Mediaboss Marketing

22-03-2012 19:57 They're back. The FBI's Lulzsec promises hijinks on April Fool's Day. On Saturday, the supposed hacktivist group infiltrated -- and we can presume created -- by the US government released a YouTube video promising more mayhem. "Lulzsec will start targeting governments, corporations, agencies, and quite possibly the people watching this video. We are here for the lulz, the fame, the anarchy, and the people," the video proclaimed. Targeting "the people watching this video" -- mostly average people who have nothing to do with the government or large corporations -- appears to be the next step in an ambitious psyop designed to manufacture consensus for government regulation of the internet. Lulzsec may not get the chance, if we can believe the hype. A couple weeks ago, sister organization Anonymous (also rumored to be a government creation) said it would not just take down a few government and corporate websites, but the entire internet. It plans to do this on March 31st using something called DNS amplification. DNS, or Domain Name System, is sort of like the White Pages of the internet. It is used every time you type a website address in your browser. Anonymous plans to attack the DNS servers. Here's an in-depth explanation of how DNS works and how Anonymous supposedly plans to attack it and disable the internet. In the past, Anonymous responded to things like the Pirate Bay and Megaupload takedowns by the government and SOPA and PIPA, but has morphed into what the ...

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Anonymous Promises to Take Down The Internet: Kurt Nimmo

When Apple's new iPad went on sale this month, it effectively raised the speed limit for a new generation of Internet users. Its 4G wireless telecom technology is as much as 10 times faster than many corporate networks over which it will communicate.

That capability puts upward pressure on consumer expectations for just how fast data should move, and may well tax many existing data centers.

The higher bar is, however, good news for companies that make the gear and systems enabling corporate and telecom networks to keep pace. Those include stalwart gear makers such as Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO - News) and Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ:RVBD - News). Revenue and earnings growth for some players has been north of 20% in recent quarters.

The need for such equipment has soared as notepads and smartphones press the boundaries of broadband communications. Networking equipment a basic element of data center construction is critical for companies, including telecom carriers, attempting to manage rising tides of information being pushed through Internet pipes and wireless networks.

The move to cloud computing services which allow companies to store and access data over the Internet is also a factor, says Rohit Mehra, an analyst for technology researcher IDC.

The next five years are likely to see continued rapid expansion of large- and medium-sized data centers, Mehra says, to support cloud-type services.

"It's already quite big," he said, "but this train isn't stopping anytime soon.

The momentum helped lift the Computer-Networking group in February into the top 50 industries tracked by IBD. The group ranked No. 32 Friday, after starting the year with a No. 108 ranking.

1. Business Cisco is the group giant. The company's business reaches into all corners of computer networking ranging from Ethernet switches and routers to Web videoconferencing systems.

Another leader, Riverbed, is the top provider of wide area networks or WAN's that push data across states and continents. Polycom (NASDAQ:PLCM - News), a leading provider of unified communications, competes with Cisco in the Web videoconferencing market.

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The Internet's New Speed Limit

Google has over 200 signals it uses to rank results. Given Googles legendary PageRank algorithm, based on links, it has led to a lot of people worrying about links way too much. Thats not to say quality links arent still important, but just because you have a whole bunch of links, it doesnt mean your site is going to rank well.

Googles Matt Cutts posted an interesting webmaster help video under the title: Will Google Provide More Link Data For All Sites? Its Cutts response to the user-submitted question:

In the wake of the demise of Yahoo Site Explorer, does Google Webmaster Tools plan to take up the reigns this product once provided to SEOs everywhere?

Cutts responds, What I think youre asking is actually code for will you give me a lot of links? and let me give you some context about Googles policies on that. I know that Yahoo Site Explorer gave a lot of links, but Yahoo Site Explorer is going away. Microsoft used to give a lot of links. And they saw so much abuse and so many people hitting it really, really hard that I think they turn that off so that people wouldnt be tempted to just keep pounding them and pounding their servers.

So our policy has been to give a subsample of links to anybody for any given page or any given site and you can do that with a link colon commandand to give a much more exhaustive, much more full list of links to the actual site owner, says Cutts. And let me tell you why I think thats a little bit more of a balanced plan. Yahoo Site Explorer, they were giving a lot of links, but they werent giving links that Google knew about. And certainly, they dont know which links Google really trusts. And so I think a lot of people sometimes focus on the low-quality links that a competitor has, and they dont realize that the vast majority of times, those links arent counting.

So, for example, the New York Times sent us a sample of literally thousands of links that they were wondering how many of these count because theyd gotten it from some third party or other source of links, he adds. And the answer was that basically none of those links had counted. And so its a little easy for people to get obsessed by looking at the backlinks of their competitors and saying, oh, theyre doing this bad thing or that bad thing. And they might not know the good links. And they might not know that a lot of those links arent counted at all.

So I also think that its a relatively good policy because you deserve to know your own links, he continues. I think thats perfectly defensible. But it doesnt provide that much help to give all the links to a competitor site unless youre maybe an SEO, or your a competitor, or something along those lines. So for somebody like a librarian or a power searcher or something like that, using link colon and getting a nice sample, a fair fraction of links to a particular page or to a particular website, is a very good policy.

I think thats defensible, but I dont expect us to show all the links that we know of for all the different sites that we know of, just because people tend to focus on the wrong thing, he concludes. They dont know which links really count. So they tend to obsess about all the bad links their competitors have and only look at the good links that they have. And its probably the case that surfacing this data makes it so that youre helping the people who really, really, really want to try to get all their competitors backlinks or whatever. And I just think its a little bit more equitable to say, OK, youre allowed to see as many of the backlinks as we can give you for your own site, but maybe not for every other site. You can get a sampling, so you can get an idea of what theyre like, but I wouldnt expect us to try to provide a full snapshot for every single site.

Links obviously arent everything, and if you follow Googles changes, its easy to see that other signals have been given a lot more significance in recent memory. This includes things like content quality, social signals and freshness. If youre that worried about the number of links you have, youre living in the wrong era of search.

Granted, links have value beyond search ranking. They still provide more potential referrals to your site, but in terms of Google, the search engine is moving more and more away from the traditional 10 organic links anyway, with more personalized results, fresher results, blended (universal search) results, and more direct answers.

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Google On How A Lot Of Your Links Don’t Count

Google often does Webmaster Central Hangouts on Google+. This gives webmasters an opportunity to connect with Googlers and learn valuable tips about how they can get more out of their sites, and out of Google.

Googles Pierre Far announced a couple of upcoming hangouts for Tuesday, March 27, and Wednesday, March 28. Both begin at 2PM UK time, and last for an hour. Far writes:

US-based webmasters: please be careful with the time difference for these as Europe would have switched to summer time by then!

Where: Right here on Google+. It works best with a webcam + headset. You can find out more about Hangouts and how to participate at http://goo.gl/k6aMv

Topic: Anything webmaster-related: Webmaster Tools, Sitemaps, crawling, indexing, duplicate content, websites, web search, etc.

To join, you obviously need a Google+ account. The thing is, theyre only limited to 10 participants, but people tend to come and go, so even if you cant immediately get in, you might be able to squeeze in sometime within the hour. Its a chance to get some direct advice about your site from Google, so depending on how pressing your issue is, it may be worth waiting to get in.

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Google Webmaster Hangouts: 2 You Can Join In The Near Future

COLCHESTER,England, March 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --The leading search engine marketing agency HP Group have been selected as the official SEO partner for Soccerex.

Soccerex is the Global Leader for the Business of Football. Football is big business, and for 17 years they have been leading the way in bringing together the football industry, providing a unique platform of global events for the game to learn, network and do business, and HP Group has been selected to manage their SEO campaign.

This exciting development came after HP Group's senior account manager James Root combined his passion for football with that of digital marketing. James approached Soccerex with a proposal outlining how they can improve search engine visibility and provide digital marketing insight for the Soccerex community.

James Root said: "This is a particularly exciting opportunity as everyone has the chance to benefit. Soccerex increases the performance of their website and provide a valuable educational resource for their membership, whilst HP Group has a partnership with the leading global football business network. Plus, I get to work around football. It's a real win for everyone involved!"

HP Group will be working with Soccerex to improve the overall compliancy of the website, increase visibility within search engines for main keywords, increase the amount of keywords sending traffic to the website and providing innovative reporting using HP Group's in-house reporting system.

This unique reporting tool developed by HP Group will also be initiating research and development targeting key terms for the soccer industry, which will be made exclusively available to the Soccerex membership.

David Wright, Soccerex Marketing Director said: "Digital marketing is integral to success in the modern marketplace, so we are very excited to be partnered with HP Group based on their track record and initial strategy, and I look forward to working with them to improve our online visibility."

HP Groupis an independent search engine marketing agency based out of Essex with offices in the UK and Spain, delivering award winning digital marketing solutions specialising in search engine optimisation and PPC advertising.

http://www.hpseo.co.uk/

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HP Group Chosen as Official SEO Provider for Soccerex