Friday, July 21, 2006

HostingCon 2006 - 07/19/06: Growing Trends in Today’s Business’s

Another very informative session at the conference for me was the Growing Trends session that was put on by a top representative from Hostway, Inc. They had spent a considerable amount of money this past year surveying their clients and identifying the top trends among todays businesses. I was surprised to learn that 43% of small businesses today still have servers and try to host their websites internally. This figure drops every year but is still surprising to me to learn this. I don’t think that this figure is completely accurate, but that’s my opinion. I find that a lot of the clients we see that have hosted their websites elsewhere have predominately all been in another data warehouse or hosting provider and very few try to manage their own servers, etc. I guess a few of the larger clietns we see today that have a full time IT department might still be hosting internally but I bet that they are likely looking to outsource to cut costs and reduce the workload of their already overworked IT departments.

Another trend that couldn’t be ignored was that Text messaging had become a vital part of a lot of todays operations. There was a lot of talk about how email was still considered by many to be the killer app, but there was no real email solution providers in attendance, other than Microsoft, that I could see. We felt pretty good in learning that messaging was earning it’s place in the service offerings arena because we had already been there for over 6 months with our PLETHWARE product.

Disaster Recovery and Offsite Data Backups also were popular buzzwords during the conference, and PLETH is already in talks with a software firm to create the ultimate CYA (Cover Your Assets) type of software application that will completely automate the tasks of backing up critical and sensitive data such as Quickbooks, Microsoft Money, and Microsoft Outlook contacts as well as a host of other software applications popular to todays small businesses and entrepreneurs. Offsite Data Backups for personal use also make a lot of sense to us. Take for example the fire-proofed safe that weighs 600 pounds that our parents use to house important documents and family photos inside their homes. Since most of the photos taken today are digital, it only makes sense to have digital safes to store these items in. A computers hard drive can fill up pretty quick w/ digital photos. Many of todays digital cameras will default to approximately 4mb or higher resolution per image, with the higher the resolution the higher the quality of the picture. This is a sharp contrast to the size of digital images even just a year or so ago, most of which were in the 2mb range with some defaulted to even smaller file sizes. In the event of a fire, or even a stolen computer system, an entire lifetime of digital photos would be lost forever, but with the offsite data backup solution in place, digital photos can be stored a mouseclick away…

Another trend in todays hosting industry that doesn’t really fit into the PLETH portfolio of business offerings was game hosting. Game hosting is extremely popular, probably moreso than any of us had really imagined. It wasn’t until I heard the new CEO from the PLANET, Doug Erwin mention that Insomnia365 was one of their popular offerings that it really sank in for me. In further talks with Julia Morgan, VP of Sales and Marketing for the PLANET, we learned that our network center was equipped with one of the most state of the art centers for game hosting in the world. Cortex, a gaming control panel, is already in place and available for our use should we decide to offer gaming as a service in the near future. We have been considering this pretty hard for the last few days and expect to have an announcement regarding gameserver offerings in the very near future…

Saturday, July 1, 2006

The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization

by Richard Drawhorn

The fundamental concepts behind Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are understood by most search engine marketers, but those new to the subject should find this article to be very useful. Informative articles on various aspects of SEO have been published here on MarketPosition.com over the years, and in this post I will summarize these concepts and provide links to relevant articles.

Keyword Research

The first step in SEO is to identify the search terms for which you would like your web site to rank well on search engines. We might believe that we know these terms already, but our intuition is often incorrect about how popular or competitive search keywords actually are in reality. People use all kinds of variations of phrases as they are searching for information on the internet. It’s important to identify these terms and use them in your site content exactly as people type them into search engines. To discover what these search terms are, a keyword research tool should be used. There are several free tools available, such as the Keyword Selector provided by Overture, but most of the robust keyword research tools are subscription based.

Web Site Optimization

You now have your well researched keyword list in hand, and are ready to use the keywords in your web site content. How should these search terms be integrated into your web pages? How often should the phrases be used, and in what sections of the pages? Those are excellent questions and the answers are not known exactly because they depend on the algorithms used by search engines. However, it is generally agreed upon that search engines look at several different sections of a page when evaluating its content:

Title tag
Heading tag
Meta Keyword and Meta Description tags
Text within the Body area
Link text and Link URL
ALT attribute for Image tags (the ALT tag may be less significant than other areas of the page)

Search engines look at the various sections of the document for repeating patterns of keywords or phrases. For this reason, it’s important to have a keyword density within a specific range. What should that keyword density be? Software tools like WebPosition’s Page Critic can help to answer that question. The Page Critic works by looking at the keyword density (and other statistics) of pages that are already ranking well on search engines. Since the search engines keep the details of how their algorithms work a secret, a reasonable strategy is to emulate pages that are well positioned.

Web Site Design

Aesthetics and user friendliness are important elements of web site design, but there are a number of other things to consider to ensure a web site will be as friendly to search engines as possible.

HTML Validation

It’s important to ensure that the HTML code that makes up a web page is correctly formatted. If there are errors in the code, then search engine spiders may have difficulty indexing the page’s content. Use a HTML Validator to check the formatting of HTML code, and read this article for more information on why this is important.

Site Map

It’s always a good idea to create a site map to make it easy for search engine spiders to index the site’s content. Link to every page on the web site that has relevant content, and place a link to the site map on the site’s home page. It may also help to sign up for the Google Sitemaps program to help ensure your content is indexed by Google.

Develop a Site Theme

One aspect of web site design that is often overlooked is theme development. If possible, organize your content so that particular themes are reinforced. Read Reinforcing Ideas and Improving Relevance to Gain Better Rankings for ideas to consider when organizing your site content.

Avoid Duplicate Content

It’s important to avoid duplicating content on the web site. Read Duplicate Content: How Does it Affect Your Rankings? for more information on how to avoid penalties associated with duplicate content.

Comply with Search Engines’ Terms of Service

There are several practices to avoid to stay on good terms with search engines. Techniques like cloaking, hidden text, or spamming, for example, violate search engines’ terms of service. If a site is found to be using these types of blackhat techniques, it will typically be removed from the search engine’s index. Read this article for more information about practices to avoid.

Build Link Popularity

The Link Popularity of a page is a term that refers to the number of other web sites that link to that page. Search engines typically consider how many other sites link to a page as a factor in determining that page’s ranking. The idea behind this is that if others link to a page, then they must consider that page’s content to be valuable in some way. However, all links are not weighted equally and it’s therefore important to try to encourage high quality web sites within your own theme area to link to your site. For a good overview of these concepts, read Link Popularity Considerations, and for some ideas about how to start building links read A Review of Link Building Strategies.

Monitor Performance

Once your optimized web site is online, you’ll want to monitor its performance on the search engines. If the site is brand new, it should of course be submitted to the search engines, or perhaps resubmitted if necessary. Monitor the site’s positions on search engines for keywords of interest to identify areas where the site is performing well and areas that can be improved. An excellent tool designed for this is WebPosition’s Reporter feature. It creates formatted reports featuring graphs of positions over time, as well as useful parameters like the Keyword Visibility Index.

A web site that is positioned well in search engines should start receiving a significant number of visitors. To monitor traffic and other useful web site statistics, a web analytics solution such as WebTrends is recommended. Read Measuring Web Site Statistics as Part of Your SEO Strategy for more information about the benefits of web analytics.

Conclusion

The art of SEO is a set of skills that can be learned and implemented by anybody who manages a web site. However, proper optimization and maintenance of the site requires time and effort, and the fundamental elements of SEO discussed above must be put into practice. Those who find they do not have the time or desire to implement their own SEO program, read Outsourcing a SEO Program for some advice on how to best seek out professionals that can help.

Launch: Wal-Mart Kids-Fishing Project

Pleth, LLC announced last month that it had been retained by Kids All-American Fishing, an organization primarily sponsored by Wal-Mart, that puts on and promotes fishing derbies across the United States and promotes the fun of fishing to children and parents alike.

“We are going to be building onto what they already have in place and in some cases just making the site function a little better.” added Greg Smart, Project Manager and Partner in Pleth, LLC.

The website currently features a Derby Locator that enables visitors to the site to go in and enter a zip code and search for a Fishing Derby near them, and at the same time the locator will also display a list of Wal-Mart Stores in that same area.

Click here to Visit the Kids-Fishing Website.

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Pleth, LLC Joins SWDN

PLETH, LLC is pleased to announce that they have joined the SWsoft Developer Network (SWDN). The SWDN is a resource and community center behind SWsoft’s OPEN FUSION Initiative. SWSOFT manufactures PLESK Control Panel Software that is currently used by PLETH, LLC hosting clients. The SWDN was created specifically for hosting service providers. SWDN provides API documentation and SDK’s needed for in-house customizations and integration with SWsoft software.


Some of the many benefits of SWDN:


  • Development Licenses: for all SWsoft products.

  • Software Developer Kits (SDKs) including API specs, & tech manuals.

  • Product Betas: early access to products before the general public.
  • Forums and Support: to interact and share information with SWsoft engineers

The PLETH, LLC Management Team met with Representatives from SWSOFT, Inc. this year during HostingCon 2006 in Las Vegas.

Monday, June 5, 2006

Launch: Team Caliber Project

Pleth, LLC an Arkansas Based technology firm announced last week that they were preparing to launch a new e-commerce enabled project for Team Caliber, Inc. of Charlotte, North Carolina, a Division of Roush Racing.

“The new project is just getting underway,” said Cotton Rohrscheib, Chief Developer and Partner. “They have put a ton of thought into providing their wholesale customers with this tool and we want to work with them in any way to bring it to fruition.”


The new project consists of various levels of authentication and security built on top of Pleth’s already award-winning e-commerce solution. Only registered and approved wholesale customers are allowed to login and view the 2006 product line. Orders are placed online and transmitted to Team Caliber by email and their staff takes it from there.

“We have taken a lot of things into consideration in putting this product together, basically rebuilding our existing e-commerce solution and making it do things that it normally wouldn’t; changing outputs and the way it displays products and handles orders, right down to the way it generates pick tickets and packing slips,” said Greg Smart, Project Manager for Pleth, LLC.

Team Caliber is the one of the top manufacturers of die-cast cars, fan memorabilia, and clothing for NASCAR.

Thursday, June 1, 2006

What is Web Hosting?

I recently ran across an article at The Whir that did a good job of explaining the basic principles of webhosting.Web hosting is a service that allows users to post Web pages to the Internet.

A Web host, or hosting service provider (HSP), is a business that provides the technologies and services needed for Web sites to be viewed on the Web.

Web hosting is a primary service that consumers can utilize after obtaining either dial-up or broadband access to the Internet. It allows users to disseminate their own information resources to any Internet user that is interested in accessing them. Web hosting utilizes the server/client model to distribute content. A Web hosting provider will offer its clients access to a Web server that will push that client’s content to recipients on request. Recipients use clients, or Web browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator to request content from the Web over their own Internet connection.

Web sites are hosted, or stored, on a special computer called a server. The server, or host computer, allows Internet users connected anywhere to reach your site when they put in your domain address, for example: www.yourcompany.com.

The host computers are set up so that when someone types in your domain name (your Web address), the address will follow a route from computer to computer until it reaches your host computer and your web site. Then the Internet user will be able to browse through your Web site. Hosting companies usually require that you own your own domain name in order to host with them. If you don’t have a domain name, most hosting companies will help you purchase one.

To have a Web site on the Internet you first need to have a Web server. Unfortunately, owning and operating a Web server can be very costly and requires technical expertise that most businesses do not possess. This is where “Web hosts” come in. Web hosts provide the equipment and other technical resources that are required to provide a consumer with their own customized Web site. Hosting companies charge a rental fee for the service of storing your Web site and allowing Web site visitor traffic flow to through their computers to get to the information on your site.

Web hosting services are more advantageous because they are outsourced, meaning that the physical location of the Web server does not reside at the consumer’s premises. Outsourcing your Web presence effectively transfers the responsibility for maintaining your Web site infrastructure from yourself to an organization that is more competent to do so.

Many individuals and small businesses take advantage of Web hosts in order to free themselves from pre-occupying their scarce human and financial resources on Web host issues. Individuals and companies who outsource their Web presence do so in order to achieve the following objectives: reduce and control operating costs; improve their own company focus; gain access to in-depth expertise; free internal resources for core competencies; and obtain access to world-class capabilities to control IT functions which are difficult to manage.

The best Web hosting services will provide relatively seamless access to IT functions that will allow you to self-publish your Web site. It is important to note that “Web hosting” strictly refers to providing the consumer with the capacity to upload content to a server for immediate transmission for those that request it. Web hosting does not include the authoring of a Web site or the development of database-driven components or code. It is incumbent upon the consumer of Web hosting services to develop this material or have it developed on his or her behalf.

Web hosting is offered to the consumer in multiple formats based upon the user’s requirements. These requirements are incumbent upon cost and infrastructure provided.

Web hosting can be obtained free of cost from content portal sites such as Yahoo! GeoCities. Such content sites invite individual users to establish Web sites on their domain in order to create a critical mass of core content on their online property. The user does not pay for service because it is subsidized by banner advertising. Because such sites do not charge, they offer limited service depth and quality of service. For example, free services will not provide customized hosting services where domain names are personalized (i.e., www.yourdomain.com).

The “paid” class of Web hosting services however does provide such services. Paid services are normally offered by Internet service providers (ISPs) or by hosting service providers (HSPs). Paid services provide a reliable set of offerings that ensure domain name personalization, service depth and high levels of quality of service. The paid class of Web hosting includes shared, dedicated and managed services. Shared is the most basic level of hosting. With shared hosting, numerous Web sites are shared on one server. While an economic solution, they typically cannot handle large amounts of storage or traffic.


If a consumer’s needs are more sophisticated, then they might opt for either dedicated or managed services.

Dedicated hosting allots a Web site its own server. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as webmasters typically have full control over the back end of the server, including choice of OS.
Managed hosting, on the other hand is a dedicated server that is accompanied by a full suite of technical support, maintenance and monitoring services. This differs from dedicated Web hosting, where customers are provided with their own servers but are still responsible for virtually all administrative and maintenance duties.

PCI Compliance & Credit Card Acceptance

I guess that Credit Card Fraud, Chargebacks, etc. finally is getting the best of Credit Card Companies… We learned while we were out in Vegas that PCI compliance would soon become a requirement from any online vendor that is accepting credit cards online by both MasterCard and Visa. I have to say that I am not surprised and sort of glad to see it. It will help to weed through the fly-by-nights that are out there…

What does PCI compliance do? Well, basically it is peace of mind to a shopper that their information is not going to be compromised. Keep in mind that within the last 6 months, the federal government and a branch of the armed forces have both had their information compromised and sensitive information about members of the military and the government were leaked to the general public. In a nutshell, if an online business is a fly-by-night business and do not have their website installed properly on a secure server w/ ssl, pci compliance, etc. they are putting their customers information at risk from being hacked.

At PLETH we have always strived to have the best intrusion detection methods in place at all times for our clients. In fact, we have some big-time clients that will do some heavy sales numbers this year. In our efforts we have learned that you just can’t be on top of everything at all times but you really need to be! With this in mind, we have contracted out with the top Security Auditing Firm in the United States, ScanAlert.

ScanAlert’s signature Hacker-Safe Certification can be found on over 55% of the top 400 e-Commerce websites in the world! We are bringing them to our clients and sparing no expense in doing so. In fact, with our new partnership arrangement that was formed at our meeting in Las Vegas, it is expected that our clients will receive a larger discount than firms that work directly with ScanAlert!

Pleth will soon be launching a co-branded website with ScanAlert that promotes the Hacker Safe Certification program that will ensure that websites meet the criteria for the following:
  • HIPAA Compliance
  • PCI Compliance
Both of these certifications will be in the news a lot in the very near future…

ScanAlert’s services monitors a websites vulnerabilities 24hrs a day, 7 days a week and watches for vulnerabilities, port scanning, and network fingerprinting services that are patent pending.
HackerSafe certification is currently being sought out by the United States Government, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and the Marine Corps. We feel that if providing our clients with peace of mind is our number one priority. In doing so, no other security auditing firm in the United States could be brought in as a partner other than ScanAlert, they are simply the best!


If you have questions regarding PCI compliance please contact a member of our team to discuss your immediate needs. Also, stay tuned to our blog for important announcement regarding the co-branded PLETH / ScanAlert Website that will be available for one stop certification shopping.

Thanks,
Cotton Rohrscheib, Partner
PLETH Networks, LLC