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If you’re a Tweetin, technie nerd like (some of) us, you’ll probaby already know the latest big search engine news from the current Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco:
It is that both Bing and Google announced yesterday that they will soon be including Tweets in their search results. And, what’s more, Bing will soon be including Facebook updates.
For us Internet Marketing people Down Unda, it can get a little frustrating trying to do the research necessary in this role with tools and information that are so dominated by the US market.
For example, with keyword research, so far only Google gives us Australia specific information on popular keywords that are used in internet searches. And, in trying to assess which search engines are the most popular among Australian users, there is very little research around that isn’t based solely on US statistics.
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Do you have a Facebook profile? If you’re trying to market your business, do you have a Facebook page? Do you know the difference between a Facebook profile and a Facebook page? Following on from the previous ‘Setting up Twitter‘ post, here’s how to get going with Facebook.
As an Internet Marketing tool, Facebook is less flexible than Twitter. It’s not as customisable as Twitter and it’s harder to get followers or, in this case, fans. A Facebook page is for the sole purpose of marketing your business; a Facebook profile is for your own personal use, ie. a way of getting in back in touch with old friends, sending silly messages and ‘poking’ each other! It’s a good idea to separate your personal stuff from your business stuff on Facebook. That way your business connections don’t have to see how childish you can be and your personal connections won’t feel as though you’re constantly trying to sell them things. However, the search engines won’t rank the business page unless you have a personal profile set up first.
Question: If you had turned down millions of dollars for the purchase of your company by another firm which, 18 months later, was able to strike a deal anyway with your company to use your services at no extra cost, would you feel silly?
Well this might be how Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang is feeling about this week’s main technology news. The techno savvy among you will already have heard of the deal that Microsoft and Yahoo have struck with each other. At the beginning of 2008, Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for US$47.5 billion but abandoned the move when Yahoo wanted more money. Now that Jerry Yang has left the building as company CEO, Yahoo has done the unthinkable and agreed to share services with Microsoft’s Bing search engine in a reciprocal arrangement. (more…)
How much does it take to destroy a reputation? What does it take to drastically shake up the career of a powerful person? In Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s case, it was a 46 word email that was sent to a mid-ranking Treasury official that has resulted in ute-gate; allegations of inappropriate financial conduct with a car dealer by the name of John Grant. Whether the allegations are true or not, Rudd’s reputation is being called into question and, if you run a website that is important to you, you should take care to make sure that the horrors of ute-gate do not happen to you!
Have you started Bing-ing yet?
You may have noticed Microsoft’s new search engine which has replaced Live Search and is curiously named Bing. Available in Australia only in beta form at the moment, apparently, the choice of name is down to the desire to ‘verb up’ the word ‘bing’ much as we do already with Google. The idea being that instead of searching for a website, we will Bing it!
Bing and Google have different algorithms for crawling websites which is why you can get different search results. But since Microsoft have confirmed that there have been no major changes to the MSNBot crawler, SEO professionals don’t have to go and work out what it likes. The bottom line for SEO is still all about quality content and good, relevant links.
The biggest difference between Google and Bing, is the presentation. Users will be impressed by the widlife photography currently on offer when they first view the site, plus some results are categorised in the full blown non-beta version. The categories facility is leading some SEO commentators to sugggest that maximising the appropriate categories on your site would be good SEO practice for Bing in order to show up in the relevant categories in search results.
The jury’s still out on how long it will take for Australia to get the full blown version of Bing but meanwhile, try it yourself and let us know what you think.
Read more about what makes good SEO.
For those of you who are not aware of Joomla it is a open source content management system. Hosting a Joomla website is not as easy as a lot of people may be led to believe. Sure there are a lot of cheap web hosting solutions available in the market place. A large percentage, approximately 95% of these cheap web hosting providers will provide the ability to host a Joomla website. This being said a lot of these providers do not actually have their servers geared towards a safe, secure and reliable joomla hosting solution. Suncoast Internet builds a lot of websites in Joomla, therefor it is important that the hosting environment which these Joomla website are stored on is secure, reliable and safe. Suncoast Internet employs an application that tests the security and health of a Joomla installation. This application is referred to as "HISA". HISA tests the web servers environment and security then advises the system administrator of what needs to be implemented to ensure that there is little to no risk of being compromised. The second phase is testing the Joomla environment and security. If your hosting your Joomla based website somewhere it is recommended that you test how safe your site is. You can download the HISA tool and upload it to your website. If you are not able to do this Suncoast Internet can offer this service to you for as low as $89.95. If you have obtained a copy of HISA and have found that the security of your joomla installation and the server it is on falls in to a medium – high risk area then you can check out our Joomla hosting page for a better, safer hosting environment.
Suncoast Internet
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Maroochydore, Qld, 4558
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