and grow your app from startup to scale.

What Features Does Cloud Hosting Come With?

Fast: With cloud hosting, you’re able to deploy in seconds. It becomes easier for you to spin up a server with just a few clicks.
99.9% Uptime: We’re reliable and we’ll ensure that your servers are up and running.
Global Availability: Because you’re a landlord literally, you can choose from multiple datacenter locations — whether it is New York or San Fransisco or London or even Amsterdam, we’ve got you!
Full Control: You also have full control of every aspect of the servers as we earlier mentioned. You’re a king and should be treated as such.
Security: Our platform is secure and we’re working on providing tools to ensure that you treat the security of your server as secure as possible.
Solid State Drives: 100% high-performance solid-state drives for optimum performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between shared web hosting and cloud hosting?

As we explained earlier, with shared web hosting, you’re basically splitting apartments with co-tenants. That means you get to share space with a few people. In a situation where you have someone who is a noisy tenant, all the attention comes to him and you may have to fight for your peace and quiet. However, with cloud hosting — you’re entitled to the whole environment and your own fair share of resources without competition.

How do I know what plan to pick?

If you’re not sure, we recommend that you start small and work your way up. You can resize your machine up or down at any time, so there’s no pressure. You can also send us an email — support@leanstack.co to help out.

Do you offer backup services?

Yes, we do. However, it comes at a token. You can set it up when configuring your server or add it at a later date from your dashboard.

Would I be able to resize my server after setup?

Yes, you will. You can also start small and work your way up. You can also send us an email — support@leanstack.co to help out.

Get started with cloud hosting here

September 2, 2020 0 comment

Tutorials

Creating A WordPress Staging Environment on Plesk

by Admin October 19, 2018

This post explains how to use Plesk Automated WordPress Toolkit 2.0 that includes automated staging Clone & Sync for WordPress

Has this ever happened to you?

Picture this scenario, you want to make a couple of quick changes on your website so you made some few changes on your local system and it worked well. You then save the changes made and updated the files on the server and then you found out some pages are broken or somethings are not working as it should. You have caused more problems than the quick fix you were meant to make, and worse of all, you are trying to figure out what is causing the error while the live site either broken or down.

This is why you need a staging environment.

A stage or staging environment is an environment for testing that exactly resembles the production environment. In other words, it’s a complete but independent copy of the production environment, including the database.

When setting up your WordPress website, you need a staging environment where you can set up your website, install plugins, configure settings and do whatever you want without the fear of breaking anything, even when you do break anything, it’s not the live site so there is nothing to be scared of.

With WordPress toolkit built into Plesk, creating a staging environment is easy. Let’s get started.

Login to your Plesk control panel.

It will take you to your domains page upon login and if you already have WordPress installed, it should look something similar to this.

Next up, you will want to make a copy of this website, which would become our staging environment to be used for development and testing before taking our changes to the live site. Click on the clone button among the WordPress options.

The clone option creates a new subdomain called staging and would also male a copy of your WordPress database with a new name. Click OK to proceed to clone. When this process is done, you will have a new staging environment called “staging.yourdomain.com”

From here on, you can make all the changes you want. Once you have made the changes and you are ready to go live with them, with the above in place it just takes a few minutes with these simple steps:

Using Plesk’s WordPress sync functionality, you can sync your changes from the staging site to the live site. In the target WordPress instance field, you specify the URL to your live WordPress site. You can select from a couple of sync options: Sync files only, sync database only, or sync everything (files and database).

After selecting an option above, the sync process would start. This process would also first create a restore point for your current live WordPress site so in case anything breaks and you would like to revert, it should be a breeze. When the process is completed, all your changes made on the staging WordPress site should be replicated on the live site.

That’s all. Now you can check your live website to be sure everything looks and works as it should.

October 19, 2018 1 comment

Security

Secure Your Website With An SSL Certificate

by Admin October 18, 2018

If you’re a seasoned internet user or even just a regular, you must have heard of https or an SSL certificate. What do these stand for and why should you care?

For starters, every information you send on the internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. So when you visit a website with http:// and you login with a username and password, your information is transmitted over the internet in plain text meaning any computer in-between you and the server can see your information (credit card numbers, usernames and passwords and other sensitive information).

SSL certificates are small data files that encrypt data packets as they are sent through the Internet. That information becomes unreadable to everyone except the server you are sending the information to. This protects the information from hackers and identity thieves.

Why Do You Need One?

Security: SSL helps encrypt all data traffic on your website. This is especially important if you’re collecting any private data like credit card information on your website. You don’t want someone snagging your client’s credit card information.
Search Engine Optimization: Google now considers SSL a factor when ranking your website. Websites that have an SSL certificate and use the HTTPS protocol are given a better ranking in search. Google wants people’s experiences to be secure (who doesn’t?).
Trust: When you see a website with the green padlock or the “Secure” emblem on your browser, it’s a subtle sign of trustworthiness. You can be sure the website is safe.

How do you get your SSL Certificate?

Getting an SSL certificate can be a pain and also pretty expensive. Thankfully, the Linux Foundation as well as a myriad of other supporters have come to the rescue in the form of free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. This means that securing your website isn’t just for the big boys anymore. Anyone can generate and install their very own certificate and get that comforting little “Secure” emblem next to their website’s URL.

At Leanstack, we offer free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates for all websites. To get started click here. If you already have a Leanstack account, is how to set up a free SSL certificate on your domain.

Also, check out other stuff we have such as cloud hosting

October 18, 2018 0 comment

Culture

What Is The Leanstack Mission?

by Admin October 18, 2018

The Nigerian web hosting industry is just fine. Oh, except that customer service isn’t encouraging (long downtimes without explanations, anyone?), dashboards are unintuitive and everyone is taking whatever they can get or hosting abroad. That’s why Leanstack is here!

Actually, that’s why leanstack exists.

We’re a group of developers who, honestly, are only just beginning to recover from the trauma of being frustrated by Nigerian hosting companies (how many are there anyway?).

The cure for the pain? We worked backwards from the things we hate the most till we arrived at leanstack, a hosting solution we’re happy about enough to share with you.

Leanstack (note the ‘l’) isn’t trying to shake things up in web hosting, even though we know that’s probably going anyway, we just want Nigerian developers to be able to host their project in peace (and in naira).

So who exactly are we?

We are just a hosting company that believes in making our customers happy and putting them first.

We want to spoil you with kindness: customer service you’ll tell everyone about, unlimited free SSL certificates (because why the heck would we charge you for that?), Git & Bitbucket integrations for code ninjas who love to deploy applications with a push from repositories, docker integration, multi-language support to keep your programming life simple (we support Nodejs, Ruby on Rails) and… you know what? Just try it yourself and tell us what you think. We’ll be waiting to hear from you.

October 18, 2018 0 comment