Google has been placing increasing importance on mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor for websites.

Starting from July 5, 2024, Google will stop indexing websites that are not mobile-friendly. This means if your website's content cannot be accessed or viewed properly on a mobile device, Google will not include it in its search index, potentially leading to a significant loss of visibility in search engine results.

To ensure your website remains indexed and visible in Google search results after this date, it's crucial to ensure that your site is optimized for mobile devices. This typically involves using responsive web design techniques that adjust the layout and content of your site based on the screen size and orientation of the device accessing it.

If you have an older static website, we can upgrade it to be fully responsive and mobile friendly. Call or contact us through the website for a quotation.

Avoiding becoming a victim of email phishing scams involves being vigilant and following some best practices to recognize and respond to phishing attempts.

Phishing is a cybercrime technique in which unsuspecting individuals are contacted via email, telephone or text message by someone posing as a legitimate business or reputable person.  The emails try to lure people into providing sensitive data such as personal information, banking and credit card details, or passwords.  

Here's how you can avoid falling for email phishing scams:

Verify the Sender

Check the sender's email address. Be cautious if the sender's address looks suspicious, contains misspelled words, or is from an unfamiliar domain. Be particularly vigilant of email addresses that impersonate trusted organizations or people – if you look closely there is usually a slight misspelling of the email address.

Never Trust Unsolicited Requests

Be skeptical of unexpected emails asking for personal or financial information. Legitimate organizations typically will never ask for such information via email. Verify the legitimacy of the request independently, preferably through official channels like the company's website or customer service.

Check for Spelling and Grammar

Phishing emails often contain spelling and grammatical errors. Be on the lookout for these signs.

Look for Generic Greetings

If you received a letter from Domain Name Services, Do not pay! It’s a scam! Throw it in the trash. 

This is a scam company (util.com) that sends what at first glance looks like a bill.  The letter says your domain is about to expire and you can take advantage of their “best savings” to renew it.  This company will try to get you to transfer your domain to them so they can charge over 3 times the usual cost, and probably hold your domain name hostage.

If you have registered your own domain through a company like GoDaddy, they will be the ones to contact you when it’s time to renew.

Unfortunately, domain name registration and renewal scams are very common. I get a couple of emails every month from clients asking what they should do with a letter/bill they’re received.

If you read the letter you’ll notice that it actually says “This is not a bill” but obviously there are enough people who fall for this because they send these notifications out quite regularly.

If you get one of these letters, and you are not sure if it’s a scam:

1. Contact your web developer (if they have registered

There are some larger marketing companies who occasionally contact my clients.

One company in particular from California spends quite a lot of money. They drop off toolboxes full of cookies, Yeti Tumblers, and even boxes containing a LCD Video Brochure (a video screen that played a commercial). According to this company, all they want is “15 minutes of the business owners time”.

Companies like this use aggressive salespeople who are only trying to make their commission. They promise the world, and sometimes they want to take over your website and then hold you hostage. You will get billed $600 to $800 per month for SEO services (more if they talk you into PPC) with a contract that is almost impossible to get out of.

They will say they have over 400 employees (the majority of them are salespeople), but they may outsource most of their web development and SEO to India. This is why your “customer service rep” will never be able to answer questions or get any work finished in a timely manner.

They do have lots of reports with pretty graphics that make little sense.

One of these salespeople who contacted a client had to brag in an

If you have a website, then you probably receive spam SEO emails on a regular basis by scammers trying to make a quick buck, or worse yet doing something malicious.

Naturally, when I receive a spam email it’s mild annoyance and I just delete it. But occasionally, a newer client will forward a spam email that claims their website isn’t as good as it should be. And sometimes even ask “is this something I should be worried about” I can’t blame the client if they want to know what’s going on, after all – it’s their business and their livelihood and anyone would be concerned if they kept getting emails saying their website could do better.

You’ve probably received emails like these:

“I found your details on Google.com and I have looked at your website and realized your website has great design but your website ranking is not good on all search engines Google, AOL, Yahoo and Bing.

Do you want more targeted visitors on your website? We can place your website on Google’s 1st Page. Yahoo, AOL, Bing. Etc. “

Or…

“I have just analyzed your site for the current search visibility and saw that your website could use

There are web development companies all over the world – legitimate web design companies!

A lot of spam emails claim they are part of a large group of professionals from India and they want to design your next website. Sometimes these are start-ups or inexperienced tennagers, but sometimes these are malicious emails just trying to get your information and take your money.

You’ve probably seem an email like this:

Hello,

I sincerely hope you are doing well.

We are India based Web Design company with primary focus on SEO based Website Design & Development (PHP development).

We have a dedicated team of 150 professional designers, developers and SEO specialists; especially for Graphic/Flash/3D designing.

We can assure you of getting quality works. Most firms overseas have achieved a significant amount of savings by outsourcing either part of, or their entire work to us in India.

We would like you to give us an opportunity to work with your company and AMAZE you with our service.
Please let us know in case you are interested.

Kind Regards,

Damita

They always use an outlook email or Google email address (Free email accounts). Never a full name, phone number, company name, address, or website.

Lately a lot of us are getting bombarded with unsolicited and poorly written emails from Eric Jones. 

They usually come through a website contact form, and even adding Google reCAPTCHA to the form doesn’t seem to help. Every email is sent from a different IP addresses, so we can’t block the IP. 

A typical email looks like this:

First name: Eric
Last name: Jones
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: 555-555-1212

Share your experience or ask a question: Hi, my name is Eric and I’m betting you’d like your website to generate more leads.

Here’s how:

Talk With Web Visitor is a software widget that’s works on your site, ready to capture any visitor’s Name, Email address and Phone Number.  It signals you as soon as they say they’re interested – so that you can talk to that lead while they’re still there at americasrepairforce.com.

Talk With Web Visitor – CLICK HERE http:// talkwith webtraffic.com for a live demo now.

And now that you’ve got their phone number, our new SMS Text With Lead feature enables you to start a text (SMS) conversation – answer questions, provide more info, and close a deal that way.

If they don’t take

In the past few days I’ve had clients forward phishing scam emails to me that claim they have copyrighted images on their websites.

The emails come through website contact forms and ask you to click on a link to view a document which shows which images have been used without permission.

Remember – never click on links in any email sent from someone you do not know. If these links are clicked on they will download viruses, malware, etc. to your computer. Then the hacker may be able to hold your device hostage and demand some kind of payment, obtain access to your computer and compromise accounts like email and banking, or Inject viruses that infect your computer and use it to launch attacks against others.

The emails come from emails like Melgallery654@gmail, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. etc. with names like Mel Johnson, Mel Stone, Meleeora, Mellie, Melina, Melissa or even Melibella.

They claim to be a qualified photographer, licensed illustrator, certified illustrator, professional photographer, licensed photographer or illustrator etc…

Here is one of the emails:

This is Meleeora and I am a professional photographer.

I was puzzled, putting it lightly, when I came across my images at your website. If you

This morning (March 23, 2021) 2 different clients of mine received a bogus invoice via FAX (Yes I said FAX) from a company called Web Envy.

The invoices were for SEO/Link Building services for $98.57.

This is the first time I've ever seen one of these letters being sent via fax. And normally there is some fine print saying “this is not a bill, etc. But this came through like a regular invoice.

Supposedly this company is in Texas but the number the FAX was sent from was (239) 237-1702 which is a Florida number. A quick search on this phone number showed many complaints about this number with some people stating when they received the fax via eFax the PDF’s contained Malware.

Apparently, the phone number (239) 237-1702 also sends bogus faxes claiming to be from GoDaddy, CareMax Pharmacy and even Amazon as well.

When I checked the Web Envy domain (webenvysolutions.com), it showed that it was just registered for the first time on March 7 2021 - so this website has only been up 16 days - not since 2013 like they claim.

The strange thing is that the website has quite a few pages – and it

Since the pandemic started there has been a noticeable increase in phishing emails, scams, and different types of fraud.

Recently phishing attacks look even more like they came from a specific company. This is called “spearfishing,” and hackers might pose as your bank, credit card company, or a site like Dropbox or PayPal. Generally, targets receive an email that looks as if it came from a legitimate business. You might be prompted to click on a link to “verify account details” and from there, malware is installed on your device.

Where you once had to download a file or an app to get malware, it’s now a matter of clicking a link. These kind of fileless attacks are also more difficult to detect, as most antivirus programs only scan your hard drive.

What to Do if you receive one of these emails

• Never click a link in an email that comes from a bank, government agency, or commercial institution. If the link comes from a company, check your account by going directly to the website by typing the URL into the navigation bar manually.
• Check at least once a week for updates for your computer’s security software, and run scans