Google has said before that search engine optimization, or SEO, can be positive and constructive—and we’re not the only ones. Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find. Search engine optimization includes things as simple as keyword research to ensure that the right words are on the page, not just industry jargon that normal people will never type.

“White hat” search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines. Good search engine optimization can also mean good marketing: thinking about creative ways to make a site more compelling, which can help with search engines as well as social media. The net result of making a great site is often greater awareness of that site on the web, which can translate into more people linking to or visiting a site.

The opposite of “white hat” SEO is something called “black hat webspam” (we say “webspam” to distinguish it from email spam). In the pursuit of higher rankings or traffic, a few sites use techniques that don’t benefit users, where the intent is to look for shortcuts or loopholes that would rank pages higher than they deserve to be ranked. We see all sorts of webspam techniques every day, from keyword stuffing to link schemes that attempt to propel sites higher in rankings.

The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end we’ve launched Panda changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results. And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

Here’s an example of a webspam tactic like keyword stuffing taken from a site that will be affected by this change:

keyword-stuffing

Of course, most sites affected by this change aren’t so blatant. Here’s an example of a site with unusual linking patterns that is also affected by this change. Notice that if you try to read the text aloud you’ll discover that the outgoing links are completely unrelated to the actual content, and in fact the page text has been “spun” beyond recognition:

link-spam

Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.

The change will go live for all languages at the same time. For context, the initial Panda change affected about 12% of queries to a significant degree; this algorithm affects about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice. The change affects roughly 3% of queries in languages such as German, Chinese, and Arabic, but the impact is higher in more heavily-spammed languages. For example, 5% of Polish queries change to a degree that a regular user might notice.

We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites. As always, we’ll keep our ears open for feedback on ways to iterate and improve our ranking algorithms toward that goal.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer

http://insidesearch.blogspot.de/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

BANG PA-IN, Thailand — In the neck-deep floodwaters of an industrial zone here, workers are using Jet Skis and wooden skiffs to transport stacks of computer components out of waterlogged factories.

Three weeks after monsoon run-off swamped more than 1,000 factories across central Thailand, the brown, corrosive floodwaters have only slightly receded, leaving the world’s largest computer makers without a reliable forecast about when crucial parts will be available once again.

Consumers worldwide could see increases of at least 10 percent in the price of external hard drives because of the flooding, according to Fang Zhang, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, a market research company. The effect will be less noticeable for laptops and desktop computers, he estimated, because demand has been weakened by the current global economic malaise.

The image of Thailand as a land of temples, beaches and smiles has over the years been reinforced by the country’s tourism advertising campaigns. But the flooding here, the worst in at least five decades, has revealed to the world the scale of Thailand’s industrialization and the extent to which two global industries, computers and cars, rely on components made here.

The world’s biggest names in hard-drive manufacturing, for example, operate from Thailand, where suppliers and customers come together.

Until the floodwaters came, a single facility in Bang Pa-In owned by Western Digital produced one-quarter of the world’s supply of “sliders,” an integral part of hard-disk drives. Over the weekend, workers in bright orange life jackets salvaged what they could from the top floors of the complex. The ground floor resembled an aquarium and the loading bays were home to jumping fish.

“Surely one of the inevitable impacts of this is that never again will so much be concentrated in so few places,” said John Monroe, an expert on storage devices at Gartner, a technology research firm. He estimated it would take a full year for hard-drive production to return to preflood levels.

The shortage is not entirely bad news for the disk-drive business, especially for those companies whose facilities were not damaged, such as Seagate, which has a factory high and dry on a plateau in northeastern Thailand. Mr. Monroe said price increases will help lift industry profit margin to about 30 percent from about 20 percent before the floods.

The flooding, which is now spreading through the northern reaches of Bangkok, is the second reminder this year of the vulnerability of global supply chains, coming just a few months after the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan and shut down facilities that produce crucial car electronic components.

Thailand became a hub for Japanese car manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s, partly because car makers sought to escape the punishing effect of a rising Japanese yen.

Today, as a measure of Thailand’s importance to the global automotive supply chain, the flooding has forced Toyota to slow production in factories in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, North America, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa and Vietnam. Honda, the carmaker most affected by the Thai floods, has also slowed production at factories in several countries.

The initial forecasts of damage to the auto industry were too optimistic, said Hajime Yamamoto, the Thailand director of IHS Automotive, an automotive market forecasting company based in Detroit. “It’s getting even more serious than what we expected,” he said. “Every week we actually revise our estimate for the scale of losses.”

Mr. Yamamoto predicted that car manufacturers and their suppliers would seek to diversify their operations to other countries.

“They will try to balance their expansion so they don’t have concentration of risk in Thailand,” said Mr. Yamamoto, who named Indonesia as a place Japanese suppliers were likely to expand.

The slow-moving floodwaters, which are an accumulation from this year’s unusually strong monsoon rains in northern Thailand, are gradually draining into the sea. At what is known as the Bang Pa-In Industrial Estate, trucks have delivered massive pumps. Workers said they would start trying to remove water from the area on Monday.

The floodwaters descended to this area an hour north of Bangkok in early October. Efforts to defend industrial areas with sandbags and other barriers were futile.

“There was no way we could have held back the water,” said Samruay Pakubol, a welder at an automotive parts factory here. Now out of work, he takes passengers on a wooden boat down the streets of the industrial zone. Workers have caught and killed crocodiles swimming in the area, he said.

Dale Schudel, managing director of IntriPlex Thailand, a company that makes components for hard-disk drives, said his factory in nearby Ayutthaya had floodwaters almost six feet deep. But pumping out the water, which will take about two to three weeks, is only the beginning of the cleanup. Mr. Schudel described the water as “highly corrosive.”

“I think you have to ask yourself, if any factory in the world were submerged in that much water, how much damage would there be?” he said.

Mr. Schudel predicted that the majority of companies affected by the flooding would rebuild their factories in Thailand. “Their customers are here and their suppliers are here,” he said.

But like other investors, Mr. Schudel said he was looking to the government to put in place flood prevention measures.

A large share of the industrial growth in Thailand has occurred on the flood plain north of Bangkok. Rice paddies were paved over to make way for factories, suburban housing and shopping malls, blocking the natural path and absorption of water during the monsoon season.

Last week, Thailand’s science and technology minister, Plodprasop Surasawadi, told a Thai newspaper that he was “one million percent sure” there would be flooding again next year.

“This is a natural phenomenon that you cannot escape,” he said. “We are living in a period of climate change.”

The country must build canals and drainage systems and adapt its roads and crop-planting schedule to mitigate future flooding, Mr. Plodprasop said.

One problem is that the Thai government lacks a master plan for flooding, said David Lyman, chairman of Tilleke & Gibbins, a prominent law firm in Bangkok. Flood prevention is hampered by interagency jealousies and the vested interests of landowners who are reluctant to give up property for flood-mitigation projects, he said.

Foreign companies affected by the flooding will not leave the country en masse, Mr. Lyman said. The country remains relatively inexpensive and a “nice place to live” despite the flooding, he said.

“Thailand will be able to get away with this once — but not twice,” he said. “They will have to do everything humanly possible to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

* Story from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/business/global/07iht-floods07.html?pagewanted=all

Popular Social Networks

If you have been hiding in a cave for the last 5 years and do not know what social networking is or never heard of Facebook or twitter then here is a link to tell you more about the definitions of Social Networking and its Service roll: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service

I am sure by now almost everybody has heard of social networking, and all the hype on how using social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace etc, as a platform for marketing business or services are successful.

But how many business are not tapping into the social networking revelation?

Facebook and Twitter both have an amazing reach to millions of web users.  Using these social networks have proven to build credibility and new customers for hundreds of thousands of online store owners.  Building brand awareness for your company is not easy, and its not cheap. Advertising on social networks is a great way to get your message out about new products, services, special offers, free newsletters and more.

Using social marketing has been a eye opener for me. At first, I didn’t understand how social network marketing could really help our business, but after experimenting a bit, I was amazed and enthused at the potential it offered!

Advertising in Twitter & Facebook has helped to broaden our business exposure & brand into a wider audience …  and at such reasonable prices! the results have been excellent!

If you’re ready to tap into the social market and promote your business on these well-established networks, take a look around on Google or ask us how you can tap into these powerful mediums and expose your company or business brand, products or services.

Ignoring the Social Phenomenon of Facebook and Twitter would be like ignoring television 50 years ago!  The social sites are here to stay…and still GROWING!  So don’t miss out on this VERY AFFORDABLE way of marketing your business online!

We have chosen the new year to say goodbye to our company Brand – Koowii,  and we welcome an energetic, exciting new brand – Nerdster to lead the way into the future.

The Name Nerdster was chosen from a list of several names that would best describe our staffs attitudes and our industry.

The choice was unanimous, in some way we have all been called a nerd at some point in time and the urban dictionary puts Nerdster as a “Cool – Nerd”, a Richie Cunningham cross Fonzie type character .

We all love Happy Days and when this was presented to us as an option we just loved the idea.

From their we had our designer come up with a mascot that would represent our Cool Nerd and after just a week of designing concepts, Nerdy was born.

The excitement around the office and the fun that our new brand represents is so energetic that staff have been working back in their own time and coming to work early with ideas they have had during the previous night that they just wanted to  share with us all.  I would like to thank everybody for their hard work over the last few months putting the new site together and all the planning that went into the Brand change migrations.

We are all looking forward to what 2012 will bring Nerdster, lets hope for a prosperous 2012 for us all.

HNY 2012

- Mick O’Shea

Sometimes it’s just not possible to confine your web hosting requirements within a single package; you need something that gives you ample space to expand your wings in whatever direction you desire. In such cases you require an all-in-1 web hosting package.

What is an all-in-1 web hosting package?

As the name clearly suggests an all-in-1 web hosting package provides everything you require to launch a website and start doing your business. Now why would you go for an all-in-1 package when you can individually accomplish tasks such as registering a domain name, getting a website designed and developed according to the chosen platform, hosting it somewhere, installing and customizing applications like shopping carts and search engine optimizing your website to get targeted traffic from search engines?

You can easily carry out these tasks individually but the problem is this will require a lot of effort and expense. If you are a prudent entrepreneur you are well aware that your time is best spent on activities that are your core strengths rather than performing administrative and troubleshooting tasks. An all-in-1 package takes the worry of setting up the website off your shoulders so that you can completely focus on your business.

All-in-1 web hosting package provided by Nerdster.com.au

As is the case with all our web services the primary purpose of our all-in-1 web hosting package is making everything for you as seamless as possible so that you can be your productive best. When you are pumping all your energies into setting up and expanding your business you can rest assured that your online presence is being taken care of by one of the best teams of web developers, server administrators and search engine optimisation experts. It is like walking into a well-furnished office on the very first day and entertaining numerous customers and clients as if you have been running this business for months if not years.

What do you get in our typical all-in-1 web hosting package?

We have different all-in-1 web hosting packages tailored to myriad online business requirements. At Nerdster you have three all-in-1 web hosting packages to choose from, namely:

• · Starter package $1600
  The Starter package gives you everything to establish a basic online presence with least effort and investment.
  • A customized design from web design team
  • 7 website pages – content supplied by customer ($60 for every extra page afterwards)
  • Admin area to add or update your web pages
  • 12 Months Web hosting
  • 24/7 hosting and technical support
  • Search engine registration
• · Ecom package $3690
  Our Ecom package is the most comprehensive all-in-1 web hosting package we can provide you.
  • A customized design from web design team
  • 7 website pages – content supplied by customer ($60 for every extra page afterwards)
  • Magento Shopping Cart
  • Configuration of Shipping with Australia Post
  • Payment Gateway configuration with PayPal
  • Customised order and invoice emails
  • 256 BIT SSL certificate to encrypt your customers data for security
  • 12 Months Premium Web Hosting plan
  • 24/7 hosting and technical support
  • Search engine registration

With the yearly cost of  you get 12 months of hosting with all the features of the premium web hosting plan. It gives you a domain name whether it is .com, .net, .info or .org along with a customized web design template containing 15 pages of supplied content ($60 for every extra page afterwards). To give you an immediate search engine traffic boost we provide you our search engine registrations. In case you want to sell products through your website this package also comes with a shopping cart system coupled with a payment gateway setup and a shipping system and all is made completely secure by a 256BIT SSL certificate.

So what is holding you back? Don’t let the limitations of your hosting plan curtail your business aspirations. Contact us today to explore the limitless possibilities with us. We love to see you grow!

-Nerdy

The world today is full of uncertainty and risk, which is why we have insurance policies for nearly everything.  Although a web hosting provider may supply internal back up options, you should NOT rely 100% solely on your Hosting provider to manage a back up of your web sites data.

Surprisingly, most people do not know how important regular and dedicated backups are for site security. For example, should anything happen at your hosting company – say the server your site is hosted on goes bad and needs to be replaced – You’re going to need to restore your site data to get it back on the web. How much would that cost you in downtime, frustration, loss of sales and customer confidence? Sure, all of your settings will still be there, such as the domain name and your IP address, but the actual data for your site could be lost. Hosting companies do not guarantee site backups, and most actually state in their terms and conditions that site owners are responsible for performing their own backups.

Your website is the public face of your company, not to mention a sizable investment. You wouldn’t drive your car around without insurance or own a house without homeowners insurance, so why have a website with no safety net? Our dedicated backup service is specifically designed to ensure that your website is backed up on a weekly basis, as well as to provide the means to quickly and easily restore your website should the need arise.

Many years ago, I had several websites hosted with a large web hosting company in the USA, this company is very well known and has been in the industry for over a decade. I used my hosting account with this USA company to host a close friends Parents business web site which sold pet food online. I also had a couple of forums with several thousand members that I had worked very hard to get over a couple of years and some micro sites.

I had 2 back ups from the first 2 months, but soon became too busy to process the back up and just let it go. 18 Months later the data center experienced a large outage and data was lost. I was devastated that they had lost my data, not just my data but my close friends family business and all their customers, products, recent invoices and orders. I spent 48 hours of my time going back and forth via their live support, international phone calls and emailing my frustration and anger towards them. They pointed out that in their terms and conditions they clearly stated that they are not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. And when I registered for hosting that i had to agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files.

I was thinking “Who reads this stuff” I didn’t have time to read a 2 page document on their terms and conditions. They compensated me the 100% of my hosting downtime (Around 10 Hours).

I was paying only $8.90 a month for this hosting, so when you calculate the damage this caused because I did not have Back ups, there is the lost years of work building up several thousand members on my forum, the design and building time of the forums, My Micro sites at about $800 a site, My close friends parents online store and data valued at about $8,000 and loss of all their client database not to mention the lost confidence in their repeat sales from existing customers, you can start to see the amount of damage this caused, and all I was compensated for this failure was 10 Hours web hosting. Lets do the Math on this: $8.90 per month divided into 720 hours ( Hours in a month) = 0.012 cents, times that by 10 hours and you will see that the total monetary value is just $1.20. I couldn’t even buy a can of coke with it.

I did however manage to restore my micro sites using Google cache, and I used the back ups from 18 months ago to restore my friends parents website and used their PayPal transactions to contact all customers and let them know what had happened.

I wanted to share this story so that others might understand how important backing up your data regularly is. Make it a monthly process, you can also use dedicated back up services that back up your data daily to a remote server out of your hosting companies data center.

Although this is not cheap, I figured that if I spent $25 a month ( $275.00 a year)  or ( $2750 over 10 years) and if this saved me the pain of losing my data only once in ten years, then it would still be a good investment.

Thanks for reading my blog post and remember to:  BACK UP your DATA REGULARLY !

Merry Christmas and I hope you all have a prosperous 2012

-Nerdy

Get Your Business Online and Sell Your Products with our Fantastic Magento offer. Here is what we can do for your business:

• Customized Professional theme that will excite and instill confidence in your online shoppers
• Custom logo design (if you do not already have one)
• Up to 5 call out ad designs (the images/ads on the left or right side columns of the chosen templates)
• First 12 months hosting on our Business Magento Plan
• A choice of one .com, .net, .com.au, .net.au or .info domain name for the first 12 months
• Up to 10 Pages of content (supplied by you)
• Payment Gateway configuration
• Australia Post Shipping configurations
• Mobile Phone compliant for iPhone or Android
• Access to many video tutorials on how to use Magento
• Search Engine Registrations
• 256BIT SSL Certificate for security
• Dedicated IP Address
• 24/7 Live support for any of your Magento questions
• Javascript Banner with up to 5 Banner images designed
• We use the WORLDS BEST shopping cart software
• We will take care of the technical stuff so you can start selling your products

Ask our friendly staff for more information about this great offer.

Regular Price is $3599, special Nerdster New Year 2012 offer now: $2750!!

REFER A FRIEND FOR A SECOND WEBSITE AND RECEIVE A FURTHER $250 DISCOUNT…..