Search Engine results

Using the correct keywords or phrases for your website is an important factor when trying to achieve good search engine rankings. It takes time and a bit of research to find what best suits your website theme. Research involves looking at search engine results to find hot topics and top search keywords. Unfortunately, it is not only marketers who are interested in keyword search these days.

Panda Labs,[Pandasecurity - antivirus protection] have released this latest warning:

“Cyber-crooks manipulate Internet searches to sell fake antivirus products.

Cyber-criminals are manipulating search engine results to distribute malware, in particular, fake antivirus products. The reasons are simple: the criminals need to attract users to malicious sites in order to infect them, what’s new however, is the way they are drawing users to these Web pages. In the past, users were lured to compromised websites by means of massive sending of spam. Targeted users read emails, clicked on the links they included and were unwittingly directed to a malicious Web page. Now however, due to the fact that users are more wary of messages received from unknown senders, criminals are using more effective ways of ensnaring new victims. They are using a Google tool called Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) which, among other things, lists the most popular searches of the day (anything from Obama’s inaugural address to the Oscar nominations).

Once they know the top searches and hot topics of the day, they create a blog full of the most searched for words (e.g. Obama, Penelope Cruz, etc.) and videos supposedly related to these topics. This way, they increase the blog’s ranking to place it among users’ first search results.

“Users who trust these results will end up on a Web page where they will be asked to download a codec or plug-in, etc. in order to watch the video. If they do so, they will be downloading malware, generally a fake antivirus”, explains Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs.”

Using the free Google keyword tool is perhaps a better than using the Trends. However there are also many keyword tools out there that will help you uncover the keywords to advertise your business and products.

As long as honest marketers are aware of tricks and deceptions used by criminals, they can avoid some of the dangers and pitfalls when doing search engine searches themselves.

Zo Nicholas

Writing articles

Writing is not something that comes easily to everyone; for some its just a matter of putting pen to paper and out it all pours and great article is produced while others can spend hours and produce very little content.

I must admit that I come into the second category rather than the first. Even at school writing or composition as it was called in my days was not a subject I ever looked forward too. It was a chore. However as in life writing skills are a necessary form of communication and it is something most of us make an effort to accomplish, at least the basics.

When wrting an article for your blog the first thing you need to do is to decide on the subject of your post, your targeted audience and then just make a list of points that you want to cover. The simplest way to start is to write a draft. Just write and let it flow, writing down exactly as you would be saying it. Personally, at this point I save my draft and go do something else for a short break.

Going back to my draft I see it with different eyes and here I make a few corrections, spelling corrections, restructure points, etc. Again I will leave this draft. Coming back to it, re read, correct. All this I do in notepad and not on the blog. Once satisfied with the draft I then paste it into a new blog post, give it the required headings, add the images,[you can import images into your editor or use a plugin like 'Tagaroo' that will help you add relevant images to your post] save and preview.

In the preview I check the layout/headings/images/categories/tags and signature. If totally satisfied, publish. A blog does not require you to be a top class author so do not hesitate to hit that publish button. If you don’t publish you end up with a whole collection of drafts and an empty blog. If I am really not sure about my article I will ask a friend to give me an opinion, give it the once over and make any neccessary corrections.

This may not be the way most people work, but it works for me. Somedays of course things just flow and I get more done as far as writing is concerned, other days its really a ‘no go’ chore. You can get very techie as to the sort of structure your article should/should not have, layout etc and there are whole books written about the subject on the ‘how to write a book or article’ but unless you want to be a ‘professional author’, I feel that for a blog its really a matter of finding what suits you, your style best as long as you convey your message to your targeted audience.

Of course, the more you practice writing blog articles, the easier it gets as in most skills that you want to acquire. Your articles do not need to be long. Short to the point is fine, but do write. I’m no author but I am finding that writing articles for my blog can be fun!

Zo Nicholas

Blogging fun

Blogging has become such an amazing phenomena online, everyone is blogging! Everywhere you look there are blogs.

From its humble beginings as just a ‘web log’ today its totally commercialised and serves as a publically displayed journal for a company, business or just individual. Anyone who authors in a blog is a blogger. Type in the term ‘blogging’ into Google it brings up 83,600,000 returns.

There are many companies out there like Blogger or Wordpress who offer ‘free blogs’ which provide a very basic template for you to post your articles. Of course these are a good way to get to understand the concept of blogging and to get the feel of what its all about, but then after that there is very little scope to broaden your horizons. You are limited to the parameters of the free version.

Catch the ‘blogging bug’ and you’ll want to fly. There are gadgets and widgets out there, all those little ‘toys’ to add to your blog to make it more atrractive and of course attract readers and comments. So next step is… a blog that you have total control of and where you can add those widgets, extra plugins etc.

To set up your own blog where you have complete control you will need a domain and hosting. Its not as complicated as it sounds, and you dont need to know html. Today’s server ready applictions like a blogging script are so easy to install and simple to use. You just follow a few simple steps of filling in your name etc and click!, its all done for you.

And now the the real fun starts, as here you now have the potential to customise your work by adding pictures, graphics, videos, podcasts, audio, widgets, advertising etc. lots of creativity, lots of blogging fun.

Zo Nicholas