E-Commerce for All

Last month Google announced that they changed their “ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site”. This change affects searches with a “strong user interest in a particular domain”.

Many in the community have voiced concerns for the smaller websites and businesses who may lose more searches and search real estate. I want to take a minute to give you my thoughts on this….

1. Only VERY relevant searches will trigger this
2. Even small businesses with this type of search can and will trigger this
3. It doesn’t matter, done is done… adapt and overcome

For example if I search for pro-webs or pro webs, I get the following enhanced result.

Enhanced SERP

Now this is perfect for us, because we have taken great care to promote our “brand”. Essentially, both pro and webs are tough terms, even together to rank for. So, we use our brand consistently throughout the web and in everything we do. The result is that between, pro-webs, prowebs, pro-webs.net, pro webs company etc… We get a great deal of these very relevant searches for our business and domain name.

While this type of brand consistency is certainly the best practice for everyone, we learned this lesson the hard way.

Early on (2003), when we just built a few websites here and there and we started PRO-Webs, we were I was dumb! Yes, I personally own all of my mistakes… and the knowledge I have gained from them. Lets cover a few of the things I screwed up.

• Dash in the domain name (very bad!)
• Registered the .NET and not the .com (Remedied last year, for a chunk of change)
• I marketed PRO-Webs.net, instead of PRO-Webs
• I used link text that I thought was helpful for my SEO efforts… Never using “PRO-Webs”
• I answered questions and blogged without regard to branding myself as “PRO-Webs”
• I changed the logo several times over the first 5 years (Finally our graphic designer took all of the “versions” and made our current logo, which we put on EVERYTHING!)
• In content I used we, us etc… Now I use “We at PRO-Webs” for example, more frequently
• I used a silly nickname for logins and IDs instead of PRO-Webs
• The list goes on… But I think you get the point

What the result was… IF anyone thought I had helped them, or remembered PRO-Webs…. They NEVER remembered the address. Worse yet, if the “Googled” PRO-Webs, we were on page 5… UGH.

Remedy: We started and continue to use consistent and aggressive branding for our company. This means every opportunity you have to get your brand out there (email sig, forum sigs, blogs, directories, social media, etc.) you do so! Simple huh?

Some can find it challenging due to some poor uninformed decisions early on, but regardless of the past mistakes you must take the initiative to “own” your brand… This may even mean re-branding if the issues are insurmountable. Nevertheless, you cannot ignore the need for branding. As we move forward in to this mashable, social media controlled web you will start to feel the pain of poor branding more and more. Don’t wait… Do this now, it matters!

So in closing, we still very much consider ourselves “little guys” ( we like this ), but we have benefited from Google’s change nonetheless. Maybe it’s not so much the “big business” or “little business” that is really the issue here… But rather the effort to brand.

Melanie E-Commerce SEO

We all worry about the security of our websites, but do you maintain your computer properly to avoid transferring malware and trojans to your website?

Fact is, we know most of you do not. We find that overall people do not take the necessary and proper steps to keep their computer and it’s software up to date and patched…. It’s a silent hacker!

Whether you have a static HTML website, blog or shopping cart… You are at risk of hacking your own website and spreading malware to your visitors…. Or worse, compromising their information and security while transacting on your website. Not to mention that most times Google will find the malware/hack before you and tag your listing or remove you from the index!

According to Web security firm McAfee’s second-quarter data, Malware reached its highest levels ever in the first half of 2010. The company found 6 million malicious files in the second quarter, making for a total of 10 million malicious files over the first six months of the year.

So we are going to give some tips to help you keep your computer up to date and your site’s visitors safe. These tips are a culmination of stuff provided to us from our ISP, our webhost and our son Troy the PC guy. We often share this list with customers to help them stay safe and will today share it with all of you. Stopping incidental and accidental malware and viruses from the Internet starts with you.

1. Make sure you have good virus software and it’s up to date. Troy recommends AVG for a very powerful and free solution. I personally use McAfee, but it is a paid solution.
2. Keep all your software (especially internet related software) such as browsers, plug-ins and add-ons up to date with the latest security patches. Examples are Adobe Reader, Flash, and Java. You can check whether your Firefox plugins are up to date at Mozilla Plugin Check…. And for secure browsing we do recommend Firefox or Chrome as your browser of choice, as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been historically subjected to the largest number of security threats.
3. Change your passwords regularly and do NOT store them in your browser. Strong passwords of at least 8 characters with numbers, letters and symbols will protect you best. Use a different password in every location.
4. Keep your computer’s operating system up to date. Software manufacturers release updates in response to bugs, and other changes… But most importantly in response to security issues discovered after release.
5. Do NOT access your website’s administration section from a public or unsecured wireless network… EVER!
6. Make sure your home or office’s wireless network is secured and closed to all but you and your staff. Here is an excellent tutorial. Have you heard of the new trendy hacker thing called “Drive By Hacking” or “Wardriving” … Check it out.
7. Limit access between computers on your network to all but that which is necessary (file sharing).
8. Get a good malware scanner for your computer, something like Malwarebytes is free and excellent.
9. Avoid adding unnecessary toolbars and plugins to your browser.
10. NEVER click cancel or another selection on popups in websites. It’s usually a trick. So if something pops up that is begging to to click to scan or similar…. Instead of clicking shut your browser down immediately and scan your machine.
11. Make certain your computer’s firewall is enabled, up to date and correctly configured at all times.
12. Whenever possible access your site’s admin, hosting control panel or FTP in a secured SSL connection to help prevent eavesdropping.
13. Know your computer’s normal processes and occasionally monitor what is running in your task manager or similar.
14. Only install software, addons and plugins from trusted publishers… Make sure all applications are signed so that you know what they are while monitoring your processes. When installing software always choose advanced or custom install as many are bundled with toolbars and other garbage you will unknowing install.
15. NEVER click links in emails or messages that look fishy or are from an unknown sender. If you get a PayPal letter, for example, asking you to update your information, view the link in your mouseover to see if it’s really from PayPal and look at the email address of the sender. When in doubt do not click the link and access the website directly by typing the url you KNOW to be correct in your address bar.
16. Never download attachments from senders you do not know… and scan them first even if you know them
17. Even if you do not normally visit gambling, p o r n or other known platforms for extreme malware, you should use a rootkit detection tool occasionally. Anti-Rootkit for example is free and does an excellent job.

Now, saying you will do these things is not enough. You have to actually do them. Set your scanners to run daily in your task scheduler, while you are sleeping even. Set your computer’s operating system updates to automatic, and think before you click. These are the things we charge you with to help make the Internet a little safer for all users…. It starts with you and your website, we all share this very important responsibility.

Melanie Off Topic, Small Business

The Internet has grown in to an opinionated, buzz driven machine. Websites seek user interaction, comments and participation, social media sharing, user specific search result weighting and more. This is all well and good until someone bad mouths you, your website or business. The things that can happen from a loose lipped comment or click are not only very dangerous, but apparently more interesting than good notations! Face it haven’t you shopped on eBay and searched that sellers ratings until you located the one bad one? It’s human nature, we are rubber neckers!

Customers behave in the same manner… 1000 great orders delivered fast and perfectly, no comments at all. 1 distribution screw up, and boom you are ranking on page one for “XYC company are idiots!” Some will say. “it’s not fair”… Tell you what I tell my kids, “Life is not fair”. Just like anything else in life, if it’s worth it…. It’s also hard work. You will have to fix this.

So today we will cover some of the things that can happen to your business, and some ways to “fix” the problems created.

While these interactive services are a wonderful part of the web, they are also easily misused and cheated as well. This is not however the most common problem, most times it’s that one bad order that will sting you. So spend your time concentrating on fixing the issue and not finding the competitor who caused it.

Some Ways You Can be Hurt by User Supplied Information on The Web

Testimonials: We know these can be a great thing for your business, but they can be a silent killer as well. Sites like GetFave.com and RipOffReport.com allow users to say what they like without much if any supporting information. These types of sites have essentially un-moderated content by way of making the “submitter” solely responsible for their own ….. Searchable content!

Product Reviews: Word of mouth advertising for products and services is as old as human commerce. These types of customer generated comments have often been the maker or breaker of small businesses for some time. A good review in a newspaper could send your business soaring to the top, while a bad one could sink your boat. This hasn’t changed much in theory, the dangers and territory have expanded. So instead of waiting out a poor review in a newspaper for 6 months that touched your local area, you now are dealing with a global area and a potentially unlimited time line.

Security Reports: For ecommerce this is a BIG deal, tools like McAfee SiteAdvisor and other toolbar phishing and security reporting devices can sting your business big time. These tools, while for the most part are fairly moderated can cause you terrible troubles if the not so savvy web user reports you for phishing or security issues. A great example is a client who was reported because his main page of his Zen Cart was NOT SSL encrypted. Why the hell would it be? But, McAfee accepted the report and was flagging the search results for the website for all of it’s users! While I am sure that the user who submitted the rating was honest and concerned, he/she was clearly NOT qualified to supply the report…. as a result the client’s business suffered while we attempted to work it out w/ McAfee.

Social Media: Sharing is the buzz word for this generation, and share we do. We share photos, experiences and of course the businesses we come in contact with as well. Again, just like we discussed, humans are far more likely to add a negative experience to their Facebook than a positive one. The dangers of not monitoring and involving your business in social media are exponential. The up side it that many social media users will ask advice before visiting a restaurant or making a purchase, and the responses from network friends will generally be positive in these cases.

As a shop owner there are some things you can do to monitor and influence these items. The term is actually a fairly new classification called “reputation management”. In essence this is the monitoring, management and repair of your’s, your business’, and/or your website’s online activity and reputation. There are professionals that can for a fee, provide these services to you… But we will try to help you, help yourself a bit first.

Monitoring Online Reputation

While we suggest you contact a professional for damage control and cleanup in the event you are “bad mouthed” on the web, there are many free tools you can use to monitor your online reputation yourself however.

• BackType: is a free search tool which will grab mentions of your company name, products, web site url etc. and deliver you results from social media, blogs and other user generated content sites on the web.
• Monitter: will scrape real time Twitter notations for up to 3 keywords at a time. Nice tool, but a bit addictive!
• Google Alerts: is by far the most comprehensive and my favorite. Way back when, originally suggested to me by the late David Castle, this tool scrapes anything you want from Google. Great for trends, keyword research and reputation management too!
• PureWireTrust: is an online search for email addresses, websites (places) and things. Results include social networking accounts, security, blacklisting, IP and WhoIs results.
• Yasni: is a pretty cool scraper for Google Blogs, web, etc… But most impressive is the “monitor tool” provided to email yourself results and save your results as well!
• BBB: has user submitted issues even if you are NOT a member. Note that at least these are well moderated user submitted comments.
• Google: is great for searching for things like your business/domain name and one of these the words: testimonials, reviews, complaints, reports etc.

Taking Action

There are many things you can do for yourself if you find your site in a reputation mess, BUT, we strongly suggest you at least consult a professional if you have been wrongly bad mouthed on the web.

1. Investigate the allegation: Do you know this user? Does the submitted report look real? Do they have the right site?
2. Contact the webmaster: Use the website’s contact information to inquire about the negative comments, provide your side of the story and request removal.
3. Make amends: Contact the user, offer to make it right…. Apologize. A wise restaurant manager (Rick Nader) once told me that customer complaints are a much greater opportunity to “wow” a customer than plain old great service. Making it right can be a huge word of mouth advertising tools for your website.
4. Address the issue: If you are unable to get the problem resolved/removed, then factually and honestly address it on your own blog or social media persona. Tell the truth, reference the page link of the negative comments and tell your side of the story in a very positive and constructive way.
5. Bomb the page: This is obviously a last resort, but popularity and freshness are huge in search engine ranking, so you can conceivably “bomb” the offending page with fresh positive results and push them down the SERPs (search results pages).

The moral of today’s post is that while nothing has changed in business reputation, the tools, playing field, influence and accessibility of these reports has grown to mammoth proportions…. And so must you step up and monitor your online reputation.

Melanie Small Business

Google Caffeine

Google officially announced the completion of the new Google index, dubbed Caffeine for it speed and freshness. This new index has been a long time in the sandbox and even longer implementing, but it seems to deliver faster, more relevant and fresher search results. While as website owners this has complicated our job on many levels, I think the positive experience for searchers is profound. Less frustrated searchers are more likely to buy, complain less and tolerate more.

Google’s new index is faster, larger and far more comprehensive. Media results, news, blogs…. They are all fresher.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Back in August of 2009 Google began the undertaking of streamlining and bug fixing the Caffeine update… They even provided all of us an opportunity to use the development index in the sandbox and provide feedback. How nice that we, developers, searchers and rubber neckers could see, touch and participate.

In the “future web” we see everyday feedback, transparency and trust are commanding factors… Google seems to have a solid grasp on this concept. They expect it from you and demonstrate it themselves in the way they run your business. So caffeine is very simply put, Google’s effort to grow effectively and deliver the best product (search) to their visitors. I think aligning yourself in this type of mentality is the key to your Internet success.

Melanie E-Commerce SEO