MyWebResource

Yep, you read right, unfortunately I made the wrong decision in picking the right coder/designer for the development of MWR. This really upsets me, and probably you too. However, I am not stopping because I never stop. I just posted a new project request and it should receive more relevant bids with in the next week.

I am very sorry for all of the community that this delay had to be done and I personally apologize to all of you. I assure you that Free Templates will keep coming every week no matter what happens. By the end of September, we will hopefully see a new and improved MWR. For now please enjoy our current free resourceful offers.

This delay was completely out of my hands, the programmer decided not to do his job to the full.

Sincerely,

Semih Gorgulu

A new custom template has been released.

Please check our download page or simply type this into your address bar http://mywebresource.com/download/45/

Here is a preview of the home page.

To all MWR community, the web enhancement development starts on August, 07, 2007. The development will continue for a maximum of two to three weeks. It will not cause any downtime, all functions of the website will be available for users. The following changes are going to be made to the website:

1- Brand new custom made design with multiple systems integrated to work as one portal.

2- New Forums Section

3- New Categorized Tutorials Section

4- New Free Hosting Section

5- New Custom .PSD templates to MWR registered users only (Exclusive to MWR only)

6- Brand new custom Xoops themes (Exclusive to MWR only)
7- New Design Group to take your custom WordPress, Xoops and Web template orders.

Hope this gets some attention from other communities as well Spread the word!!!!

August,2, 2007, 4:00 PM EST, MWR will be changing servers so expect a short downtime.

August, 8, 2007 MWR will become under development for the new sections: Forums, Categorized Tutorials, Free Hosting and a new layout. The website will remain ONLINE and active. There will be no downtime during development period. Keep posted as I will post more on the development.

Thank you.

Semih Gorgulu

Dear MyWebResource Community, Readers and Affiliates:

This post is to inform you all that MWR is officially under new ownership as of today, July, 31, 2007. I am not exactly sure of the feedback this news is going to receive from the community, but personally I am thrilled to let you know that I am one excited man. Please allow me to introduce myself; I am Semih Gorgulu, an online entrepreneur who has done everything from gaming, domain reselling, web hosting, web designing, template designing to the good old one million dollar home page. Continue reading »

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring - Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a whole?

What’s Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now, Microsoft put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo! search engine in early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at first, saying that it undervalued its company as one of the top engines (and a provider of other services, including email and chat as well). Microsoft did not increase the offer at this point; it instead decided to enter a proxy battle.

A proxy battle would involve Microsoft putting up its own board of directors to let shareholders decide if its purchase of the Yahoo! search engine would be acceptable or not. In essence, Microsoft has decided that it will attempt to convince shareholders that their interests are better served by people who will approve this acquisition between two of the top Internet search engines. And Yahoo! shareholders have been beaten down for some time, so it is widely expected that the majority will in fact favor this acquisition.

Meanwhile, Yahoo!, on spurning this offer, began talking with other companies in order to build strategic partnerships and keep itself as one of the top engines, as it had been for so long. It was rumored that MySpace’s parent company, News Corporation, was in talks to work with the Yahoo! search engine, as was Google. However, these talks seem to have fizzled, and Yahoo!’s board of directors has begun speaking directly with Microsoft’s board. Yahoo! bought a bit of time by delaying the election of its board, but it is believed that this is all the shareholders will stand for at this point.

So I’m assuming that if the acquisition goes down, the Microsoft search engine and the Yahoo! search engine will likely be using the same algorithm, even if they remain separate sites. It just makes sense not to spend the money to have two separate research departments, especially when the Yahoo! search engine is widely regarded to be superior to Microsoft’s.

Will Ask.com Continue to Be One of the Top Internet Search Engines?

For a time, Ask.com seemed to be trying to go head to head with Google and to position itself as one of the top Internet search engines - period. You may remember the “algorithm” ads that it ran for a time on television. However, recently Ask.com announced that it will instead be tailoring itself to the niche market share of which it already has control. In other words, they’re no longer trying to be all things to all people in the way that other top search engines like, well, Yahoo! and Google are.

What we know about Ask.com’s demographic is that it is largely female, although Ask.com refutes the notion that it is focusing on “older women.” According to an article in Forbes, an Ask.com spokesperson said that:

…reports of the site becoming oriented towards older women are false and were fueled by an erroneous Associated Press article that has since been changed. Ask acknowledged that married women do compose a lot of its core users and these matronly queries are often dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia type queries - as well as categories like health and entertainment (1)…

Seeing as Ask.com also laid off 8% of its staff at the same time that it refocused, it seems clear that the company is no longer aiming to be considered one of the top Internet search engines.

And this means that we are down to two search engine technologies dominating the entire landscape: Google and a MSN/Yahoo! search engine hybrid (Micro-hoo? Yah-soft?).

How Will This Affect Consumers?

If there truly are only two major top Internet search engines, the industry will be like Coke vs. Pepsi. Sure there are other, smaller players like RC Cola that some people will be brand loyal about, but for the most part it’s either Big Guy One or Big Guy Two.

And this means that businesses that had good rankings and that were getting good traffic from, say, Ask.com and MSN but not the Yahoo! search engine, will be in a bind. With only two top Internet search engines, there will be less real estate to compete for and the same number of businesses vying for this real estate.

How Will This Affect SEO Companies?

In one sense, having only two serious engines makes the job easier for search engine optimization companies - there’s just less algorithms to absorb and master. However, it makes the opportunity for volatility much more likely. Before, if the Google or Yahoo! search engine changed its algorithm, you had three or four other engines to fall back on while you worked to update your practices. But with only two major players, a tweak to either the Google or MSN/Yahoo! search engine algorithm could have much further reaching implications to individual companies in the search space.

Who Will Compete Next?

Google has been coasting for many years as being seen as the underdog in the industry - the cool, hip engine to use that’s not owned by the big guys. However, search engine optimization practitioners have started to see some cracks in that veneer. The truth of the matter is that Microsoft is seen as a huge corporate conglomerate, with Google starting to be seen similarly. And now Google has to answer to shareholders, rather than just going along trying “not to be evil.” Google has its own set of privacy issues and conflicts of interest, such as its recent purchase of DoubleClick, which came along with a SEO company. [See my recent article on this topic for more information.]

So when there are just two top Internet search engines, the door is opened for competition. If another company can come along technologically that is on par with the Google and Yahoo! search engine algorithms and that does not have huge corporate considerations, it could very well start gaining some market share in this space. I’ll let you know if I see any contenders.

Sources

1. http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/2008/03/05/iac-ask-update-markets-equity-cx_md_0305markets33.html

(C) Medium Blue 2008

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

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It’s a common question that companies who are considering hiring a search engine optimization company often face - is this something that we can do in-house? More importantly, can we do this in-house and get the same results that an expert search engine optimization company would provide?

As this article will demonstrate, clearly the answer is “yes” to both questions. However, as this article will also demonstrate, getting the types of results that an expert at search engine optimization can provide will cost you - often more than outsourcing.

For the purpose of this article, I’m ignoring the multitudes of companies that decide to dump the job on somebody already in their organization (usually an IT person who already has too much to do) rather than hiring a search engine optimization company. It has been my experience that while some of these people eventually provide decent results, they are the exception. More often than not, the project never leaves the ground, or the effort is halfhearted at best. In a worst case scenario, your internal person may embrace tactics that no expert search engine optimization company would ever use because they can put your site at risk of penalization or outright removal from the engine indexes.

My company often works with firms after they have used non-expert internal talent to optimize their website, and most of the time we are actually doing more work because much of what has been done is ineffective or dangerous. We have to take everything apart and put it all back together, often while making requests to the search engines to have penalties lifted.

The real goal of this article, however, is to assume that a business has decided to embark on a search engine optimization campaign, and that it is also committed to using a proven expert in search engine optimization. The choice then is simple - does the business hire an experienced resource to work in-house or should it instead go with an outsourced search engine optimization company?

A recent study by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, published in the January 2008 edition of DM News (”Healthy SEM Salaries Rule: SEMPO Survey”), points out that experience in search engine marketing carries a high price tag. For instance, if you were looking to hire someone with more than five years of experience in search engine marketing, you could expect to pay between $100,000 and $200,000 per year. For somebody with experience but not five or more years, you can expect to pay anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 per year.

If nothing else, these real world figures should convince discerning companies that expert search engine optimization and marketing is not something that you should dump off on an existing employee without any experience in the field. The free market has determined that expert search engine optimization and marketing is worth at least $60,000 per year for a full time position, and up to $200,000 per year.

On the other hand, most reputable search agencies have many more than five years of collective experience in the search engine marketing industry. In addition, a high percentage of these agencies offer SEO services that cost considerably less than $60,000 per year, to say nothing of $200,000 per year. It should also be noted that this figure neglects to include any of the additional costs associated with hiring - benefits, training, and so on. In addition, an expert search engine optimization company will have a broad range of sites from which to draw knowledge, while your in-house expert will likely only have one, or a handful at best.

To be fair, there are certain advantages to hiring an in-house expert. First of all, experts will have their feet to the fire, so to speak. A search engine optimization company isn’t likely to go out of business if it underperforms on your site, but an in-house expert in search engine optimization is likely to lose his or her job. It’s also much easier to get the whole team together to discuss your SEO initiatives at any time you choose when you are working with someone in-house. And hey, when you’re paying someone $200,000 per year, you can be pretty certain that you’re going to get top-notch work. But can an expert search engine optimization company give you that same level of work for a lot less money? Probably.

Conclusion

There are many compelling reasons why your business should hire an expert search engine optimization company rather than bring in an SEO expert internally or simply give the SEO project to an existing team member. Financially, it makes sense. But more so, you’re more likely to get the results over the short and long term with an outsourced company for all of the reasons noted above. I’m not saying you have to hire an SEO company - at first. I’m saying eventually you’ll probably want to.

(C) Medium Blue 2008

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld in 2006 and 2007. Scott’s articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

If you are a merchant that processes credit cards, then you are probably already well aware of PCI compliance, but you may not be sure how web application security fits into the picture. You may also have heard that starting in June 2008, section 6.6 of the rules for PCI compliance will go from a “best practice” to a mandatory requirement (if not, it’s time to pay attention!), but you might not know what this means for your business. The fact is, in a perfect world you already have in place what is necessary to be compliant with not only section 6.6, but PCI rules as a whole. This is because ideally, you would have handled your web application security practices from the start, as the applications are built, so that you are not scrambling to add security to existing applications. Unfortunately, this is often not the case – which makes now a great time for businesses to reevaluate their web application security processes overall.What PCI Compliance Means

A bit of background regarding PCI compliance - as credit card use has become more widespread both offline and online, and as consumer concern about security has understandably grown, the credit card industries have made an effort to ensure that sensitive information is protected. To that end, in September 2006, the major credit card companies (American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International) formed the PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) and established a set of rules for what they called PCI compliance. These rules have to be followed depending on the size of a business and the number of credit card transactions handled, and if done properly will help protect consumers’ data from theft. The Rules for PCI Compliance There are six major categories within the standards established by the PCI SSC, which are as follows:

· Build and maintain a secure network
· Protect cardholder data
· Maintain a vulnerability management program
· Implement strong access control measures
· Regularly monitor and test networks
· Maintain an information security policyWithin these six categories are 12 requirements that address particular issues and that are directly related to web application security:

1. Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
2. Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters
3. Protect stored cardholder data
4. Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks
5. Use and regularly update anti-virus software
6. Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
7. Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
8. Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
9. Restrict physical access to cardholder data
10. Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
11. Regularly test security systems and processes
12. Maintain a policy that addresses information securityEach requirement for PCI compliance is broken up into a variety of subsections that go into detail about the process, the full list of which can be viewed at www.pcicomplianceguide.org. Section 6.6 – the most important subsection regarding web application security because it is coming under scrutiny this year - states the following:

Ensure that web-facing applications are protected against known attacks by applying either of the following methods: · Having all custom application code reviewed for common vulnerabilities by an organization that specializes in application security
· Installing an application layer firewall in front of web facing applications

As a result of this upcoming change, it is important for companies to have a game plan in place for web application security. Until now, companies may not have taken PCI compliance very seriously. No major fines have been levied for noncompliance so far and the entire process may have been seen as something nonessential. But with this new change to 6.6, IT teams around the world are evaluating the strengths and weaknesses between web application firewalls, code reviews and application assessment software which all satisfy the requirement. What It Means for Your Business

There are two mistakes that many organizations make related to web application security. First, many businesses and government organizations have historically focused their attention on network security rather than web application security, and it may seem that the June 2008 deadline is coming out of nowhere and that businesses will be scrambling to achieve PCI compliance. But the fact is, your business should have ensured that all of its web applications were secure from the beginning. PCI compliance shouldn’t be viewed as a checklist, because then all that will happen is that unreliable fixes will be applied to problems. Instead, the concept of web application security needs to be implemented within the web application itself. When web application security is implemented properly, the PCI compliance requirements related to web application security are automatically met.As a result, the development and QA teams at businesses need to be focused on web application security. It may be that businesses will need to take their web applications and break them down from the start, rather than trying to install patches and fixes for PCI compliance.

Another section related to PCI compliance that could cause problems in the near future is 11, which states that security scans must be done on a regular basis. If instead of fixing web application security issues internally, patches had been installed as an afterthought, these scans could become nightmarish because they will identify hundreds of issues that will need to be fixed. Better to take the time up front to build in web application security measures and avoid this problem altogether.Conclusion

Businesses that process credit cards are likely already aware that they must be PCI compliant – but they may not have worked very hard to make sure that they are. In 2008, one of the subsections of PCI compliance will become mandatory, and businesses are going to have to evaluate their web applications very carefully. By ensuring that web application security is built from within, rather than by adding on fixes that will only work in the short term, businesses will find that not only are they compliant with one part of the PCI standards, but that they are compliant with all of them, and that their customers’ data is secure across the board. About the Author Michael Sutton is a security evangelist for HP Software. Michael is responsible for educating audiences on the importance of integrating web application security best practices throughout the application development process and works closely with the HP Software Security Labs team. The co-author of Fuzzing: Brute Force Vulnerability Discovery, Michael has his CISSP and CISA designations and is a member of ISACA.

As any good search engine optimization company knows, in search, more so than any other medium, you have a very short window of opportunity in which to engage your prospect. The only way to get a solid competitive advantage in this arena is to utilize various techniques in order to make sure that you are giving a prospect exactly what it is that he or she is looking for. Otherwise, your prospect will simply click the back button and visit one of your competitors - a process that only takes seconds.

One way to gain a competitive advantage, of course, is to work on the website itself. Any search engine optimization company worth its salt will also be involved in conversion testing on your website - in other words, making certain that the visitors who arrive on your site are likely to take a point of action that eventually leads to a sale. Split tests, modifications in content, different color schemes, and numerous other variable elements can all have a measurable impact.

There is also another way that a quality search engine optimization company will seek to maximize the value of the prospects that find your website through search engines. In this case, however, it is using your company differentiators in the keyphrases that they target to make sure that the traffic that comes to your site is of a very high quality.

Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Differentiators

As more and more companies turn to organic search to gain a competitive advantage while promoting their products and services, it can be increasingly difficult to achieve high rankings for the generic terms that everyone in your industry is pursuing. While any ranking is ultimately attainable, eventually a search engine optimization company has to decide whether the effort involved is worth it, especially when it recognizes that you can get overall better results from the campaign by making sure that a very high percentage of people that are typing keyphrases into search engines are looking for exactly what you offer.

This is why your search engine optimization company should be able to leverage differentiators in your keyphrases to give you the best competitive advantage available.

What Keyphrases Will Work Best for Your Business?

Suppose that you are in an industry where companies can have a wide array of prices, approaches, customer service levels, and so on. Instead of targeting, from the outset, the general keyphrase that defines the industry (for example “email marketing”), a good search engine optimization company will take the time to help you gain a competitive advantage by realizing what is different about your company in order to a.) attract very highly targeted prospects who know what they are seeking and b.) reduce the competitiveness of the keyphrases they are choosing.

Let’s take a look at a high-end provider of email marketing that has advanced web-based functionality and focuses on the B2B market. This fictional business is seeking a competitive advantage by working with a search engine optimization company. We can safely assume that the percentage of people that type “email marketing” into a search engine who are looking for this exact type of company is anywhere from between 0 and 100%.

By looking into the popularity of other variations, however, we can see that it is nowhere near 100%. Phrases like “cheap email marketing” or “free email marketing” are very popular, demonstrating that many people seeking “email marketing” are not looking for exactly the service that the provider is offering.

Imagine that instead of targeting “email marketing”, a daunting task (that, even if achieved, assures that a high percentage of visitors that come to the site are not looking for the provider’s particular type of solution), the search engine optimization company takes advantage of the provider’s differentiators. In this case, the search engine optimization company would instead target phrases such as “business to business email marketing” and “web-based email marketing”. Suddenly the two objectives have been achieved - the provider knows that a much higher percentage of visitors that are typing these terms are actually looking for the right kind of company and the competitiveness of the phrases has also been reduced, leading to faster and higher rankings.

Using Modifiers to Give You the Edge

There are hundreds of modifiers that can give a competitive advantage by reflecting a company’s differentiators, including words such as “free”, “affordable”, “high-end”, “full service”, “proven”, “turnkey”, etc. The point is that by making use of your unique differentiators in the search terms you target, your search engine optimization company is already setting the table for your prospect before he or she even clicks over to your website. When the message that is seen on your site then supports the keyphrase that was typed, you now have an engaged visitor. This can mean more leads, less site abandonment, and better overall website performance.

Conclusion

Remember, your company is better than the others out there. Ask yourself why, and then tell your search engine optimization company to take advantage of these differences in your keyphrases to give you a competitive advantage in your industry. The subtle addition of a few seemingly minor modifiers can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

(C) Medium Blue 2008

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld in 2006 and 2007. Scott has contributed content to many publications including The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008), Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.