Virtual Private Servers (VPS): The Virtual Future of Small Business

Hosting, Technology, virtual private network, virtual private servers, VPN, vPS, ,

virtual private serversVirtual private servers (VPS) are re-defining the way small businesses use the Internet. Small businesses who need a secure, private server can connect to the host and agree to the terms and conditions to achieve their goals. Not only is VPS convenient, the Small Business Administration reports approximately 25 percent of small businesses have backed up data using a web host/server.

A private server is a web-hosting medium where information is stored and shared among specific groups who are allowed access to the information. Large web hosting companies provide service to a multitude of companies at one time. With a private server, the web hosting companies offer each business its own secure network. This eliminates issues with one server from impacting another. Other benefits include:

  • Security – Each private server is provided maximum security. Information can only be shared with others who have been given access through pass codes or a direct link. This prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to highly sensitive or confidential information.
  • Cost Effectiveness – Small businesses often run on a tight budget. Using a virtual private server is cost effective. There is no need for expensive storage or additional servers and programs when everything is centralized and accessible from one location.
  • Stability – Private web hosts and servers offer stability as well as security. Because it is a private network, the activities of other companies using the host server will not be able to affect or impact your network in any way. They are totally separate entities and do not interact with one another.
  • Consistent Resources – As your business grows, its information and data storage needs will continually change. By using a VPS system, you have access to consistent and guaranteed resources as you need them. You don’t have to worry about not having enough RAM or losing files because they aren’t compatible with another program in the system.
  • Flexibility – Several operating systems are available to choose from. You can choose the one you are accustomed to using without worrying about learning a new one or converting your IT programs. This familiarity adds convenience and practicality.
  • Maximum Control – You have maximum control over your network. If there is something you need, install it. If you want to upgrade the system or change accessibility requirements, you can. You control your environment, and it stays the way you design it. According to Webhostinggeeks.com, being able to control data storage and this ultimate flexibility make the service worth its price.
  • Designed to Meet Your Needs – Web hosting companies provide networks designed to meet your needs. Their scalability allows you to grow within your system without worrying about having to stop and install new programs or add new resources. Each “container,” or environment, comes with exactly what you put into it at the beginning. Over time, the environment has the capability to expand and grow right along with your business, keeping you up to speed and on track for growth.

Author: Peter Marino is the owner and CDO of reelWebDesign.com and SocialMediaMarketing.co a website design and Inbound marketing company in NYC, respectively.

How to Recover From Google Penalties

SEO, SEO tools, Small Business Marketing, , ,

Recovering from Google penalties

Success or failure of your website hinges upon the appropriate use of Google to rank your site in search listings. Unfortunately, Google has the ability to hand out penalties which can adversely affect how far up the search rankings your website is listed. These penalties are put in place usually because Google believes that your site manipulates the ranking data through various spamming or black-hat SEO techniques. This can result in your website appearing way down the pecking order of sites in your category of keywords making it difficult for potential visitors to find your site at all.

Thankfully, there are a number of steps which can be taken to recover from Google penalties which we will outline below. Follow these steps and your site will hopefully be given a fair search ranking.

First Step: Find Out The Nature of The Penalty

In order to begin recovery you will need to know exactly what type of penalty has been levelled against your site. There are two categories of Google Penalties, Manual and Automatic.

  • Identifying Manual Penalties: There are two types of manual penalty which your site may be effected by. To assess whether or not you have been given an Unnatural Link Warning, log in to your Webmaster Tools account which is provided by Google to help site owners maximise their search rankings. From there look for any alerts directly from Google in your inbox which states that your site violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines in the form of unnatural links which lead to your site, unfairly effecting PageRank. The second type of manual penalty is De-Indexation. To find out if you have fallen foul of this penalty, go to Google.com and type in Site:yourdomain with the appropriate ending (com, org, net, etc.) into the search box. If your site doesn’t appear in the resulting search, you’ve been de-indexed which means that your site is ‘off the radar’.
  • Identifying Automatic Penalties: To find out whether or not you’ve been hit with an Identifying Algorithmic Filter penalty, log in to your Google account and click on your analytics reports. Look through the graph presented which shows your site traffic, if at some point there is a complete drop in visitors which never rises, then your site has most probably been de-indexed from searches.

Second Step: Recover From Manual Google Penalties

If you have found that your site has been struck by a manual penalty in the form of unnatural linking, then do the following to recover a fair search ranking:

  1. Do as Google Asks!: In the original notification mentioned above, you will have been told to look for artificial or unnatural links which point to your site and are being used to manipulate your PageRank. Familiarise yourself with the forms of unnatural or artificial links available so that you can identify them more easily. This will involve a bit of online research, here are is a video from Google about this to get you started.
  2. Locate & Remove Unnatural Links: To remove these unwanted links, log in to your Webmaster Tools and look for the Traffic section. Here you should be able to find stats on the links to your site from other sources. Look for ones which appear unnatural and often added together on the same day in large numbers. Take a note of these then go to this website and type in your URL. Here you will be given a report about the sources back-linking to your site, and which ones may be ‘bad’. Now here is the tricky part, if these links have not been created by yourself you will need to contact the Webmasters of those sites directly and ask them to delete the links. Be warned, they do sometimes try to charge you for this, if they try this scam take a screen capture of the request and attach it to your correspondence with Google about your penalties. Now, use the Google Link Disavow Tool which will let you report these links directly to Google who should remove them from consideration when calculating your PageRank.
  3. Resubmit Your Site For Ranking: Finally you will need to resubmit your website for ranking via Google. You can do this by following Google’s guidelines.

If you believe your site has been de-indexed then you will also be required to apply for reconsideration directly.

Third Step: Recover From Automatic Google Penalties

If you have identified automatic penalties via algorithmic filters, you will need to follow these steps to recover your PageRank:

  1. Find Duplicate Content: The majority of these penalties are brought about by the existence of duplicate content. To find duplicates, take a portion of the content and paste it into Google search exactly. If you have used a piece of content more than once on your sites, then removing the duplicates will help recover your PageRank. If it is the case that someone else has used your content and created a duplicate, then you unfortunately have only three options. First, contact the site owner and inform them that you hold the copyright for that content, providing links, and request that they remove their duplicates or you will have to take them to court. Second, you could contact the web-host who could remove the offending website completely if you can prove the content is yours. Finally, you may have to use a lawyer to threaten legal action if they do not meet your requests.
  2. Remove Low Quality Content:Familiarise yourself with Google’s Quality Controlguidelines. After this, delete any pages you might have which do not pass this benchmark, often pages with little or no content in them.
  3. Remove Over Advertising: Delete advertising which is overtly excessive which could slow down your site and drown out any content.
  4. Increase Page Load Speeds: If your site is really slow to load, Google might not index it properly. Follow these recommendations to increase your site’s speed.
  5. Resubmit: Finally, when you are convinced your page is in a better position to be evaluated for PageRank, resubmit your site for reconsideration.

alice-mcleanAuthor’s bio: Alice McLean is a writer at bestessays.com  with a background in history, sociology and internet marketing. Now she is writing her first book on internet marketing.

What Makes A Piece Of Content Go Viral?

SEO

viral contentGoing viral is the dream of every internet marketer, because when a piece of content goes viral you get a great deal of attention. Not only are you able to reach a high amount of customers, but you will also continue to reach a new client base as the content continues to spread which means that you can make a lot of new customers. Therefore, the goal of every marketer becomes going viral, but it can be tricky to write a piece that will take off the way that you want. The following are a few tips that will help explain how to create viral content.

Skimable

The first thing you need to do is make sure that your article is easy to skim. Headings and subheadings as well as short paragraphs all make content easy to briefly look over. According to Jacob Nielsen reports, only about 20% of the content on a web page is read by users, so make sure that readers are easily able to pick up what you are offering if you want them to continue to share it.

Share Buttons

This might seem like a no-brainer, but many people forget to include share buttons for different social media websites on their web pages. Do not assume that your content is not going to be shared, because you never know which piece is going to take off and what will strike a chord in people. Make sure to place these buttons at the top of every post and at the bottom so that sharing is a simple task for readers.

Practical Information

If you offer information that readers can use right away they are more likely to pass on the hints to their friends and family members via that sacred share button. Hands-on

information that concerns your topic or subject will be a lot more likely to spread. For instance, information about training classes for information technology that includes dates, times, and prices is likely going to get shared with a friend over an article that is simply about training classes.

Rarity

Finally, attempt to write about niche topics or create content that has not already been floated out there into the online world. When people read content that they think is unique or at least hard to come by, they are more likely to share it since it will appear to be of much more high value to their networks. Therefore, explore topics that are a bit outside of the box.

Consistent

The first thing you need to do is slowly build a consistent reputation for your work. By always making sure that your writing is of the highest quality you will slowly start to build an audience that comes to depend on your content. Once you get a large group or readers to trust what you write you will find that they are much more apt to share your content on a regular basis. By writing high caliber pieces on a frequent basis you can easily build a consistent reputation.

Our Guest blogger Mark Chan is a freelance writer. He blogs about social media and SEO.

So, What Does It Take To Be An Online Expert?

Blogging, Business Tech, Content creation, content marketing,

what does it take to be an online expertMany people profess to be an expert but very few actually succeed and it’s not always through lack of talent, in fact the opposite. There are a lot of hugely talented people out there who have yet to be noticed and the reason for that is technological ignorance. The internet is a pretty incredible creation and it has proved to be the greatest tool to help budding freelancers.

There are lots of online platforms that are there solely for freelancers to show their expert talent to the world. It is such a shame that so many people, whose talent is obviously there, just don’t take advantage of the internet.

There are so many simple ways in which you can increase the effectiveness of your online profile and thus dramatically increase your employability. This article will highlight the main points and provide some guidance about how to do it well.

Grit and Determination

It takes grit and determination to be successful in any career (unless you are an heiress or royalty). You have to have a passion and desire to succeed and provide for your family and yourself. If you have this in your armory then your chance of success is great so long as you have the talent to back you up.

Being a freelance, online expert you have got to be willing to market yourself properly. Your portfolio has to be flawless and innovative, don’t stop until it is perfected, it’s pretty much the easiest way to get noticed so take the appropriate care and ensure that it is constantly updated and kept relevant.

You can’t be successful as a freelancer with grit and determination alone, the natural talent and flare and passion has to be there but if you have that, then its the way you promote yourself online that will secure you work.

In Depth Knowledge

This is a given but I feel it needs to be mentioned. You have got the make yourself the best in the business, the go to guy in your field – you know what type of person I mean. If you select the freelance route in your life then you have got to make sure you won’t make a fool of yourself when questioned by potential employers.

If you know everything there is to know about your area then you will provide a confident and reassuring face for the people who are paying you. It is so important to be transparent on your portfolio, ensure the work is totally yours and make sure that you don’t state anything on there that you can’t answer a detailed question about.

An understanding of your Market

Knowing your competition is important, check out similar experts in your field and assess what you can offer that makes you more employable. If there is nothing, do something about it. Also it may be wise to look through the websites that employers will use, such as Enthuse.me, and see what your profile looks like to them.

Ask people what they think and whether it stands out enough compared to the rest of the market. It’s all about refining the detail and if you do this well it can kick start your career as an online expert.

Our guest blogger, Andrew, is an online author with over 5 years freelance experience. He loves to write advisory texts aimed at young professionals.