Ways to Move Up in Search Engine Results
It’s common for our firm to receive phone calls from businesses and organizations asking how to move up to the first pages in search engine search results.
There are two ways to move up in search engine results, SEO and SEM.
SEM
Search Engine Marketing – we call this renting search engine results. These are the pay-per-click ad links that you see at the top and off to the side on search engine result listings. You’ll also see ads appears on websites you visit, these are part of SEM programs as well. A business can setup and manage their own paid search engine marketing, or have a professional firm help them set up and manage their paid ads. **Be sure you’re not locked into a long term contract or forced to keep a minimum budget with the firm that is managing your SEO ad account. If a firm requires this, seek another firm.
It used to be that people only talked about Google Ad-Words, but now Bing Ads, Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads are all players in the paid online advertising world.
SEM costs per-click, every click. If you contact the ad dealers, you can often obtain some free credits to help ease you into pay-per-click ads. Yes, most consumers are immune to the little yellow “Sponsored” boxes next to the paid ads. But keep in mind many consumers can also be frustrated when they click on these paid ad links because sometimes too broad of a search term was used to create the ad and its not really related to what the consumer was searching for. This wastes the paid advertiser’s money for the click and the user’s time.
Apple Brings a New Way to Search
Apple heard the moans and groans of search engine users dealing with having to scroll past paid advertisements in Google and answered with “Spotlight”. Apple is throwing its hat in the search engine ring with its “Spotlight” search product. If you own an Apple device you’re already using Apple’s search tool and helping it grow at a pace of 3% per quarter. Apple takes search one step further and looks through the content on all sorts of online tools such as Wikepedia, maps, your email and Apps.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization – we call this building your search engine results, it takes time and planning, but time and time again SEO work has shown to be worth it for our clients. SEO is our favorite ways to move up in search engine results. If you stop putting money into SEM, your ads no longer appear. If you ease back on your SEO work, though, your website won’t just disappear from the search engine results. SEO requires creating and managing appropriate content and keywords on your website to naturally get attention from search engines, hence building your world wide web presence.
Search engines are constantly changing the way they rank websites and how much information they’re willing to share about what users are typing in to to find your website. As Moz recently admitted, “we can’t do keyword research like we used to do it.” Google shut the door to showing what keywords led visitors to websites last year and Bing is in the process of shutting the door on keyword reports this summer. This makes it even more important to work with an experienced agency to manage your search engine optimization so that your website will appear on the first page of search engine results.
Recipe for Success
We often recommend a mix of search engine optimization and search engine marketing to our clients. The SEM ads will drive immediate traffic to a website while we work on the SEO, which generally takes six-months of three to five hours a month to see results and witness a website moving up in search engine results. Once the SEO kicks in, the SEM ad budgets can be throttled back while maintaining the cheaper SEO maintenance plans.
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The OPM Hack and Data Breach
The recent Office of Personnel Management hack was a data breach and espionage on a large scale – but who orchestrated it, and how could it come to pass? Read on for more info on what might be a modern day case of spying on an international level.
What was hacked?
The Office of Personnel Management within the federal government was hacked. Specifically, two systems were breached, according to Ars Technica. One was the Electronic Official Personnel Folder. The second was the central database behind EPIC, software that collects data for government employee and contractor background investigations.
Officials say the hack likely affected 14 million people – specifically personnel data and background investigation data. The stolen data included social security numbers, names, dates, birth places, and addresses as well as detailed background security clearance related information including finances, criminal history, and past drug use.
When did this happen?
The breaches were identified over a four month period in 2014 by two OPM investigative contractors, USIS and KeyPoint Solutions.
Who was responsible?
Current evidence points to a Chinese Cyber-espionage group dubbed “Deep Panda.” According to NPR, this has not been formally announced because, while they are convinced this is the case, this is the sort of espionage that many governments do and calling China out may be problematic.
Why did they do it?
Unlike credit card data breaches that we have seen recently, this was likely espionage. The information could be used as blackmail, given the depth of data that was stolen and the potential risk to people whose information was leaked. Anyone with security clearance could potentially have had their info stolen.
How did the info get out and why wasn’t it caught?
According to Wired.com, multiple levels of failures were involved in the data breach. The OPM had no IT security staff until 2013. Equipment lacked appropriate encryption and inventory lists of servers and databases. The agency failed to use multi-factor authentication for systems abroad and when it was used, it was not encrypted appropriately. Arstechnica also explains nearly half the major IT systems were run by contractors which OPM’s security team had limited visibility into, but even internal systems lacked the basic security measures and security testing. Ars Technica says that some of the contracted companies may even have employed Chinese nationals from overseas as subcontractors.
It is also thought that an inspector general’s report released in November 2014 might have identified some of the problems in security with the OPM, and may have tipped off the hackers.
Investigations are also focused on the government shutdown in October 2013, where workers were furloughed and those who would have monitored FEC networks were not on the job at the time. It is possible a Chinese breach that occurred at the time might have helped hackers find vulnerabilities in that system to use later.
That Window in the System Tray
Windows 10 Is Coming
What is that little square windows icon in the corner? Where did it come from and why isn’t it going away?
Microsoft is going to release Windows 10 in the near future. Since they want everyone to upgrade, they are using that square in the system tray – that icon – a notice to get people to ‘reserve a copy’ in advance. If you click on the icon it will walk you through the ‘reservation’ and Microsoft will let you know when Windows 10 is available. They released the icon with the last Windows upgrade.
When does it come out?
Windows 10 is supposed to come out on July 29.
How much does it cost?
Windows 10 is going to be free to Windows 7 and 8 users choosing to upgrade within the first year. From there Microsoft has not been very clear on what happens. There will also be a few different versions for Phone, tablets, and higher end users.
Why is there no Windows 9?
The joke is that 7 ate 9? Every second version of Windows is not so good so they just skipped one? Seriously though, there is a lot of ambiguity there and nobody has had a very good answer.
How is Windows 10 different?
I have not used it myself, but from what I understand it is said to have a lot of the good points of 7 and 8. People were not big on the tiles for Windows and were angry the start menu went away. The start menu comes back for Windows 10 (though they still keep some of the tile use.) If anything it should be an easier jump than from 7 to 8.
Will my old computer handle it?
It is said that it is supposed to be lighter-weight and easier on resources than 8 or 7, so it should play nice with even that old laptop sitting on the shelf.
Is it going to be good or bad?
A lot of people who have used the demo version are pleasantly surprised and say it is an improvement over 8. I am definitely going to upgrade my Windows 8 machine to try it out.
Anything else?
Internet explorer is going away. They haven’t said what the new browser is yet, but the code name is ‘Spartan.’
