Search:
Site   Web

SiteProNews

SiteProNews

Article Categories









By Ben Kemp

Blogs-&-PodcastsWordpress STD’s (Security Transgression Defilements) are a common occurrence. WordPress-powered websites are far from being immune to hackers, although the latest release/s address many earlier security issues. WordPress, like other content management systems and forums such as phpBB, vBulletin, is a major target for hackers and spammers. Basic prophylactic measures, or condoms for WordPress STDs, need not be complicated or expensive.

Those involved in hacking WordPress usually want to use the sites as concealed (cloaked) link farms. Its rare that actual damage is done to your site, and often the site owner remains blissfully unaware that there’s been any interference. Some of the link injection systems are extremely sophisticated! Testing for enemy action can be as simple as opening your site and choosing View / Source and reading through the content of the <Head> section down to, and including, the <BODY> tag. The link injections I’ve seen are usually immediately after <BODY>. Is there a long string of HTML code containing links to dozens of sites you know nothing about? If there is, you’ve been violated, and have a WordPress STD (Security Terminated Deficiency)!

By John Sylvester

It is now becoming apparent that Tim O’Reilly’s vision of the web being “One Ring to Rule Them All” and “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”, is coming apart at the seams as the big media company News Corp and Microsoft join hands to threaten Google and, in turn, Web 2.0 itself.

In “O’Reilly: The Web is at war, and it’s making me sad” (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10399710-36.html), we have seen over the past few months that News Corp has stepped up the stakes in its battle to block Google from indexing content from Rupert Murdoch’s online media titles, and that now Microsoft is said to be willing to pay Time Warner and News Corporation, among others, to make these sources available exclusively through Bing, it’s new search engine.

During this time, and many articles later, Rupert Murdoch has criticised Google for “kleptomania” and has threatened to cut them off from all his online publications. That is not quite as easy as he thinks, though, as nearly a quarter of all traffic to the Wall Street Journal’s website, for example, comes via Google. Microsoft, for their part, is willing to spend up to 10% of its operating income over the next five years, which could add up to a sum somewhere around $US11bn. Tim O’Reilly, who coined the term Web 2.0, questions the war for the control of the web, which directly contradicts his “interoperable platform” concept.

Not all agree though, as the Economist argues that, “a handful of well-funded and powerful platforms, locked in heated competition, could be better for consumers and generate more innovation than Mr O’Reilly’s vision of an internet made of many ’small pieces loosely joined’.”

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 was a turning point for the web and, with it, the concept of “Web 2.0″ was born. Its web pioneer Tim O’Reilly warned an audience at a recent Web 2.0 Expo that he thinks “we’re headed into another ugly time”, meaning that the corporates are ganging up on Google’s dominance, with Rupert “Dr Evil” Murdoch leading the charge and threatening to pull News Corp’s content carpet from under Google’s feet.

In the same CNet article, it says that: “O’Reilly’s attitude isn’t ‘bring it on, and get me a large popcorn with extra butter, while you’re at it’. Rather, he hinted that at least in some cases, he’s willing to embrace Google as a big, cuddly, benevolent dictator in the midst of it all.” Rather like Stalin dressed up in a Winnie The Pooh fancy dress outfit, maybe?

But with all fancy dress parties there are reactionaries in the mix, as Barbarian Group executive Rick Webb announced: “Setting aside the boo hoo, the internet is becoming a bunch of walled gardens arguments, when rational people have conversations about how to make the web actually usable and not 95 percent piracy, spam, and fraud…”

All this aside, it is becoming clearer by the day that the web is heading into a full-frontal period of bloody competition that could kill the concept of the web’s interoperability as we know it today.

In radar.oreilly.com, Mr O’Reilly clearly states that: “And so we’ve grown used to a world with one dominant search engine, one dominant online encyclopaedia, one dominant online retailer, one dominant auction site, one dominant online classified site, and we’ve been readying ourselves for one dominant social network…

“It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we’ll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we’ve enjoyed for the past two decades. But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.”

In a postscript, he predicts that: “Microsoft will emerge as a champion of the open web platform, supporting interoperable web services from many independent players, much as IBM emerged as the leading enterprise backer of Linux.”

————————–

John Sylvester is the media director of V9 Design & Build and an expert in search engine optimization and web marketing strategies.

By Jerry Bader

webmastersEveryone wants to do more business. Everyone occasionally runs a promotion, a new marketing initiative, a product launch, or a new seasonal lineup. Everyone has a website stuffed with all kinds of content ranging from the important to the useless. But only the truly smart business minds understand that campaigns require their own space and identity if they are to succeed. And when it comes to using the Web as your vehicle for such a campaign, the obvious solution is a Video Campaign Microsite.

By Jerry Bader

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Chili’s restaurant chain brought back their “I Want My Baby Back Ribs” jingle with a new media campaign. In Canada, the makers of the Coffee Crisp candy bar recently started to rerun an almost twenty year old commercial featuring two very amusing card playing senior citizens with the memorable tag, “How do you like your coffee? I like my Coffee Crisp!”

Unlike the movie and music industries that keep recycling the same tired ideas and overpriced performers because (1) they fear their own self-perpetuating financially crippling business model and (2) because they are at heart, creatively bankrupt, some in the commercial marketing industry have realized what branding is about: a consistent message that resonates in the mind of the consumer. If you have a memorable campaign that penetrates the mind of the consumer, you need to push it for all it’s worth, rather than switching messages like you switch your underwear.

McDonald’s runs so many different campaigns aimed at so many different demographics that it no longer has a brand image. Maybe some overpaid marketing guru will remember “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, etc.”

Small and medium sized businesses can learn an important lesson from this kind of marketing faux pax: once you hit on a brand message the works, one that people not only remember, but take to heart – do not mess with it.

Jerry Bader
MRPwebmedia
(905) 764-1246

Visit Our Sites
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads
http://www.136words.com
http://www.sonicpersonality.com
http://www.cacheclosed.com

About MRPwebmedia

People ask, “What do you do?” You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients’ marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to video-production to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design.

What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to your audience’s real needs. We tell your story so your brand, your message, embeds in the minds of your clients. We are corporate storytellers; we turn advertising into content, and content into an experience.

By Jerry Bader

One of the fastest growing areas of website marketing is the ‘how-to’ video business sector. With the epidemic of layoffs, plant closings, and cost cutting, the growth of how-to-material covering everything from how to start a business, to how to improve a business, to how to survive bankruptcy, is assured. No matter what the subject matter, how-to-do-it-better is in demand, and it’s big business.

The desire to be the best you can be is one of our innate needs, but the shear volume of demand seems to be the result of rapid and fundamental changes in technology, the economy, and society. This has led to a massive inferiority complex resulting from an, improve or perish, mentality delivered by a constant barrage of information, metrics, and analysis.

The Web is an ideal environment for using a video how-to-sales-strategy to increase site conversions but as always, the devil is in the details; you need to understand the underlying desire in order to make the strategy work. Whether your approach to sales is to sell-by-teaching or, what you sell is teaching, the fact is, the way you do it is what will make or break you.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

About MRPwebmedia

People ask, “What do you do?” You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients’ marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to video-production to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design.

What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to your audience’s real needs. We tell your story so your brand, your message, embeds in the minds of your clients. We are corporate storytellers.

By Jerry Bader

MRPwebmedia is pleased to announce the introduction of ConceptCreator©, a preproduction development process that acts as the initial step in creating an engaging, informative, entertaining, and above all memorable Web Video Campaign or Video Microsite; it is the Campaign Concept that states a company’s differentiating marketing message within the context of its brand story. Using the ConceptCreator© process, MRPwebmedia helps companies define their emotional and psychological value proposition, the key element in building a Web-based marketing communication strategy that creates, enhances, and promotes brand personality, the key factor in converting a website audience from passive viewers into enthusiastic clients.

Toronto, Canada, September 22, 2009 — Toronto, ON. ConceptCreator© is a new preproduction development process that acts as the initial step in creating an engaging, informative, entertaining, and above all memorable Web Video Campaign or Video Microsite; it is the Campaign Concept that states a company’s differentiating marketing message within the context of its brand story.
ConceptCreator© is an exclusive MRPwebmedia creative service used to discover the emotional and psychological value that a company or its products promise; it forms the basis of all a company’s marketing communication efforts and is the key to establishing a brand personality, market position, and corporate image. It states a company’s promise and creates appropriate expectations. It is the missing ingredient on most company websites, and in their marketing communication efforts. It is the key to future marketing success. All a company needs is a willingness to think out-side-the-box.
ConceptCreator© is an inexpensive stand-alone service that puts marketing communication efforts on the right track. There is no further obligation beyond the initial ConceptCreator© stage, but if a company decides to go forward with the suggested Video Campaign or Video Microsite the cost of the service is deducted from the cost of the full project.
ConceptCreator© allows business owners and entrepreneurs to get ad agency quality concept development-work for a fraction of the cost, and it allows businesses to get their feet wet without any additional financial commitment.
Contactl Jerry Bader at (905) 764-1246 or email info@mrpwebmedia,com for further details.
About MRPwebmedia

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads and http://www.136words.com 
Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246

By Jerry Bader

Summer Special

New Video Micro Campaign Site Special designed to promote a particular product, service, or special promotional campaign, includes a basic five page Micro Video Campaign Website with four 30-60 second video presentations using one onscreen actor filmed in studio on a white, black, or green screen background, plus custom signature music all done in MRPwebmedia’s innovative branding-delivery style.

Specifics can be discussed and modified for each client depending on their particular requirements and needs.

Additional videos, video lengths, Web pages, actors, props, and sets are available at additional costs.

If you are interested you can contact us for details, pricing, and an actual client example.

Jerry Bader
MRPwebmedia
(905) 764-1246

Visit Our Sites
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads
http://www.136words.com
http://www.sonicpersonality.com
http://www.cacheclosed.com

By admin

In the past few weeks speculation has run rampant on the future of search and whether Google might be supplanted by Twitter real-time social search  or by Wolfram Alpha, the still to be launched search engine that is billed as a true computational knowledge engine.

Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/) is scheduled to launch in May and could very well be a major advance in search technology. In brief, ask Wolfram Alpha a question and it supposedly will deliver a specific and accurate response as opposed to a list of related results.  Stephen Wolfram outlines  Wolfram Alpha’s technological foundation in his blog post at: http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/ .

Will Wolfram Alpha supplant Google? Not in the short term. Google has become a synonym for search, like Xerox became for copying. But Wolfram Alpha and the search technologies that follow could very well begin to undermine Google’s dominance. Wolfram appears to be a largely scientific endeavor, but with the proper funding, promotion and innovation, it could rapidly find an audience. Search has always been about finding answers.  A hundred million search results to a query are impressive, but one specific, accurate and correct result is really all that’s needed for many queries. It might be simpler for Wolfram Alpha to backfill their accurate answer results with related search results than for Google to duplicate Wolfram’s “millions of lines of algorithms”. Then again, success in the marketplace is not always about what’s “best”. Assuming Wolfram does what it claims it can and takes a competitive stance,  the search industry could dramatically change in 5 years.

Then, there’s Twitter. Does anyone seriously believe that Twitter search could be a Google killer? Indexing the micro-blogging sphere is not exactly a major technological feat for a search giant like Google. If Google search results can be supplemented with Twitter results using a GreaseMonkey script, how difficult would it be for Google to supplement their own search results with real-time social search results. Then there’s the question of exactly how useful Twitter results are. Mini blog posts are interesting but hardly a resevoir of accuracy and reliability. Tweets have their place – good for rapid communication, breaking news, marketing blurbs, networking, tips, etc. – but they are unlikely to ever be the basis for search results that put Google out of business.  

  


Warning: in_array(): Wrong datatype for first argument in /home/sitepronews/public_html/wp-content/themes/newsitepro/category.php on line 25

By Jerry Bader

If you’re in business, you’re in sales; that’s just the way it is. We are all salesmen; we all have something to sell, a product, a service, an idea, a cause, or maybe just an opinion. And if you’re in business you have a website intended to communicate the value of that which you sell.

So if you’re in the business of selling something, and your website is the vehicle you choose to communicate your sales pitch, then shouldn’t your main concern be how effectively you are communicating that message?

Communication or Analytics

Instead of concentrating on effective communication, many businesses put the emphasis on search engine statistics: how high they rank on Google, MSN, and Yahoo, with the assumption that the higher they rank, the more traffic they’ll generate, and the more traffic they generate, the more sales they’ll get. At least, that’s what we are led to believe.

Here’s the problem: almost all the rank-generating strategies are aimed at search engine spiders, not people, so you have to ask yourself, who exactly is my website communicating to, robots or human beings?

The Secret Formula Doesn’t Exist

Why are today’s business owners and executives so mesmerized by this whole search engine thing? It reminds me of the story of an infamous Hollywood movie mogul and studio head who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Instead of firing the guy immediately, he was retained for some time for the simple reason his movies made money; and the dirty little secret in Hollywood is that nobody really knows why some movies are hits and others are bombs. So you keep paying the guy you think is making you money, no matter what he does, because maybe he knows something you don’t.

What we have today is a new generation of business leaders who came of age with the Internet. These Internet technology geeks and boffins are the new Web-wizards and wunderkinds: the guys with the secret formula. But like the movie industry, nobody really has a foolproof search engine recipe for success, but since most of the technical stuff is ever-changing, and over most entrepreneurs and business executives heads, they buy into it; that is until somebody tells them the emperor has no clothes.

What’s A Web Entrepreneur To do?

You heard the old expression, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” well it has never been so true as it applies to website marketing. The simple truth about websites is that success is based on a site’s ability to communicate a marketing message that makes sense, and is understood in an easy to digest format.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

By Jerry Bader

You have a website, and perhaps you’re even a professional salesperson, and as such you know that the best way to sell someone something is face-to-face, but have you seen the price of gas lately?

So whether your customers are local, national, or international, the cost of getting to them is just too darn high to make any money. You could call them on the phone or email them, but with voice mail, spam filters, and all manner of gatekeepers, it is literally impossible to get to people, even when they’re waiting for your call.

It’s never been easy to sell, but in today’s jaded, cynical, frustrated business climate, the job is even harder.

Order-takers are next to useless in the field, so don’t expect the tactic to work any better on your website: you know what I mean by order-takers, the guys and gals that service fully developed territories with clients that already use your wares, and who order what they need no matter whether anybody calls on them or not.

No, what you need is a real sales presentation, one aimed at the customers you don’t have, the ones looking for new ideas and products.

Here’s seven website sales tactics to remember:

1. Use The Web’s Video and Audio Capability

Make better use out of your company’s website by adding some face-to-face ingredient through the use of audio and video. Give your audience someone they can relate to, someone who will connect on an emotional and psychological level.

2. Don’t Fall Into The SEO Trap

Unfortunately, many business owners have fallen into the SEO trap of designing their online presentations for search engine spiders not people. Sure it’s great to drive traffic to a website, but if they leave within seconds of arriving without getting your marketing message, what exactly have you achieved?

3. Technology Is Not The Solution To A People Problem

And of course, you’ve got those websites that are nothing more than a shopping cart and ordering system; a technological solution to a human problem that turns whatever is being sold into a commodity, and we all know commodity sales go to the lowest seller.

4. Be Aware of The Paradox of Choice

Some entrepreneurs think by offering everything but the kitchen sink is how to get customers; but they obviously haven’t heard of the Paradox of Choice, a term coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz, whose book by the same name postulates that the more choice you offer, the less likely people will make any decision at all.

5. What Is Required Is A Performer

The Web with its remote, dislocated nature requires very specific performance criteria that few people, even professional salespeople possess. You may be practiced at making presentations, maybe even immensely effective in front of a live audience or in a boardroom, but selling in person is far more forgiving than selling remotely online.

What is required is a performer, someone who looks, sounds, and acts the apart; someone who also knows how to use verbal and nonverbal techniques to deliver a message. Don’t let your ego get in the way of building your online clientele.

6. The Web Is No Place For Overheads Or Flipcharts

Selling on the Web is about building relationships the same as traditional beat-the-pavement sales, but the arsenal of techniques required is far more challenging from a psychological and performance point-of-view. An online presentation that is nothing more than a series of overhead slides, graphs, and royalty-free photos delivered with a tentative delivery will not be taken seriously from an audience that is one click away from accessing your competitors.

7. Treat Your Website Visitors Like An Audience

So what then are the criteria for creating an online presentation that sells? There are four things your online presentation must be: informative, engaging, entertaining, and memorable.

Why you ask? The thing you have to keep in mind when you want to use your website to connect to people and build a business relationship is that you can’t treat them like customers, you have to treat them like an audience, and once you make that leap of faith, you are on your way to a successful online sales presentation strategy.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

About MRPwebmedia

People ask, “What do you do?” You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients’ marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to video-production to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design.

What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to your audience’s real needs. We tell your story so your brand, your message, embeds in the minds of your clients. We are corporate storytellers.

« Older Entries

Subscribe to SiteProNews Articles

Receive New Articles As They are Posted


Webmaster Headlines

Yelp Walked Away From $700M Microsoft Offer - Silicon Alley Insider

Indian IT Giant Tata Consultancy Services Hacked - TechCrunch

Survey: Majority of people don't want an iPad - cNet News

Apple banning location-based ads?
- iMediaConnection

The Internet Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize - Mashable

FBI Calls For ISPs to Keep Browsing History Logs - ReadWriteWeb

Bing & Facebook Expand Search Agreement - Marketing Pilgrim

Two Simple Rules For Fixing High Bounce Rate Pages - Search Engine Land

Now It Is The iTablet That Takes Center Stage - Lockergnome

Testing How Crawl Priority Works - SEOMoz

Recent SiteProNews Articles

RecentSiteProNews Articles

The Benefits of Installing Internal Site Search

The End Of Dumb Affiliate Marketing

The Road To Online Marketing Success Requires Commitment

How to Conduct Keyword Research Like the Pros

Obama, Giant Lollipops and Unique Selling Propositions

Reader Rescue: How do I choose what keywords to target?

How to Participate in a Tweetchat

SiteProNews Blog News

Reader Rescue: How do I choose what keywords to target?
Hi Kalena I have two questions. 1) How do I know if a keyword merits my time and energy? For e...
more >

Can Jobs walk on water or is he the god that failed?
Steve Jobs, Apple Inc's visionary CEO, may not be in the same league as Moses, but he has the potent...
more >

Google’s New URL Shortener: Goo.gl
Everyone needs to shorten a URL sometimes. Whether it's to prevent long URLs wrapping in emails, ...
more >

Recommended Links


   SEO Consult - SEO Services

   Submit Express - SEO Services