Digital Journal

In 1996 Bill Gates wrote an article titled “Content is King,” now a common catchphrase used when talking about Internet content. Today, over 16 years after it was penned, Gates’ article has been described as “shockingly current.” It’s hard not to agree.

What makes content so important, and why is it considered king of the Internet? It all comes down to the power of the mighty search engine. The more content the search engine can find that’s relevant to a particular search phrase, the more chance your website has of being listed in the search results. Website owners not capitalizing on content creation to reach their target audience are missing search engine optimization opportunities.

“I don’t write well,” or “I don’t have time to write,” may be some of the fears you face when contemplating writing content for your website. Yet, content creation comes in all shapes and sizes; it doesn’t need to take a lot of time, and you don’t always need to write an in depth article. Content may be in the form of using photos to illustrate a story; the text that accompanies the story may be a paragraph, or even a sentence, to describe the images.

Alternatively you can always use a guest writer who’s knowledgeable on a particular product or service you supply. If you’re a restaurateur, you could have one of your staff write about serving etiquette or perhaps writing about the latest wines on the market would be an attractive opportunity for your wine rep to get more exposure in the industry.

An addition to Gates’ aforementioned catchphrase is “good content is king.” The key to good content is using content containing keywords relevant to the product or service you’re supplying. It’s great to see increased traffic to your site, but more importantly you want the visitors to be within your target market. There’s no point in spending a lot of time attracting visitors to your site if they’re only going to leave because the content isn’t relevant to what they were searching for in the first place.

I’ve previously spoken about viewing your analytics to see where your site traffic is generated; after you’ve posted a few articles on your site take a look at your analytics, I’m sure you’ll be surprised by the results. While viewing your analytics, be sure to pay attention to the entry and exit points of traffic. If they came from a blog post and exited your site right after reading the post, you may not be attracting the right visitors to your site.

To read Gates’ 1996 article in full visit: http://www.craigbailey.net/content-is-king-by-bill-gates/

So you heard there’s a great new social network on the market; everyone’s talking about it and telling you how great it’s going to be for your business. You quickly sign up, put together a business profile, update your status a few times and figure you’ll sign back in in a few days to make some more changes. The days turn to weeks, and weeks to months; the ball has dropped and you’ve moved on to other things.

Six months later you discover that the great new network you signed up for is now the latest new social network and you really should be part of that platform to help your business grow.

It’s often then that the hunt beings. What was that “different” password you used for that account? Well, if you can’t remember the password, there’s no harm in just resetting it, if only you could remember which e-mail address you used . . . perhaps an employee set the account up, but now they’ve moved on.

Perhaps a friend set it up for you but now they’re out of touch.

Or perhaps someone else is holding the key information but isn’t responding to your e-mail requests for one reason or another.

These are common problems businesses face in today’s social media networked world. The best way to combat these issues is to keep good records of your usernames and passwords.

There are several password managers on the market that can help you keep track of your log-in information. Alternatively you can use a password protected Excel spreadsheet containing a list of all your usernames and passwords. By using these methods you’ll only need to remember one password and can feel relieved that you don’t need to use the same password for every account just so you can remember it.

Make sure when friends or employees set up accounts on your behalf you have them associate the account with a main work e-mail address that’s unlikely to change in a few months or years.

So, with an organized map of log-in information, user names, passwords and associated e-mail addresses, getting back in touch with those long lost networks is that much easier.

Set yourself a schedule to check your networks every three to six months to ensure you still have access to them and to determine if you’re using them effectively.

That cool new network you signed up to last year, the one that was promised take over Facebook, may not have been effective for your company, or perhaps you just weren’t using it effectively. By checking your networks regularly you can determine what to do with them. You might find it’s better to delete old accounts that are sitting stale and unfinished and instead really focus on the ones that do work for your business. Or you might be ready to look more closely at the up-and-coming network to see if you’ve overlooked its potential. It’s important to be savvy to the networks out there, and to stay current, but it won’t do your business any good to have a bunch of half finished projects sitting out there for anyone to see.

You have the passwords, take the time to tidy up what you have and see what networks are a good fit for your business.

We all know the importance of optimizing a website to ensure it ranks well by the search engines, but knowing how traffic is getting to your site can be equally important, especially when trying to increase your site’s ranking.

Some of the most important tools to add to the backend of your website, are website analytics—the statistics that measure a site’s performance. Site statistics are usually included in your web hosting package, however these results are often difficult to understand and contain limited information. Using a combination of analytics tools can give you a deeper understanding of how visitors found your site, what their entry and exit points were, the amount of time they spent on your site and what pages or links were clicked during their visit.

By viewing the top keywords visitors used to find your site, you can determine if your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is working effectively and where it can be improved. For example, if your domain name was HeffleyLakeTours.com, you should expect to be ranked highly when Googling the phrase “Heffley Lake Tours.” However, if, when analyzing your keyword results, you find most of your hits are coming from those keywords alone, you’ll want to change things up to focus on alternative keywords that aim to reach broader search terms.

Viewing data on the sources of your traffic can reveal whether your visitors were organic, direct or referring.

Organic traffic is traffic that came from a naturally occurring search result. For example, after Googling “heffley lake tours” a visitor clicks a link to your site from the search engine result.

Direct traffic refers to visits from those who are familiar with your domain and typed it directly into the address bar of their browser. These visitors may know your domain name because of traditional forms of advertising, or it may be traffic that’s unmeasurable, meaning it came from an offline source such as a link in an offline document.

Referring traffic comes to your site via an outside source such as Twitter or Facebook, an e-mail campaign, or other websites that provide links back to your site. If you’re working on your SEO, generally you’ll want to see that the majority of your traffic is organic.

Viewing the statistics of how your blog posts were found will give you a good indication of whether your efforts yielded effective results or not. For example, did you receive a spike in traffic after sending out a blog post or e-mail campaign? What source generated the most traffic? Many e-mail campaign services will provide separate statistical information like who did and didn’t open the campaign, who clicked links within the campaign and what e-mail program they used to view your campaign. Using integrated e-mail and web analytics tools will show you if there was an increase in visits from your blog post or e-mail campaign.

Other useful information to view includes: which pages received the most views, the number of visitors to your site, your visitor bounce rate and the average time a visitor spent on your site. These can be viewed by day, week, month, year or all time.

It’s a great practice to view these statistics on a regular basis. Knowing where your traffic is coming from, and how visitors are finding your site, will give you great insight on where and how to focus your SEO, and on what platforms drive the most traffic to your site.

The rise in popularity of smart phones with social media applications can put consumers at risk of fraud.

The Province, Consumer Protection BC and the Better Business Bureau are teaming up during Fraud Prevention Month to provide tips to help British Columbians get smart about their smart phone usage.

According to a recent study by Javelin Research and Strategy, smart phone users are at greater risk of identity theft and fraud than average consumers. Sixty-two per cent of smart phone owners do not use a password to protect their home screens, 32 per cent save log-in information on their phones and a third of users do not have the most current security updates on their operating systems.

A typical user scenario:

Samantha carries her smart phone with her everywhere. She runs all of her favourite social networks from her phone which is loaded up with all of the latest apps, including one allowing her to do all of her banking on the go. Samantha also keeps all of her personal information on her smart phone so that it is handy – phone numbers, addresses, birthdates and even passwords. One day Samantha leaves her phone on the bus. Not only is Samantha’s personal information now available to any stranger who picks up her phone, she’s now a potential victim of fraud and identify theft.

Here are some tips to protect you
and your family and become smart phone savvy:

• Get the latest operating system for your phone so your security is up-to-date.
• Add a password to your phone for access, so if it is lost a person does not have access to your phone and your personal identifiers.
• Password-protect everything, preferably with unique passwords for each social media service.
• Look for ‘remote wiping’ programs in the user manual of your smart phone so in case of loss you can remove and destroy all data from your phone from a remote location.
• Check applications for geo-tagging that allow you to “tag” a photo or video with your current location. You can turn this “tagging” option off in applications if you feel uncomfortable broadcasting your location publically.
• To avoid risk of financial loss, do not do your banking over public Wi-Fi networks.
• Be sure all the apps you download come from legitimate vendors. Check user reviews and learn about what the application needs to access on your smart phone.
  For example: If a wallpaper app needs access to your contact list, there’s probably a virus attached to the application.
• ‘Start with Trust’ when dealing with businesses and companies you’ve never heard of by researching them at: www.mbc.bbb.org
•  To stay informed about possible scams and to warn others:
  Visit Consumer Protection BC on Facebook at:
  www.facebook.com/ConsumerProtectionBC

For several months, phone scammers have been targeting British Columbians by pretending to be with a reputable computer software company, asking to perform urgent software updates and requesting hundreds of dollars as a fee for their service.

In response to this and other frauds, the Province and Consumer Protection BC are teaming up during Fraud Prevention Month to provide tips to help British Columbians fraud-proof themselves.

Fraud Prevention Month is a national initiative with the goal of fighting fraud aimed at businesses and consumers. This phone scam is a prevalent one. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says it currently accounts for 70 per cent of all fraud complaints in Canada.

The phone scam works like this: Tom, a B.C. resident, receives a phone call at dinner time. The caller explains he is from ‘Microsoft Tech Support’. He asks Tom whether his computer is running slowly and encourages him to download software right away to fix his computer. Tom has found that his system has been sluggish lately so he follows the caller’s instructions and bills the new ‘software’ to his credit card.

The total bill is in the hundreds of dollars.

Unfortunately, Tom has been scammed and has installed spyware, or malware, on his computer. The corrupt program can potentially monitor what he is typing on his computer, including personal information like banking details and passwords.

Here are some tips to protect you and your family from becoming a victim of this ‘virus-fixing’ scheme:

• If you receive one of these unsolicited phone calls, hang up and do not download anything onto your computer.
• Do your research and ask questions around all unsolicited phone calls.
• Get the name, phone number and website address of any company that calls you. Check to see if it is a legitimate company or if a real company’s name is being used as part of a scam. The Internet has a great deal of useful information on scam avoidance.
• Do not provide any personal information, especially your credit card number.

To stay informed about possible scams and to warn others:

• Visit Consumer Protection BC on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/ConsumerProtectionBC
• Report any fraudulent activity to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre by calling 1 888 495-8501.
• Know your rights! If you have questions about your rights and responsibilities as a B.C. consumer, please contact Consumer Protection BC, toll-free at 1 888 564-9963 or online at: www.consumerprotectionbc.ca

 

Children can use online technology in amazing ways to do amazing things. Unfortunately, by doing so, they also put themselves at risk of victimization. This year on Safer Internet Day – Tuesday, 7 February, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection is partnering with the Canadian government and law enforcement to remind parents, educators and anyone else with children in their lives about the importance of having an ongoing dialogue with their children tied to online safety.

Safer Internet Day is held each year in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially among children and young people. Parents and educators are encouraged to visit the Canadian Centre’s Internet safety website, The Door That’s Not Locked (thedoorthatsnotlocked.ca), for comprehensive Internet safety information and to download age-specific Safety and the Internet brochures.

“Safer Internet Day reminds us of the importance of being involved in our children’s Internet activities,” said Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews. “Internet crimes – especially those involving children are increasing at an alarming rate.”

“Our Government remains committed to protecting our children by taking tough action against Internet sexual predators,” said Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson. “No parent wants their child to fall prey to a predator. We all have a responsibility to teach and promote responsible use of online and mobile technology, so that we can help to prevent online luring and child sexual exploitation.”

“Based on an analysis of reports to Cybertip.ca, we know that youth continue to be lured online and are vulnerable to victimization,” said Lianna McDonald, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. “Based on their development, youth ranging in age from 12 to 15 are susceptible to being groomed and manipulated by offenders. As such, parents need to be particularly vigilant and engaged in their youth’s online activities.”

In the spring of 2012, Cybertip.ca – Canada’s tipline to report the online exploitation of children – will release a research report on the issue of luring. Preliminary results involving 300 reported cases reveal:

• 85% of identified luring victims were girls and 15% were boys;
• contact requests were made in 18% of cases;
• voyeuristic behaviour was seen in 31% of cases;
• reference to child pornography was seen in 50% of cases; and,
• threats were evident in 13% of cases.

“These innovative criminals are smart and engaging and know exactly what to say to capture a child’s attention. Manipulation is their tool and they know how to pick their targets,” said Det. Sgt. Kim Gross of the Toronto Police Service, Child Exploitation Section. “The lonely teenager, looking for contact with someone new and different is an easy mark. Before they know it, a meeting is set and things get much worse. Keeping good open lines of communication with your children is critical and education is and will always be the key to combating this criminal behaviour.”

The Door that’s Not Locked website was made possible through the help of the Government of Canada, TELUS, Bell, Shaw and Honeywell. In the coming weeks, with help from these partners, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection will be distributing more than half a million pieces of Internet and mobile safety information, educational activities and other resources to schools across Canada free-of-charge to coincide with Safer Internet Day.