If you are building or scaling your business, your website is one of your most powerful assets. It’s your digital storefront, your branding hub, and often the first impression you make on potential customers. And in that landscape, alt text is one of those details that can either elevate your brand visibility or leave opportunities on the table.

In this article, we’ll unpack what alt text is, why it matters, and how businesses can leverage it to maximize both accessibility and SEO. By the end, you’ll see how a few words of thoughtful description can help you win more traffic, trust, and conversions.

What Exactly Is Alt Text?

Alt text — short for alternative text — is the written description added to images on a webpage. Its primary purpose is to provide context when the image cannot be displayed or when a visitor is using a screen reader. But beyond accessibility, alt text plays a huge role in how search engines understand your content.

Here’s something that might blow your mind: Google’s sophisticated AI still can’t perfectly understand images without textual context. Search engines are also blind in a way without alt-text. While they can crawl and index your written words, they, however, can’t “see” your images. Without alt text, that valuable image content remains invisible to them. By adding descriptive alt text, you essentially translate your images into searchable language that boosts your overall SEO.

So while it may seem like a small technical detail, alt text is really a strategic tool.

Why Should I Care About Alt Text?

Here is why you should care :

Accessibility Builds Trust and Loyalty

Inclusivity is no longer optional. Many potential customers rely on screen readers due to visual impairments. If your website is missing alt text, you’re excluding a portion of your audience. By simply writing clear descriptions for your images, you show empathy and respect. And that builds loyalty.

 Alt Text Fuels Your SEO

Search engines can’t interpret images the way humans can. By writing optimized alt text, you’re essentially whispering in Google’s ear: “Here’s what this picture is about.” This extra context can help your pages rank higher, especially when your alt text includes relevant keywords naturally.

For entrepreneurs, this is free organic traffic you can’t afford to miss. Every visitor who finds you through search is one step closer to becoming a customer.

 Improves User Experience Beyond the Screen

Technical failures happen more than you think. Sometimes images don’t load. Maybe the user has a slow internet connection. Perhaps your image hosting service is experiencing technical difficulties. Sometimes corporate firewalls block certain image types or external resources. In mobile environments with limited data plans, users might disable image loading entirely to conserve bandwidth.

When that happens, alt text ensures users still understand the context. Instead of being confused by a blank square, they still get the full story.

In other words, alt text acts as your safety net. It guarantees your content communicates effectively even when technology fails.

Legal Compliance and Avoiding Risk

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 2.2 billion people worldwide have some form of vision impairment. That’s roughly one in four people on this planet.

In many regions, there are accessibility laws in place. These laws require websites to be usable by people with disabilities. Failing to be compliant can put a business at legal risk.

In 2023 alone, there were over 4,000 website accessibility lawsuits filed in the United States. That’s more than ten lawsuits every single day. Companies like Target, Netflix, and Domino‘s have faced high-profile lawsuits specifically related to website accessibility issues. Domino’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court.

These lawsuits are completely preventable. Simply adding alt text is one of the easiest ways to safeguard your business and stay compliant with regulations.

Most startups and small businesses with limited funds do not have the luxury of paying hefty settlements, so as site owners, it is best to get this remedy as soon as possible.

How to Write Effective Alt Text

Now that you know why it matters, let’s talk about how to write alt text that actually works.

 Be Descriptive, Not Robotic

Instead of writing something vague like “image” or “photo,” describe what the picture shows. For example, instead of:

  “Dog”

  “Golden retriever puppy playing with a red ball in a park”

The second example not only paints a clearer picture for users but also gives search engines more context.

 Keep It Concise

Alt text is not the place for lengthy sentences.

Aim for one short, clear description — usually under 125 characters. Screen readers cut off longer text, so brevity ensures clarity.

 Use Keywords Naturally

If your target keyword fits naturally, use it. For example, if your keyword is “eco-friendly water bottle,” and your image shows that product, your alt text could read:

  “Eco-friendly stainless steel water bottle on a wooden desk”

Avoid keyword stuffing. Forcing phrases like “eco-friendly water bottle” into every image alt text looks spammy and hurts your SEO.

 Skip Redundancy

You don’t need to write “image of” or “picture of” in your alt text.

Screen readers already announce that it’s an image. Jump straight into the description.

 Prioritize Meaningful Images

Not every single image needs detailed alt text. Decorative elements (like background patterns or design flourishes) can have empty alt attributes (`alt=””`) so they don’t clutter the experience for screen readers. Focus your energy on product images, infographics, charts, and photos that add real value.

Use Cases for Alt Text

So, how do entrepreneurs apply this practically? Let’s look at a few scenarios.

E-commerce Businesses

If you sell products online, alt text is your silent salesperson. Well-written descriptions make your products discoverable in Google Images, which drives buying intent traffic straight to your store.

For example, instead of:

  “Shoes”

  “Women’s black leather ankle boots with side zipper”

That extra detail improves both search visibility and conversion. Despite its simplicity, alt text remains one of the most overlooked aspects of web development.

Content Creators and Coaches

If you publish blogs, webinars, or guides, alt text ensures your visuals (charts, screenshots, promotional graphics) contribute to SEO. It also makes your content more accessible to a broader audience, expanding your reach.

Startups and Small Businesses

When you’re building awareness on a budget, every ounce of organic visibility matters. Alt text is one of the cheapest SEO wins available. It helps your site compete with bigger players who may overlook this detail.

Personal Branding for Entrepreneurs

If you’re building a personal brand through photos, speaking events, or media features, alt text ensures your image-based content contributes to your discoverability. Imagine someone searching for “entrepreneur keynote speaker Singapore” — if your event photo has the right alt text, you could appear.

Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make with Alt Text

Despite its simplicity, many entrepreneurs miss the mark. Here are mistakes to avoid:

 Keyword stuffing: Writing alt text like “alt text alt text entrepreneur SEO alt text” doesn’t fool Google.

 Being too vague: “Business image” doesn’t add value.

 Forgetting brand consistency: Use alt text to reinforce your brand voice subtly.

 Ignoring charts and infographics: Data visuals need alt text too, or you lose SEO and accessibility benefits.

Final Thoughts: Don’t Overlook the Small Things

As entrepreneurs, it’s tempting to focus only on the big, flashy strategies — product launches, ad campaigns, scaling operations. But sometimes, it’s the quiet, overlooked details that make the difference between being found and being forgotten.

Alt text may look small on the surface, but its ripple effects touch accessibility, SEO, brand reputation, and even legal compliance. By investing just a few extra minutes to write thoughtful alt text, you’re investing in a better experience for your customers and a stronger foundation for your business.

Remember the 2.2 billion people with disabilities; though they may face visual challenges, they nonetheless represent real people with real purchasing power.

So next time you upload an image, don’t just leave that alt text box blank. Use it as a chance to improve your visibility and show your customers that you care.

It’s often the little things that make the biggest impact or sink a mighty ship. If you want professional help optimizing your digital presence, drop us a note as we specialize in strategies that ensure every detail of your online presence is working for you and not against you, including alt text.

Cutting-edge AI tool writing solutions such as ChatGPT can save time and simplify content creation processes, but they still have some considerable downsides that businesses and content creators need to consider.

While AI can generate text, images, and analytics, they are not a universal solution that automatically delivers flawless results. They are merely tools that operate based on trained data and given instructions.

Risks exist in using AI. In this article, we will explain the AI-generated risks that bloggers face and how to resolve such issues.

1. Misleading Information

Advanced AI is capable of producing impressive work. However, they cannot verify data in real-time, which means that generative AI models can produce misleading information such as incorrect statistics and outdated and unverifiable data.

If these inaccuracies are not dealt with, they could potentially harm a brand’s credibility as well as do some severe damage. This could lead to a publicity crisis, which will not end well for the brand.

To avoid this issue, ensure that AI-generated content is double-checked against credible databases. Consider AI-generated text as rough work that needs proofreading. It is best to avoid using AI for technical and sensitive subjects that need more attention to detail. 

2. Fabricated Data

Generative AI works off monumental datasets. Drawing from databases, their work is largely based on predicting probabilities. Should some relevant data be absent from the training material or just plain wrong, AI has no problem inventing fictitious fillers to resolve the issue, delivering nonsense with confidence. A term is even given to such fabricated data: hallucination.

AI hallucinations are a significant challenge in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly with large language models (LLMs) and generative AI systems. These hallucinations occur when AI models produce outputs that are factually incorrect or nonsensical, yet presented as if they were true. These hallucinations can lead to misinformation, incorrect decision-making, and potential security risks.

Thus, it is dangerous to rely 100% on AI-generated content; human oversight and alterations are required. 

3. Failing to Achieve Originality

AI-driven content creation sources information from uploaded data to generate content, which means the output almost always suffers from originality. This makes the AI content generated lose its spark and engagement, making it bland and repetitive.

While AI can assist in generating content, inputs from an actual person can add depth and insights to the content piece.

Adding real-life examples or citing case studies along with personal narratives can help in creating original content.

4. Brand Voice and Authenticity

Every brand is distinct, and they have a specific way of communicating, whether through their choice of words or tone.

Content generated through the use of AI lacks the essence of such distinction. Such content can appear mechanical, posing challenges to the brand’s identity and failing to cut through the noise.

Brands typically try to reach out to people’s emotions through storytelling or even lighthearted jokes.

5. SEO and Ranking Issues

Google, as with other search engines, emphasizes user-friendly searchable content.

Keywords are the foundation of a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. They are necessary if you wish for your blog article to be picked up by search engines.

AI has no clue about strategic keywords, and your blog post will never see organic traffic if relevant keywords are not included. Once again, human involvement is thus necessary.

Proper on-page SEO needs to be done for blog posts to be ranked. AI content simply being regurgitated and used will not cut it. Make sure that the content from AI is blended with human interventions to ensure the right keywords are incorporated.

6. Moral and Prejudice Issues

AI models are reliant on vast amounts of accessible data online. Some of these data have biases, which when reproduced by AI can be harmful. AI’s outputs might marginalize certain demographics or portray skewed depictions. This will create negative sentiments towards your post and eventually your brand if they exist in your blog writeup. 

Always make sure to verify the AI content for biases and that the article is inclusive and ethical. There should be a balance between AI enablement and human control for unbiased and ethical content. 

7. Legal and Copyright Risks

Lastly, with with AI content creation, copyright infringement are becoming common issues. For example, AI could write text for which ownership is already claimed and labeled, thus producing IP issues.

In some areas, content generated by an AI cannot be copyrighted, implying that there is no ownership of the created content. Exploration of ownership in such cases remains a gray area.

Always, before publishing any content, run AI-generated content through a plagiarism checker and edit it to make sure the content is uniquely yours. As a business owner or content creator, it is important to keep tabs on everything regarding AI copyright policies. Reach out to professionals when needed.

Final Remark

While generative AI empowers us with powerful tools to produce content, it does come with several caveats. Issues such as misinformation, ethics, brand voice, SEO, and plagiarism should always be moderated by humans.

To make the most of AI technology without exposing yourself to potential threats, use AI as a content assistant, creating a draft rather than a final version. Optimize and validate the content produced with the help of AI. Retain human involvement for content authenticity. Remember legal and ethical boundaries.

Fusing AI language models with human intelligence and oversight allows businesses to produce better, more authentic blogs that connect with their audience. What are your thoughts? Do you work with AI in content marketing for business growth? Join the discussion in the comment section below.

The geographic distribution of website visitors today makes it important for a site to be able to deliver content reliably and without delay; otherwise, a visitor will leave for another one in a snap. CDNs help eliminate poor download experience by providing faster site downloads, so businesses must adopt them, especially those serving global audiences — even if you’re not speaking to the world, having one is still good.

CDN comes with lots of benefits that affect different areas of a website, directly or indirectly. These are some:

1 Quicker Website Loading Times

One thing you’ll notice almost immediately after setting up CDN service is how fast your web pages load now. What happens here is that CDNs cache (store temporarily) copies of websites on their servers worldwide. Every time someone visits your site, instead of pulling information from just one server, it pulls data from the closest server possible in order to reduce latency time, therefore speeding up page display – which leads to higher customer satisfaction rates and lower bounce rates, too.

When people get tired of waiting for a web page to download, they close it and move on. This may result in a loss of potential revenue for website owners. So you do not want to have such a problem and instead have as many happy visitors as you can.

2 Increased Reliability For Websites

With many CDN servers having copies of your website, you won’t have sleepless nights wondering whether your website is showing up! CDNs come equipped with strong failover capabilities and redundancy features, so if something goes wrong at one place, there’s always another copy somewhere else waiting to be shown.

By distributing content across multiple servers, CDNs reduce the chances of server failures or network congestion which could cause downtimes. This ensures that even if you get a spike in visitors or some hosts go offline unexpectedly, users can still access your site continuously without interruptions hence keeping business on track all day every day – if necessary.

3 Aids With Higher Rankings On Search Engines

Site speed is an important ranking factor for search engines like Google and Bing etc., because it affects user experience.

When it comes to user experience, search engine algorithms don’t take prisoners! So webmasters should do everything possible within reason (and perhaps beyond) to make their sites perform well in terms of loading times which will help them rank higher up on SERPs. In other words, people whose websites are not fast enough need to start worrying about this issue right now because, before they know it, their competitors might have already overtaken them thanks to better CDN optimization techniques.

Apart from that, many CDNs include SSL/TLS encryption — another SEO ranking signal considered important by Google.

4 Support for Rich Media Content

Nowadays, websites often contain high-res images, videos, and interactive elements. These content can take up a lot of bandwidth and time to download. CDNs help to efficiently deliver these assets to users so they can be played back smoothly over different devices and network conditions. Whether it’s product images on an eCommerce site or video content heavy blog post – a CDN can massively improve user experience by reducing buffering times and generally speeding up content delivery.

5 Enhanced Security

Most CDNs come with built-in security features. They include security features such as web application firewalls (WAF), and bot mitigation. However, CDN excels in protecting against a DDoS attack which can crash a server. These functions help protect your web server against malicious attacks, thus making you feel confident about your safety online.

With the constantly evolving landscape of cyber threats, a web server without a CDN can be vulnerable. Companies are encouraged to invest in a CDN that has strong security measures in place if they want to keep their company’s digital assets safe from harm.

6 Scalability

Working on a pay as you used model, CDN can quickly scale up without any downtime. With its elastic computing, load balancing and traffic routing capabilities, a CDN is ready to take on any sudden spikes in traffic on a fly.

CDNs have the ability to scale resources automatically when demand rises, ensuring that even during peak periods, the site remains responsive.

7 Compliance and Regulatory Requirements

Finally, as data privacy laws continue tightening globally. The transfer of data outside a country’s jurisdiction can be an issue, like in the recent TikTok case with the US government. This is where a CDN can be useful if they have servers in the same jurisdiction where data is being collected. In the future, a country’s protection rules may require businesses storing customer information outside certain jurisdictions to comply with specific regulations, which can be facilitated by having some or all parts of their infrastructure reside within those boundaries provided by CDNs.

8 Reduce cost

As more people access your website, you will have no option but to add more servers, which could mean expensive investments into additional hardware. This could be costly as you would also need manpower to help manage things. Leveraging a CDN provider can defray infrastructure and operational costs. Working with CDNs can also help cut down on deployment time together.

In conclusion, integrating a CDN into your website’s infrastructure does not only speed things up or reduce server loads; it also allows businesses to provide frictionless digital encounters that foster customer trust, increase participation and ultimately drive bottom line.

Accompanying some of these new developments are new regulations like personal data protection and personal privacy. Companies need to be ready for all these changes.

Training can help organisations to be ready. Through training, employees can quickly fill knowledge gaps and be effective contributors to your organisation. An organisation that doesn’t invest in training will not be ready to face the challenges in the market. They might even find themselves going the way of the dinosaurs eventually.

Still not convinced about the benefits of training? Do read below to understand the key benefits.

#1 Develop Awareness

One of the primary and key benefits of training is awareness.

Training can bring about awareness in many ways. For example, training can help employees learn new skills and knowledge that can help them better understand their work and the world around them.

Training can also help employees develop a new level of self-awareness of things to do and things to avoid doing.

Finally, training helps employees develop organizational awareness by understanding the goals of their organization. This can lead to increased collaboration and communication between employees, as well as improved performance and efficiency in the workplace.

Thus, awareness is the first and most important thing training brings to the table. From there, all improvement begins.

#2 Increase effectiveness

Things are evolving rapidly – customers are getting sophisticated and competitors are getting more innovative and aggressive. To be able to compete in the market, being effective executors is essential.

For example, in business-to-business sales, being able to present well can get you to the next meeting with someone higher within the organisation. At the customer service end of things, a negative customer can be converted into an advocate.

The above are just two examples of how things can improve or even turn in your favor with employee training.

#3 Prevent things from breaking down

Things break down when people are ill-equipped to deal with situations. In every break down, there will be consequences and repercussions. There could be repercussions in customer or management dissatisfaction, reduce productivity or even unwanted media exposure.

Little incidents can quickly escalate if not properly handled. Customer dissatisfaction can quickly find its way to social media. Hence, training is essential to prevent things from breaking down. Training can also prevent mistakes from ever happening again.

#4 Raise standards

Training sets a company apart from being mediocre.

Deliberate, and constant training can radically improve employees’ understanding of company objectives and help to raise and set standards of performance. If an organisation do not invest in training their employees, they can’t expect their people to get to the next level. That’s why some companies stay small or have to continually waste time addressing the same issues and problems over and over again.

#5 Improve customer experience

When clients experience consistent top-notch service, they will keep coming back.

Top-notch service can be achieved through training, and deploying sound procedures. Without proactively addressing issues through training, you’ll lose clients that might otherwise be saved. With training, standardized client interaction and sound follow-up procedures, you are constantly building better client relationships that will lead to repeat business and referrals.

#6 Be a competitive advantage

Training can be a competitive advantage.

With improved standards brought about by training, customers can expect better service over a competitor who does not invest in training.

With staff having attended training, they can make a difference and are in a better place to put a smile on a customer’s face. Customers are more likely to come back to you over a business that does not know how to take care of them.

#7 Increase revenue

Quality training is guaranteed to make you money.

For example, training your frontline team (i.e. sales, customer support) can help them handle any situation that may occur in a client engagement. Arm them with the necessary mindset to deal with customers’ complaints and objections effectively. They can turn a bad situation into a good one. This could result in more sales and referrals.

#8 Save expenses

Training can also help you save money.

Educating employees on certain must-dos can avert downtime, mishaps, avoid penalties and fines etc.. Training can get employees to toe the line and be compliant and more self-aware.

In today’s privacy-conscious world, do not skip any training in compliance because failing to comply with privacy regulations like PDPA can result in severe penalties.

#9 Retain talent

Training also saves you money through reduced employee turnover. The cost of hiring and training a new employee is high. Also, there is the uncertainty of whether the person can quickly learn the ropes and fit into your company’s culture.

So employee retention is a key consideration in maintaining continuous performance and growth for an organisation. When employees know exactly what to do and are empowered to do so, they feel more confident in executing their tasks to meet performance standards. Employees also feel less stress for now they are equipped with better knowledge of what to do, instead of figuring things out themselves.

With organized and regular training programs, employees will feel your company is willing to invest in them to help them grow. Most people would appreciate a progressive company, rather than one who is not.

Conclusion

Training needs to be part of a company’s culture. It should be looked upon as an investment rather than a cost. Trying to save money on training will cost you more in the future through reduced productivity, loss of customers, penalties from regulators etc.

The quicker an employee is trained, the quicker you will reap the dividends (i.e. increased performance, protection against regulators and cyberattacks, etc.) of your investment.

If you need any training in the areas of sales, cybercriminals and personal data protection, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Here are some reasons why deploying a data protection policy is in an organisation’s best interest :

1.Meet regulatory requirements

Having a data protection policy and management program is mandatory to meet regulatory expectations.

Failure to comply could have serious consequences as hefty penalties are at stake, potentially impacting revenue figures. Besides financial penalties, there might be other costs including non-financial impacts like reputational damages and loss of brand confidence.

2.Increase consumer trust and credibility

Knowing that a company is compliant with data protection regulations, consumers will have more faith that their personal data are being well-protected. Your brand will be perceived to be more trusted, and they are more likely to do business with your brand.

3.Limit liabilities

Any breach and publishing of personal data could lead to untold, unexpected consequences leading to possible regulatory and civil suits.

By implementing a policy and program for managing personal data, companies can fulfill their obligations and reduce their legal risks.

4.Improve brand equity

A brand that puts consumers’ interests first will be perceived as a company that cares for its consumers. Consumers are more likely to gravitate towards and buy from such a brand. This in turn will greatly improve the brand’s equity, goodwill and bottom line.

5.Reduce investor’s risk

Investors are always on the prowl for good companies to invest their money in. The last thing they would want to do is to invest in a company with a bad reputation. Also if the company has not been caught out by regulators, they would prefer to buy a company that has in place policies, process, and controls compliant with local laws.

6.Improve personal data management

With a personal data policy and management program in place, company leaders would have a better understanding of the personal data under their care. Company directors would be ready to provide answers, concerning personal data they manage, to regulators, shareholders, potential investors, and customers.

7.Competitive advantage

Having a personal data policy and management program in place can be a competitive advantage over another company in consideration. Increasingly many companies expect their vendors to be compliant with personal data regulations. They do not wish to be dragged into any legal non-compliance and have their brand in the limelight for the wrong reasons.

As public awareness of personal data rights increases, the expectations for vendors to be compliant with personal data regulations will increase.

8. Peace of mind

With a personal data protection policy and program in place, you can sleep more soundly at night.

Knowing that you have your back covered, you are ready for any unexpected challenges that may arise from a user compliant to a data breach.

If you need help in your personal data protection journey for your organisation, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Companies that handle personal data from Singapore are responsible for lawful processing under Singaporean law. The transfer of personal data outside of Singapore is regulated, and the PDPC is the main enforcing authority.

As more and more companies adopt policies to be compliant and competitive, it is only a matter of time before companies of all shapes and sizes adopt data protection policies and work toward compliance. 

To be compliant with the law, there are several steps to take. 

Step 1 – Appoint a Data Protection Officer

Foremost, in accordance with section 11 of the PDPA, companies need to appoint a Data Protection Officer. The data protection representative will help management develop policies, programs, and training for employees to comply with the PDPA. The DPO will also keep the management informed of changes to the regulations and issues on the ground. 

Step 2 – Understands the PDPA Obligations

Secondly, company founders and directors need to understand their obligations under the PDPA. Currently, there are 10 obligations with the latest one added on the 1^st Oct 2022. With an understanding of the obligations, management can then have a better appreciation of the PDPA and the necessary actions to take. 

Step 3 – Develop a Data Protection Policy

Thirdly, section 12 of the PDPA requires companies to develop policies and processes to meet the obligations under the PDPA. These policies and procedures will form the baseline of personal data practices within the company. They would then need to be communicated to all staff to ensure compliance. 

Step 4 – Develop a Information Security Policy

We are now living in the information age.

Companies today are increasingly adopting technology to go digital and establish an online presence. While the adoption of technology makes things more efficient and convenient. It also exposes us to cybercriminals who want something from us.  

To remain safe and compliant, technology is employed to help fulfill certain obligations of the PDPA. They serve as controls to provide protection, alert, and audit trails for documentation purposes. Hence, an information security policy is necessary to augment personal data protection practices within the organisation. 

Step 5 – Develop a Data Protection Program

Without a program to back them up, policies are just text on paper.

A personal data protection program should detail tasks to be done to ensure compliance. Creating a data inventory, understanding data flow, and identifying owners are the baseline of any data protection program. Specific areas such as consent, notification, personal data request, handling of personal data, complaints, and data breaches need to be covered in the program.  Regular testing and rehearsals should be conducted whenever possible.  

Step 6 – Employee Awareness Training

To empower employees from becoming victims to defenders of the organisation, it is crucial for them to familiarize themselves with company policies and best practices. Hence, regular training and assessment need to be done to keep every employee on their toes. 

Step 7 – Regular Audit and Update

Finally, as new threats and new ways of working emerge, there will be changes in the way we do things. Hence, regular audits are necessary to fine-tune any process. New discoveries need to be updated in the respective policies to keep them current and relevant. Personal data regulations are not about to go away any time soon. In fact, its adoption by companies will increase. As companies become more aware of their obligations, they may require their business partners to implement PDPA-compliant policies and processes. Any failure to adopt such practices could result in a personal data breach on their end. The fallout may affect the companies that are the data controllers. This could lead to bad press, loss of revenue, and for some even their jobs. 

If you need help in any way on your data protection journey, do drop us a note.

Email marketing is particularly attractive to marketers in the early days of the Internet. It costs next to nothing to use them. Marketers need not deploy any new application but leverage off existing assets the company already owns – the email system.

The idea of using emails as a marketing channel caught on and soon many marketers were blasting away to promote their company’s offerings. This behavior resulted in SPAM. It became irritating as messages were irrelevant. Also with repeated messages, it fast become annoying and was overwhelming inboxes. Eventually, this uncontrol, excessive behavior led to the birth of SPAM laws to control these spammers and their unwanted messages.

While spam laws have been around for a long time. It never resulted in many emails landing in junk or spam folders. Something else is at foot.

The rise of phishing

Now there is a newer threat in our inboxes – phishing emails. Phishing emails are more insidious and more malicious than spam emails. While spam emails were merely irritating, they didn’t cause much trouble beyond that. However, with phishing emails, it is a whole new ballgame.

Source : FBI Internet Cybercrime Report 2021

Phishing emails can cause companies and their associates (i.e. customers, stakeholders, etc.) some damaging problems. Problems like locking digital assets, stealing confidential data, taking over IT assets to launch further attacks on other organizations, etc. These are problems companies can live without.

To counter this issue, companies have set up mechanisms to deal with this new threat.

The rise of privacy regulations

One of the major drivers for companies to start taking action to protect the organization’s inboxes is regulations, specifically those relating to personal data. With regulations like GDPR, companies are liable to pay huge fines if there is a data breach of personal data.

As cybercriminals can easily enter an organization’s network via emails, incoming emails have to be protected against these perpetrators.

To meet regulatory expectations, companies have put in policies, processes and measures to protect themselves against these new regulations.

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In the past, organizations relied on users’ inputs on whether an email was a spam email. It was a manual process, without much automation and checks.

These days not only do we have automation but built-in intelligence in spam filtering applications to detect spammy emails. With AI, the check goes deeper into the content. Hence, increasingly you might find your email not landing in the inbox if your content is not properly crafted. For example, if you are sending promotional emails to any Gmail accounts, they will not land in your inbox, but in other folders (please refer below).

The rise of service providers’ blacklists

Blacklists have existed with us for a long time now. They existed mostly in the domain of cybersecurity specialists to list out rouge IPs and domains. However, increasingly, the use of blacklists is expanding beyond the traditional use of keeping perpetrators out of the network.

Service providers, namely Internet service providers, email hosting providers, email marketing service providers, application service providers have a blacklist. The purpose of these blacklists is to weed out rouge users of their services. Why? Simple, they themselves need to be compliant to regulatory laws

To provide an affordable service, service providers use a shared-services model where its customers use an application mounted on a server. All it takes is one inconsiderate user to ruin the reputation of the IP of the server. All users on the server with the same IP will be affected. Hence, service providers are keen to identify these abusers and will not hesitate to have them removed if they fail to heed any warnings.

Let’s have a conversation if you would like to avoid your emails heading to the spam/junk folder or blacklist.

Once the malicious email (with your domain) lands in your recipient’s inbox, and if they are opened, all sorts of malware may be unleashed on their computer and network. This will cause a lot of problems for them as well as for you.

So what can you do about it?

Enter Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (aka DMARC). DMARC is an email authentication mechanism. It consists of two parts – a verification component and a policy component.

However, DMARC does not work alone. It requires two set of information from the authorised email server – the Sender Policy Framework (aka SPF) and Domain Key Identified Mail (aka DKIM). These three records residing at the Domain Name Server (aka DNS) will help email-receiving servers to determine the authenticity of the mail and how to handle the email thereafter (i.e. allowed the email to pass through, put into a spam or junk folder, or simply rejected it).

The technical implementation of DMARC, SPF and DKIM has several business benefits which brand and business owners should take note of.

#1 Prevents Email Spoofing

It is easy to send off emails with fake domains. This is due to the lack of an authentication mechanism in current mail servers. Cybercriminals are aware of this loophole and are taking advantage of it.

Cyber criminals also knows that a familiar email is more likely to be opened than one from a stranger. Customers and business associates who have come to trust you and your brand are more likely to trust the email and its the content, thinking the email is legitimate.

DMARC, together with SPF and DKIM, blocks out cyber criminals’ email spoofing attempts through a system of verification and authentication. They ensure that only authenticated emails land in the inboxes.

#2 Business Protection

If a fraudulent email is successful in its mission, and causes damage to another organisation, the victim company may seek legal redress from your company for “allowing” the incident to happen. Your company’s progress and productivity may be impacted as you get embroiled in a civil suit. If the matter is picked up by the press and make known. This could put a dent in your business as customers and associates might stay away for fear of being the next victim. Their may be financial and reputation impact, eventually affecting revenue.

#3 Avoiding the Spam/ Junk Folder

Before deploying DMARC for your domain, receiving email servers have no way of authentication your emails. Hence, your emails may find a home in your recipient’s spam or junk folder.

With DMARC deployed, the chances of emails landing in the inbox are higher. This is crucial for transactional or important emails, where you do not wish them landing in a spam/junk folder. This may cause some inconveniences and even confusion for the receiving party, resulting in a poor experience with your brand.

#4 Improved Marketing RoI

If you are running a marketing campaign, you want your emails to reach as many inboxes of your target audience as possible. It doesn’t help your marketing effort with your marketing emails landing in your recipient’s spam box. This severely impacts on your marketing metrics, projecting a lower return on investment (aka RoI).

With DMARC together with email marketing best practices, emails performance can be properly tracked, reflecting the true RoI of your marketing campaigns.

#5 Avoid being Blacklisted

With SPAM laws in place, Internet Service Providers (aka ISPs) and Email Service providers (aka ESPs) are setting up blacklists to list down domains and IP addresses that are misbehaving (i.e. spamming).

Mass mailing also consumes precious bandwidth. This cost ISPs as they have to purchase more bandwidth to accommodate more traffic. On the part of ESPs, they themselves do not wish to be penalized by ISPs and placed on a blacklist. Hence, they have their own blacklist to weed out non-compliant customers.

Once on any blacklist, it may take weeks if not months to be removed from it. Also if you are not diligent enough to quickly remove yourself on a blacklist, you may quickly be listed on other blacklists. This will adversely affect your sender score and domain reputation.

#7 Better Sender Score

In the world of finance, there is a scoring system called the credit score. The purpose of the credit score is to determine the credit worthiness of a borrower.

Similarly, in the world of emails, there is a similar system called the sender score. Through this system, ESPs are able to determine whether your domain has a good or poor email track record. A number between 0 and 100 is assigned to domains. The higher the score a domain has, the better would be the preferential treatment by major mailbox providers. You want to have a sender score of more than 70.

Internet and email service providers rely on various metrics to determine a domain’s reputation – sender score is one of them. It has a high weightage. You do not want your domain to have a poor sender score.

#7 Identify Email Senders

These days many applications are being used across the organisation. You have sales using a CRM, marketing using email marketing systems and various analytics solutions, customer support using ticketing support systems to help customers with their issues etc. For the purpose of better tracking and reporting, some of these applications are able to send off emails through their application.

During a DMARC deployment, before a DMARC policy is enforced, DMARC can surface all IPs that are sending off emails with your domain. From there, you can white list certain IPs and blacklist any unauthorized IPs at work. Without DMARC, you are allowing nefarious elements to continue their malicious work.

From the above, the benefits of deploying a DMARC policy are overwhelming. If you need help with your DMARC deployment, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

However, times have changed. Today,  there are several laws in place that require activities that involve the gathering, use, storage, and disposal of personal data to comply with privacy regulations. These laws are not to be taken likely, and it affects everyone.

Even before privacy law kicks in, a domain may be blocked and blacklisted by Internet service providers if the domain has a history of spamming. What this means is that your email might even not even reach your audiences if these service providers have their way. No one likes spammers.

Besides regulatory requirements and being on a blacklist, mass emailing via traditional email clients is an inherently unproductive activity when it comes to marketing.

For starters, a marketer has no insights into the effectiveness of the activity. They do not have a view of whether the client has opened or even viewed their emails. There is no insight into whether this channel of marketing is an effective one. Without this simple insight, a marketer is just shooting in the dark. This lack of information leads to a lot of marketing challenges.

Without the ability to understand their audience behavior, a marketer is unable to do any segmentation. Without proper segmentation, customers might receive emails that are not relevant to them. This makes for a poor customer experience when they receive emails with marketing messages that do not resonate with them. You might even be reported as a spammer and get your emails channeled into a spam folder.

One of the critical technical limitations of traditional email services is that it does not allow emails to be scheduled.

Studies have shown that at certain times of the day, more time is spent reading emails than at other times. If there is a need to send emails over the weekend or after office hours, you might need to hire someone willing to do the job or deploy a system to resolve this issue.

The scheduling feature in email marketing tools comes in handy too for many other occasions like reminders if you are providing regular services, birthday greetings, anniversary notes, etc. Automating such repetitive tasks saves a lot of time. From the client’s perspective, they would be happy to receive such celebratory greetings. If not, at least you would look upon favorably over your competitors who are not doing so. Hence, an investment in an email marketing system pays dividends even after a sale is made.

Behavioral studies have shown that a buyer would likely make a purchase only after repeated exposure. Automating a series of emails with different messages sent off on different days would be most helpful in this nurturing effort. This increases the likelihood of a sale for your brand.

Knowing that it costs up to five times or more to sell to a prospect than to an existing customer, businesses are constantly seeking ways to cross-sell or upsell to their customers. Being able to tag a subscriber in the email marketing system would allow businesses to have a better idea of how to increase spending with your brand. Businesses can now put in front of their customer complementary solutions that they might need.

By crafting the automation once, the same automation could be re-used for all customers buying the same product. This saves a lot of time.

Thus an email marketing is not only necessary in today’s privacy-conscious world but brings a host of benefits pre and post-sales.

There are many email marketing applications in the market, and they are all not created the same. They have their respective strengths and weaknesses.

Through understanding you and your business, we would be able to advise an appropriate system that works for you.

Speak to us today for a non-obligation discussion!

As it spreads across the world, governments are implementing measures to “flatten the curve”. As such, companies are instructed to allow employees to work from home.

During this time, face to face meetings is also kept to a minimum to starve the virus of new hosts. Remote meetings via webinars are now the preferred mode of any communications.

While we do our part to “flatten the curve”, we must not forget about the cybercriminals. They are still around despite the broader threat of Covid19.  

Companies can essentially do a few things to improve their position. They could modernize things, enhance the way of working, better protect themselves, and get ready for an uptick in business when the virus passes.

#1 Improve connectivity security

With employees working remotely, companies would want to improve their cyber defenses. Companies should consider deploying a firewall and VPN solution if they have not already done so. A VPN will prevent any “man in the middle” attacks.

#2 Improve endpoint security

Companies should also consider deploying an anti-malware solution on all remote machines in the event a cyber attacker is successful in deploying a malware payload. With an anti-malware solution in place, the malware can be detected and isolated.

Any anti-malware should also include an Endpoint Detection and Reporting component (EDR). With the added EDR functionality, companies can identify the origin of the attack the path it took, and the systems affected. This information will facilitate the investigative work of forensics experts. It will also reduce the financial cost of involving these experts, as their expertise is not cheap.

#3 Minimizing information loss

Finally, if companies are afraid of sensitive information being leaked, we can help in preventing that from happening.

If there is a data breach and sensitive personal data is leaked to the public, there will be an investigation by regulators. Pending the outcome of the findings, there would be a fine by the regulators. The size of the penalty will depend on the effort made by the company to improve its process in handling personal data, and what measures and controls they have put in place to minimize a data breach.

#4 Employee cyber awareness training

Beyond implementing solutions, companies could also explore running training programs to empower their employees.

One could be in the are of cyber defense and get ready to dash out of the gates when the economy picks up.

We provide cybersecurity employee awareness to empower employees against a cyber attack. We will convert them from being unwitting victims to alert defenders against any cyber onslaught.

#5 Sales training

For the sales team, we can also provide sales training to help them deliver better outcomes through better sales presentations and customer engagement.

Customers are getting savvier, and they expect to deal with a salesperson to be equally apted. Customers may be seeking a solution to solve a problem, but they eventually buy into the confidence of the service provider through the salesperson representing them.

#6 Lead generating website

A crisis is always an excellent time to slow down, review and improve on things (i.e., enhance internal processes, attend training, etc.) you usually never had the time to do.

With the impact of Covid19 weighing down on businesses, this would be a good time to modernize and sharpen the sword.

One of the things we can help with is your website. Your website has a bigger job to do rather than just looking pretty. We can not only help empower it to generate more leads but bring in more relevant leads.

Do drop us a note to see how we can make it happen for you.

Mixed content includes content downloads such as software executables, documents, and media files offered from secure HTTPS websites over insecure HTTP connections.

Mixed content resulted from the need for websites to move to HTTPS from mid-2018 when Google started flagging out sites that are insecurely transmitting information over its Chrome browser.

Users seeing the HTTPS padlock on a site in Chrome typically assume that any downloads it offers are also secure.

Google’s recent announcement points out:

Insecurely-downloaded files are a risk to users’ security and privacy.
For instance, insecurely downloaded programs can be swapped out for malware by attackers, and eavesdroppers can read users’ insecurely-downloaded bank statements.

To eliminate this issue, Google has recently announced a timetable for phasing out insecure file downloads in its Chrome browser.

It will be a gradual effort rather than an immediate hardline exercise. It will begin with Chrome on desktop version 81 due out next month, by offering warnings. The dateline for all downloads via HTTP will systematically be blocked by Chrome version 86 scheduled to be out in October 2020.

Mobile versions of Chrome will use the same timetable except that they will lag by a version behind their desktop counterpart.

This latest plan underlines Google’s desire to improve security and user experience by the promotion of HTTPS everywhere in Chrome.

Make note eradicating unsecured downloads doesn’t guarantee that the download isn’t malicious. In essence, it merely means that the download hasn’t been tampered with as it travels from the webserver to your computer.

As part of our web security offering, we can help scan and fix these mixed content issues.

Shall we have a conversation? 

Once a site is blacklisted, its presence on search results can be drastically reduced or even removed altogether, cutting off traffic and credibility in an instant. For entrepreneurs, marketers, and content creators, understanding how these blacklists operate is not just a technical concern but a fundamental safeguard for protecting brand reputation.

What makes the issue of a search engine blacklist particularly challenging is that it often happens quietly, without immediate notice to the site owner. Many discover the problem only after experiencing a sharp drop in visitors or receiving alerts from users who encounter warnings before accessing the site.

By learning what triggers these blacklists and how to avoid them, website owners can shield themselves from unnecessary setbacks and maintain the digital trust that drives growth.

Why do search engine blacklist exist?

For a search engine, a good user experience is important. Protecting its users from harmful websites is one such good user experience requirement.

Websites that have been blacklisted will display a strong message such as “This site may be compromised“, or have a red screen enveloping the entire website.

If your website is on a search engines’ blacklist, not only do you lose organic growth, but more importantly, you lose both reputation and goodwill. All goodwill with the current domain will be lost; your website ranking will drastically drop on search engines. The business consequences can be devastating—lost sales, broken trust, and a long road to recovery.

In extreme cases, you might even have to rebrand your business and get a new domain name. All goodwill and organic traffic will be lost and you need to rebuild everything. That takes a lot of effort and time.

You might have to embark on a costly rebranding campaign to inform your audience of your new website.

How do websites get on the search engine’s blacklist?

There are various reasons why a site is blacklisted.  

Blackhat SEO tactics. For the purpose of ranking higher on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP), some SEO specialists might adopt practices to duped them to rank the page higher. Tactics like cloaking, excessive link exchanges are some of them. You can read more of some blackhat SEO tactics.

Spammy website. A site can be spammy due to malware putting out spammy content. This might result in unhappy site visitors and this doesn’t go down well with Google if the site gets discovered.

Website spreading malware. In some instances, your site could be used to download malware to unsuspecting users. Once this is picked up by the search engines, users will be shown a red screen to warn users from proceeding further. Your website will be quarantined and eventually blacklisted.

Website that plagiarizes. If a website is stealing content from other sites and making it it’s own. The artificial intelligence capabilities of the search engine can quickly and easily pick it up. Being blatant about it and you will soon get blacklisted too.

The sad and truthful part is that you might not even know that you have been banned by the search engines.

It has been reported that typically a malware could be residing on a website for 3 to 6 months without the website owner’s knowledge. Things start to surface when either you are notified by your web host or worst still by your customers and potential prospects.

It is not the search engine’s role to remove malicious code. That will fall onto the lap of the website owner. If you have Google Search Console in place, you could get a warning.

Take a proactive approach

Instead of a reactive approach, which is challenging and detrimental, we would recommend a proactive approach – have an alert mechanism, link your site up with Google Search Console, and implement an anti-malware solution.

We believe as a site owner; you should be the “first to know” of anything that is happening on your website (including the presence of malware) instead of the search engines or anyone else. News, especially negative ones, when made public, can be hard to manage and might spin out of control, resulting in negative publicity.

Reputation is priceless. Why risk it?

One way to avoid it is to deploy an alert mechanism. Once an alert is triggered, you can start your own internal investigation and quickly rectify and contain the problem.

Next is to have a good anti-malware solution to nip the problem at the bud. If anti-malware is in place on your site, it would be able to pick up the malware and tackle the malware before it can do its damage.

We can help you to get you ready and avoid trouble with the search engines.

If, however, you are already on the search engine’s blacklist, you can head to Google Search Console to take the necessary actions to remove the malware if any is present. Next, you would need to check on all login credentials and remove infected files manually. Or if you have an uninfected backup, you can restore it. Just confirm there is no malware in the backup.

Once you have taken the preliminary effort to make your website “good” again, you can then initiate a removal request through Google Search Console. These might take days.

Let us know if you need any assistance in the above area.