SITE SECURITY??? WHAT, AGAIN???

OH, LOOK. A SCRIPT-KIDDIE RIPPING OFF YOUR DATABASE.

WAVE TO THE NICE HACKER. HE OWNS YOU NOW.

Hacked:

The Basics of Site Security Again

You log on to your site and notice that, from your administrator’s console, things don’t look right. So you search the site access log and discover the worst. You’ve been hacked. You’ve got a bogus IP address listed in the search log and when you try to access the intruder, all you get is a 404 error message – Site Not Found.

Now what do you do? What did the hacker do? Is there a digital ticking time bomb buried in your site’s code? A Trojan horse, perhaps? And what about that sensitive personal data stored on your site’s database? You know that’s been copied, even though a quick check of MySQL reveals the database is still in tact. Even so, that sensitive data has been compromised.

Any site is vulnerable to hackers, crackers, script-kiddies and other black hats regardless of how many layers of security you have in place. Remember, hackers never sleep and they’re always looking for web site vulnerabilities. These guys could have gained entry to your site in lots of different ways. By placing an order or opting in for your newsletter. Once contact is made, security is more easily breached.

You’ve got a problem. So, never let it get this far.

Keeping the Bad Guys at Bay

Once a site has been hacked, getting it scrubbed clean and back online can be an arduous, time-consuming-money-losing proposition. Better to keep those evil-doers out from the start.

Check your host server’s configuration. Ooops, forgot to do that.

Revisit your server configuration. You can buy the best, locked-down-tight site security but if it isn’t properly configured with server side software it may provide a false sense of security, as in you aren’t getting what you paid for.

Synch up for safety.

Keep security software and hardware current.

We all know that the hacker community doesn’t have much else to do except sit around devising new ways to circumvent the latest patches from Microsoft or security software developers like MacAfee. The security software programmers know it all-too-well so 24/7, there’s a battle going on between security programmers and hackers looking for a trophy and web creds from other hackers.

Update in-place security regularly. Log on for patches and fixes.

Keep meticulous records of all software. (Keep the box.)

Maintain a record of all software in use to support your business including edition number, i.e. XYZ 2.0. Also user key codes and other information that’ll come in handy if a hacker does get through. An online security company needs to know as much about your software as the hacker did. Make it easy for that company by providing make, model and serial number.

Review log files.

At least once a day, check your back office logs to make sure no one has dropped by unnoticed.

Good time to bring up permissions. A lot of small companies maintain a network of computers. One in customer service. One in accounting and so on. A network is a must for even small businesses today, small businesses that rely on the office network to access business data and records of activity.

This requires the company owner to develop a permissions log – a directory of which employees have access to what company data. All departments and employees should not have access to all data. Only that information required to do the job.

Limit the number of permissions. Limit access to data. And train employees in safe and secure online practices, i.e., email scans, daily virus scans across the network and so on.

And worth another mention, keep access logs up to date. Close out all ex-employees and others who have no business looking at order tracking data.

Stay current on viral epidemics.

First, always keep site security in mind. Consider it a key part of your job as online business owner. That requires a pro-active approach to security. And that requires a knowledge of the latest in frauds, scams, schemes and viruses.

A new virus, once discovered, is almost instantly identified on webmaster sites, on security software sites and, of course, on the Microsoft download page. That’s good. It prevents a local epidemic from becoming a pandemic. Keep up with the latest in hacker tactics and the cures offered on the web. If you wait, your site is vulnerable to a viral injection.

Bulk up your passwords.

This is a simple step, it doesn’t cost a penny yet many site owners still insist on using their pet’s name as the administrator log on. Anyone who knows the site owner will be able to hack the site in, oh, about 10 minutes.

Limit access and create undefeatable passwords. Dictionary software is easily available on hacker sites. These programs go though millions of letter and number strings a day until they generate the actual password. So, extend your passwords, use letters, numbers and symbols, and change them often.

Change all passwords whenever an employee leaves the company.

Run a check of all content generated by third parties.

You might download a FREE counter and pick up a dose of key-logger software – software that logs every key stroke made by you and other members of the office network.

Evaluate the source of the content. For example, sites that syndicate content via RSS feed should be Googled and checked by you, the web business owner. Any third party content can be booby-trapped so be careful. As mom used to say, “You don’t know where it’s been!”

Check your links. Check their ads.

Links are important to building connectivity within a small market. But a link is also an access point for a black hat so always consider the company you keep. Inbound links can be used to inject malware.

Same with paid advertising. Some “company” may be pay you $50 a month to advertise on your site, build a shell site or mirror site and steal your sales. You might not notice it for a couple of days – and by then, your legitimate business could be out $1,000s in sales and you’re facing a boggy mess of customer complaints that are only going to cost more to repair.

Just because an advertiser “sounds nice on the phone” doesn’t mean that she’s running a legitimate business. Know what’s on your pages. Know who’s on your pages. If it looks funny, or your instincts tell you something’s not right, do you really need that extra $50 a month? Take care with those who reach out to touch you. They may be picking your pocket.

When you grow, hire a pro.

When you’re just starting out with a new site, money is always tight, always a consideration. In this case, go with a reputable web host that maintains high levels of server security, including security against cross-server (X-server) attacks. And if this is all gibberish, call the tech support team at your hosting company.

However, at some point, when that online business has grown from a part-time hobby to your sole source of income, congratulations. Now hire a pro.

Site security is no longer a priority. It’s become the priority once you’ve quit your day job and now rely on web traffic to pay the bills. Have a security pro check your system and, if merited, hire a security service that tracks attacks on your site, providing higher levels of safety for your “hand-built” digital business.

Yep, despite the fact that the web has been gussied up in recent years, it’s still a lawless frontier in which you have to protect yourself. The web police don’t exist so forget the 911 call. It won’t help.

The secret to a secure site is constant vigilance and automated convenience. Buy good security ware. Properly configure with server security. Update regularly and keep track of who comes and goes, whether an employee, a link-in or a paid advertiser.

Keep security front and center. It will keep what’s yours – yours!

Site security is serious business. If you're serious about your web-based biz, drop me line. You can bet that some hacker, cracker or script-kiddie is working on ways to do you wrong.

Webwordslinger.com

On-Line Guerrila Marketing: Use The Resources of Others For Your Benefit.

SAVE YOUR MONEY.

GUERRILLA MARKETING IS FREE.

IT EXPLOITS THE RESOURCES OF OTHERS.

SO RELAX, ALREADY.

Guerilla Marketing:

Forget Viral. Go Guerilla.

If you read through webmaster blogs the big thing is still viral marketing. Yeah, it’s okay. It’s free. But viral, online marketing assumes a passive posture when it comes to long-term promotion. You put it out there (whatever it is that you hope goes viral) and you pray for good timing and a whole lot of luck.

Example: A few weeks back the national TV networks all picked up this YouTube upload of a baby in a high-chair laughing hysterically at daddy’s funny antics. It was a very funny clip, no doubt. But out of curiosity, I went to YouTube, searched “laughing babies” and got about 200 hits using site search. Clicking on just a few of these uploads (you can only take so much of laughing babies even if they are as cute as the dickens) I saw plenty of good stuff. Funny stuff. Every bit as funny as the clip that caught the attention of a news editor at a 24-hour cable news network.

So, why does one clip go viral while those other 200 laughing baby clips didn’t? Lots of luck and good timing. Slow news day, pop onto YouTube, find a clip of funny baby (plenty to choose from), show on evening news. Wait for congratulations. Easy, right?

Well, it is easy to upload a webcast to YouTube, and you might actually get some organic viewers. The operative word, here, is might. Viral marketing is effective. It’s also annoying, sometimes illegal, mis-placed, offensive, off-putting and a bunch of other negatives that won’t drive traffic the way you anticipate. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That’s the problem with viral marketing. It relies much too heavily on luck and timing. That means you launch campaign after campaign of viral promotion with iffy results. Sometimes it pays off. Other times, it actually hurts your search engine ranking and annoys potential site visitors.

So, instead of casting your site’s fate to the wind, employ guerilla marketing tactics. These are pro-active, extremely focused and much more controllable by you, the guerilla marketer.

Viral Versus Guerilla Marketing

Indeed, they are similar, sharing two important characteristics.

Viral marketing is based on to critical premises:

1. It’s free.

2. It employs the resources of others for your gain. Legally!

The characteristics of guerilla marketing:

1. It’s also free (to you).

2. It also employs the resources of others.

3. It puts you in control. It’s pro-active promotion, unlike viral.

Why is this important? Well, let’s say you launch a viral marketing campaign and you post a bunch of your well-written articles on sites that syndicate content to other site owners. Syndication sites include helium.com, ezine.com and a bunch of other free content sites.

Once you’ve uploaded your article, design, program, artwork or other bait, you give up control over where those elements end up. Your scholarly article criticizing the United Nations could end up on a skinhead site. Great, now your name and your ideas are tainted by your “association” with hate groups. Ugh.

Your rights free photos can end up on competitor sites, or a site in a different language that you can’t even read. The fact is, when you employ these viral tactics, you may get the results you anticipated – visitors that have identified your authority and want to learn more about your good or services. Or, you may have a mess on your hands that’ll take a bunch of work to clean up.

Online Guerilla Marketing

Control over your creation. That’s what you want, even if you’re giving it away.

Place Free Content Downloads on Your Site

So, let’s say you have 50 articles uploaded to helium.com. And your pieces are spread all over the web on lots of different sites, each providing a backlink to your site. Okay, but what if you put those 50 articles on your site in an archives format and allowed rights-free use of the content.

Add “free content” to your keyword phrase list. This accomplishes a few things. First, you decide who can use your content and who can’t. Second, it drives traffic to your site, not to helium’s site. And third, using a content management system, you can track where your creations appear.

The content has to be good to be picked up so if you can’t string words together to form cogent sentences, hire a “ghost” at elance.com, guru.com and other outsourcing sites. You can buy words by the pound – and, because it was ghosted, you own it. It’s yours just as though you wrote it.

When you do offer up a free whatever, make the terms clear. You can download this article and display it on your site. In return, you must provide a link back to my site. By the way, it’s a good idea to track whether links are, indeed, provided. Some less-than-scrupulous site owners may claim the text as their own, defeating the whole purpose of guerilla marketing.

Blog Like a Crazy Person

Okay, if your blog posts sound like they were written by someone who howls at the full moon, you’ll probably get yourself banned. However, if you blog other sites everyday, pretty soon you’ll have lots of non-reciprocal back links.

First, find the top blogs within your area of expertise. For example, if you’re a site owner, Google “webmaster blogs” to see what pops up. If you’re an aerospace consultant, Google “aerospace blogs.” You get the idea.

Write your blog post or response in Word so you can check for spelling and other typos. These things still count as testaments to the quality of the writing. Be provocative. Controversy sells. But be sincere, too. It’s pretty easy to spot a blogger who’s more interested in promoting his or her agenda than providing a forum for public discourse.

Blog posts should be longer than 600 words but no longer than 1200 words. Embed text links to your site in each piece. These embedded links rank higher with search engine bots than the link in the “About the Author” block at the end of a piece.

You should set a goal of three or five or 10 posts a week if you can keep up the pace. And spread around that wisdom and experience. Use different blogs but don’t use the same content on different blogs. Spiders don’t value re-used content anywhere near as much as green, original content.

Become a Yahoo Authority

Yahoo Answers enables you to establish creds and get your URL plastered all over Yahoo. Here’s how it works:

You create a Yahoo account. (Have to.) Sign up as an authority. You don’t have to name a specific field. Just create a screen name, start looking for questions to which you have helpful answers and be sure to end each answer with contact information – especially your site’s URL.

You receive two points for each question you answer, working your way up the ladder from a level 1 authority to a level 7 authority, all the time helping others, helping build credibility for yourself and driving traffic using the resources of Yahoo to spread the word.

Yahoo users vote for “best answers” to questions. If your answer is selected best, you receive 10 points and you’ll move up that authority ladder pretty fast.

Try to post at least two good answers to open questions a day. Questions identified as resolved may still be read but they won’t move you up the ladder regardless of how cogent your answer.

Provide HTML Code for Your Webcasts

YouTube does this. If you look at a YouTube upload, you’ll see the HTML string for the video clip. Just copy and paste the code to embed the video on a site. However, don’t follow YouTube’s example.

Remember, the important aspect of guerilla marketing is control. You want to maintain control over where your content appears so let webmasters know that your webcasts can be embedded on other sites. They just have to drop you a line.

Hit and Run. Don’t Stop Ever.

On battlegrounds, guerilla fighters make short, powerful attacks and then disappear into the jungles or mix in with the rest of the population. That’s what you’re after. Short bursts of promotion repeated over and over.

Guerillas don’t face their enemies on the battle field. Strategic placement. The right force for the task. Control, hit, retreat, reload, hit. Over and over.

So take control of your content to insure its best use for your promotional efforts. And remember, guerilla marketing is short and sweet. A 10-part auto-responder is NOT short and sweet and by the time that 10^th piece of hype lands in the inbox, most users are apoplexic. Enough already.

But a one page, surgical strike aimed at previous buyers who already know your solid reputation is good, guerilla marketing.

The final key to the success of a guerilla marketing campaign is persistence. It’s the repetition that wins the day. It’s the use of other people’s resources – their blogs and websites – that makes it work. And, the fact that going guerilla doesn’t cost anything but your time, you have to admit it’s cost effective.

Using this hit and run strategy will provide the means to take on much bigger competitors and enable you to stay in the fray and even flourish thanks to the use of free, controllable resources.

Go guerilla.

I know, marketing dollars are tight, but if you don't market your site, how's anyone going to find you? Guerrilla marketing has been around for millenia. It worked 4,000 years ago and it works even better today. I'll show you how.

Webwordslinger.com

LET GOOGLE TELL YOU WHAT IT WANTS. THEN LISTEN CAREFULLY!

YOU WANT GOOGLE TO LOVE YOUR SITE, AND THEY'RE HAPPY TO TELL YOU HOW TO BUILD A LOVING RELATIONSHIP.

YOU JUST HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE GOOLISTAS.

Google How-Tos:

Listen to the Googlistas

You want Google to love your website. This search engine alone accounts for 46% of all searches so when you consider that there are virtually thousands of search engines (granted, many topic specific), controlling a 46% share of all search engine users makes you “the cat that everybody’s rapping ‘bout.” And they are.

The webmaster community and Google don’t always get along and that’s understandable. For most webmasters, Google is a prime source of site traffic but if there are too many obstacles to Google success, of course there’s going to be feuding between search engine and those professionals who rely on search engines for their livelihoods. Every time Google tweaks an algorithm, some sites gain, some lose ground – and the reasons are rarely clear.

So, Google put together Webmaster Central, a blog for site owners to post gripes, offer suggestions, identify glitches and otherwise interact with the people behind the search engine. (We can only assume there are people behind Google. Verifiable proof is slow in coming. The entire company could be bot-run for all we know.)

The Google Webmaster Blog and You

Google knows it must keep site owners happy and who or whatever is running the company recognizes the need to interact with professional SEOs, SEMs, coders, designers, graphic artists and every new technology that takes a giant leap forward such as remote site syndication (RSS) that changed the way information was distributed over a weekend.

So, this is where you go to ask questions and get answers from other site owners. Google answers. From regular users like you – the owner of a small, once active site that has mysteriously disappeared from Google SERPs overnight. What happened? And how are you going to pay the rent if your e-store has disappeared from Google’s ever-expanding index?

Posting to the Webmaster Central Blog is a good place to go for quick answers from real people. And that usually means you’ll get an answer you can actually understand rather than an earful of techno-babble from some chip head.

This is also the place where Google introduces new features for webmasters. Just a while back. Google let loose improvements to iGoogle Gadgets for Webmaster Tools.

Here’s how the Googlistas explain it: “After our initial release, we saw clear interest in the gadgets, and plenty of suggestions for improvement. So we've spent the past several weeks working on various areas. The biggest improvements are probably for those of you with more than one site: when you add a new tab of gadgets, your gadgets will now default to the site you were viewing when you added them to your iGoogle page. Additionally, gadgets now retain settings as a group, so if you change the site for any gadget in a group, the next time you refresh that page, all the gadgets will show data for that site. And gadgets now resize dynamically, so they take up less room.”

Functionality has also been improved with the addition of Top Search Queries for your site, very helpful in refining a keyword list. “The data from the Top Search Queries allows you to quickly pinpoint what searches your site appears for and which of those searches are resulting in clicks,” according to Google.

Other new features that improve site performance analysis include a smart, geo-targeting function. This enables you to create several site skins for regions around the world if you choose. This geo-targeting gadget also produces a map overlay of where your visitors are coming from – right down to street level if you’re only seeking local business or referrals. Your site may be hot in Australia but bombing in the UK. There’s got to be a reason. This Google gadget helps isolate what’s working where, by region, with incredible specificity.

And if you’d like Google’s opinion of your numbers and your conclusions, click on Analytics Help Center for a ton of Google-centric info. All good in determining what Google likes and dislikes about your site.

Another tool from Google is the URL Remover. You log on to your administrator’s console over coffee and scan through your stats for the overnight, and you discover that your “Content by Title” section – a back office only function – has been inadvertently Googled, indexed and displayed on Google SERPs, giving anyone (including competitors) more than a quick peek at your business. They can read everything because it’s been spidered and indexed.

Using the new URL Removal Tool, you can quickly remove those private pages from Google’s index and tell spiders that this information is off limits as in DO NOT SPIDER.

Google Webmaster Help

This is one very cool tool. One that is certainly bookmark-worthy.

Google Webmaster Help provides tips and suggestions for improving your site in the eyes of what Google calls “benevolent Googlebots.” Hey Boys, those bots ain’t so benevolent if they mis-index my site because of your messed up classification taxonomy. Even so, when you have as much influence over online success as Google does, you get to call your bots “benevolent” even if they are mindless snippets of programs that chew through letter strings.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good, useful information here from the people who make the algos. So, it’s worth a visit just to see what’s new, what’s working and what you should do about your precipitous loss of PR when you changed the home page text. Something Happened. And this is the place to find out what.

The Google Webmaster Help section also has a very robust, informed community able to answer FAQs from other site owners. You don’t have to wait for Google to get back to you. Ask an SEO or other web professional using the Webmaster blog for fast facts fast.

Today, there are 107,738 messages, questions and answers on crawling, indexing and ranking; 14,019 posts on the new Google gadgets listed above, so you see that these help pages see a lot of activity and should be a part of your daily web scan.

Go To the Source

Google sets the rules and no matter how strongly these rules are debated among site designers, SEOs and other web professionals, the rules are the rules. One way to stay current is by joining the regular online discussions that Google offers. You can check the schedule of upcoming discussions and mark them so you don’t forget. It’s a great way to meet the Googlistas and your counterparts who are trying to figure out how to perform better in the search engine sweepstakes.

Visit webmaster blogs like the one you’re reading now, especially targeted at those just venturing into ecommerce. Some webmaster blogs are highly technical (more for coders than site owners, actually) while other webmaster blogs provide information on everything from digital selling to site design tips.

But if you want the skinny – the unvarnished truth – go to the source. Go to Google and become a member of the Google webmaster community. Download the free Google analytics and join in with companion site owners to let Google know when a problem arises.

With Google controlling almost half of all searches, it’s good business practice to learn what Google wants.

We're all trying to control the machine and, employing best practice delivers the results you expect from your site. I'm here if you want to drop me a line or give me a call.

Play nice and Google will shower you with digtal star dust.

Webwordslinger.com

osCommerce: Open Source Software Site Solutions Simplified

MAKE THE

SALE SIMPLE.

Overwhelmed by Web Site Software?

Check Out osCommerce, an “Everything” Solution

If you’re just in the planning stages of building your web site, you may be overwhelmed by all of the different aspects of site design, construction, administration and marketing. Unless you’ve been occupying web space for a while, all of these different software packages are enough to discourage anyone from launching a web site. Fortunately, the processes involved in creating and running a commercial site (a site that sells a product or service) have been vastly simplified with an OSS (open source software, which means it’s free) called osCommerce.

Create Your Look With osCommerce

Because osCommerce is OSS, it’s being updated and refined constantly by knowledgeable coders and site designers, who add more and more features to simplify your on-line life. osCommerce has it all.

With this one piece of software, you can design the look and feel of your site’s presentation layer using dozens of attractive templates, color selections and your choice of type fonts to give your site the look you have a mind, from quiet and dignified to totally rad and back again. Just click on the template you like, add your text and you’ve developed the site skin in just a couple of hours. Oh, and changing the look of your site is also easy with osCommerce.

The Back Office

osCommerce is much more than an easy-to-use site builder. This powerful tool also enables you to maintain accurate inventory records and shipping records. The package also provides a shopping cart and a consumer-friendly checkout designed to instill confidence and allay fears in buyers. (Read on)

You don’t need programming skills. You don’t even need to know what HTML is. osCommerce provides top-down features to simplify your daily on-line store chores and to facilitate marketing and promotion campaigns to get your new site noticed quickly by search engines and buyers looking for what you sell. osCommerce automatically creates search engine friendly URLs to make sure spiders “get you” when they roam your site.

osCommerce Benefits

In addition to simplifying the design, launch and operation of your web site, osCommerce delivers numerous benefits to new cyber store owners and old veterans at e-commerce.

You can manage products or services with equal ease.

You can add or change content, including product images, with a few clicks of the mouse.

Security is always an issue with black hats (hackers, crackers, etc.) roaming the on-line landscape. Your site is protected automatically with a fully-encrypted, password accessed administrator’s office only you and trusted associates can access. It keeps the kids out of the office.

Contact your buyers by e-mail automatically, generating a shipping invoice that’s delivered to the buyer’s e-mail box as soon as the order is finalized – usually in a matter of minutes.

Manage customer care to ensure that your site’s customer base continues to expand. All orders are automatically added to an infinitely flexible database, enabling you to access customer and order information in seconds.

Print shipping labels directly from the computer screen. Enter the data once and it’s used over and over, saving hours of administrative time.

You can even go multi-lingual to increase the number of shoppers on your site – shoppers from around the globe 24/7. Now that’s sweet.

Want more from this OSS? Regular customers can maintain multiple shipping addresses (great for holiday shopping), complete search functions take visitors to the exact products they’re looking for, develop site analytics to determine your best sellers (then put these items on the “Bestseller’s Page” to drive more traffic to your biggest sellers).

The osCommerce Shopping Experience

The easier it is to make a sale, the more sales you’re going to make and osCommerce makes shopping fun. The osCommerce shopping cart is under the complete control of the visitor who can add and delete products, change quantities and obtain total cost of the items in the cart before arriving at the osCommerce Checkout. Convenient, easy and totally accurate.

The osCommerce Checkout

The checkout is where many sales are lost as buyers abandon their shopping carts because the checkout procedures are complicated, unclear or simply don’t create that level of trust required to enter a credit card number. The osCommerce Checkout is simplicity itself for both buyers and site owners.

The Checkout is also a wonder at keeping records, order information and even an automated, personalized thank you e-mail sent with the order shipment.

Order Fulfillment

Another time-consuming, data processing, keyboard chore cut down to size with osCommerce. You can track order status from the moment the order is placed to delivery to the final destination. Shipping and handling are figured automatically based on your criteria. Induce visitors to buy more by offering free shipping on orders over X dollars. The software even takes care of calculating taxes based on shipping address.

So What Are You Waiting For?

osCommerce is free, enabling you to register your domain name and open up shop in just hours. This powerful tool simplifies site administration so you can spend more time on marketing, promotion and, of course, customer service.

See what site pages attract visitor interest based on osCommerce’s in-depth metrics analysis. This cuts down on “tweaking” time, moving your site to profitability faster and with much less hassle.

From the look of your site, to getting chummy with search engine spiders, and from automated administration to easy order fulfillment, osCommerce will deliver the site traffic you envision – and you don’t have to hire an expensive site designer or purchase expensive site management software.

Looking for software solutions for your site? Drop me a line or give me a call. Let's design the site you envision and grow the business you have in mind - fast!

Webwordslinger.com

Testing out ping.fm, a simplified way to consolodate posting. Post once, and you're everywhere. News at 11:00 http://ping.fm/i2d3U

GUERRILLA MARKETING USES ASSETS OF OTHERS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE.

IF IT'S FREE, USE IT TO PROMOTE YOUR SITE. TWEET, TWEET.

Guerilla Marketing:

Forget Viral. Go Guerilla.

If you read through webmaster blogs the big thing is still viral marketing. Yeah, it’s okay. It’s free. But viral, online marketing assumes a passive posture when it comes to long-term promotion. You put it out there (whatever it is that you hope goes viral) and you pray for good timing and a whole lot of luck.

Example: A few weeks back the national TV networks all picked up this YouTube upload of a baby in a high-chair laughing hysterically at daddy’s funny antics. It was a very funny clip, no doubt. But out of curiosity, I went to YouTube, searched “laughing babies” and got about 200 hits using site search. Clicking on just a few of these uploads (you can only take so much of laughing babies even if they are as cute as the dickens) I saw plenty of good stuff. Funny stuff. Every bit as funny as the clip that caught the attention of a news editor at a 24-hour cable news network.

So, why does one clip go viral while those other 200 laughing baby clips didn’t? Lots of luck and good timing. Slow news day, pop onto YouTube, find a clip of funny baby (plenty to choose from), show on evening news. Wait for congratulations. Easy, right?

Well, it is easy to upload a webcast to YouTube, and you might actually get some organic viewers. The operative word, here, is might. Viral marketing is effective. It’s also annoying, sometimes illegal, mis-placed, offensive, off-putting and a bunch of other negatives that won’t drive traffic the way you anticipate. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That’s the problem with viral marketing. It relies much too heavily on luck and timing. That means you launch campaign after campaign of viral promotion with iffy results. Sometimes it pays off. Other times, it actually hurts your search engine ranking and annoys potential site visitors.

So, instead of casting your site’s fate to the wind, employ guerilla marketing tactics. These are pro-active, extremely focused and much more controllable by you, the guerilla marketer.

Viral Versus Guerilla Marketing

Indeed, they are similar, sharing two important characteristics.

Viral marketing is based on to critical premises:

1. It’s free.

2. It employs the resources of others for your gain. Legally!

The characteristics of guerilla marketing:

1. It’s also free (to you).

2. It also employs the resources of others.

3. It puts you in control. It’s pro-active promotion, unlike viral.

Why is this important? Well, let’s say you launch a viral marketing campaign and you post a bunch of your well-written articles on sites that syndicate content to other site owners. Syndication sites include helium.com, ezine.com and a bunch of other free content sites.

Once you’ve uploaded your article, design, program, artwork or other bait, you give up control over where those elements end up. Your scholarly article criticizing the United Nations could end up on a skinhead site. Great, now your name and your ideas are tainted by your “association” with hate groups. Ugh.

Your rights free photos can end up on competitor sites, or a site in a different language that you can’t even read. The fact is, when you employ these viral tactics, you may get the results you anticipated – visitors that have identified your authority and want to learn more about your good or services. Or, you may have a mess on your hands that’ll take a bunch of work to clean up.

Online Guerilla Marketing

Control over your creation. That’s what you want, even if you’re giving it away.

Place Free Content Downloads on Your Site

So, let’s say you have 50 articles uploaded to helium.com. And your pieces are spread all over the web on lots of different sites, each providing a backlink to your site. Okay, but what if you put those 50 articles on your site in an archives format and allowed rights-free use of the content.

Add “free content” to your keyword phrase list. This accomplishes a few things. First, you decide who can use your content and who can’t. Second, it drives traffic to your site, not to helium’s site. And third, using a content management system, you can track where your creations appear.

The content has to be good to be picked up so if you can’t string words together to form cogent sentences, hire a “ghost” at elance.com, guru.com and other outsourcing sites. You can buy words by the pound – and, because it was ghosted, you own it. It’s yours just as though you wrote it.

When you do offer up a free whatever, make the terms clear. You can download this article and display it on your site. In return, you must provide a link back to my site. By the way, it’s a good idea to track whether links are, indeed, provided. Some less-than-scrupulous site owners may claim the text as their own, defeating the whole purpose of guerilla marketing.

Blog Like a Crazy Person

Okay, if your blog posts sound like they were written by someone who howls at the full moon, you’ll probably get yourself banned. However, if you blog other sites everyday, pretty soon you’ll have lots of non-reciprocal back links.

First, find the top blogs within your area of expertise. For example, if you’re a site owner, Google “webmaster blogs” to see what pops up. If you’re an aerospace consultant, Google “aerospace blogs.” You get the idea.

Write your blog post or response in Word so you can check for spelling and other typos. These things still count as testaments to the quality of the writing. Be provocative. Controversy sells. But be sincere, too. It’s pretty easy to spot a blogger who’s more interested in promoting his or her agenda than providing a forum for public discourse.

Blog posts should be longer than 600 words but no longer than 1200 words. Embed text links to your site in each piece. These embedded links rank higher with search engine bots than the link in the “About the Author” block at the end of a piece.

You should set a goal of three or five or 10 posts a week if you can keep up the pace. And spread around that wisdom and experience. Use different blogs but don’t use the same content on different blogs. Spiders don’t value re-used content anywhere near as much as green, original content.

Become a Yahoo Authority

Yahoo Answers enables you to establish creds and get your URL plastered all over Yahoo. Here’s how it works:

You create a Yahoo account. (Have to.) Sign up as an authority. You don’t have to name a specific field. Just create a screen name, start looking for questions to which you have helpful answers and be sure to end each answer with contact information – especially your site’s URL.

You receive two points for each question you answer, working your way up the ladder from a level 1 authority to a level 7 authority, all the time helping others, helping build credibility for yourself and driving traffic using the resources of Yahoo to spread the word.

Yahoo users vote for “best answers” to questions. If your answer is selected best, you receive 10 points and you’ll move up that authority ladder pretty fast.

Try to post at least two good answers to open questions a day. Questions identified as resolved may still be read but they won’t move you up the ladder regardless of how cogent your answer.

Provide HTML Code for Your Webcasts

YouTube does this. If you look at a YouTube upload, you’ll see the HTML string for the video clip. Just copy and paste the code to embed the video on a site. However, don’t follow YouTube’s example.

Remember, the important aspect of guerilla marketing is control. You want to maintain control over where your content appears so let webmasters know that your webcasts can be embedded on other sites. They just have to drop you a line.

Hit and Run. Don’t Stop Ever.

On battlegrounds, guerilla fighters make short, powerful attacks and then disappear into the jungles or mix in with the rest of the population. That’s what you’re after. Short bursts of promotion repeated over and over.

Guerillas don’t face their enemies on the battle field. Strategic placement. The right force for the task. Control, hit, retreat, reload, hit. Over and over.

So take control of your content to insure its best use for your promotional efforts. And remember, guerilla marketing is short and sweet. A 10-part auto-responder is NOT short and sweet and by the time that 10^th piece of hype lands in the inbox, most users are apoplexic. Enough already.

But a one page, surgical strike aimed at previous buyers who already know your solid reputation is good, guerilla marketing.

The final key to the success of a guerilla marketing campaign is persistence. It’s the repetition that wins the day. It’s the use of other people’s resources – their blogs and websites – that makes it work. And, the fact that going guerilla doesn’t cost anything but your time, you have to admit it’s cost effective.

Using this hit and run strategy will provide the means to take on much bigger competitors and enable you to stay in the fray and even flourish thanks to the use of free, controllable resources.

Go guerilla.

Working with a small marketing budget. Learn to do it yourself and save. Drop me a line and let me show you how to use your web-based assets for max impact and even revenue.

Talk soon,

Webwordslinger.com

HOW MANY WAYS CAN VISITORS ENTER YOUR WEB SITE?

CAN SITE VISITORS COME

THROUGH THE SIDE DOOR?

Add More Doors to Your Store

Good for you. You’re building your own vision on line. It’s not hard – all design elements are click and go so you don’t need a degree in graphic design to create a super-slick, professional looking site. And writing the text about your area of expertise isn’t so tough, so you can do this thing.

But, as you’re building and then optimizing your site there are some very simple, behind-the-curtain tactics you can use to create a bigger search engine presence, to create a more prominent on-line persona and provide more points of access into the guts of your site.

Here are some simple things you can do to quick start your e-business. They don’t cost anything, but they really deliver a punch.

Create more doors to your store.

If you Google “indoor plant care,” somewhere on that first search engine result page (SERP) will be a link to a book listed on Amazon. If I click on that link, I’m taken directly to the Amazon page that describes that book. I didn’t come through the front door, via the Amazon homepage. The Google link took me to an interior page through another access point for the Amazon site.

You see it all the time. Not all of your site visitors enter your site by way of the home page. Why? Because search engine algorithms are intended to produce the most relevant search results, and that’s a book on indoor plant care on Amazon.

Using simple HTML code, it’s possible to create dozens, even hundreds of visitor access points. The key is to use HTML

The information in the title tag is indexed as a separate entity back at the search engine storehouse. The reason? Search engines don’t index web sites. They index web site pages. These bots are none-too-smart with very little in the way of AI so they track letter strings and read title tags.

Add a title tag to each page of your site. This page will be indexed differently than another page on the same site, including categorization within a completely different taxonomy. This is especially true if you sell numerous products or provide a variety of services. Your financial advisor pages will be indexed differently from your insurance broker pages because search engine users want relevance.

Treat each page of your site as a distinct entity. Add title tags that describe that page’s content and be sure that the information in the title tags synchs up with the actual text on the presentation layer. If it doesn’t, search engine algorithms (a suspicious group) may slam you for perceived black hat tactics and ban you. Not a good start to your new venture.

Update Meta Data

Meta data appears above the HTML code that actually forms the structure of a web site. It’s meant to be seen only by spiders and it provides information spiders need to technically assess and index a web page.

Most site designers (even the high-priced professionals) don’t change the meta data on each page since most of the information remains the same. So, to save time in development, coders produce meta data at the outset and use the same information throughout each page of the site.

Though they don’t carry the weight they once did, meta data includes your site page’s . That means you have the opportunity to distinguish each page with keywords and phrases specific to the page’s content. Once again, this turns every page of your site into a visitor access point.

• It provides increased specificity within search engine taxonomy (you’ll be in the right category, even if it’s a niche category).

• It increases the likelihood of seeing some organic search results when your site page appears on page one or two of the SERPs.

• It makes it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for without having to click through drill down screens to find the exact product shown in your site’s SERP link.

• It places your site before potential buyers who wish to purchase a specific product and know make and model of the item. Make and model are the keywords the search engine buyer will use. If your pages are all distinctive, when a search engine user enters “Scabbard 480 miter saw w/change out templates,” you’re page 84 will show up on page one of the SERPs as long as the page has been properly and completely indexed.

Add title tags and keyword tags to each page to create as many access points for visitors as possible. They’re more likely to find you and more likely to stick around long enough to see what other items or services of interest you sell.

Increase On-Site Connectivity

More doors. Only these aren’t doors to the outside web. These are interior doors that lead visitors to specific information and encourage further exploration of the site.

Embed text links, especially when they employ a keyword. Embedded links, in the ubiquitous blue font color, provide doorways for easier access to specific information, they pull the visitor deeper into the site and they assist visitors in their search for information.

Consider embedded text links as sign posts directing visitors to related information. However, don’t overdo the use of embedded links. You’ll have visitors bouncing around like ping pong balls and they’ll eventually move on to another site after one too many pings or pongs.

As you’re deciding where to place embedded links remember this: search engine spiders follow links. They don’t move about randomly. They follow whatever path or paths are present. That’s good. That means when your site is crawled, the spiders will follow the embedded text links. This accomplishes a couple of important things.

First, it assures that the different pages and zones of your site are properly indexed. If there’s any confusion on the spider-side (bots are brainless) your site may be indexed improperly within the search engine taxonomy or system of classification. That means you’ll see more unqualified traffic if you see any at all.

Second, it ensures your site is completely indexed. Again, spiders follow links including links that take them off your site to another, related site. Interconnectivity between mutually relevant sites is a good thing. Search engines like interconnectivity because it makes it easier for search engine users to continue their search.

However, this also means that a site – especially one with few embedded links – may not be completely indexed the first time it’s spidered. Entire sections may be missed. Entire sites may be missed. Web lore has it that some sites never get indexed for unknown (and therefore scary) reasons.

Help the spiders. Help your visitors. Help yourself. Provide more doors to the store by adding title tags to each site page and changing meta data on appropriate pages. Add embedded links to direct both visitors and spiders to useful information about your products or services, order pages, contact information and other key data. These internal links increase the intra-connectivity of individual site pages.

It takes time, especially when your site is made up of hundreds of pages. Just think of each of those pages as a doorway to your site.

Instant expansion of your site’s web presence. Free.

Need some advice on making it easier to make that sale? Piece of cake. Drop me a line or give me a call and let's add some more doorways to your web site.

Webwordslinger.com