SSL certificate stands for Secure Socket Layer, and it is used to create an encrypted connection between website visitors devices (clients) and the server hosting the website.

In a nutshell, an SSL certificate is used to secure personal information that is being entered into a website such as usernames, passwords, address and credit card information.

SSL Certificate components

The certificate is composed of the following components:

• Digital signature of the issuing authority or the verifier
• The certificate key or serial
• Certificate expiry date
• Certificate owner

Do you need SSL certificate for your website?

If your website collects any sort of user information it will require an SSL certificate to keep the transfer of this information to-and-from the web server secure. Moreover, google chrome started in July, 2018 marking website without SSL certificate as “Not Secure”. So if you care about your search engine ranking, you definitely need to setup a certificate.

In the Let’s Encrypt era, where SSL certificates are given for free, the question is not whether you need a certificate for your website or not, because you most probably do. The question is whether you should go for a free or paid one.

When should you start paying for your SSL Certificate?

To answer this question first we need to look at the difference between free and paid certificates.

Verification Level
Free certificates provides domain validation (DV) only, whereas paid versions provide organization validation (OV) and extended validation (EV), meaning that they provide validation for the site owner organization and not just the domain name.

Duration
Free certificates usually have a validity period of three months while paid certificate can be renewed once every three years.

Support and Warranty
All paid certificate comes with backend warranty several support packages to purchase and tech support are only a chat window or email message away. Obviously, free SSL comes with no warranties and if something goes wrong on the verifier’s side, you’re on your own.

So both choices provide a website with the famous green https lock. But the bottom line is that free certificates are great for a blog or an informative website that does not have much more than a simple contact form and a newsletter subscription. However, if trust a major issue for online business- and in most cases it is- especially in e-commerce websites, then paid certificate is the only option.

Where to buy?

When it comes to paid service providers there are many choices, where budget and service levels are the most deciding factors. To name a few service providers:

• DigiCert – digicert.com
• Symantec websecurity – acquired by Digicert in 2017
• VeriSign – verisign.com acquired by Symantec in 2010
• Sectigo – Formerly Comodo – sectigo.com
• GoDaddy – godaddy.com
• Network Solutions – networksolutions.com
• Cheap SSL Security – cheapsslsecurity.com
• RapidSSL – rapidsslonline.com

Need help?

Hope that this article was helpful, if you require any help with setting up SSL certificate for your website let us know here. We’ll be more than happy to help.

The post What is SSL Certificate? appeared first on CIATEC.

It is no secret that google has been dominating the search engines market share for the last couple of decades. Google was founded in 1997, although the very first search engine was called “Archie”, but let’s keep history for another post. We are here to show some numbers on how the search engines market share is actually shared between google, bing, yahoo, yandex, baidu and others.

According to the below graph from StatCounter, Google still holds 90% of market share worldwide, with slight insignificant loss for bing in the past couple of months.

Search Engines Market Share By Country

• Google’s market share is around 90% in US, Canda, Australia, South America and Europe.
• China is considered to be the “No-Google-land” where local search engines Baidu and Alibaba’s Shenma dominates the Chinese search engines market.

• In Russia , Google has almost a 50-50 market share with Yandex.

• As far as our region (Middle East) is concerned, Google dominates the search engines market share with even a higher percentage to reach around 97% in Saudi Arabia , United Arab Emirates , Kuwait , Egypt and Lebanon .

Why Google is by far the leading search engine?

Bing is trying, with the beautiful images and all. In fact, Google couldn’t find things that are not found by bing or yahoo. Search results are in most cases similar on all search engines. Yet, google has always been holding the largest market share, and this doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon.

So, what makes Google so special? Here are some reasons that makes Google the primary holder of search engines market share:

1- Simplicity: Google kept it simple, a factor which positively contributes to user experience.

2- Core business: search is Google’s core business right from the beginnings in the 1990s.

3- CSI factor: continual service improvement in google products and services is a key factor for staying on top of the list.

4- Chrome: Google chrome is the most popular internet browser. It gained that title because it belongs to Google’s family. But on the other hand, with address bar search feature and google being the default search engine, chrome definitely plays a vital role in 4 billion search queries happening every day.

5- Products integration: Integrating all google products together such as gmail, YouTube, maps, analytics, ads, adsense and other is a major player in moving google way ahead of the competition.

Google dominates the search engines market with 4 billion query a day. Which is an enough reason to use Ciatec’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service to rank higher on search engines results page, contact us today for a free site assessment.

The post Search Engines Market Share [August 2018] appeared first on CIATEC.

While “Go-to-Market” concept is still a thing in our countries, digital marketing techniques through digital technologies continues to develop and improve. Digital marketers and advertisers got powerful tools in their hands that keep getting better everyday. Tools and platforms such as social media, search engines and big data provide endless opportunities to reach more customers and increase revenues.

There are many digital marketing tools available, and they are all relatively easy-to-use but the trick is to select or mix-and-match the one’s that best suits your business goals.

Here is an info-graph highlighting the most common digital marketing channels:

Industry News

Have you started a blog for your business? If not, you should probably start right now, blog posts with content of most recent industry updates will demonstrate how on-trend your business is, increase your organic search presence and definitely drives more customers. Content creation is the key, blog posts needs to contain relevant information, a certain level of copy writing and experienced content. If done right, the business could become an industry source of information and opinions. As for the tools, WordPress is the most powerful blogging tool out there, among others.

Social Media Marketing

This is a widely known method, and it is based on sharing of information and direct communication with consumers, followers, partners and the competition on social media sites with the aim of marketing products and services. Social media is already considered to be a powerful marketing platform and most companies would have a presence already established there.

In general, social media is now an essential part of any marketing campaign and one that won’t be going away anytime soon, it is here to stay. In effect, it is currently one of the most effective, focused methods of targeting a specific demography. A social media marketing campaign can be quite simple, yet, so effective.

Here is an info-graph highlighting some of the social media marketing benefits.

Comment and Opinion Pieces

These provide great opportunities for ‘link bait’ and can attract a large amount of attention for a digital marketing campaign. Opinion pieces can be used to offer individual comments on recent news releases or trends. An eye-catching, provoking headline that includes important catch phrases is a strong method of creating better link bait. You can use sites such as “Quora” to answer users question and direct users to your business.

Content Marketing

Digital marketing through content marketing makes use of strong subject matter to entice customers to your online site. The content can be any subject and method of delivery, from blogs, forums, instructional guides, Q&A sessions, news articles, pictures, banners, podcasts, webinars, gifs and links to social media sites.

 Here is an info-graph highlighting some of the content marketing benefits.

Email Marketing

Email campaigns are usually carried out once a list of target consumers has been compiled. The list is then contacted with a cleverly designed email advertisement, relevant to the target audience. This can take the format of newsletters, product release date launches, online only announcements and are all instantaneous and relatively inexpensive. To strengthen this method, it can be used in collaboration with other strategies, include linking social media, websites and customer service contacts to the email campaign.

Here is an info-graph highlighting some of Email Campaigns benefits.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Digital Marketing through search engine optimization is one of the most popular methods used to boost your online presence by increasing your pages ranking on search engines such as Google. This involves building  SEO friendly website with proper keywords and back links. Google trends serves as a good tool to check what keywords are trending in web searches and use them as keywords on your website.

Here is an info-graph highlighting some of SEO benefits.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Another type of PPC advertising method as the company pays per every single click to link to a website. The majority of social networks offer this method of advertising, not just search engines, and the ads are shown in the targeted user’s feed as a pay per click advertisement.

 Here is an info-graph highlighting some of PPC benefits.

Search Engine Marketing

SEO and PPC together with SERM (Search Engine reputation management) forms the technical term Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Think about it as the big umbrella with all the three mentioned techniques lies underneath it.

In some cases, instead of just including certain keywords or phrases, a company may opt to pay for advertisements to feature on the result pages of search engines. This is known as Search Engine Marketing or SEM and it works by companies bidding on keywords that feature frequently on Google or Bing from users entering specific words. This means that the company can advertise its products by having their advertisement pop up beside the results for those specific words or phrases.

The greatest benefit from search engine marketing is that it places products exactly where they need to be at the exact moment that a potential customer wants to buy that product. This is not available with any other advertising method, which explains why this method of marketing is so popular and valuable and provides quick returns on investments.

Here is an info-graph highlighting some of SEM benefits.

Mobile Marketing

Traditionally, mobile marketing was limited to targeting your potential customers through SMS, which is still widely used up till now. But with the increased popularity of Smart Phones the term “Mobile Marketing” might also include social media marketing and other forms of digital marketing mentioned above. However, if we want to specify a scope for mobile marketing we would limit to three areas:

1. SMS marketing, obviously.
2. Mobile Apps such as Whatsapp Business.
3. Responsive Website for your business that loads perfectly on a mobile device.

Conclusion

The importance of digital marketing options and methods cannot be understated. Quite simply, it provides companies with opportunities for competitive advantages. It is a relatively low-cost option and it is an instant, targeted method of linking a company with a large interested field of potential consumers. It is also an opportunity for companies to deliver real-time customer services, which improves customer satisfaction, increasing loyalty and profits. It enables companies to compete on a global basis and gives them an online presence worldwide.

In summary, the digital world is now an integral reality of our everyday lives. It is our first port of call when we need information or if we want to buy a product. This shows the absolute necessity for a strategic business plan to guide and secure this crucial competitive business advantage.

Did we miss anything?

Please share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Ciatec is a digital marketing agency providing services to clients in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Beirut and other areas. At Ciatec, we can assist you in your digital marketing campaigns either through our consulting service, or through training your staff with our Digital Marketing Training program. Contact us today to get a quote.

The post Let’s Talk Digital Marketing appeared first on CIATEC.

Analyzing performance of top sites in a certain country will provide a general overview of the digital population interests and demands and help digital strategists set strategies to better fit. If you are looking to build a digital marketing strategy in Saudi Arabia, the below list will give you a brief idea of the Top websites in Saudi Arabia (most visited website in Saudi Arabia) in all categories.

Top Websites in Saudi Arabia

	Site	Site Nationality	Daily time on Site
1	Google.com		6:28
2	Youtube.com		8:12
3	Sabq.org		3:40
4	Facebook.com		11:03
5	Yahoo.com		3:57
6	Live.com		4:03
7	Argaam.com		12:38
8	Twitter.com		6:24
9	Hawaaworld.com		1:52
10	Wikipedia.org		4:15
11	Souq.com		6:23
12	Moe.gov.sa		13:26
13	Blogspot.com		2:39
14	Moi.gov.sa		8:40
15	Ajel.sa		3:54
16	Instagram.com		5:27
17	almubasher.com.sa		9:02
18	Starzplay.com		1:24
19	3sk.tv		3:39
20	Mawdoo3.com		3:17

With CIATEC help, your site will have a better chance to make it to the top 20 websites list, contact us here to know how.

Disclaimer:

• Top Websites in Saudi Arabia: The sites in the top sites lists are ordered by their 1 month Alexa traffic rank. The 1 month rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past month. The site with the highest combination of visitors and page-views is ranked #1.
• Duplicate sites such as google.com and google.com.sa are considered as one site.
• Ads service websites such as deloton.com are ignored.

The post [Statistics] Top websites in Saudi Arabia (March 2018) appeared first on CIATEC.

Who joined #DeleteFacebook Movement up till now?

Since the scandal took place many corporate and public figures joined the movement #DeleteFacebook in protest for privacy protection, a concept proven to be hard to accomplish on the internet. Below are the top figures or brands that ditched facebook since March 17^th:

Will Ferrell

Comedian Will Ferrel joined #DeleteFacebook, he wrote a statement on his Facebook page on March 27th announcing it’s deletion within 72 hours. He said:

It’s important that we protect the truth, as well as those who work to bring it to light. I can no longer, in good conscience, use the services of a company that allowed the spread of propaganda and directly aimed it at those most vulnerable.

Will Ferrel

Playboy

Playboy 25 million fans pages released a statement on Tuesday March 27th announcing it’s withdrawal from Facebook.

The recent news about Facebook’s alleged mismanagement of users’ data has solidified our decision to suspend our activity on the platform at this time. There are more than 25 million fans who engage with Playboy via our various Facebook pages, and we do not want to be complicit in exposing them to the reported practices.

Playboy

Pepboys, Sonos and Mozilla

All three brands released statements expressing their disappointment by the news coming from Silicon Valley, they didn’t #DeleteFacebook though and their public profiles are still accessible but they all halted facebook ads.

SpaceX and Tesla

SpaceX and Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk joined #DeleteFacebook in a funny way, claiming on twitter that he didn’t realize that Tesla and SpaceX had facebook pages, in reply to a fan daring him to delete SpaceX page.

I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018

Brian Acton

Whatsapp co-founder Brian Acton tweeted to #DeleteFacebook. Brian left Whatsapp, three years after it was aquired by facebook.

It is time. #deletefacebook

— Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018

How is #DeleteFacebook affecting the social media giant?

After such events, the first place to look at is the stock market. Facebook Inc. stock had been on the rise ever since its first public offering on May 2012, it peaked 2 months ago to 190.28 USD and dropped after the scandal to 159.79 USD on April 2 (before trading start on Monday). Forecasts expects further drop in the coming days despite all the action taken by Facebook to check thousands of third party developed apps, and raise standards of what info is shared with such apps.

Facebook Instagram and Whatsapp

Facebook Inc. has acquired Whatsapp in 2014 in the famous 19 billion dollars deal. Instagram was also acquired earlier in 2012 for 1 billion. Facebook made 65 other acquisitions along the way. How will #DeleteFacebook movement deal with those other platforms owned and operated by Facebook?

Before deciding on whether you’re going to join #DeleteFacebook movement, take a moment to think that if you really want to boycott Facebook Inc., you might also want to consider #DeleteWhatsapp and #DeleteInstagram and all other platforms owned by facebook as well, because they are all collecting your data in a very similar way. Are you ready to do it?

Read more in TechNews

The post #DeleteFacebook: But what about Instagram and Whatsapp?! appeared first on CIATEC.

Top 20 Websites in Lebanon

	Site	Site Nationality	Daily time on Site
1	Google.com		7:36
2	Youtube.com		8:11
3	Facebook.com		11:03
4	Live.com		4:03
5	Bintjbeil.org		4:23
6	Yasour.org		4:19
7	Greenarea.me		2:50
8	Wikipedia.org		4:15
9	Yahoo.com		3:57
10	Saidaonline.com		6:39
11	Instagram.com		5:27
12	Almodon.com		3:29
13	Office.com		3:43
14	Lebanon-Lotto.com		3:07
15	Aliexpress.com		14:26
16	Lebanonfiles.com		16:49
17	Msn.com		3:44
18	Elnashra.com		8:04
19	Twitter.com		6:24
20	Blogspot.com		2:39

With CIATEC help, your site will have a better chance to make it to the top 20 websites list, contact us here to know how.

Disclaimer:

• Top 20 Websites in Lebanon: The sites in the top sites lists are ordered by their 1 month Alexa traffic rank. The 1 month rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past month. The site with the highest combination of visitors and page-views is ranked #1.
• Rank improvement  or decline  are in comparison to previous top websites statistics published on ciatec.com under the same category.
• Duplicate sites such as google.com and google.com.lb are considered as one site.
• Ads service websites such as deloton.com are ignored.

The post [Statistics] Top 20 websites in Lebanon (March 2018) appeared first on CIATEC.

If you want your company to become ISO certified, you probably already know the benefits. Other than operating under the governance of international standards, putting ISO Certification badge on your company website and paper publications is prestigious and will definitely contribute to a positive image towards your clients as well as your own staff. However, it is very important to know how to promote your ISO certification without breaking the rules. In this article we’ll highlight the do’s and dont’s of promoting your ISO certification, but first let’s tell you a little bit about ISO.

A little about ISO

ISO (International Organization of Standards) is an international standard-setting organization located in Geneva, Switzerland with presence in 161 countries through National, Correspondent or Subscriber members. For example: US ANSI, Canada SCC, Saudi Arabia SASO, Emirates ESMA, Lebanon LIBNOR are all national standard bodies in the mentioned countries and members in ISO General Assembly that meet once a year to decide on strategic objectives.

ISO formed partnership with other International organizations: International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) specialized in setting standards for Electrical and electronic-related technologies, and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) specialized in setting standards for information and communication technologies. In 2001, ISO, IEC and ITU formed the World Standards Cooperation (WSC).

One of the most popular standards is ISO 9001 Quality Management, but there are many others such as:

• ISO / IEC 27001 Information Security Management
• ISO / IEC 20000 IT Service Management
• ISO 14001 Environmental Management
• ISO 22000 Food Safety Management

and many others.

Why it is wrong to say ISO Certified or ISO Certification?

Your corporate can for example become ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified not just ISO Certified, it can get ISO 20000-1:2011 certification not an ISO Certification. Meaning, that you’ll have to choose a domain that is relevant to your business, choose a scope within this domain, prepare the necessary documentation, implement the management system based on the standard, get audited and become certified in the chosen scope, and maintain your certification year after year.

ISO itself doesn’t provide certifications, certification bodies provide certifications. It is very important to choose your certification body, an ISO certification issued by a reputable and accredited certification body will reflect a better image to your business and inspire confidence. To name a few, here is a list of reputable certification bodies with global presence:

• PECB, Canada
• BSI, UK
• TUV, Germany
• Bureau Veritas, France
• SGS, Switzerland

Do’s and Dont’s in promoting your ISO Certification

How can CIATEC help you Become ISO Certified

CIATEC plays the role of remote consultant that can help prepare the necessary documentation to become ISO certified, currently focused on two main standards: ISO 27001 and ISO 20000 Certifications. ISO 27001 is a specification for an information security management system (ISMS), a framework of policies and procedures that includes all the needed controls involved in an organization’s information risk management processes. While ISO 20000 is a standard developed in 2005 and revised in 2011 it describes best practices to implement IT service management system. CIATEC catalyzes your process toward getting certified by helping you prepare the necessary documentation, implement the system and audit your work.

Finally, if you need help implementing a management system and become ISO certified, @AskCiatec or drop us a line here for assistance.

The post You can’t become ISO Certified appeared first on CIATEC.

We live in a hyper-connected, high-speed world today.  Advent of the Internet has given way to online and partly online businesses instead of the traditional offline businesses. The internet, along with smart phones, has changed the way business is done.

Let’s get started!

Anyone can start a money-making online business—anyone with a computer, that is. It can be some of the most profitable enterprises around – with low overheads and staff requirements, the potential to make money is huge.

Here are the 9 steps you must follow to celebrate your success.

I really hope the above 9 Key Tips For Running A Successful Online Business helps you get a grasp of the core concepts of online business and more importantly, the confidence to take the next step and start one of your own!

This post is also available in Arabic هذا المقال متوفر أيضًا باللغة العربية

The post 9 Key Tips For Running Successful Online Businesses appeared first on CIATEC.

Top Websites in Lebanon

	Site	Site Nationality	Daily time on Site
1	Google.com		7:24
2	Youtube.com		8:13
3	Facebook.com		10:57
4	Live.com		4:02
5	Bintjbeil.org		3:43
6	Yasour.org		4:22
7	Greenarea.me		2:51
8	Wikipedia.org		4:16
9	Yahoo.com		3:57
10	Saidaonline.com		6:41
11	Instagram.com		5:26
12	Lebanon-lotto.com		3:25
13	Office.com		3:42
14	Aliexpress.com		13:45
15	Msn.com		3:46
16	Lebanonfiles.com		17:27
17	Blogspot.com		7:28
18	Twitter.com		6:25
19	Elnashra.com		7:28
20	Almodon.com		3:25

With our help, your site can make it to the top 20 list, contact us here.

Disclaimer:

• Top Websites in Lebanon: The sites in the top sites lists are ordered by their 1 month Alexa traffic rank. The 1 month rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past month. The site with the highest combination of visitors and page-views is ranked #1.
• Duplicate sites such as google.com and google.com.lb are considered as one site.
• Ads service websites such as deloton.com are ignored.

The post [Statistics] Top 20 websites in Lebanon (February 2018) appeared first on CIATEC.

At CIATEC, we study those statistics on regular basis and we provide you with the latest numbers for active Arab internet users statistics per country in Middle East region and Arab world in general for the year of 2017.

ِArab Internet Users Statistics (2017)

		Country/Region	Population	Internet Users	Penetration Rate
		Middle East	396,839,124	179,210,416	45.16%
1		Bahrain	1,418,895	1,390,517	98.00%
2		UAE	9,541,615	8,515,420	89.25%
3		Qatar	2,694,849	2,204,580	81.81%
4		Kuwait	4,197,128	3,214,347	76.58%
5		Lebanon	6,093,509	4,596,494	75.43%
6		Saudi Arabia	33,554,343	24,147,715	71.97%
7		Oman	4,829,946	3,310,260	68.54%
8		Jordan	9,903,802	6,300,000	63.61%
9		Palestine	5,052,776	3,015,088	59.67%
10		Morocco	35,421,776	20,555,783	58.03%
11		Tunisia	11,532,137	5,801,972	50.31%
12		Algeria	41,318,412	17,440,299	42.21%
13		Egypt	97,812,496	39,218,736	40.10%
14		Iraq	39,339,753	14,103,501	35.85%
15		Syria	18,284,407	6,025,631	32.96%
16		Sudan	40,553,380	11,082,072	27.33%
17		Yemen	28,915,284	6,911,784	23.90%
18		Libya	6,374,616	1,376,217	21.59%

The post Arab Digital Population (2017) appeared first on CIATEC.