Yeah yeah, I know, everyone EVERWHERE is obsessed with Twitter, and for good reason. Twitter is fun, it’s easy to connect to tons of people and it’s SO hot right now. But, with the good comes the advertising. Along with being everyone’s favorite social media plaything, Twitter is also paving the way for the next generation in spamming. And, as the account holders with the most followers get wooed by the green, good people get jacked.

Help! My Tech Heroes Are Selling Out!

Every time I login to our TurnKey Internet Twitter account, I see another good tech person selling out. I know: who am I to talk? After all, I’m logging in to my COMPANY Twitter account, to SELL something. I shouldn’t really be splitting hairs here. But there is a big difference between a company account and a personal account; between a company network and a network of friends. Or there should be. There REALLY should be. Unfortunately, at this stage of the game, the line between personal and professional is woefully blurry. Drunk pirate anyone? While this might be good news for companies taking advantage of individual’s social popularity to market their products, it’s not so good for individuals taking advantage of their FRIENDS for monetary gain.

Companies are no dummies

Twitter offers an unprecedented forum for the bite-sized advertisement and tech gurus with thousands of followers offer an irresistible demographic. But I don’t follow those tech gurus to be advertised to, and I suspect you don’t either. I want my free information and I want it now! Which leads me to my next point…

Everyone’s In IT for the Money

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the problem is more systemic. We have all gotten so used to this fancy-free exchange of information. We subscribe to feeds and streams left and right and consume them without a thought for the poor sap behind the tweets, endlessly and thanklessly churning out tech tips for our enjoyment. Surely tech gurus need to eat! If only we could all keep our professional lives and our private lives separate, but with this all-access-all-the-time technology… it’s a fat chance, sister.

So what’s the upshot? The conclusion I keep coming to is that free access puts the onus on the individual. It’s up to each of us to decide what we are going to share and where we are going to share it. Each of us has to weigh our friendships against our desire to monetize. We also have to remember that our input is valuable, as diluted as we might feel by the seemingly endless input of others. And, I think, we have to start valuing quality input more highly, and by that I mean, we have to start being willing to pay for it. If we aren’t, we have no right to complain about our tech expert buddy spamming our twitter feed with advertisements. The fact remains: if we value what he has to say, we’ll tolerate his spam. Probably. If enough of us stop following him, perhaps he’ll think twice about what he’s doing. Perhaps he will offer a monthly subscription to an ad-free version of his feed. Now THAT is something I’d pay for.

Backlinks inevitably come up in every discussion of SEO. They are a critical part of building solid traffic and play a large role in getting your website ranked by search engines. Building good backlinks can take a lot of time. Unique IP addresses are very important, so you can’t just set up a bunch of domains and link to yourself and get results. The ranking of the sites linking in is also important. The more authoritative the site linking to you, the better your site looks to Google. In a perfect world, content really would be king. Unfortunately, with billions of websites out there, learning how to use the system is an important element for success.

Buying Backlinks

Buying backlinks from an SEO company can be very effective very quickly but the ground you gain usually doesn’t last long. Since many backlink packages include software you run on your server, you risk damaging your site’s reputation and getting your IP blocked for spamming. Buying backlinks one-by-one can be very effective if you have a decent budget and are willing to spend time researching each site before you invest. It’s rather like advertising but with the search engine as the consumer.

Building Backlinks Yourself

The organic backlink is the most powerful of all. Good content, well distributed WILL grow your traffic though, of course, it takes both work and time. Trading links is a great way to grow traffic while supporting other businesses and growing your network. Great methods for building backlinks on your own include: posting on blogs, posting on forums, posting on article directories, utilizing social bookmarking sites and newsletters.

I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, the secret to success is hard work. As much as we all might not want to admit it, the quick fix or the magic bullet are just as pretend on the Internet as they are in the real world. The great thing about investing time and energy into building up backlinks is that, in the process, you’re also improving your brand and building your networks. The more good content you put out there, the more attention you get. And I just can’t ever say enough for good old fashioned reputation. Behind every computer (kind of) there is a person, with a real live brain, forming opinions about every single thing he sees. If your company keeps popping up with compelling content he wants to read, you’ll get his clicks, and his links, and his network.

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.

In this, the first of our new series, Ask the Experts, our President and CEO, Adam Wills, tackles our first question:

How can I choose a dedicated service web hosting company?

Take it away, Adam…

1) Work with a reputable, real company.

It may sound obvious that you should  be looking for a reputable, real company, but the reality is that  many of the web hosting companies that claim to be, aren’t.  There are thousands upon thousands of web hosting companies in existence today, many of which claim to offer dedicated servers.  However, the shocking truth is that many of them are 1-man operations that lack infrastructure, support and a positive track-record. So, the first step in choosing a dedicated server host, it to research the company that offers it. Visit the Better Business Bureau website. Look for an independently verified reputation. Make sure there is an organization in place to back up promises like service-level guarantees.

2) Purchase directly from the company that owns the hardware (i.e. do business directly with the datacenter and carefully review any businesses that are middlemen or resellers).

Many clients come to us on the heels of devastating experiences with other hosting providers. Often their websites just disappeared along with the supposed company they were doing business with. Here at TurnKey Internet, we support resellers. There are a great many excellent reseller companies with pristine reputations and wonderful customer service who have been in business for years. However, like with any business, there are plenty of not-so-reputable resellers out there too. When a reseller doesn’t pay his hosting bill with his provider, his servers get shut down. If your website happens to be on one of those servers, your website gets shut down too. The best way to avoid this is by researching your reseller or, better yet, by going directly to the source– the web hosting company that owns their own infrastructure and datacenter. You will not only get the piece of mind an established, brick-and-mortar business provides, you will also get a better price by cutting out the middleman.

3) Work with companies that offer a large selection of the latest technology.

A wide variety of the latest server hardware and models is a sign of the health and longevity of a dedicated server provider. For instance, today the hot CPU chips for entry level and mid-range dervers are the Quad Core Intel i5 and i7. The high-end and enterprise-level CPUs are typically the multi-CPU configured, Quad Core Xeon E550x series. Make sure the company you choose has these products available.

4) Make sure the company you choose has a wide range of support and backup options.

Most web hosting companies will claim to have top-notch support. You should always try before you buy. Test phone numbers and live chat and note response times. Also, make sure the company offers a premium managed support and backup service option. If a company is not able to offer options like server hardening or firewall setup, it is a sign that company is not a full-fledged dedicated provider. While you might not need to take advantage of these services at the start, it is always good to know they are available, should you need to upgrade in the future.

Here at TurnKey Internet, we go out of our way to help potential clients feel comfortable. We always offer all the latest technology and we take time to explain who we are and why what we offer is unique.  We display our better business bureau A+ status and independent reviews right in the footer of all our web pages. We provide links to news organizations that have written stories about our company, and in general try to help potential clients understand the all that we offer. Whether you choose TurnKey Internet or another established web host (and we hope you choose us!) doing a little research can save you lots of heartache and ensure that you have a positive  hosting experience.

Adam Wills
President and CEO

As the Marketing Director here at TurnKey, it’s my job to keep up with all the social networking stuff the kids are doing these days. In all seriousness, social networking has had a real impact on how we do business. Since the very beginning of the company, TurnKey has been focused on the customer first. Adam Wills, our president, firmly believes that customer satisfaction is the single most important part of a successful business. I couldn’t agree more! So, when I came on last summer, my job was to facilitate our customer communication and to present TurnKey to the world as a company that cares about nothing more than keeping our customers happy.

Of course, these times being what they are, the logical first step was to set up accounts on all the social networks. I built our profiles and started posting company news and coupons, but quickly realized I wasn’t getting the kind of customer interaction I had hoped for. There are so many commercial enterprises out there vying for eyeballs nowadays and people are wary of befriending companies that might just end up spamming them.

I realized social networking works best for our business as an extension of our ticketing/contact system. By using Twitter and Facebook to respond to questions about our services, I engage our customers, help them out and encourage them to stay connected. When I do post the occasional coupon or special, the customers who have connected with us through the network in the past appreciate the notification because it comes on the heels of actual real human interaction. Nowhere does it say that being part of a company means you can’t make small talk or be friendly but so often in this virtual space, companies are all business. Of course it goes without saying that professionalism is important, but we are selling services to people, not machines. They are called social networks, after all. If you’re going to use them (and doesn’t everyone?) I think you should make an effort to really connect.

Anyhow, I’d like to give a shout to Facebook, Twitter and Myspace for facilitating our communication with our clients. You’ve given us great tools for understanding how we can be a better company!

If you would like to connect with TurnKey on the social networks, you can!

TurnKey on Facebook
TurnKey onTwitter
TurnKey on Myspace

Come tell us what you think, what you need and how we can better serve you! We’re all ears.

This is a question we often get from new clients. Every time I hear the question, I think, “if you don’t know the difference, you probably want a managed server.” Of course, this isn’t a very helpful thing to say to someone who is curious about what is actually going on behind the scenes. Here brief overview of the differences…

We have many clients with years of experience working with servers, and these are typically the clients who opt for the unmanaged option. With an unmanaged server, we set up the hardware, install the operating system, install the control panel if one is ordered, and maintain the network and hardware. Beyond that, most everything is controlled by the client: troubleshooting, configuring firewalls, installing software, etc. While we are happy to provide unmanaged servers to those clients who request it, we feel so strongly that managed servers are the way to go for most clients that we offer it free with our dedicated and virtual private servers. Over the years, we have found that this is the most effective and efficient plan for keeping our clients up and running. 

A managed server is dedicated server or virtual private server backed with extra technical support services such as round the clock monitoring, off-site backups, security and firewall management, software updates, and software technical support beyond just rebooting the server if you have a problem. Many companies out there today abuse the term Managed, when in reality they only provide minimal support via email only, and offer to reboot or reformat your server in response to any problems you may have. TurnKey Internet was founded on managed services and we take it very seriously – when we say our servers are fully managed we mean it, and put it in writing.

Whether a client is an expert or a novice, having a platform that works without a fuss is usually pretty appealing. Why do all the extra work if you don’t have to?

Click here to learn more about TurnKey’s managed services.

Or follow these links to learn more about our different managed plan options:
Silver, Gold, Platinum, and  Titanium.