Thank you for taking action!

Hi Melanie

Last week you stood with millions of Americans to protect online freedom and innovation. Congress heard you, and delayed consideration of the PIPA and SOPA bills, which -- if enacted -- would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American businesses.

We hope that today you will join us in thanking your representatives for protecting the Internet.

And we want to thank you, again, for your actions last week. We are humbled that so many of you rallied around what we believe is the most transformative invention in history.

Until next time,
The Google team

I thought this was quite nice to share and celebrate a small victory in the fight for our web rights.

NY Times Editorial by REBECCA MacKINNON

The bills would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a trial. The House version goes further, allowing private companies to sue service providers for even briefly and unknowingly hosting content that infringes on copyright — a sharp change from current law, which protects the service providers from civil liability if they remove the problematic content immediately upon notification. The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team has done an excellent job of getting the word out and getting website owners and the web community involved. Below is a video to help you better understand whats going on, and whats at stake.

Count PRO-Webs as a company doing our part to put down this injustice, we have signed the petition at We the People which has 52,096 signatures, educated customers and acquaintances alike. As a result of our signing of the petition to STOP SOPA, we received an email from the Whitehouse. I am sharing it with you in its entirety below.

Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet

By Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, and Howard Schmidt

 

Thanks for taking the time to sign this petition. Both your words and actions illustrate the importance of maintaining an open and democratic Internet.

Right now, Congress is debating a few pieces of legislation concerning the
very real issue of online piracy, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA),
the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Online Protection and
Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). We want to take this opportunity to tell you
what the Administration will support—and what we will not support. Any effective
legislation should reflect a wide range of stakeholders, including everyone from
content creators to the engineers that build and maintain the infrastructure of
the Internet.

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem
that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation
that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines
the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of
online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our
dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of
the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and
society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be
narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover
activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively
tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any
provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks,
payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to
prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified
litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from
growing.

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the
underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper
with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the
Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the
DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a
real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services
accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous,
unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the
deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American
economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and
hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and
entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews,
and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are
strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights,
existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond
our borders. That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work
together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and
rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S.
borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this
response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of
legitimate American values.

This is not just a matter for legislation. We expect and encourage
all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform
providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to
reduce online piracy.

So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself:
Where do we go from here? Don’t limit your opinion to what’s the wrong thing to
do, ask yourself what’s right. Already, many of members of Congress are asking
for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those
opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer
of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a
conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and
soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your
questions. Details on that will follow in the coming days.

Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue
websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American
artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all
interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global
intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet.
Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important
challenge.

Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis
on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy
and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the
values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation. Again, thank you
for taking the time to participate in this important process. We hope you’ll
continue to be part of it.

Victoria Espinel is Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at
Office of Management and Budget

Aneesh Chopra is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the
President and Associate Director for Technology at the Office of Science and
Technology Policy

Howard Schmidt is Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity
Coordinator for National Security Staff

Check out this response on We the People.

Stay Connected

Stay connected to the White House by signing up for periodic email updates from President Obama and other senior administration officials.

 

The data standardization within Google Product Search has put like products from very large retailers capable of deep discounts in the same page product lineup with smaller merchants who cannot compete on price. The smaller merchants who would generally seek to make their listing somewhat unique to grab longtail product searches can no longer do that. Smaller merchants in the product lineup with Pet Smart for example, have few options to elicit a click from a searcher.

For example, if I search on Google.com for "pet gear" I am given the following product choices:

Obviously, being a "regular shopper" I select the product with the stars! I am taken to a page where Google offers me the following retailers:

1. Amazon.com
2. Walmart
3. Buy.com
4. Sam's Club
5. Sears
6. Overstock.com
7. The Sportsman Guide
8. Meijer
9. Wayfair
10. eBay

I find it rather funny that the Sam's Club price is $12.16 more than Walmart. However, this set of results most disturbs me because nearly ALL of these pampered results are using a very "vanilla", UN-engaging, unimaginative, duplicate product description! That's a real pisser huh?

Nope, the real pisser is that hiding in the lower left under these results is....... the rest of us!

Soooooo, I click the next arrow 2 times before I find a single small retailer! I know you're probably mad, but it gets worse. I click and click all the way to page 5 of the results before finding a unique product description! That's bullshit!

Corporate America strikes again, the "little guy" is forced to reduce cost in order to compete.... Profit becomes nil and the retailer fails. All this while companies like Walmart continue to bankrupt manufacturers with their volume pricing demands so low that the manufacturer makes no margin. So, since Walmart eats companies, does this mean that someday there will be no choice, but rather companies like Walmart will become all their is.... "The Walmart Effect".

Is Walmart Good for America? provides a provocative examination of the impact
Wal-Mart has had on the U.S. economy. The documentary highlights the changing
relationship between manufacturers and the so-called "big-box" retailers, exemplified by
Wal-Mart, that has contributed to the bankruptcy of some American businesses and a
growing unemployment rate. While Wal-Mart supporters tout the advantages of one-stop,
low-cost shopping, others are alarmed at both the outsourcing that has made these low
prices possible and how large retailers affect smaller, local businesses. FRONTLINE
examines the winners and the losers as it documents how:
• Global retailers are superceding manufacturers in making decisions about
product quality, type and price.
• A basic flaw in the United States-China trade relationship is that we can afford
to buy Chinese products, but they cannot afford to buy ours.
• Wal-Mart has approximately 6,000 global suppliers; 80 percent of these are
from China.
• China is becoming the biggest producer of high-tech products in the world.
• TCL, a Chinese company, is now the largest producer of televisions in the world
and almost all of their U.S. exports go to Wal-Mart.
• The United States is exporting raw materials to Third World countries and
importing their manufactured products, which is a reversal of former economic
relations.
• In 2003, the United States had a $120 billion trade deficit with China and it is
expected to be even higher in 2004.

So what is Google's part in all of this?

I am seriously disturbed that, whether intentionally or not, Google is laying the framework for a capitalist shopping experience on their platform. This is America, our uniqueness, intuitiveness, drive, ambition and imagination make great companies.... Such as Google even. How can a company as big, powerful, American and creative "eat" these small retailers?

If you do any email marketing at all, you know that keeping your list free of invalid email bounces is a primary objective. You see, when you send your newsletters networks, email apps, web hosts and other ISP related services monitor the number of bounces received from an individual host/IP. So if you send out 600 newsletters and 14 to ATT/Yahoo bounce you are likely to get blacklisted. It's a simple way for big networks to monitor and keep email spam down.

These innocent emails let the marketer spammer know in advance that your email address is valid! You may have also heard about the famous "unsubscribe validation" technique. This is similar to the emails we have received, but with more risk. They send an email to a purchased email list for example, and then monitor the bounces as well as noting the unsubscribes, which are definitely valid email addresses!

Neither one has a singular defense that you or I can take.... But spamming them is always the best idea. Additionally, if you simply forward a "spam" email to spam@uce.gov.

What Can I Do With the Spam in my In-Box?

Report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Send a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to spam@uce.gov. The FTC uses the unsolicited emails stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive spam email.

Let the FTC know if a "remove me" request is not honored. If you want to complain about a removal link that doesn't work or not being able to unsubcribe from a list, you can fill out the FTC's online complaint form at www.ftc.gov. Your complaint will be added to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel database and made available to hundreds of law enforcement and consumer protection agencies.

Whenever you complain about spam, it's important to include the full email header. The information in the header makes it possible for consumer protection agencies to follow up on your complaint.

Send a copy of the spam to your ISP's abuse desk. Often the email address is abuse@yourispname.com or postmaster@yourispname.com. By doing this, you can let the ISP know about the spam problem on their system and help them to stop it in the future. Make sure to include a copy of the spam, along with the full email header. At the top of the message, state that you're complaining about being spammed.

Complain to the sender's ISP. Most ISPs want to cut off spammers who abuse their system. Again, make sure to include a copy of the message and header information and state that you're complaining about spam.

Seems to me that Google is not likely to be just sending a friendly reminder here... Most likely there is a master purpose (certainly for the greater good of mankind) and the reminder is a bonus service. So this benevolent service is in fact helpful to most, but clearly it means Google's watching.

For the record, this is an old, stubborn client that wouldn't upgrade their website unless sales completely stopped.... and then they might even use PPC to get by.

See the friendly email from Google Search Quality Team below... and yes, upon full email trace it is in fact from Google.

Website removed to protect the stubborn! Click to enlarge

Get one!

Looking  at the changes and trend of Google and the other search engines, I thought it might be a good time to plot a new plan of attack. Sure, many things remain as they were... But there are also many new things we are looking at more deeply, as well as things we no longer concern ourselves with.

In my mind's eye you need to have a plan to accomplish anything well. So I always develop a plan of attack for our shops, every year.  This plan of attack is intended to not only keep me on track and focused... But it helps me muster the desire and dedication needed to be more successful every year.

In this plan, I generally try to prioritize the tasks as well as keeping them simple and targeted. Below is the list we are using in house for 2011 for our own shops. Your own list is likely going to be a bit different, but this may help you develop a customized plan of attack for your store more easily.

1. Speed. We are spending some resources, time and training  to improve the speed at which our shop's pages are being delivered to shoppers and spiders alike.
2. Uniqueness. We have always endeavored to create high quality content on our websites, but this year we are putting a great deal of time in to creating not only high quality content... But high quality 100% unique content.
3. Regularity. All of our shops have adequate opportunity for related content, we are making a huge effort to post fresh, top quality relevant content regularly. Such as once a month or once a week, depending on the size of the site.
4. Usability. We are split testing several different product page layouts, navigation and checkout options to find the best system to improve click through, trust and of course the shop's ability to convert.... by lowering abandonment.
5. Link bait. This is a term you hardly ever hear in ecommerce, but since Google has gone commando on low quality and reciprocal links we will shoot to create content so excellent on our store's content pages that people will naturally share and link to it.
6. Optimizing for feeds. We are working hard to include proper information, killer images and high converting information in our product pages so that our product feeds are bringing in the highest quality clicks possible.
7. Low hanging fruit. We are looking to our deep analytics reports to find high converting, but low traffic searches... We then properly optimize the product for these smaller phrases to reap the better conversions.
8. Content containers. We are working extremely hard to correctly segment our page's content in to proper containers for better snippets, readability and  to answer Google's new patent for analyzing page content.

Hope you find a helpful start to your own 2011 plan of attack!

First of all understand that Zen Cart is FREE GPL licensed software. This means in a nutshell that Zen Cart owes you nothing. Lucky for you the development team at Zen Cart takes the development, support and ability of their software very seriously. However, before you get started you need to know that even with all of this support YOU will ultimately be responsible for staying up to date with version, patch, security and other Zen Cart software developments. You do that by subscribing to the Zen Cart release announcements thread. Do this right now.... even if your store is already built.

Modules for Zen Cart are predominantly free and available here. The trick with modules is knowing, researching or seeking advice (from more than one company, person or source) is an absolute MUST DO. While these modules add flexibility and functionality to your store... They have a dark side. The simple installation is generally not very simple for your average shop owner, the installation (even if properly written in overrides) will cause extra costs in future upgrades and believe it or not... Some don't even work. So the simple rules of thumb for Zen Cart modules is don't install it unless you really need it, seek out the support thread for advice and keep track of all the modules you have installed... Preferably keep a folder of the module installation zip.

Think security. Even a small business like yours is susceptible to hacks and business ending fines. You can be penalized by a search engine, hacked and receive a fine from the credit card companies, have your customers orders emailed to hackers, get screwed by developers/programmers/designers and simply suffer the lemon disease where you just continually throw money at your site without any return on your investment. My aim here is to teach you some of the security and business security traits and behaviors you need to have to avoid these dangers. So I have a short list... as I realize we all have short time and attention spans.

• Ask around about your hosting company. Ask about PCI/DSS compliance, security, support and backups.
• Use strong alpha numeric passwords and change them frequently.
• Give others access to your hosting and cart in their own user account so you can easily remove it when their need is done.
• Investigate the modules and addons you need to use, and I don't mean just one resource.
• Checkout any company you intend to do business with. Does their site look professional? Do they have a portfolio and testimonials? Can they provide references? Google a Google search for things like company name +complaints, reviews or check the Better Business Bureau for complaints filed against them.
• Plan your Zen Cart project, keep notes, names, modules installed and anything else you have or are provided during this endeavor. This is not just for prosperity, but rather makes your future development, problem solving and help seeking easier, more effective and fruitful.
• If they say they "Guarantee" to put you on page 1 of the organic results... They are lying. If they claim to be affiliated with Google for example, they are lying.
• If someone tells you they know Zen Cart, invite them to prove it.
• Do not buy or reciprocate (trade) links.
• Do not hide keywords in your code.
• Do not cloak pages for users vs. what Google's crawler sees.
• Make sure you have sought out a legal professional to help you craft your privacy, conditions and shipping & returns policies.
• Read your merchant agreement, and any other for that matter in full. If you don't understand ask.
• Unlimited bandwidth or web space is NOT unlimited. (Read the TOS)
• PCI/DSS compliance is required if you accept credit cards on your site or in your place of business. This is for everyone, and their are no exclusions.
• Email is not secure. Do not send sensitive information in an email.
• If it seems to good to be true it is!
• Take good care of your customers and their issues... One bad bark on the web regarding your company can ruin you.
• Do not let a developer or designer register a domain for you. It's really not that tough and you may be sorry later when you lose the domain.
• Do not rely on just one resource for your website... People come and go at an alarming rate in this business and you need to be able to continue your business.
• Keep a full account backup of your website weekly on your own hard drive. If the hosting company does not have this ability find one that does!
• This is hard work and you will not be rich in a month, but if you work hard and learn the ropes you can make a living.

I may add to this list, but the most important point is that this is YOUR business and YOUR responsibility. Don't blame or rely on others to "own" the responsibility, it will most certainly come back and bite you in the tail.

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.

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.

Got Blog?

There has been an absolute onslaught of shop owners wanting a blog. This is not very unexpected, as the freshness and regularity of content carry far more weight then they ever have before in Google's algorithm.

Certainly, I advise clients that this creation of fresh content on a regular business is a very good thing.... But I also tell them how NOT to shoot themselves in the foot.

Okay, so that sounds funny, but it's very true.... Your shiny new blog can do you a huge disservice if you don't know the basics. So today tonight I will attempt to give you new bloggers a fighting chance.

Perhaps in many cases the word content, by its very definition is too vague or not as descriptive as we mean to say. So if you read somewhere or your SEO tells you you need to create fresh content.... We should in fact say: You need to create unique, descriptive, fresh, honest, longtail keyword enriched content. Wow, that's a mouthful. But, true none the less.

Unique is a word you should really wrap your head around for everything web you do. In a nutshell it means simply that the content is not published anywhere else on the web. So clearly grabbing those free articles and republishing them on your blog is not the ticket. Every page on your website should be unique from your other pages and all other web pages. It's this uniqueness that holds the advantage.

Descriptive content is also often misunderstood. I will ask a client to write more descriptive product descriptions and he will provide me a product description with 50 key points in a bulleted list. Okay, so again, I was too vague... I mean that your pages should contain copy descriptive enough for users to read and scan naturally which generates an image or understanding of the product or page.

For example, if I called you on the phone to inquire about the widget for sale in your shopping cart, would you blow through 50 key points? No, you would use descriptive language and natural language to help me to visualize the product and it's qualities. You would use examples and experiences to instill trust in your product, and lastly you would most certainly speak in a confident tone. My point is simple, you do not have to be a very talented writer to write descriptive text... Mostly, you just have to want to.

Fresh content is pretty simple to understand, this is new content. While updating existing pages is very good and important, your site will perform much better if you are creating new pages on a regular basis. Face it, this demonstrates both maintenance and growth.

Honest content is something every blogger should know and understand. This is simply the fact that this blog, while an incredible marketing tool is an extension of you and your company. These are posts, not white papers. Reach out to your readers, show some humanity and personality.

Sanitized blog posts will never bring you the readership and following needed to make your blog a success. If you are Joe, then blog as Joe.... Not admin. Make yourself approachable, identifiable and easy to follow, and your readers will love you.

Longtail keyword enriched content is rather a simple thing and easily accomplished. The best advice I can give you to create great longtail keywords is to refer to descriptive content above.

Too many times a week to count, clients will ask me what I think they should be targeting in their keywords. Now they don't mean the Meta keyword tag, most of the time anymore... Instead they mean for me to give them a list of keywords to stuff in their content. Aside from coming up empty handed, they have now made me get my soap box out and begin to preach.

You see, most of you are not in a position to know what keywords you should be targeting. Instead you should be creating unique, descriptive content so in a year you will know.

For example, if you sell bananas, you will inevitably tell me you need to get to page one for bananas. This produces 2 problems. 1 the shorter keyword phrase is much harder to rank for, 2 it's not likely to be a high converting or money making phrase. Something like buy bananas, or fresh green bananas are more convertible search queries. These longer phrases are created by descriptive content, AND they do support the necessary relevance and content for the bigger box search query bananas.

So after you have some data, you will begin to see in analytics that some phrases you are ranking for, which you may have NEVER thought of trying to.... are making sales. Bingo, that's a phrase we want to target.

So now that we have covered some geek translations for shop owners, lets cover some do's and don'ts for your new blog.

1. Do post regularly and about topics related to your whole website theme
2. Do Not post exclusively about sales, products and other marketing venues
3. Do answer every comment you ever receive
4. Do use catchy post titles
5. Do make your posts at least 3 paragraphs <-- Yes folks, I mean text
6. Do use images and other media to engage your readers
7. Do encourage comments and discussions from your readers
8. Do use 10 or less post tags
9. Do categorize your posts in a logical manner
10. Do have your blog designed in the likeness of the rest of your website (brand continuity)
11. Do use natural language that all most of your readers can understand and identify with
12. Do try to use some semblance of proper grammar, so your posts can be scanned and read
13. Do have fun and stay positive

Topic selection is a big hurdle for many shop owners... What the hell do i have to blog about?

Well, honestly, this is a tough one for many. You will have to think outside of the box to find your blog's calling. To start your creative juices flowing consider related groups, events and organizations. How about historical points and tradition, myths, news and hey... Your own personal experiences?

These posts will be the meat and potatoes of your blog, the link bait so to speak. You cannot just run sale ads and product reviews in your blog.... No one shares these much, heck many don't even read them. When you only market from your blog you seem fake, pushy and certainly uninteresting. So look for the things in your niche that your readers will find value in.

I have used these guys as an example before, but I will again as I am very proud of them. Silver and Pewter gifts is a Zen Cart store who has had their blog for about a year now, but their posts are incredibly intelligent. They go out of their way to find stories, traditions, uses and tips for their products in their posts.

This recent one is a favorite of mine, the post is about Salt Cellars and Shakers... Yeah I know, what the heck is a salt cellar. Well, that's the key folks, they posted the history and the current trends into a very informative post that also effectively markets their products. Bravo!

Don't be scared, you can blog successfully... Just loosen up a bit and relate to your site visitors on a more common and approachable level.

Most ecommerce stores have some season trending. This is very unique to both the store and the product line. So a store selling green widgets can be expected to trend sales in a similar manner to another shop selling green widgets... But not exactly, as they are many additional metrics that influence one's sales.

So you should be planning for your spring and early summer products, marketing and trends now... So that you are prepared for this period in your business. Even especially if traditionally spring is a low volume period for sales.

Here is a checklist of sorts to help you get started for planning any marketing period, including this spring.

Trending: Unless you site is brand new, you should have some sales and traffic data that you can use to trend or predict the data for the upcoming period. I tend to concentrate on sales and traffic. I use both as they can be very unrelated for some websites. There are clearly some periods where even if the traffic is there, conversions are down... So to properly trend our potential for this upcoming period we should use both. You may even have other metrics such as, bounce, average order or similar that are specifically a target for your store.

Gathering the data is the easiest part, as you should be using a proper analytical stat program to record your data. We will use Google Anayltics for our example, as it is very popular.

When gathering your data, we are looking for specific trends within the matching period from previous years to predict, affect and produce a proper marketing plan for the upcoming period. So login to Google Analytics and lets get to work.

So we will pull data for all of March, April, May and June to cover our bases and provide some overlap. You will want to pull at least on year, more if you have them. I would not be concerned with using more than 3 years as things in your business and on the web change very quickly and it's not likely to be very relevant any longer.

The example store I am using had a 2009 average daily visits of 279 uniques a day. There conversion rate for the year was 3.87%. You can see by the graph that holiday traffic is a crucial part of this store's success and that spring is rather soft by comparison. You can also see that our spring period it right at or just a bit above average for them.

2009 Unique Visits

We can clearly see from this data, that traffic could be improved for this period.... Especially because they have a genuine promotable product line for spring sales. Now let's have a look at conversions in relationship with this traffic... Do they convert well in this period?

2009 Conversions

We can see that last year, while traffic was average, they converted pretty well the end part of spring. looks very much like March should be our focus area.

Next you will determine your trend. You can use data from previous tears to do this... But if you lack that data no worries, this old restaurant manager has the equation to get you close.

Obviously, any data you do have is clearly relevant... But let's say you have little or none. To determine your current rate of growth in both of these metrics we will poll the last 4 months. This is a weighted process with the greatest weight on the most recent data.

This applies to any metric. Gather the data for these metrics for Nov 2009, Dec 2009, Jan 2010 and Feb 2010.

We will start with March's data from last year 8,043 unique visits and a conversion rate of 3.13%.

• Nov 2009 8,789 & 4.85%
• Dec 2009 14634 & 4.5%
• Jan 2010 7,604 & 3.67%
• Feb 2010 6,395 & 3.52%

For this purpose, with holiday data so much higher we will exclude Nov & Dec, unless we have 2008 numbers... Which we do. Nov 2008 7,419 & 3.18%, Dec 2008 8,861 & 4.00%, Jan 2009 6,146 & 2.99% and Feb 2009 5,742 & 3.22%.

Here is the math:

The math is easier than it looks....

Step 1: YOY growth, which is simply current year minus previous year.

Step 2: Trend. Like I said we will weight this for the most current monthly data. So 100% being the whole, we will use 12.5% from Nov & Dec, 25% from Jan and the remaining 50% from most current Feb. Something like this:

• 1 part : Nov. 18.49% plus Dec. 65.15% = 83.64 divided by 2 = 41.82%
• 1 part: Jan. = 23.72%
• 1 part: Feb. =11.37%
• 1 part: Feb. =11.37%

= The whole (88.28) divided by 4 = (22.07%) Current Trend

Last year March (8043) apply trend 22.07% = (1775 growth) This year March forecast (9818) unique visits... Into 318 average daily visits.

Check our math:

Last year average daily visits March = 260

This year forecast = 318

% of predicted growth = 22.3%

**Note that rounding changes these just a hair, but not to worry this should be pretty reliable data.

So this "math" can be applied to the entire period as a whole, or each month individually computed. The point here is to have an idea of what to expect, AND and basis to measure the effectiveness of your marketing this spring. For example if you did nothing last spring, and you know (above) what to expect if you do nothing this spring... Then you have a pretty good benchmark to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign this spring.

Merchant Processing Survival Tips 2010

If you haven't read about the new "Brand Damaging" issues and you accept credit cards on your website... You need to. The potential impact on your business is too large to ignore.

Now that you have hopefully informed yourself, let's concentrate on keeping you out of trouble and getting canceled.

The new rules may seem a bit daunting, but they are really pretty simple.... If it's trickery, you cannot do it anymore. You may be sitting there thinking, "I have been running this "Free Money" website for 10 years.... This doesn't apply to me. You are most certainly wrong. These are new rules, new implementations and new punishments for violations.

The cost for violating one of these rules and getting caught (and you will) is at it's best cancellation of your merchant account or gateway account.... At it's worst, very large fines and cancellation. Heed this warning, even if you haven't received any communication from your Merchant services providers.

Merchant Processing Survival Tips 2010

Online marketing campaigns that employ any “Free-Trial”, “Deferred Billing” and/or “Shipping Only” are considered trial offers and are subject to the new rules. Consumers must receive a tangible good or contracted service in exchange for the credit card charge(s). Incentive type discount offers are acceptable ONLY when the cardholder is receiving goods or services in exchange for payment. Having said this, note for example that e-Online will no longer support

accounts engaging in hidden or delayed charges and ‘free’ offers that are not truly free.

1. Avoid using  "free" or "risk free" language on your website and in marketing campaigns (including PPC) .. Unless it is 100% really free.
2. If you use the "Pay Shipping & Handling Only" technique, then these charges must be fair, reasonable and fully disclosed. So if you have been slipping by on the $5 shipping and $20 handling fee, you must stop. Also note that inflating your actual shipping has additional implications as well... Did you know that most states expect you to pay sales tax on overcharged shipping fees?
3. Trial offers need to be no less than 10 days and the trial period should not begin until product is shipped to the consumer or the service has begun. You are not permitted to offer trails with exemptions, filtering or special rules for age, weight, height, geographic location, race etc.
4. Avoid creating a false sense of urgency because if the matter is not genuinely urgent you are in violation. For example if you have the "10 day only" message running on your website for 3 years now... You are in violation. These periods of offers must be genuine and accurate. e-Online has strictly forbid the use of  applications such as countdown clocks, tickers, or language such as “Offer Expires Today!”, for example already.
5. By mandate of the FTC, product claims, promises, guarantees and research claims MUST be accurate and proper. This is pretty unlimited and includes testimonials, endorsements and even product reviews. Don't think for one second that user supplied product reviews are exempt... It is your website right? Not only do you risk loss of merchant services with these issues, but the FTC can fine 11K on top of whatever the credit card companies may choose to fine you for your "Brand Damaging" behavior.
6. How about the FTC's new rules for pricing? Prices must be within reasonable “fair market value”. Any negative options must be clearly disclosed, and you cannot bill for any product or service that the shopper/consumer did not knowingly purchase... Including things like upgrades and software updates, for example.
7. If you have a special offer which includes some shady marketing like exclusions or negative options you are required to have that customer agree to the terms twice before charging them.

The first validation can take place with the initial offer presentation prior to submission of credit card information, and the second during the checkout process. The confirmation order page must also require consumers to acknowledge that they agree to the Terms & Conditions and authorize the merchant to charge the credit card for the disclosed dollar amount. Terms must be displayed adjacent to the “submit”, “confirm” or any other “call to action” button confirming the order. The price must be within 100 pixels of the “submit”, “confirm” or any other “call to action” button.

• Shipping and Handling should not be billed separate from charges for the product or service.
• Terms must be in a minimum 12-point “easy to read” font.
• Avoid visually distracting graphics from the display of terms.
• Pre-checked boxes must never be used.
• Consumers should be required to actively and individually select each offer or bonus during the checkout process when there are multiple offers or up sells presented. No offers or up sells should be pre–selected or pre-checked.
• Consumers should not be able to move forward in the offer or checkout until the box acknowledging the terms is checked.
• Verbiage must clearly disclose the enrollment into an ongoing membership with no distraction. An example of an acceptable disclosure is: “By clicking “Submit” you acknowledge that you understand you are being enrolled in a 10 day trial for $4.95, and after expiration of the 10 day trial period you will be charged $59 per month until you cancel your service”
• All products or services purchased when the call-to-action button is clicked should be billed as a single charge unless the order is fulfilled at different times requiring multiple charges.

REFUND POLICIES

Merchants must not make it difficult for consumers to exercise the disclosed cancellation procedures and all cancellation requests must be honored in accordance with the stated terms of the transaction.

1. Refund policies must be disclosed prior to the sale completion. Establish a clear, concise statement of your refund and credit policy. Your policy should be consistent with the objectives of your business and the products or services sold.
2. Merchants must not require return of any trial offer product samples in order for the consumer to receive a refund, or cancel their ongoing subscription.
3. “Full Money Back” or “Full Satisfaction” guarantees are considered false and prohibited unless the offer provides a full refund on all products, including but not limited to Shipping & Handling charges.
4. Refunds should be for the full amount charged including shipping and handling
5. All future billing to a customer should be canceled when a refund is issued.

All future billing to a customer should be canceled when a chargeback is received.

RESOURCES:

The FTC has published the regulations along with many resources online for businesses and consumers like yourself to learn and understand the new regulations.  A few helpful links provided by e-online are included below:

Commercial Practices Part 425, Use of Prenotification Negative Option Plans

Prenotification Negative Option Plans

Advertising and Marketing on the Internet

Dot Com Disclosures

Direct Response industry publications have provided articles with some clarification regarding these guidelines:

http://www.responsemagazine.com/resources/legal-resources/legal-review-getting-strict-with-negative-option-marketing-1351

http://www.dmnews.com/get-comfortable-with-new-ftc-regs/article/136023/

So, are you scared?

If you have been utilizing these techniques, then you probably should be. Realize that the allowable fines and penalties for violations of these rules can mean the death of many if not most small businesses. On the lighter side, even receiving the cancellation email from a merchant provider, allowing you a very short 2 weeks to make other arrangements for processing or gateway services is enough to put you in the poor house.

Take heed, learn and understand these practices, and when in doubt contact your merchant providers... speak with someone in underwriting and have them look at your website and marketing materials and provide you the correct way to market your products.... Before the axe falls.

JS-Downloader-X

The issue kept reoccurring after users cleaned their websites up. When cleaning a hacked website we look for back doors which can provide future access to cause damage. In this case, the "back door" providing the access for reinfection resided on the website owners computers.

The infection, caused by a Trojan downloader threat JS-Downloader-X, infected from several different websites. The threat is listed as high, and unfortunately at the time it escaped many common virus software scanners. The virus essentially uses the hosting and/or FTP login info on the user's computer to make its access. This is highly hard to track down and prevent, as normal hosting firewalls, security rules and even brute force detection are not triggered... You see the access is authorized.

Below is a list of things you can do to keep your own computer and other who access your website clean.

1. Use the following online vulnerability scanner and ensure your software is up-to-date: http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/online/?task=load
2. Download anti-virus and fully scan your PC for malicious files. Here are some free online scanners for Windows, which is typically the most vulnerable to infection. If you have a different OS, there are similar programs that can be located and run on your system to protect it in the same way:
MalwareBytes ( http://www.malwarebytes.org/ ) and
ComboFix ( http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix ) have been reported to be able to clean a recent strain of malware that resists detection by almost all other anti-virus agents. It is highly suggested that you one or both of them and one of the following:
-http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
-http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
-http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner
-http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml
-http://www.eset.com
3. Update all passwords for any account that you access/own that may not be up to standards. Any passwords that have been compromised will need to be changed as well. Standards for secure passwords are available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength#Guidelines_for_strong_passwords
4. Keep your computer secure from malware infecting it. If your computer is compromised, your account can be compromised through your password being used to access it.
- Ensure you use the latest browser version; Ensure that said browser subscribes to Google's blacklist API (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari)
- Disable javascript
- Use the firefox addon noscript
- Make sure your antivirus has a subscription to new database and version releases. This may cost some amount of money, but is well worth the expense.
- Use http://www.avg.com.au/index.cfm?section=avg&action=onlinescan to test suspicious links you are given in emails or find online.
6. Ensure that all database configurations for your account are using a custom generated user and password combination, and that this information is not stored in plain text if this is feasible. Using your cPanel username and password to access your databases for your site may be convenient, but it introduces an incredible security risk.
7. Audit your account for unnecessary scripts, such as file uploaders. Ensure that if they are necessary that they are password protected, or if that is not feasible that they check the file type before allowing upload, to prevent upload of certain types of files.

Most important, if you see the file zcv.gif in your file structure, know that removing it will not remove the threat and all with access will need to properly scan and clean up their computers.

Brand Damaging

First let's attempt to define what "brand damaging" actually means. It's really a rather ambiguous, mostly legal term referring to statements, actions, images, content, theft and other actions causing damage or harm to one's brand. Be that brand an authors name, a business or a service.

Many times this type of issue involves another nasty term, "identity theft". The connection comes from associating a known brand, such as the case with Jeremy Schoemaker in 2008. This matter was one of the first notable cases I have seen reported. In this case,  the Hydra Network or one of its affiliates made unauthorized use of a picture of ShoeMoney holding a check and the accompanying ad claiming he had made the money using a scam called "Google Money Tree".

How does this affect shop owners?

Many of you will have already received a letter of intent, or decided changes from your merchant bank if you process credit cards. The changes or proposed changes are quite frankly in answer to Visa Mastercard's intent to take action in response to increases in consumer disputes related to card not present and direct response products and services.

It's not really Greek, in a nutshell, if you, your practices, your security or your products and services are a bad risk, Visa Mastercard feels that this damages their brand.

These forthcoming and anticipated payment brand mandates and requirements will change a great many things for some merchants. For example e-online has already adapted the following policy changes:

e-onlinedata cannot accept merchant applications for products and/or services employing “Negative Option” enrollment, in addition to the following practices:

• Marketing models that employ “Free-Trial”, “Deferred Billing” and/or “Shipping Only”. Customers must be receiving a tangible good or contracted service in exchange for charging of payment cards. Incentivized discount offers are acceptable when the cardholder is receiving something in exchange for payment, however we will be unable to support accounts engaging in hidden or delayed charges and ‘free’ offers that are not truly free.
• “Cross-Selling” and “Up-selling” business practices. All sales should be directly between the business entities (merchant) processing the transaction and the cardholder, with cardholder authorization for all purchases.
• Per Payment Brand guidelines, the use of multiple merchant accounts, billing descriptors and merchant processors may be viewed as an attempt to avoid chargeback monitoring programs and is prohibited. Perceived non-compliance has led to termination of processing relationships. e-onlinedata will review the business consideration for opening multiple merchant accounts to ensure compliance with Payment Brand guidelines.
• Transactions generated from internet traffic and all other lead sources must be managed and monitored for potential fraud using an approved system. Third Party service engagement may be a requirement for account approval.

Of these, the most likely ecommerce merchant concern is the last. The last statement refers to properly managing, monitoring and PCI compliance of your shopping cart, hosting and merchant gateway. These are not recommendations, but rather already required for merchants. When you signed your merchant agreement, you also agreed to maintain the proper PCI/DSS standards and mandates.

Originally, PCI was Greek, however, merchants are learning and much support is available to meet the needs of small businesses whose budget for these matters can be quite small. Your merchant provider, merchant gateway provider or PCI approved scanner can help you to understand and manage the protocols necessary to keep not only yourself, but your shoppers safe. I have a post here to get you started on the road to PCI compliance.

It is clearly worth noting that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has already moved on the "Negative Option" marketing technique. Additionally, the FTC recently made changes to the requirements for paid testimonials, blog posts and endorsements. These are also clearly targeted at the web, and I think we can expect to see more of the same with big fines from the FTC in the future.

Not only are these things right and proper in my opinion, but changes to protect consumers on the web are long overdue. I think if you run and honest business in good faith you will not have any issues, frankly, those sapped by the movement to protect Internet consumers are in general those who would strive to deceive and take advantage of consumers.... Giving us all a bad name and damaging our brand as well!

Google Patent

Google has been applied for and been awarded United States Patent #7624101 called Enhanced Search Results. This new patent award will enhance Google's local search capabilities, including the ability to return a result for a business that includes a phone number, address and often a map at the top of the search results for locally targeted search queries. The means for which this Google local search process will be improved are centered around Google's ability to identify and verify addresses and phone numbers associated with the first natural search result.

Previously, you basically had to submit your local business information to Google Local. However, now Google will be better able to query the WhoIs information for your domain in order to *match or validate locally targeted information within your website. Still suggest you submit and verify your business with Google Local, as there are many other tools available in this application to benefit you business... But now searchers will get better local results regardless.

Google United States Patent 7624101

A method includes receiving a search query from a user and generating search results based on the search query. The method may also include providing the search results and information identifying at least one of a telephone number or an address associated with a first one of the search results to the user. The method may further include providing a link to a map associated with at least the first search result to the user.

Deindexed!

Recently a shop owner contacted us with an email from Google for a quality violation. The nature of this violation was spam, specifically hidden text. This website was NOT setup in Google's webmaster tools, but Google managed to send an email to the site owners using normal contact addresses such as info and webmaster.

Exactly what hidden text is and why is it spam?

Hidden text can occur for many reasons, most are in no way malicious. Text can be same color text and background, hidden in html commenting, stuffed in to alts and titles and hidden with numerous CSS styles. All of the common findings of hidden text, malicious or not are a violation of Google's quality guidelines for hidden text. Hidden text is simply text the search engines can see, but human visitors cannot.

In this particular case the text was injected by a third party through a software vulnerability. The email from Google contained a sample of the offending text and the procedure to recover. I will post the edited letter below.... But Google sent this letter with another message. Removal, on the same day this letter arrived the entire site (4k +) pages was completely removed from the index.

So the procedure is to secure the vulnerability, clean up and quarantine affected files check it thoroughly for ANY quality violation and request that Google review and reconsider indexing the site.

Subject: Removal from Google's Index

Dear site owner or webmaster of examplesite.com,

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en. This appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.

The following is some example hidden text we found at http://examplesite.com/:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tatio.

In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from examplesite.com are scheduled to be removed temporarily from our search results for at least 30 days.

We would prefer to keep your pages in Google's index. If you wish to be reconsidered, please correct or remove all pages (may not be limited to the examples provided) that are outside our quality guidelines. One potential remedy is to contact your web host technical support for assistance. For more information about security for webmasters, see http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-sites-been-hacked-now-what.html. When such changes have been made, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en to learn more and submit your site for reconsideration.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

Note: if you have an account in Google's Webmaster Tools, you can verify the authenticity of this message by logging into https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview?hl=en and going to the Message Center.

So what does this mean for you?

Is all of the software on your site and hosting current? Are you an easy target to be hacked?

You see, the cost of keeping your software up to date is part of the cost of doing business.... It is also inevitably cheaper than paying for the lost sales, cleanup and re inclusion request instead.

Many times when discussing the status of their software with site owners I am met with the "we cannot afford it" rebuttal... Ask yourself this... Can you afford all of this? Worse yet, can you afford to be fined tens of thousands of dollars by the credit card companies for failure to maintain PCI compliance?

Just like anything else.... You get back what you put in. If you never change your oil, your car will have much higher maintenance costs and downtime. This is just common business sense, right?

For those who wondered... Google located this and moved on it with full removal within 3 days of the hack!

Aside from the obvious shortage of short and quality domain names, a movement to brand and market entirely new names and ideas is also clearly afoot. We know that keyword rich domain names can help your organic rank for the keywords, but have you considered the value of other, perhaps more effective metrics for choosing a domain name.

More often than not, and clearly demonstrated by our example above Hulu.com, short and memorable domain names can be far more effective for your business. Metrics such as length, phonic spelling and its ability to be remembered and shared are really collectively more important metrics for a successful domain name/website.

Let's take a minute to examine a few effective traits that great domain names have/need.

1. Length: Clearly shorter is better, let's face it, the Internet is about ease of use and convenience. Typing 18 character domain names is not very convenient.
2. Spelling: Try to choose domain names that are spelled phonically, this will help people who have heard (audio) or are trying to remember your domain name a fighting chance to find it.
3. Avoid substitutions: Do not register domain names with letter or number substitutes for words. If you register SEO4U.com for example, you have many opportunities for visitors to forget your substitution. This domain would be okay, IF you also have SEOforU.com, SEOforYou.com, SEO4You.com for example. People will inevitably forget the substitutions, and worse yet, others will register them and camp on your mistyped traffic.
4. Dashes: Avoid dashes and other separators. These are no only unnecessary, but just another hurdle for people to overcome in order to find you.
5. .COM: This is still the way to go, .com domains are still very much the status quo. If you have a .NET for example and not the .COM... Your visitors are going to the .COM most of the time, when they attempt to type the address in from memory.

Let's look at this in a different perspective. Everyone has that childhood phone number they remember... a friend, pizza place or place you used to live. Say that phone number out loud right now. You probably heard yourself say the number in a pattern or rhythm that you have in fact locked on and been able to remember the number. This is no different then children singing the alphabet, just a routine that our brains are able to identify or associate with something that helps us remember it... Or rather, never forget it. This is the quality you really want for your domain name.

Whether you start with a new word, totally undiscovered and build the rhythm or association in to it or is just flows off of the tongue matters not. The important thing, above all is the visual and audio marketing ability in your domain name.

I have a friend, who has a domain name that contains, not only a couple of dashes, but has 5 and perhaps arguably 6 keywords in it. I will tell you that given all the time we spend working together, if my browser didn't remember her domain name I'd have to Google it! Imagine now, since I work with domain names / web addresses all day long how this type of domain name affects a regular Internet user. Yeah, you got it now, don't you?

Ecommerce Security

Maintaining the security of your shopping cart is an ongoing issue, it was before, it is now and will remain so. If you’re a small business with a website trying to break into this fresh, but competitive market, shopping cart software integrated to your website would certainly be a great investment. However, several issues will need to be addressed in your planning and maintenance budget. The more significant will be the issue of maintaining your shopping cart security. This help to protect the privacy and financial information of you and that of your shopper's.

Shopping Cart Security

Let’s begin with the basic concept of online shopping carts. Shopping carts are online software applications which facilitate visitors to make purchases by shopping on the Internet, which are generally paid electronically by some means. If you already have, or plan to have an online store, you will need a reliable and secure web host to host your shopping cart application. You also need shopping cart software that is easy enough to use and functional to your current and near future needs. Additionally, unless you house PHP programmers and web designers in house, you will need a company who develops shopping carts. Note that a developer is neither a programmer, nor a designer, but rather the person responsible for the project completion... Like a contractor, some things they will do and other things like custom programming and design they will have contracted parties complete for you.

A shopping cart at its most basic description is the added website functionality of a check out, which generates the total purchase, computes for the shipping costs, records the needed personal information and processes the payment to the chosen Gateway or online collection service you choose. The most commonly recognized security aspect of the shopping cart lies on the Secured Socket Layer certificate or SSL which encrypts the transmission of the personal information entered by customers up until the time the information reaches the payment gateway. The SSL is the responsible for making the pages address prefixed with “https”.  Meanwhile, the payment gateway or credit cart gateway is receives the information, validates and charges the purchase on the credit card with their own software. Upon validation, you cart is notified and the transaction is complete.

It is important that you let your customers know that you have done your part to make the website secure and hack free. Never underestimate your shoppers. If they feel that something is not right with a your shopping cart, they will most likely leave without purchasing.

To most effectively do business online, you will not only let your shoppers know that you are secure, but practice what you preach as well. Keep your shopping cart, server software and other applications like email up to date ... always. Have your shop scanned quarterly for PCI/DSS compliance... If you accept credit cards, PCI compliance is not negotiable, but rather required.

Be clear and accurate about your shopping cart policies and guidelines. I know it might be tempting to use various legal and marketing tricks, but, you need to remember that your store's visitors are not experts and presenting them with a policy or guideline that is high complicated and overly difficult to understand will reflect on your business’ reputation.... Many will leave for an easier purchase at the next click.

We can only stress the importance of security in these kinds of ecommerce applications. I have heard, same as anyone else, stories of identity thefts before and so have your customers. Most consumers will be looking for shopping carts that can protect them from possible theft of credit card and personal information.

One of the most crucial pieces of a secure network is to use the services of well respected and secure service providers and web hosts. That being said, you may choose wrong early on, be ready to move your website if you need to. While many web hosting companies will make moving your shopping cart seem daunting and impossible... Its not and you have to do what is right for your business.  Spend  some time checking on theses service providers and get to know them.

The bottom line is, you must maintain a secure shopping cart for your customers. You have tons of valid and robust options at  your disposal in the current market, so having an insecure or out of date  network or cart is totally inexcusable.

Ecommerce Product Life

Many will have  never heard of the term planned obsolescence.  The term stems from the period prior to 1920, when retail products were made with the purposeful intent to stand the test of time. These high quality products were sturdy; often hand machined piecework, and ultimately provided and excellent long term investment for the consumer.

Business owners, however experienced and unforeseen problem in the lack of of return customers and residual income. You see, you can have all the satisfied customers in the world, but if you can not convert them in to repeat customers, then the longevity of your business is doomed.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s businesses began adopting the process of planned obsolescence to tackle this business killing issue. Ultimately this meant that the products consumers bought would not last as long because product parts were intentionally designed to wear out near or at the end of their planned lifespan. In other words if a company planned for a vehicle to last ten years then parts would begin to wear out after 10 years or the total number of miles driven for a statistically generated 10 year average.

Essentially a company would use their sales trend and loyalty statistics to determine how long they wanted to wait for a repeat sale and then advertise the life of the product (EX: a blender for fifteen years). Then the company would produce parts or acquire parts as cheaply as possible to only reach or slightly exceed the life expectancy of the product... Thus creating return customers.

By reducing the once very long time between purchases of replacement products the companies actually began to see an increase in long term repeat sales. This in itself breeds additional sales opportunities. For example, you may be looking for a new washer and I can then tell you about the 3 washers I have had from X Company which have lasted long and been trouble free... Boom word of mouth marketing. Note that also, since purchases happened more often, the consumers had the details and information about these products more present in their mind, which only increased the word of mouth marketing as well. America has become accustomed to the need for replacement products. In fact, this technique, carried to its modern extreme we would almost be disappointed if we didn't need to replace common items occasionally.

In the brave new world of ecommerce the functionality of planned obsolescence is a very important component in determining what type of products you will carry in your online store. For example if you develop your business around a popular product which has an extended life expectancy you would need many more customers over a longer period of time than if had chosen a product that is popular still, but is often replaced by a smaller customer base. This long term planning of "meat and potato" sales can be the difference between selling a quality furnace one time and furnace filters thousands of times..... Or both!

Electronic devices differ greatly as they may have the ability to last longer than they are typically used, but most consumers will replace them regularly when the next newest gadget is released. In this case planned obsolesce is made possible simply due to consumer demand for increased functionality and America's love of gadgets.

An online store developed around candles is an example of the need for a higher volume of customers. Your average consumer does not light a candle each night, so the need for additional candles is somewhat diminished no matter how beautiful or well scented the candles you sell might be. In this case a clear marketing emphasis on giving candles as gifts may allow existing customers to more easily convert in to repeat customers.

This post is not really designed to encourage you to pursue one type of product over another, but to draw your attention to the dynamics hiding just below the surface related to consumer purchasing patterns of certain items. This post is however designed to get you thinking about the life expectancy of the item’s usefulness and how you should ultimately market the product for the best reach and return overall.

Press Releases

Online press releases can provide valuable marketing platform to reach the growing online community. Press releases, however, must be well written and well optimized for PR distribution through the press release network. A great press release will attract journalists and will also be well optimized for distribution to your targeted audience. If you cannot get your "news" to the audience most suited for its content... There is no point. This skill alone can drastically improve your store's sales and market reach.

Proper keywords: Selecting key word is the most important part of press release optimization. Be very careful while deciding on a keyword phrase that is pertinent to the product or service you are offering. The best tool I can recommend to search keywords is wordtracker.com. Note that stopping by the Adwords keyword tool will also provide you some additional stemming and search volume information specific to Google.

Keyword or phrase position: Place key phrase into the headline and the title of your press release. Try to repeat it nearly 2-3 times in the content of of a 250 word release.

Starting should be solid: Remember to make your title and initial lines cover that you want to express in an engaging manner. The remaining part of your press release should depict the more detailed information.

Use product name: Repeat placements of the name of your service or product in natural text to make it eminent. For example, write “Search Engine Optimization” instead of writing “SEO” every time, this would make your product name much popular. These varied terms are one in the same, but using both helps to establish relevancy.

Draft it for Journalists/Media agencies: The media agencies and journalists will grab your press release and publish it in their publications if it is well written and newsworthy. Note however, they may slightly edit your press release.

Consider reader’s interest: You should consider to whom you are targeting your press release and their interests. Think, if you were a part of audience, your targeted audience, would you like to read the press release you have written.

Make your press release appear practical: Point out real facts of your company/organization, as readers are already so scholar enough to find out ‘what’s true and what not’? Remember, a soft sell will be far more effective in business writing of any kind.

Include real facts: Avoid untrue examples, exaggerations and fluffy wording. If you find the content using much added extras, make it more natural and real. Your press release should be in active voice, not passive. Verbs in the active voice make your press release live and engaging.

Use only sufficient and essential words: Avoid using superfluous adjectives, extravagant language, or unnecessary expressions like “The most powerful”. Tell your story with lesser words, as verbosity distracts from your content and intent.

Avoid usage of terminology: However, a limited use of terminology would be allowed if required for technical reasons, if you aim to optimize news release for distribution. The finest technique to communicate your press release is to speak naturally, using regular language.

Keep away from too many exclamations: Too much usage of exclamation point (!) may harm your press release. But, if you must use an exclamation point, use only one.  This just goes to the exaggeration rule... Make it real.

Get company permission: Companies are very self-protective about their recognition and credibility. So, get written permission before putting in any information or quotes about any company in to your press release.

Company Information: The press release should include a short description of your company, which depicts your company's correct contact information, products, services and a brief history as well.

Pick precise PR distribution networks: Deciding on press release distribution network is also an important. There are hundreds of free and paid press release distribution networks exist so it is critical to select a distribution process which will suit your needs.

Propose RSS feeds: Assist journalists by offering RSS feeds so that they haul to your website. Through this interested parties will get known that you have relevant release on the topic for, which they are searching for.

Publish releases often: Try to publish press releases monthly to be recognized as news source for news agencies such as Yahoo news and Google news, this will improve both your distribution (reach) and readership.

While this can seem an overwhelming task your first time... Learning to write a proper press release can be one of the most important things you can do for your online business. To get you started, here is an excellent press release layout template.