WebStyle

Helpful tips, latest gadgets and News



You are here: Home / Archives for SEO

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

by

seo

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The two most common reasons why your website may be labelled as spam is either because you have out of date software running or have an open redirect in place.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.




4 Most Common Blogging Mistakes Made by Small Businesses

by

Everywhere you turn it seems like everyone is talking about how important blogging is for small business (and big business) websites. That is true; blogging is good for SEO since adding new posts keeps the website fresh, and more content means that you can get more long tail traffic; blogging is also good for establishing and maintaining good relationship with your customers, and for building your brand. The reasons pro are all good. The cons – there aren’t any. Unless you’re doing it wrong.

The only thing worse than not having a blog on your business website is to attempt to blog without really understanding how it should be done. And that’s the mistake many small businesses make. Are you among them? Before you start defending yourself saying “hey, I’m doing everything by the book, I’m doing my research, I’m interlinking my posts…” – we aren’t talking here about the technical aspect of blogging, and the mistakes listed below are so common that you may not even realize that they shouldn’t be done, since many others are doing them.

Are you talking about yourself a lot?

This is by far the most common one. Without even realizing it, many businesses are creating blog posts that are about them – and not about their customers. Of course, the customers probably do want to know a bit more about the people behind the brand, but that doesn’t involve the topics such as their pets, the fight with the kindergarten teacher, the plumbing issues – would you be telling them about that face to face? No? Then don’t write about these things on your business blog either.

Are you paying too much or too little attention to your post titles?

Crafting a good post title is what often makes a difference between whether people will read your post or not. A good title lets them know what the post is about, and invites them to click on it and read the rest at the same time. If you aren’t paying attention to your titles, you may as well be creating the most engaging content in the post itself – there’s a very good chance that no one will know about it.

On the other hand, if you have mastered the art of crafting the catchy titles that provide a great click through rate, but you aren’t delivering in the content, your visitors will probably feel tricked – and then you can forget about having them leave their email address, or calling for a free consultation. You haven’t delivered the first chance you had, why should they bother with you further.

Are you too much or too little of a perfectionist about your content?

You should be neither. You should be aware of the fact that your content will be seen and read by the people who are very important to your business – your potential customers, so do your best to make it worth them while. But don’t go overboard and polish it over and over again, so that it takes you two weeks to finish one article. Keep in mind that it will probably never be perfect – but it needs to be good enough.

Are you not showing that you value the content you’ve created?

If you don’t care about your content enough to promote it yourself, then why would your readers care to do it? If you don’t think that comments on your posts are worth reading and responding to, then your readers will feel the same. You have to be the first one to show that your latest post is really useful/entertaining/engaging – you are the one person who shouldn’t forget about that piece.

This post was written ba Andrew Handley, from http://www.midislandcollision.com/. If you recognize yourself in one or more of these points, then it’s time to stop and re-think your blogging strategy. Then go back and re-do all the posts on your blog – some of them will probably scream: Delete!

Could SEO help your business survive the credit crunch?

by

If your business is struggling in the recession, you’d probably never consider spending money employing people to sort out your website.

You might think in the current economic climate there are surely much more pressing things to be spending your cash on – you need to keep your business afloat and it’s tough enough just to keep going, let alone expanding online as well. It may be a logical thought but in fact ignoring the potential of the online market completely is probably one of the worst decisions you could make right now. In fact, almost all the businesses that are still thriving in spite of the recession are succeeding because they have a strong online presence, and are bringing in new customers through Google. Remember, times may be hard for businesses but they are also hard for consumers, and more and more people are turning to the internet for the best deals on all kinds of products.

It can be difficult to get your head around the minefield that is Google and internet marketing, but with the right approach and a bit of expert SEO, anyone can improve their site and see a huge improvement in the number of people visiting, using and buying their products. With countless websites offering competitive discounts and deals on every type of product online, it’s the ones who fail to take advantage of the internet who will suffer most. Think about it, of the huge brand stores that have gone into administration over the last few months – Woolworths, Zavvi, MFI – they all had limited online resources and nothing to offer compared to their main online competitors.

Internet Marketing and SEO is an area that has barely been hit by the recession. The ability to manipulate online resources and maximize a website’s potential is more in demand than ever and even in the job market there are still plenty of vacancies for SEO training and internet marketing. Clearly more people are beginning to realize that it could possibly be the only way to beat the credit crunch and stay ahead.

Meta

Pages

Archives