Blog Category: internet

SEO Extensions for Google Chrome

26 November 2012

Yahoo has long been a memory. Bing tried to challenge but did not succeed. The fact is that no search provider out there has the clout and appeal of Google, and part of the reason that this is such an enormous brand is that the folks at Google hate resting on their laurels. When it comes to optimizing your site for the search engines, Google provides a wide assortment of tools.

Through all of Google’s many tools, however, it’s actual the company’s own Internet browser, Chrome, that has the potential to help people the most. Google Chrome is a very advanced yet incredibly streamlined search browser that can be updated with a slew of add-ons and extensions to help you get the most of your SEO efforts.

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What happened in the Penguin SEO update?

19 September 2012

Black and white and a little on the wobbly side, penguins are cute, cuddly and considered to be relatively harmless. However, when we’re talking about a Google Penguin, we’re talking about a real angry bird. After the huge Penguin update (some call it an overhaul), there are more than a few web experts spreading the word that SEO is quickly dying on the vine.

Google has never shied away from making huge updates to their entire format. Since Google owns the lion’s share of Internet searching, almost every online businessperson in the world (outside of China) relies heavily on Google for their search results, traffic, clickthroughs, sales, etc. But the problem Google has always had is that they focus on the larger, able-to-pay-millions advertisers, while the little guys get thrown under the bus. Enter Penguin.

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What is an SSL Certificate?

17 September 2012

When the average Internet user visits a website, there’s a lot of information being exchanged between the computer or device and the web host. These transactions can unfortunately be breached—and quite easily—and thus hacking and identify theft are always major issues to contend with online for any frequent net user or businessperson. Knowing which sites to trust and letting users know that you can be trusted may all boil down to an SSL Certificate.

Although you may have seen sites displaying an SSL Certificate, and although you may have a general idea that it is security-based, few people actually realize what’s at the root of this feature. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, and like its predecessor, Transport Layer Security (TLS), an SSL is a cryptographic protocol providing tight security during data exchanges.

Using symmetric encrypting for confidentiality and asymmetric cryptography for the key exchange, an SSL essentially encrypts information by scrambling various segments of a network connection at two key points – the Transport layer and the Application layer. The method is so effective that email, faxing, IMs, VoIP and many other communications online are protected by SSL protocols.

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How to create a podcast and put it on iTunes

16 July 2012

There are many different ways to communicate with your visitors when you have a website. Some site owners use simple text, and it can work quite effectively. Other site owners enjoy creating videos and posting them all over the place. Well, you can really split the difference here by creating a podcast. This is an audio file that allows you to speak directly to your customers using an MP3 file.

Podcasts are easy to create, easy to upload and update, and visitors to your website will most definitely view your brand more seriously if you have a podcast. You will instantly come across as more trustworthy to your base at large.

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How to use royalty free music in your web videos

20 April 2012

For designing and marketing a successful website, nothing beats an entertaining video. Properly formatted, well edited and enjoyable, a video is the perfect method of conveyance. Any message you want to get across, a video can do it. On the upside, great videos keep watchers interested and wanting to come back, so an enthralled base and repeat visitation is what you have to look forward to if you produce high-quality videos.

One of the best ways to make a video really sing, pun intended, is to add a music track to the video. However, whether you’re posting these vids on YouTube or Facebook to create a buzz, or whether you’re posting them directly on your website, there is always a chance of violating copyright laws.

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What should you write on an About Us page?

23 November 2011

Whether your website is a large online retailer or a special interest blog, you will invariably have an “About” page. This is the page that everyone feels they need, and yet people seldom put the right kind of information on it. If your website is a personal blog, there is a good chance that nobody will need to look at your About Us page to find this out. For most other kinds of websites, this page presents an opportunity to connect with a very important type of visitor - the visitor who is interested in knowing more about your site, or your business.

When Not to Market Yourself

Although the About Us page presents an easy opportunity to market to your visitors (clicking on the “About Us” link can be equated to saying “I want you to try and sell yourself to me”), that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is the place where you should put yet more sales copy.

Once a visitor is on your site, they are probably already interested in the products you sell or the services you provide. They don’t necessarily want to read more of the same thing that you have on your home page and in your product descriptions.

Why Someone Clicks on “About Us”

Most of the time, when someone visits your About Us page, they are interested in some of the following things:

• What exactly does this company do/who owns it/what is their business objective?

• Is this a legitimate business, and if I want to talk to someone is there a real person behind it?

• Where is the business based, and how did it start? (less likely)
These aren’t all the questions they could ask, but they’re good ones to begin with. You have to remember that most of the people who come to your site are probably not as interested in these things as you are.

Internet users have short attention spans, especially when it comes to big pages of text. Here’s how to give out the most information, make yourself look good, and not lose your reader’s interest.

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How to Find sites that are stealing your content

09 November 2011

Content stealing is rife on the internet, and there is every chance that if you have written something useful, interesting or insightful that someone will steal it and put it up on their own blog within a few weeks. Fortunately, there are easy ways to find this out.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do about it if you do find that someone has stolen your content.

Most fortunately of all, though, is that thanks to changes made in 2010 - 2011 to Google’s search ranking algorithms, people who steal content seldom gain very much advantage from it, reducing the need for you to lose sleep over your stolen content and traffic.

Content Stealing vs Pingbacks

When I made my first website, I saw to my great distress that someone had used some kind of script to take excerpts from my content and place it on their blog (with little or no context). I didn’t see the point, but I was annoyed - until I realized that they had posted the link to my article there. While I didn’t get much traffic from referrals from the site, the incoming links did help my own articles to gain search results positions.

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