I’ve always been told, if an expert hacker wants to infintrate your network, they will.  You can stop a majority of hackers with upgraded software, firewalls, etc.  However, there will always be a select few out there that can get into about anything.  These are the ones you hear about in the news from time to time.

More on ICSA’s Company’s Release

The ICSA, International Computer Security Association, is now offering $250,000 of insurance for customers of it’s TruSecure service.  This insurance will cover customers if their network is attacked by any malicious hackers, even if no losses are suffered.

ICSA’s President Peter Tippet mentioned how they expect claims from time to time because what they do is reduce risk, not totally eliminate it.  A recent study conducted by ICSA revielled that more than 70% of 200 internet servers had security flaws that made these servers vulnerable to outside attackers.  This was the result of the study even though most of the servers had firewalls in place.  This survey study was performed on companies of all sizes from small businesses to fortune 500 companies.

One fact that was mentioned was how operating systems have built in vulnerabilities.  Proper configuration of firewalls is crucial to get the most security oout of your network.

The insurance policy offered to customers pays out $20,000 per occurence for each certified site up to 2 times the customer’s annual subscription.  The $250,000 is the maximum annual payment.

Tippet also mentioned how this insurance is in part a device for marketing.  However the company has signed up 100 customers in the last 6 months for the TruSecure service.  The company now is discussing network risk and liability coverage with a Major U.S insurance companies who may in the future offer coverage with higher limits.

Currently the TruSecure service starts at $40,000 a year and this pays for the complete service.  This service is aimed to protect an organization’s network from outside penetration.  The service involves scanning for vulnerabilities and bringing the networks up to security standards.  TruSecure will also conduct on-site audits, updates, alerts and periodic spot-checking.

This is what I did to hopefully fix this issue.  I’ll follow up on the status within 24-48 hours.

Review updates at the bottom of the article.

First I submitted this into my htaccess file

RewriteEngine on

rewritecond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$

RewriteRule ^robots\.txt$ robots_ssl.txt [L]

This little snippet I found online will serve up two versions of your

robots.txt file; an http and https version.

So the http version shows the robots.txt file you currently have.

Next you need to create a robots_ssl.txt file and upload it to your root file.

Contents of the robots_ssl.txt file:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

What this will do is block all https: urls from indexing.

No more duplicate content penalty? Did it work? Update coming soon…

Updates
Same day 4 hours Later:
Appears my rank is back but https is still showing on search engine listing. However I just checked my google webmaster tools to see if my robots.txt file was recently crawled and it appears the last download was just a couple of hours ago. Ill update this post again once I see the https come off in the search results.

Next Day
Well I clicked online today and guess what, as expected the https is gone and the rank is where it was prior to the shake up.  I even moved up 2 notches on a competitive phrase (which could of been for any other reason).  A good start to a tuesday morning.

The alarm I sold sells in stores for $50 + tax and online for about $30 + shipping.  The alarm sat under my bed for about 6 months and then sold for $40.  I didn’t make all that much as far as profit but I could of bought 3 of these alarms at this price and got free shipping which would of resulted in a higher profit. 

Now the sale went pretty smoothly but you do have to take scetchy people into consideration when selling stuff on craigslist. 

• Some people will make an arrangement to meet and never show up. 
• Others may try to buy your product with conterfeit money. 
• Some will agree on a price and come without the full amount.
• When buying, be skeptical especially with electronics.

With high risks there could be hefty rewards but most things that sound too good to be true usually are.  Making profits on craigslist by buying items online and selling them locally are realistic.  It takes work and research.  Test a few products and see which one works the best.  You’ll find some products to fly off the shelf while others don’t even get a bite.

More on quality links…

Now I’m going to go back to this president voting analogy.  If the president along with a couple of his colleagues votes for you to take office while a few random Joes vote for your competitor, who will get the job?  One of the best ways to get good quality links is simply by having good quality website.  A link from the major news website can cost you hundreds monthly, however if you are the best service in your industry you may find yourself mentioned on this website at no cost to you (especially if you drop a hint about it to one of the editors).  If you do buy a link, which Google frowns upon, your website should be in position were it can be assumed that the link was given for free. 

Those behind Quality websites only have to ask…

Having a good resources is also going to make it easier for you to ask for links from others.  You’ll find by asking you will come up with your own type of quality scoring.  Wouldn’t you like to say to yourself, “For every 100 people I ask, I get 10 links.” Next month I’ll try for 20 out of 100 requests.  What can I do to earn that? 

It will also help to put a little bit of research into asking for a link.  The target website should already be linking out to other quality web sites.  The websites, or web-posts, you want to be included on must also be related to your web site’s theme and have a valid reason for inclusion. 

After making the changes I now feel a little more comfortable about the over all presence of this page and am looking forward to writing more articles about marketing, seo and online business. The overall design is also a bit out-dated (maybe an understatement).

At some point I will probably hold a template design contest for some type cash gift. If this is something you would be interested please leave a comment about your interest and what the prize should be. If I get enough people interested, I’ll definitely set the contest up.

Halfway through the week!

The marketing plan is our tool that permits us to design our road to success.  Every business designs strategic plans for the achievement of their objectives and goals. These plans can have short, medium and long time limits.

The Strategic Planning constitutes a managerial system that displaces the emphasis in the “what to achieve” (objective) to the “what to do” (strategies).  The essence of the strategic planning consists of the systematic identification of the opportunities and dangers that arise in the future, which combined with other important data they provide the base so that a business take better decisions in the present to exploit the opportunities and to avoid the dangers.

As of March 31, 2009 Google has approximately 19,786 full-time employees. Many of these employees being some of the best programmers in the World. I personally feel Google has over a million employees from which 19,786 are paid. Anytime one webmaster rats out another, they’re in a way working for Google. Google runs thousands of servers worldwide and processes millions of search requests each day and about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every hour.

Predict Tomorrow’s Google Guidelines

It’s a living document. Are you currently breaking Google’s Guidelenes? Will strategies today break Google’s guidelines tomorrow? Google guidelines will continue changing as the company continues pushing forward with the goals they have set.

Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Read More about Google on wikipedia.

Lets take a Well known company like Ford Motor Corporation. Do you see the Marketing reps at Ford ever committing any of the following marketing techniques.

~ Hidden text or links
~ Misleading or repeated words
~ Page does not match Google’s Description
~ Cloaked page
~ Deceptive redirects
~ Doorway pages
~ Duplicate site or pages

( Google’s Guidelines )

Of course not, why would they have to. They rank because of who they are for one, along with their 245,320 backlinks pointing to them. Even Ford utilizes social media and RSS of course. Check out their Ford.com New and Announcements Page. Now 245,321, your welcome Ford…as they roll their eyes. Where are their most powerful links coming from? Mostly Major news resources (CNN), Ford Enthusiasts, Stock resources, auto shops; they are the Authority!

SIDE THOUGHT: I once wondered how many News links I would receive if I got a permit to throw $10,000 off a some inner city roof top. If your a local company wanting your company website to rank for your local keywords, this is probably all you’ll need to do with a little onsite optimization. If you decide to do this give me a call and I’ll tell you which neighborhood to do this in…

Will Google ever hit white hat blog commenting or signature linking on forums you visit regularly. Maybe ,who knows. Will Google ever hit links built from news stories or PR about your Company. Of course not, How many Major companies would lose their ranking if Google did penalize links within news stories?

How many links.html pages will you find a Major Companies web address? Many right? Seo’s often say link pages are not that good for building rank but I beg to differ. If the links page has less than 20 links and appears to be a true list of useful links the webmaster manually posted one at a time than hell yea, those links are gold in my eyes. Well maybe silver or bronze but still very helpful when it comes to building rank. Here are several results for “link pages” linking to Ford found here.

A few questions to ask yourself?

- Will this link or strategy be against Search Engine guidelines now or in the future?

- If you were being paid by Google, what would you do if you were notified of a webmaster using your same tactic?

- How do you want your website viewed. Are you providing the best resource in your niche yet?

- Depending on your topic, how can you become well known to your specific target market?

- Would your service, resource or web tool gain interest like a newly developed disease curing serum. This goes back to being remarkable?

1. Start your article off with an interesting title such as 30 better, 5 Cool tricks, etc… Doing this will help increase CTR (click through rate) and at the same time help maintain the Reader’s interest.
2. Add informative links within the posts that may help the reader understand the article better.  Many tend to post links to the Wikipedia for definitions.
3. Do you want to be seen as a regular blogger or the topic expert.  Be the topic expert when posting each Article. Provide ideas that are new and fresh to your readers; that are not provided elsewhere. (An incentive to come back.)
4. Share real experiences.  People love to learn from experiences, not just prediction.
5. Add value by including surveys, photos, statistical data.  A little reseach never hurts anybody.  The more reseach you put into an article, the more authority it will gain.  Are you willing to put in more time than your competitor would?
6. It’s important to take the time and respond to any comments or emails sent to you from your readers. Your readers questions and comments should be your #1 priority.  They are the reason why you blog.  Your quick response will also encourage your readers to revisit and subscribe to your RSS Feed.  Comments in a blog may make up half of the article in some cases.
7. Keep an eye on grammar.  Worpress and other blog platforms will highlight errors for you.  Too many errors can make you look not so cool.  Math has always been my strong point, therefore writing has never been.  Because of this, I usually read my articles several times before posting.
8. If you’re new to blogging, DON’T GIVE UP!  So many people start blogs only to quit a month later. A blog needs time to grow and blossom.  Those who have the most success post compelling articles daily and never quit.  This is why it’s important to blog about something that will interest you for the long haul.

Also read Quality before SEO

There will also be an introduction to mobile marketing during the morning session. This workshop will be presented to you by Cindy Krum of Rank Mobile. This will be the session from 8am to 12pm

During the afternoon sessions, SEO and Social Media will be the focus of conversation led by Lee Odden from TopRank Online Marketing. Once again this will be held from 1:00pm to 5:00pm

These sessions will be held on October 26, 2009. For more information visit searchenginestrategies.com

About Search Engine Strategies

Incisive Media’s Search Engine Strategies is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include the ClickZ network for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research and Search Engine Watch which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Read More.

Send article idea and your website’s url to cole @ thisurl

If your article introduction is approved (usually within a day) you may then go ahead and write the article with a minimum of 500 words.  I cannot pay for your article however I can provide you with a seo-friendly signature back-link to your own website.  I also must approve the link since I’d rather not post an article with a link out to an unrelated source.

Thanks and have a good day!