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What Should You Do If Google Labels Your Website As ‘Malware’?

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Google has one of the most accurate malware scanning features built into its browser and search engine. Google can also penalize your website pretty severely if it detects malware, so as soon as you are notified it’s time to act quickly, not only because it will ruin all your advertising and SEO but also because you’ll lose traffic dramatically. Being labelled as having malware on your site means one of two things i.e. either your website was hacked and malware was installed by the hacker on purpose or there is a coding problem. The chances of it being a false positive is one in fifty.

Take your site down

When your website has been tagged as having malware on it, search engine optimization should be the least of your worries. So, don’t think too much about taking your site down for the next 24 to 48 hours to fix the error or issue. Once down start by verifying the issue by visiting: http://google.com/webmasters/, here you should get some information about the malicious code causing the problem.

 

The most common types of malware and solutions

The two most common reasons why your website may be labelled as spam is either because you have out of date software running or have an open redirect in place. There are also other reasons like SQL injections, infected admin computer and coding errors. But for the sake of simplicity we’ll just address two of the most common ones below.

Outdated software: Make sure that you check if you have the latest updated version of the operating system, blogging platform software, plugins, applications and content management system. Turn on the ‘auto-update’ feature for each of these things and they should auto update and you’ll never have this problem again. The updates should also patch up any vulnerabilities that may exist.

Open Redirects: These are usually coded to allow the website to redirect visitors to another website. Usually, an old website will have a redirect setup to take people to a new URL that hosts the new website. This is often the case when a company changes its domain and business name. But hackers will abuse these open redirects by adding their own malware or spam pages. The easiest way to fix this issue is to check your software and see if the option for open redirects has been enabled. If it’s turned on by default you may want to turn it off. You can also code the page to prohibit open redirects.

Using the QualysGuard tool

Even though Google does allow you to learn a little bit about why your website has been labelled as having malware if you are not tech minded you will have issues. Most people who are not programmers will have a problem detecting and eventually fixing problems that are not any one of the ones discussed above.

QualysGuard is a free third party tool that allows webmasters to scan their whole website for suspicious code and malware. The scan is easy to start manually and it will crawl your whole site for malware. It will also execute a number of JavaScript codes.

The program works by emulating a real browser working from a user’s machine. Even though this assures accurate analysis it will mess up your web analytics statics because the automated system will show up as a number of individual visits to your website. So, you’ll need to setup your analytics software in advance to filter all of the tool’s visits to your website.

Once the system has compiled a complete analysis report it is emailed to you. In most cases the average computer user should be able to understand the findings of the system and run appropriate fixes. However, some fixes that require recoding in PHP or MySql will require an experienced programmer.

Get off Google’s Blacklist

Once you are 100% sure that your website is free from viruses, Trojans and malware, it’s time to submit your website to Google for reconsideration. This is the only way to get off the blacklist. Head over to Google’ webmaster tools and navigate down to ‘Request a Review’ then submit your website again. It takes a few minutes. But it takes Google around two weeks to get around to whitelisting your website.

If you want to know more about this please visit - http://www.smart-seo.com.au

Featured images:
  •  License: Creative Commons image source
  •  License: Image author owned

Nathanael Vanderkolk is a qualified SEO optimisation specialist who has spent the last fifteen years optimizing websites for Smart SEO Clients. He currently runs his own SEO business based in Sydney.




How To Make Your Business Stand Out Online

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Marketing is so much more than just the artistic and descriptive combination of words to sell a product. Visual marketing is just as important if you want to sell a product and make a statement. In fact, some of the very best marketing projects are based almost entirely on visual graphics and include very little words. Visual marketing has a way of capturing attention, eliciting emotions, and telling a story in a way that words can’t measure up to. If you would like to learn how to use visual marketing for the benefit of your company, here are some ways that you can come up with great visual marketing ideas.

Learn From Social Media Sites

Have you noticed how adeptly social media sites such as Pinterest use visual marketing? Why try to describe the perfect apple crumble cake when you can show a mouth-watering picture of one? As the old saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and in the world of online marketing, a picture may be worth much more than that if it helps to attract customers and generate more revenue for your company.  Facebook and Instagram, like Pinterest, are also driven by photographs and images to illustrate the life, interests and background of a person or a company. If you learn from popular social media sites such as these, you will have more success attracting a following through the use of visual marketing.

Let Your Followers Know You Are Real

In the world of online marketing it can be hard for customers to distinguish the line between virtual reality and actual reality. That is why you should let your followers know you are real by including a picture of you and your staff in the “About Us” section of your profile or website page. Your followers will automatically feel a sense of connection to you by simply being able to see who you are and that you are in fact real people. Depending on your target audience and the nature of your business you can make this picture professional, casual, or even humorous. Humor is a great way to utilize loyalty marketing and can make you more likeable to your followers. As all good online marketers know, if your followers like you they are more prone to be loyal to you and to share your page with their friends.

Make Your Product Look Different

Making your product stand out and look different is one of the most challenging tasks that a marketer will face. You need to make your product memorable if you expect to attract a loyal customer base, and you can do this by using visual marketing to your advantage. You can incorporate humor into your product images or use modest, child-like drawings to simplify your products and make them memorable. Whatever method you choose to use, stick with it and try to use that same type of visual marketing across the board so that people will immediately recognize it when they see it.

Use Bold Visuals To Draw Attention

If you are having a difficult time getting the attention of your customers, try using bold visuals to catch their eye. Whether you choose to incorporate humorous, beautiful or creative images, just make sure that they appeal to your target audience and attract more followers to your site.

If you feel like you have reached a stand-still in the world of online marketing, incorporate more visual marketing into your technique and you are bound to see positive results.

Attached Images:
  •  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/c/ca/caesantana/1407384_color_pencil.jpg

Dorian Travers is a contributor for The Marketing Robot. He keeps his readers informed on all things business.

Give Your Animal Website Some Life!

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Copyright Erik Lam | Dreamstime.comAnimal centric businesses are often the result of a life long dream fulfilled by the owner. You’ve always loved animals, and would have loved to take on any career that consisted of you getting paid to take care of animals, or otherwise interact with them. Now that you’ve achieved that goal, you have to think up ways of keeping your business going and growing.

One thing that you might not have considered was the difficulty of getting photos of the animals. Animals, by their very nature, are not exactly the type that are going to sit there and let you pose them and snap every photo you’d like of them. You can’t even get humans to do that most of the time, and they can understand what you’re saying.

So, what’s a person to do when they can’t get their hands on the proper pose or animal for a photo? It’s pretty simple. Royalty free stock images gives you a wide range of options when it comes to animals, especially if you’re going after common pet breeds for your dog photos.

You can even find exotic wildlife photographers selling stock photography, if you’re looking to add a wild flair to your animal centric website. Exotic wildlife is very hard to get good photographs of. If you’re running a rescue, you don’t necessarily want to be bothering your animals, especially if you are a rehab facility. If you don’t commonly have exotic animal access, then chances are you won’t be prepared for those once in a lifetime shots that come up from time to time.

Copyright Rikki_ | Dreamstime.comInstead of spending all day crawling around in a field, trying to get dog photographs, turn to royalty free stock photography to meet your most pressing needs. Whether it’s getting that super cute image for your front page, or you just need to find something to put on one of your species information pages, you’ll be able to pick up a stock photo.

Once you get started working with stock photos, you’ll be wondering just how you managed to do without them. It’s a rather great way to save time so you have more time to spend with animals. After all, would you rather be stuck in a room working on photo editing because you couldn’t quite get the right shot, or would you rather be out playing with the animals that you’re paid to take care of. It’s pretty easy to tell that you should go with the stock photography as a way to open up your time for the important things. Even if you do have your own photographer on staff, you can always give them a bit of a break and help them out by getting all of these stock photos together.

Attached Images:
  •  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-group-five-dogs-image23180759
  •  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-wild-horses-image1408129

This post was brought to you buy the experts in animal stock photos, images, and illustrations, Dreamstime.com; bringing together a vast community of talented photographers and designers to make the web and world a more beautiful place since 2000.

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