Cyberspace is, “the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, and includes the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers in critical industries. Common usage of the term also refers to the virtual environment of information and interactions between people” as defined by the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD-54/HSPD23).

On June 25, 2010, via the White House blog, a draft release of National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) was announced. It was described as, “a blueprint to reduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities and improve online privacy protections through the use of trusted digital identities.”

NSTIC, “calls for the creation of an online environment [...] where individuals and organizations can complete online transactions with confidence, trusting the identities of each other and the identities of the infrastructure that the transaction runs on.”

On January 7, 2011, Howard A. Schmidt, Cybersecurity Coordinator and Special Assistant to the President, and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced that the National Program Office (NPO) will be moving forward with the national identity program which is expected to be implemented within months.

“We have a major problem in cyberspace, because when we are online we do not really know if people, businesses, and organizations are who they say they are” Schmidt stated via The White House Blog.

One goal of the NSTIC is to “reduce inefficient identification procedures” and improve security and privacy. This would involve getting credentials from various online providers, such as a digital certificate, to prove individuals and websites are who they say they are when performing transactions, online banking, accessing personal information and records, and sending email. The NPO envisions a process where you sign in once and move among your sites without signing in each time. Details are vague, but users will have control over how much information they input and whether they want to surf verified or log out and remain anonymous.

Potential Hiccups
A big question this all brings up is, what happens if someone hacks into or steals your online identity. Now they don’t just have your password, computer or phone–they’ve got your “digital certificates” verifying your identity and possibly allowing thieves to float among your financial sites. It seems like a lot of damage could occur pretty quickly. I can just hear the banks and credit reporting agencies now–”but you were logged in using your verified national identity.”

Identity Ecosystem–Sounds Gritty
This new world, as envisioned in the NSTIC is called the Identity Ecosystem. With the help of some in the private sector, Schmidt states, “Now is the time to move forward with our shared vision of a better, more secure cyberspace.”

Here is a link to the Cyperspace Policy Review.

Works Cited:

Schmidt, Howard A. “The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.” The White House Blog. 25 June 2010. Web. 12 Jan. 2011. .

Schmidt, Howard A. “A National Program Office for Enhancing Online Trust and Privacy.” The White House. 7 Jan. 2011. Web. 12 Jan. 2011. .

Your Thoughts?
Let us know what you think? Is this new program too intrusive? Should the government focus more on securing infrastructure and less on personal interactions and business? Or is this a change that is long over due?

SEO Revolution Blog

There is no substitute for a converting landing page on page one of Google; however, I wanted to share an easy method for getting your Tweets listed in Google Reatime.

If you’re not too familiar with Google Reatime results, you’ll find a link to it in the left side menu of Google Search. Once a search is performed, a menu appears to the left. Click the “Everything” link. This reveals the different Universal Search options available, such as searching only blogs and blogs posts, images, or videos. For this article, we’re interested in the “Realtime” link (which may appears as “Updates” in your area). Realtime was created to list the “latest” information and breaking news on the web from sources like Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, FriendFeed and MySpace, but right now it’s basically a search for indexed Tweets.

But that’s a good thing. It means even if someone doesn’t use Twitter they may still find your news, link, or offers. Not all Tweets are included in Realtime, but there is an easy technique for getting yours included immediately. It doesn’t matter if your Twitter account is one minute or one year old, this works. And I’m not talking about “sponsored” Tweets I’m talking about “any” Tweet which is even better.

1. Sign up for Twitter or log in.
2. Sign up for Digg or log in.
3. Link your Twitter and Digg accounts via Digg.
4. Post a link on Digg (avoid spam).
5. Elect (via Digg) to also post it to your Twitter account.

It may take an hour or so for the initial post to appear in Realtime results, but once you’ve done this, future posts appear almost instantly. Just remember to follow the steps above. Once you have a nice Twitter following, have shown that you post quality content regularly, and have gotten some retweets and mentions, your posts should appear on their own.

SEO Revolution Blog

Question: What market is going to grow in double digits through 2014?
Answer: The mobile market.

Next Question: Do you have a mobile presence?
Answer: If you have a “regular” website you also have a mobile presence.

That’s right: your existing site is a player in the mobile market, but chances are it’s not too mobile friendly. So, what easy changes can you make right now to better serve a mobile market? Keep reading and we’ll walk you through some.

How Desktop and Mobile Sites Differ

Mobile Site:

• Coded specifically for smaller mobile browsers. The most common languages for mobile sites are: cHTML (compressed HTML), XHTML Basic 1.1 XHTML MP 1.2 and WML 1.3 (wireless markup language).
• Less page content
• Fewer images
• Less navigation
• Designed with specific user-tasks in mind

Desktop Site:

• Designed to be viewed on a desktop/laptop computer
• More images
• More content
• Flash
• More navigation

Mobile Searches Return Non-Mobile Pages
Google dominates mobile search leaving Bing and Yahoo! with about 2% of that market, so we’re going to focus on Google SERPs only. Google has a unique bot for mobile sites (Mobile Bot), but not a different index. The pages (mobile vs. non-mobile) are just treated differently. Due to the lack of mobile specific pages, Google is “borrowing” desktop sites for mobile SERPs. That means if you don’t have a dedicated mobile page, you’ll still show up in mobile searches.

Google is about relevancy, so if a non-mobile page is the best result it will rank for now. Google will also adapt your desktop page to render in a mobile browser. Many desktop pages render decently in mobile browsers, but issues include overlapping navigation, non-functioning flash, pop up windows that cause browsing issues, and a page width that requires too much scrolling.

Does This Browser Make My Site Look Big?
View your desktop pages in a mobile emulator so you can see how it looks on different smartphones screen sizes/browsers. Compare this to the PC version of your site.
Mobile Phone Emulator is an excellent tool that lets you view pages on different screen sizes for different mobile phones/browsers. It shows you a working version of your site in mobile form. Click the links and navigate your site just as a mobile user would.

Easy changes to make your site mobile friendly.
After viewing your pages on different platforms you’ll begin to see page changes you can make that will improve mobile browsing without hurting desktop browsing. These may include:

• Eliminating pop ups.
• Creating front-loading content (like a journalist). Think of information like a triangle. Most important “need to know content” at the top, followed by second most important information, etc.
• Larger font–less text.
• Fewer images.
• Cleaner navigation–less navigation.
• Avoiding frames.
• Continuing to improve page speed. This is very important with mobile devices.
• Adding contact information, maps, directions, hours of operation.
• Limiting long heading tags.
• Avoiding flash.
• Thinking of what a mobile user–on the go–would be using the page for.
• Optimizing for tasks.
• Shorten meta descriptions if possible.

Plug-In and Mobilize Your WordPress Blog
If you run WordPress sites that aren’t rendering well, the following plugins will create a clean mobile version.

• WP Touch: If you’re site is a WordPress blog which doesn’t convert well in mobile browsers, install the WPTouch plugin. This will turn your blog into a very clean and organized app-style theme for iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch visitors (user agents Android, CUPCAKE, bada, blackberry9500, blackberry9520, blackberry9530, blackberry9550, blackberry9800, dream, iPhone, iPod, incognito, s8000, webOS, webmate). WPTouch will also put AdSense for mobile ads in your posts when you customize those settings. Takes just a couple minutes to set up.
• WordPress Mobile Pack: The WordPress Mobile Pack automatically detects when a visitor is on a mobile device and switches to a mobile theme. This toolkit has a barcode and mobile ad widget and mobile analytics.

Your Mobile SERPs
Use the Google Mobile Search page or the XHTML version and compare mobile SERPs vs. desktop SERPs for your important keyword phrases.

Redirecting Mobile Visitors
Now that you’ve seen what your site looks like in the mobile browser and what’s ranking in SERPs, you may want to redirect mobile visitors to a different (but similar) page. You can do that by adding the following to the head section.

Click to Call
Mobile users tend to seek information now–that they’re going to act on now. For example, finding a restaurant or shop nearby.
Make your contact information visible and clickable. Link phone numbers so mobile users can “click to call.” Use the following HTML on your phone numbers.

Replace the example phone number with your own and don’t leave out the “1″ before your area code. I left it out of the actual anchor text, but you can include it there too.

Be More Accessible: Go Local
Mobile is very much about local, so make sure you register with local sites.

• Google Places: List your business, address, hours of operation, expanded directions, specials/coupons, images, and incentives like free parking.
• Bing Local
• Yahoo! Local
• Best of the Web
• Yelp
• Citysearch
• Hot Frog

The following are just a few tips for making your site more mobile friendly, until you have a dedicated mobile site up. Until then, remember to have contact information visible and easily accessible, keep the design clean and quick to load, and develop a local presence.

SEO Revolution Blog

Often, when a typical marketer is looking to get into a market, they dive right in and often fail far more than they succeed. It doesn’t have to be that way. Just by doing some “quick math” in your head and a few searches can greatly help you determine if you should proceed with that 0.00 ad spend in AdWords as a test in the market. When you find a potential market, spend just ten minutes. That’s it, just ten. Remember, sometimes a great market just won’t convert well for your offer … it happens and it is best to know as soon as possible if the market is a dud. And to figure that out just do these steps first:

In this example, I will use ClickBank, which sells mostly eBooks. You can apply these steps to any affiliate program or network.

Step One: Write down the industry, exact eBook name and author.

Step Two: Write down the commission per sale.

Step Three: Based on an aggressive conversion ratio of 3%, project revenue. (while I realize that 3% seems high, it is what you should expect with the right targeted keywords, the right product and the right landing page).

Step Four: Write down your “break even” point in terms of Cost Per Click (CPC).

Step Five: Open the Keyword Tool in Google AdWords

Step Six: Enter the “main keyword” or the merchant’s site

Step Seven: Show Estimated CPC, Search Volume Trends and Highest Volume Occurred In (drop down “Choose Columns to Display)

Step Eight: Change Match Type to “Exact” (we don’t want non-qualified clicks)

Step Nine: Sort by Estimated CPC (highest first)

Step Ten: Scroll down to the range of the break even point you wrote down in Step Four. You must have at least 300 in Search Volume from the month prior to consider using the keyword phrase. This will give you ten potential searchers per day.

Step Eleven: Verify that at least 100 clicks per day can be had with the keywords which match the above criteria.

Step Twelve: Re-run “Traffic Estimator” and target the actual product name and the author’s name and look for traffic estimates of ten clicks or more.

Let’s do an example together:

1. Dog Training. Kingdom of Pets: SitStayFetch by Daniel Stevens

2. .23

3. .69 (.23 x 3) 3 sales is based on 100 visitors at 3% conversion (most will state that this conversion ratio is too high, but because we will focus on the keywords that sell, this is the minimum that you should expect).

4. .94 (.69/100) Paying .94 per click would “break even” on the campaign.

5. N/A

6. I prefer to target the merchant’s site, as it often gives me a faster pull of effective keywords. I can also use SpyFu. So I put in: http://www.kingdomofpets.com/

7-9. N/A

10. The first section is keywords related to “how to train” which is the focus of the site and the keywords we want to focus on to sell the guide. Here are the ones that I selected:

how to train dog (.96) 74,000. Yes, this is above the range, but just barely and it is highly focused.
how to train my dog ($.90) 3,600
how to train a puppy (.80) 27,100
how to train puppies (.56) 3,600

The other sections? You can target them, but you will need to create a new landing page for each because each has a different market and we want to keep our conversions as high as possible. Here are some ideas:

“dog training collar” – this would be an eCommerce product sale rather than an informational eBook.

“dog trainer” – with the slumping economy, many could be looking to “moonlight” to help make ends meet. This could spur you to create your own product on how to make a career out of being a dog trainer. There is plenty of information to pull from on the web and being the merchant often is the ticket you have been looking for.

“dog bark” – this is a problem. By targeting your landing page to show how the problem can be solved quickly, easily and affordably is what the prospect is seeking.

This is where “out of the box” thinking comes in. Business opportunities can come anytime and anywhere, but you must seize the opportunity.

11. Verified. On the conservative side, 3,000 searches per day should result in at least 100 clicks.

12. Searching for “kingdom of pets”, “sitstayfetch”, “sit stay fetch” and “daniel stevens” did not return results which were usable.

With the above, it can be assumed since we can get over 100 clicks per day at around the break even point that this would be a product worth pursuing. A -0.00 PPC test would be worthwhile.

PPC Tip: Make your bids half of what the top bid is, so if you do this, then you can target keywords at DOUBLE your break-even point to gain more qualified click throughs.

SEO Revolution Blog

America is the great melting pot of cultures, and many people are most comfortable speaking their native language. Businesses everywhere have recognized this fact, and as a result have begun to offer services in varying languages. Extending your customer base by offering your site in additional languages can only help your bottom line!

Those of you with brick and mortar businesses have probably noticed the advantages of having a bilingual staff. As indicated by the fast rising growth of online shoppers, this advantage extends to your business’ online presence as well. Neglecting to translate your website’s sales pages may be causing you to lose out on sales.

For example, in San Antonio, Texas, 62% of the population is Hispanic; most of this Hispanic community speak Spanish, so a business there would greatly benefit from a Spanish translation on its website. You can easily check your county, city or state demographics to see if your business would benefit from translating your sales pages into another language.

There are many ways to get your site translated; you can use Google Translate, other translating software such as Babylon 8, or hire someone fluent in the language to do it for you. Many people have questioned the accuracy of Google’s translation application, but I don’t have any personal experience with it. Find whatever method works best for you to get the job done.

Your work doesn’t end at the translation; now you have to get the word out there that you offer pages in another language. You can run advertisements or a PR campaign both online and offline to spread the word that you are now offering services in another language.

First, check to see if any of your competitors have translated their sites. As always, the secret is to check the back links of those who have; you’ll find many resources for getting your business out there as a bilingual site.

Another way to find PR resources for your site’s new translation is to look for business organizations similar to the US Chambers of Commerce, such as the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Once you find these organizations, look at the back links of their press releases to see who has cited them.

Translating your site into other languages benefits you in two major ways: first it increases your audience, thereby increasing your sales; secondly, it opens up new avenues for publicity and link building. Building a business requires a willingness to change and the ability to adapt. If you are missing out on customers because they don’t speak English, you’re letting opportunity pass you by. Keep an eye on your target audience; your customer base may be broader than you think.

SEO Revolution Blog