A colocated server is a privately owned server hosted at a datacenter, rather than in a home or business. Datacenters offer security, regulated power (with backup generators), fire protection, dedicated Internet connections, and climate control.

Customization

While the customer provides his own hardware, the facility offers choices of storage, connectivity, backup solutions, and security to suit the customer’s needs. The customer also has freedom to upgrade at any time.

Connectivity

Many datacenters offer fully-redundant network connections. At TurnKey Internet, we offer a 100% up-time guarantee on all colocated servers.

Financial Benefits

For small and medium-sized businesses housing servers in their offices, costs can be extremely high. Employing technicians, energy costs and maintaining infrastructure is extremely costly. By housing hardware in a datacenter, all of that is taken care of with support staff available to troubleshoot 24×7. Colocating is also a much greener option. A datacenter is considerably more energy efficient than an office.

Storage

Getting those servers out of the office opens up space and keeps things quiet so employees can work. Server fans are loud!

Disaster Recovery

Datacenters offer remote backup sites in case of disaster. If the unthinkable happens, your data is safe.

Security

Firewalls, security cameras, guards and other precautionary measures insure the safety of your physical hardware and virtual network.

Most office copiers these days contain hard drives that store data from every copy, print-out and scan you and your colleagues have ever made. The security risk is huge but many companies neglect to wipe their copier’s hard drives when they replace the equipment. Recently, a piece on CBS news exposed the dangers of this kind of security leak by searching through four used copiers purchased from a New Jersey warehouse. They mined the hard drives from the copiers with free software, available to anyone on the Internet.

What the investigators found was shocking. One of the copiers had belonged to the Buffalo, NY police department and it contained everything from a list of wanted sex offenders to detailed domestic violence complaints. A machine from the Buffalo police narcotics unit included information about targets in a major drug raid. Data culled from a construction company’s copier yielded the architectural floor-plan of a building near ground zero, and pay stubs with the names, addresses and social security numbers of employees. The fourth machine, from an insurance company, contained 300 complete medical records, including the results of blood tests, family medical histories, and cancer diagnoses.

As more and more of our sensitive data is digitized, we need to keep up with security protocols apace. Companies should be keeping careful track of every device where information is stored: computers, printers, copiers, voice mail and more. Every storage location is a potential security hazard and should be monitored, maintained and wiped clean before disposal.

Starting a new business can be a long and complicated process. One of the most important first steps (and one that often gets set aside for later) is creating a recognizable brand that suits your business goals. Your brand should reflect your industry but should also set you apart as unique. It should be memorable, easy to say and spell and should appeal specifically to your demographic. Lastly, your brand should be available as a domain name.

Brainstorm: What are You Looking For in a Company Brand?

Because of how hard it is to get a simple domain name these days, your best bet is to attack the problem from the opposite side. Figure out how you want to present your company to the world. Are you fun and web 2.0 like Google or Mozy, or are you more traditional and neutral like Dell Computers or Verizon? Try to think from the perspective of your demographic. If your clients are teenagers, look at the successful businesses in that market. What are their names like? Take your time doing this research. The brand you choose will help shape your company, and once you start marketing, you won’t want to make any changes that could disrupt traffic or confuse consumers. Point is, if your business is successful (which it will be, obviously) you’ll be living with this brand for a long time. The energy you put into naming your company will pay off every single time you see the name in the paper or on your letter head, every time you say it on the phone. This is your business! You need to be proud of its name.

Start Searching for Domain Names

Once you have a solid sense of the scope of your business, start trying out domain names. Sure, many of your early choices will likely be taken, but you might be surprised. There are still many domains out there and if you know what you’re looking for, chances are good you’ll find one pretty fast. Aim for short and simple and remember your goals and demographic. Don’t settle for something too soon. Once you have a list of names you like, show them to friends. Ask people in your target demographic what they think: if the name is memorable and interesting, and if it would attract them to the company.

If you can see the name in lights, up on a billboard or behind home base, you’ve done your job.

In the last post we discussed the new changes in Google’s algorithm to favor older, faster sites. But what does that mean for you?  Well, as is always the case with Google’s changes, there are many ways you can optimize your site to take advantage of the new rules.

In addition to older, faster favoritism, Google is now a faster spider. GoogleBot is more robust, and can spider more information more quickly. This means, of course, that new content is more important than ever before. It also means newer products will likely appear in searches before older ones. This can present some problems but, overall, just remember: New=indexed.

Over the past few days, I have been researching what site changes need to be implemented to get TurnKey Internet to the top. I have learned that there are several changes that can improve rank under the new algorithm, though not all of them are easy or without some technical trickiness.  While reading over these suggestions, remember, the goal here is to maximize speed and take advantage of faster indexing. Of course, you also want to continue to add new content, but you already know that.

Make the most of Google Caffeine

1) Minimize CSS and Javascripts

This is pretty obvious but, by reducing file size, you can significantly increase your site speed.

2) Avoid Duplicate URLs

If you’re pulling the same content, there is no need to be duplicating the same URL. Each time the browser loads that content, it slows download speed.

3) Intelligently Paralyze Resource URLs

Use separate host names for all of your files—for example, CSS.yourdomain.com or images.yourdomain.com. By doing this you allow your browser to make simultaneous connections, increasing site download speed. But watch out for your javascript files. These need to be in the same location as your index file because many browsers won’t start rendering until the javascripts have executed.

4) Enable Compression

Enable mod_gzip or mod_decompress to, once again, speed up your site download.

5) Enable Caching

Make sure you have enabled caching and “last modified” tags to reflect updates. Make them available to search engines with HTTP headers.

6) Use a CDN for Graphic Intensive Sites

Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to host large images and other files. This will cache these files geographically. What you spend on CDN (which shouldn’t be much) should pay for itself with increased business from improved page rank.

While PageRank remains shrouded in mystery, each new update reveals new information we can all use to optimize our content. Remember, like with all legitimate hard work, improving rank takes time. But if you make these improvements now, you will be ahead of the curve and, with a little luck and some elbow grease, you can rise to the top of search results.

To your success!

As the latest round of Google’s algorithm changes take the Internet by storm, SEO marketers around the world are wondering what effect these changes will have on search results. Google’s primary metric, PageRank, named after its inventor, Larry Page, is extremely complex. The Wikipedia entry for PageRank demonstrates the lengths to which many great minds have gone to try and reverse-engineer the algorithm to figure it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank.  But, each new algorithm tweak Google reveals new hints about how it all works.

The latest update is called Caffeine and includes several new layers of complexity for the algorithm. It is rumored that caffeine will be taking into account website age and loading time. This will benefit those sites that are more established and faster, and will hurt newer and slower sites. Evidently, Google aims to reinforce good quality, reliable content, optimized for speed and built over time. This is consistent with Google’s mission of improving the overall search experience.

According to Wikipedia and Mashable, there are two key changes to consider:

1) Caffeine includes a massive speed increase. Search results will now be returned twice as fast as before.

2) Search results will be “blended,” including information culled from a wide variety of sources—press releases, images, video, news—along with traditional results.

While, as a marketer Google’s constant changes might drive me crazy, as a searcher, I appreciate the egalitarian nature of much of what they do. If marketers had the inside scoop, there would, undoubtedly, be millions of dollars invested by those who could afford it to manipulate search results to their own ends. This would be great for those businesses but, in the long run, it would ruin the user experience. When I run a search, I’m not looking for results paid for by wealthy companies, I’m looking results that best match my search terms. As our collective information bank, our massive online reference library, Google has a responsibility to the information above all else. As much as the business people among us might wish for it, as soon as money starts getting in the way of our free access to information, we no longer live in a free society.