I noticed a blip on various news sites yesterday and today. Apparently the Chinese government is accused of attacking/hijacking foreign reporters Gmail accounts.  India and other governments have complained that the Chinese have attacked their government computers.  China claims that they are the “biggest victim of hacking attacks“.

CNET TV explains how the attacks traced back to China in this almost 7 minute video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYhxaWKdsL0[/youtube]

According to The Register, issues in IE6 were the root of recent attacks against Google and other  hi-tech firms last month.  These attacks reported originated in China.

“This attack involved very advanced methods, with several pieces of malware working in concert to give the attackers full control of the infected system, at the same time it attempts to disguise itself as a common connection to a secure website,” he explains. “This way, the attackers were able to covertly gather all the information they wanted without being discovered.”

In a Security Advisory IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8 on supported editions of Windows XP, Vista and 7 are vulnerable.  Microsoft was aware of attacks specifically against IE 6.  Microsoft listed a few workarounds that will not eliminate the vulnerability it would help block similar attacks.  Of course these workarounds can reduce functionality.

According to the The Register, the governments of Australia, France and Germany are suggesting users download Firefox, Safari or Chrome as alternatives to IE (until Microsoft gets the issue fixed).  Microsoft has promised to adjust its standard patch cycle to address this issue.

Unless your computer cannot handle a browser newer than IE 6, it is truly time to download a newer browser. The Internet and Web are changing and evolving and the newer versions of Firefox, IE, Safari, Chrome are available to better display the web to you.

This is a significant security issue. Without trying to get too technical, this attack has the potential to affect a large quantity of computers.  If you have ever had to deal with viruses or other malware on your computer, this has the potential to be as bad as you have ever seen.  I am sure that Microsoft will patch the vulnerabilities, but this is an excellent opportunity to verify the security on you computers.  It is time to verify that you have updated Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware software installed and know how to use it.

If you have questions about how to make sure you are safe, this article from Stepcase Lifehack has 8 easy to understand guidelines.  Whether you use free or commercial tools to protect your computer, make sure you use them and they are up to date.

–Karl Johnson, Tech Dog

Did you know you can send to SMS (text message) subscribers? Most of your customers take their mobile phone with them wherever they go so it’s a great way to reach customers with last-minute deals, daily specials, hot news.  When sending text-messages (SMS), you can exclude recipients you’ve already emailed with WoofEmail–or send to your entire list at once according to their preference to receive by email or SMS.  The cost is the same; just 1¢ per destination, no matter where you send.

Our WoofEmail mobile marketing tool just became more powerful. Up until now, your mobile campaigns were sent from a default number. You can now send your campaigns from the number that you specify. Which means you can receive direct responses. We call it SMS Sender ID.  Contact Sabrina to find out more. 360.642.4431

As 2009 drew to a close, Google still enjoyed roughly 70% of search engine market share. Yahoo! dropped from ~17.5% to 15% over the course o the year and Bing slid into nearly 10% after starting the year at just 5.5% and AOL and Ask dropped to roughly 2% each (source: The Nielsen Company). Together, these 5 search monoliths make up nearly 99% of all search online …and Yahoo and Bing are, from the perspective of search market share, the same company.

While Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are complex subjects, it doesn’t take a Mensa member to infer that watching the moves of these companies is imperative if you want your small business website to show up in a search.

Here at beachdog.com, our SEO approach has been “white hat conservative”, which means we use tried-and-true techniques we believe will give our customers a longer-term ‘organic’ placement in the search engines. Our holistic approach to small business marketing means we look at a company’s marketing goals and their resources before making recommendations. After doing so, most of our customers find a stronger return on investment from a diversified marketing mix than they do in being highly competitive in the highly competitive world of search.

In our 13+ years of SEO and SEM, our techniques have certainly changed, but have also had one thing in common: a reasonable amount of space on the search engine’s results page. We could expect our clients to come up with a top-10 rank and that a top-10 rank was enough. This is because, while ‘top-10’ could mean first on the page Monday, eighth on the page Wednesday and fourth on the page Friday, top-10 meant the first page of results. And, while we’ve had a variety of monitor sizes, the web has been oriented to a desktop- or laptop- shaped screen, giving non-paid listings at least ten placements on the first page of results.

Enter 2010.

Since Google is the big boy of the team, let’s just take a minute to talk about what we expect from the king of search this year.

Real-Time Search. Back in December, Google announced that it had started using real-time information found on blogs, news sites, and social networking sites. Users now have access to information more quickly, with dynamic sites quickly jumping to the top of the search heap due to their fresh and relevant content. Small business owners with sites that don’t get updated regularly are going to find themselves no longer in the search game, regardless how well optimized these sites may be.

Mobile Search. Google is has released a mobile phone application called ‘Google Goggles’ which lets you search by taking a photograph. For example, you take a picture of a book cover and are presented with Google results page that includes title and author information, as well as links to Google’s book preview and price comparison searches, as well as organic search results. Modules include search categories for landmarks, artwork, places, logos, wines, books and contact information. Another exciting change for users, small business web site owners are undoubtedly contemplating how to compete in a search method that doesn’t involve keywords or inbound links or any of the SEO elements that are typically important to Google.

Google Caffeine is one of Google’s biggest behind-the-scenes updates in more than three years, and is intended to improve the speed and accuracy of searching on Google while also including content from social media sites like Facebook & Twitter. The big question for small business, whenever Google does a major update, is what havoc it will wreak on their site’s ranking. That is yet to be seen with caffeine although beta testing indicated that caffeine is, indeed, giving the jitters to site rank.

Google Sidewiki shows up in your browser’s sidebar and is a bevy of relevant information on any web page, information contributed by USERS.  Users can read and write entries in this sidebar, and the comments
are saved and displayed beside that web page when subsequent visitors
view the page (if they have Sidewiki installed as well). The entries
are not ranked with the most recent entries first; instead, they are
ranked using a Google algorithm that ranks the most useful,
high-quality entries first, and takes into account other criteria
Google deems important.

The implications of this user-friendly tool are far-reaching for site owners.  This definitely adds another layer of complexity to managing your company’s online reputation, since now you need to monitor your web page comments in Sidewiki as well as all the other tracking & reporting you do for your web site and social media marketing efforts.

Google Place Pages extend your existing Google Local information in Google Maps to an online profile for your business.   You can get to a Place Page by clicking on “more info” in search results, or by clicking “more info” in the mini-bubble.

We’ve been telling clients for more than a year now to ‘trick out’ their business listing here, which costs only the time it takes to fill out the form.  Doing so increases your business’ visibility and improves your content in Google, especially since the search engine started giving these map-based results higher placement on the search results page than organic search results.  Now you also needed to monitor your Place Page for accuracy because these pages also display aggregated information about your business that Google finds throughout the internet.  Reviews of your business, search results relevant to your business name and even paid listings by your competitors can show up here, making managing your online reputation even more important.   However, it is also a great opportunity to provide Google with the most complete, updated, search-engine-optimized information about your business.

Site-Loading Times are going to be more and more important in 2010.  According to Google’s unofficial spokesperson, Matt Cutts, the time that it takes your web page to load into a browser window is now a much more important factor in your Google positions. If your web site is image-heavy or has been built with Flash, a tables-based layout, or contains local formatting code, chances are that your page download times will cost you in the Google search results. If your site hasn’t had a facelift in a year or two, now is the time to invest in a web site upgrade to convert your site from old, tables-based HTML to a new, cleaner, and faster CSS-based site with modular files for formatting.

Personalized Search. Google is experimenting with ‘Personal Search’, which will deliver specific results to users based on their search history and personal preferences. If it does launch in 2010 as rumored, each user will get a different set of results from the same search, tailored to what Google believes is that user’s personal preferences.  This will make it nearly impossible to optimize your business so as to use search to get in front of potential customers since you can’t optimize for personal preference.  The good news is, if you’ve been following our prescription to make search only a part of your online marketing plan, you’ll be even better poised to compete as your search-heavy competitors scramble to do what you’ve already been doing.

2010 promises to be an exciting year in online marketing.  The implications of these changes are far-reaching and yet to be fully realized. Don’t be surprised – or too worried – if your rankings bounce around a bit as the search world stretches and morphs. That is, unless you’ve been following ‘cutting edge’ or ‘black hat’ search rank gurus.  If that’s your SEM game, get ready for the ride of your life and open your wallet a bit wider to stay strapped in.

We’re confident that business owners who:

1. Provide good customer service in their stores and online
2. Stick to a diversified online marketing plan
3. Follow established best practices and ‘white hat’ SEO techniques like providing great content on a regular basis and
4. Continue to build inbound links from quality sites while they
5. Manage their online reputation

…will come through better than just okay.

If you’ve been lax in creating or following your online marketing plan*, and need someone to help you with an analysis of how well-poised your company is to weather the changes, give us a call (360-642-4431) or email (webmaster@beachdog.com).

*We don’t judge; we meet you where you are, inventory your business’ branding and marketing, your reputation on and offline, and the resources you have to allocate to the effort.  Then we work with you to create a customized plan that gives you the strongest return on your investment.

Pepsi has been advertising during the Super Bowl for 23 years and is NOT placing TV ads during this year’s Super Bowl.  Why?  Because it believes it can get a better return on investment by putting those marketing dollars into social media.

It’s not all guesswork, either.  A new study from Wetpaint and The Altimeter Group now shows that companies who were the most engaged in social media marketing increased revenues by 18% , versus companies not engaged in social media marketing, who showed an average decrease in revenues of 6%.

What can your small business do to take advantage of marketing via social networks?

Keep it simple.  Don’t let the incredible number of social networks overwhelm you.  Start with the popular kids – YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.  Set up a business profile on each of them.  You can expand to other networks after you’ve gotten your feet wet–and identified which might serve your target niche markets. 

Don’t lose site of your brand.  Be sure you’re using your logo, your color scheme, the look and feel of your website and other marketing materials when you set up those profiles. Keep your non-verbal communication effective by making it consistent and professional.

Take the time to learn the ropes.  Each of these system has advanced features that benefit businesses, from places you can post custom content, to putting badges and widgets on your site, to use RSS feeds between your site and the social networks.  Find out what’s available and maximize your profile on each network.  Then…

Integrate!  To keep your sanity, and to get the most out of your involvement in each of the networks, you’ll want to integrate your profiles to work as one.  For example, your latest blog post might push to facebook and the first 140 characters of it also post to twitter.  We can help you set this up if it seems overwhelming.  Check out ping.fm, a wonderful site that lets you post to all your social networks at once!  Getting integration in place can seem challenging but it will save you a lot of time in the long run while also expanding your reach.

Give each social network individual attention.  While this may seem the opposite of the advice to integrate, it really isn’t.  Decide which information you’ll post to all profiles and integrate your networks to make that happen.  Then give some individual flavor to each.  One restaurant we know has their bar manager post regularly to their facebook profile while their chef de cuisine tweets (posts to twitter).  This gives each location a voice and a personal touch.  Social networking is about building relationships with your customers and potential customers.  If your social networking integration makes your efforts seem automated to your friends/fans/customers, you’re spinning your wheels.

Plan on, and be committed to, posting regularly.  This is frequently the hardest part of any marketing plan for small business owners.  Social Network Marketing is fairly inexpensive in terms of cash but not in terms of time.  You must commit to spending at least a few minutes on a regular basis to develop relationships with your customers.  Log in regularly, read and respond to comments and post new content.  If you have employees, consider delegating portions of this effort to them.  In our experience, the companies who create a social media strategy, outlining which social sites the company will use, what content will be posted to each, how often, and who is responsible, have the most success.

Beware.  Social Networks are a grand way to poke a hole in your bottom line and let profits run out when they aren’t properly managed.  Make a plan and stick to it.  You’ll soon be realizing the benefits of social media marketing as a component of your overall marketing mix.

We’ve all heard of Twitter and most of you are wondering whether you should be using it for business and, IF you should, HOW. Twitter can be confusing at best, and downright intimidating to many newcomers. Our friends at Noupe.com have composed a Twitter guide that gives you everything you need to get started, or to improve your “twefficiency”.  From etiquette to tools to how to find people to follow, retweets, lists…and how to use it given your industry, this guide is a good place to get your, er, beak polished.