 Welcome to the Internet Beacon’s blog. My name is Josh. The Internet Beacon is a Search Engine Optimization firm located in Finksburg, MD. SEO is a form of Internet Marketing. In essence, we work with you and your website to increase the likelihood of being found in search engines like Google and Yahoo. For more information, check out our page on SEO Answers and our blog post on SEO. This week I’d like to talk about keeping spammers off of your blog.
A blog is a great way to get your particular message out to people around the world. Whether you are sharing recipes, business strategies, or trading baseball cards, a blog can become a hub of activity. Naturally, there are people drawn to these places to take advantage of the amount of activity. These people are called spammers. You can tell who they are because they don’t usually add to the conversation, but rather promote their own site. Keeping these people off of your blog will go a long way towards building its legitimacy. Here are three ways to do that.
1) CAPTCHA Them.
First, please forgive the play on words. Okay, a CAPTCHA is a tool for many
blogs and other sites which requires the user to enter the text they see in an image that looks slightly garbled of distorted. We’ve all seen them. CAPTCHA is used to prevent automated software from just scanning a website and filling in their information. This is a classic method for spammers. The best part of this is that implementation is free and has very little impact on the end user. It is readily available for WordPress as an add-on called “SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam 2.2.9”. It’s free so go out and grab it if WordPress is powering your blog.
2) Papers Please
Another way to ensure that the comments left on your blog are legitimate is to require users to register themselves. This is an almost surefire way to make sure that comments left are legitimate. The biggest downside here is that many users may not wish… Read the rest
Tags: Blog Hints, captcha, comments, internet, marketing, seo, spammers
Posted in Blog Hints, Internet Marketing, Web Development |
1 Comment »
Welcome to the Internet Beacon blog. My name is Josh. The Internet Beacon is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm located in Finksburg, MD. SEO is a form of Internet Marketing. What we do is work with you to get your website among the top ranked results for select keywords related to your business. For a more detailed explanation, check out our SEO Answers page and our blog post on SEO.
Today I’d like to talk about avoiding SEO companies that promise the world. What I mean by this is someone who will tell you that they can get your website on the top ten results on Google inside of a week or two; or that they know the “secret” of SEO. The truth is SEO takes a lot of time and work if done properly. If not, you may have just thrown hundreds of dollars away. Here are three things to watch out for when choosing an SEO company.
1) The Promise
You’ve met with the young, fashionable director of SEO at “Marketing, Inc Corporation International” about doing SEO for your small business. He threw around a lot of cool buzzwords and told you that, for a small fee, your site will be the most popular location on the Internet. For the most part, this is obviously an attempt to get your money. Let me say this clearly, it is not possible to become, overnight, the hottest thing on the Internet. Thank this guy for his time and move on.
2) The Secret
The website you’ve discovered has finally “found the secret to SEO”. They can’t tell you how, but they have mastered this process. All they need is your money and they will make your site an Internet phenomenon. This is a lie. There is no secret to SEO. It is a process like anything else. Good SEO takes time and, only after that time, will results begin to surface.
3) The Quick Fix (That Lasts!)
Some SEO providers will tell you that all you need is their one time service to meet your SEO… Read the rest
Tags: Blog Hints, internet, search engine optimization, seo, site, time, website
Posted in Search Engine Optimization SEO |
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February 26, 2010 by Josh
Hey, Josh from the Internet Beacon.
We are a Search Engine Optimization company located in Finksburg,Maryland. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means that we work hard so that prospective clients and sales leads find your website before others. For a more detailed look at what we do, check out our page of SEO Answers and a blog post here. This week, I’d like to talk to you about Hard Drive maintenance.
I know this sounds like something that could be really complicated, but it’s quite simple. This will be another one of those things that you’ll be able to do on your own and save a bundle at the same time. Some of the big box stores that offer tech support would charge around $50 for this. All it will cost you is time.
You’re probably thinking, “Why even do this?” Well, I’ll tell you. Your hard drive is where all your data is stored; your music, documents, all of it. What happens is that over time, bits and pieces of the files get spread around the hard drive as you open and close programs. This process is called fragmenting. What it means for you is that the time it takes to access your files increases. Defragmenting, or “defragging”, your hard drive makes your computer run faster.
First, open up My Computer. Here you will see your hard drive. It is almost universally labeled as “C:”. You may see statistics on the drive underneath it’s label, usually the amount of free space. Now, place your mouse over the icon and right click the drive. Select “Properties”.
Once the new window has opened up, you should see a tab across the top called Tools. There are three options on this screen. The one you want is “Defragment”. The tool will start up and you will have two options. The first is “Analyze” and the second is “Defragment”. The latter will also analyze the disk, as it is a requirement for Defragmenting. Now comes the hard part. Wait.
This tool will take an inordinate amount of time to complete. I don’t mean a “go make a sandwich” and… Read the rest
Tags: drive maintenance, hard drive, hard drive maintenance
Posted in Computer Maintenance |
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February 18, 2010 by Josh
 Hey, everyone. It’s Josh from the Internet Beacon, again. We’re a Search Engine Optimization firm located in Finksburg, MD. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means that we work hard so that prospective clients and sales leads find your website before others. For a more detailed look at what we do, check out our page of SEO Answers here and a blog post here.
This week I’d like to talk to you about social networks. We’ve talked before about Facebook and how to use it for personal reasons. Now, let’s talk about how to use them to your business’ advantage. As most of you probably know, members of Facebook can be fans of various things. A great way to increase your business’ online presence is to set up a fan page for your company.
A “Fan Page” means that you create a page similar to a profile that talks about your company and provides links and information you think your clientele and leads would like to know. This is a great tool for keeping people up to date on corporate events or changes to the business. For example, you could announce that you’re giving away coupon codes to the first 20 people to send you a private message through Facebook. Or, a better example, might be to announce a raffle. All that is required is to be a fan and post something on the company’s wall. This will encourage participation on the community’s behalf as well as spread the word about your business!
From here, users of Facebook will be able to create a link to your company’s page from their personal page. This means that when their friends see what they are up to, they’ll notice that “John Smith is now a fan of The Internet Beacon”. Coincidentally, this is a step we have also taken. You can be our fan here. One thing to note here is that you can get a custom URL for your business, i.e. www.Facebook.com/YourBusiness once you’ve reached 25 fans. That’s all you need to get your business a permanent link in the Facebook hierarchy.… Read the rest
Tags: Blog Hints, Facebook, fan, internet, internetbeacon, search engine optimization, seo, social networks
Posted in Internet Marketing |
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February 12, 2010 by Josh
 Hey everyone, Josh from the Internet Beacon here. We’re a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm located in Finksburg, MD. SEO is a form of Internet Marketing. For a more detailed explanation, you can check out my blog post about it here. Today, I’d like to talk to you about privacy on Facebook.
We all like to think we’ve been especially careful when putting our information online. We take steps to ensure that we don’t put information like our credit card numbers, home address, etc where everyone can see. However, there are other ways for people to get a hold of your information.
Since Facebook is all about connecting with other people, usually friends and family, information gets shared with them. They have access to whatever you post. And why shouldn’t they? You’ve given them the okay. What you haven’t allowed, however, is the applications they use.We are going to prevent whatever goofy program your relative installed in their Facebook from accessing your name and address. This is incredibly easy to do.
First, login to Facebook. Then, go to the top right portion of the window. Click “Account” and then “Privacy Settings.” From here, you’ll see a link called “Applications and Websites”, click it. Of the several options here, you want to locate “What your friends can share about you” and then click on Edit Settings.
Welcome to your application privacy settings, at least concerning your friends. This screen will have a list of checkboxes detailing different facets of your account information. From here, you can now determine what exactly you want to share with your friends’ and family’s applications. Just make sure to save your changes!
That’s all for this week’s post. Be sure to check back for more every Friday.
-Josh
Internet Beacon
Baltimore SEO
Maryland SEO
Tags: Facebook, fan, information, seo
Posted in Web Tips |
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 Hey, everyone! It’s Josh from the Internet Beacon. We’re a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm in Finksburg, MD. Our business focuses on getting your business’ name out there on the Internet. Essentially, we work so that popular search engines like Google or Yahoo are more likely to display your site when potential customers search for keywords related to your business.
This week I’d like to talk about Passwords. We all have them for various areas of our electronic lives. We all need them, and too often we are not as careful as we should be when choosing them. In choosing a password there are several things to consider.
An important part of choosing a password is the length. Certainly a lot of website give us guidelines when setting the password length, but they are often the minimum requirements. A good thing to keep in mind for password length is making them longer than 8 characters. This is because of the way that different operating systems interpret them. Without getting too technical, passwords are harder to break them if they are over 8 characters.
Another “best practice” is to include special characters and number in your passwords. This can turn something like “baseball” into b4s3ba!!”. Someone could easily guess your password if they know you well or your interests. However, simply knowing you like baseball will not be enough if you add in these steps. Someone could spend days trying to figure out the combination, and more often then not, they would be locked out before actually cracking your password.
Well, that’s all for this week. Hopefully, you now have a better idea of how to keep your personal accounts a little safer online. If you have any questions, feel free to email me!
-Josh
Internet Beacon
Baltimore SEO
Maryland SEO
Tags: password, passwords, search engine optimization, seo
Posted in Web Tips |
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Hey, everyone. Josh here from the Internet Beacon. We’re a Search Engine Optimization firm located in Finksburg, Maryland. In my previous posts, I’ve talked a little bit about helpful tips for using your computer and the Internet in general. Today, I’d like to get into what we really do here at the Internet Beacon.
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The proper term for our business is SEO, meaning Search Engine Optimization. But what does that really mean? Well, our goal is to engineer your website so that when someone searches for a business that does what you do in your locality, your company will be among the first results. It’s one of many forms of Internet Marketing. At first, it can seem slightly complicated. Knowing the ins and outs of how search engines, like Google, come up with their results is part of our job. We do a lot of behind the scenes work to get the job done.
Part of getting the job done involves checking keyword density. Keyword density is exactly what it sounds like. We make sure that keywords related to your company, let’s say “roofing Maryland” if you are a roofing company, appear prominently on your site. Part of this task is also making sure that it works organically on your site. You would get nowhere by having a paragraph comprised solely of “roofing Maryland”. Search engines know shortcuts like that are cheap and you can actually get your site penalized!
That’s just part of what we do for you here at the Internet Beacon. There are a lot of other methods for getting your business out there, but I could go on for pages and pages about them. Suffice it to say we worry about this stuff so you don’t! Well, that’s all for this week. I’ll see you next week.
-Josh
Internet Beacon
Baltimore SEO
Maryland SEO
Tags: internet beacon, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, seo
Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization SEO |
1 Comment »
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Hey, everyone. Josh from Internet Beacon, here. We’re a Search Engine Optimization firm in Finksburg, MD. Essentially, SEO is a form of Internet Marketing. We work hard so your business is among the first results when people try to find the service/product you offer. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about safe use of one of the Internet’s biggest areas, e-mail. I know a lot of you are thinking, “I’m pretty safe with my email use”. But it never hurts to take another look at your usage.
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One of the biggest concerns I hear is from people forwarding emails to others. The emails could contain something that seems pretty funny, like quiz to find out “Which Muppet You Are”, or others are politically motivated. Naturally, people want to pass information that they enjoy to their friends. However, of concern is where this information originates.
While a lot of interesting content is available online, it is very important that the source is examined. There are plenty of websites out there that seem legitimate. What they are really doing is spreading around malicious software without your knowledge and, sometimes, with your name attached! A good rule when using email is to check where the message was sent.
For example, any email you get from someone named “Me” or a variation of that is almost always a scam. Also, be careful of anyone whose name you do not instantly recognize. You should have a mental list of people you trust online (usually your family, friends, and coworkers). If anyone else sends you something, it is perfectly acceptable to be suspicious. In fact, I would caution against opening any messages from people whom you do not directly know.
Another important thing to consider the kind of email you get from the sender. Do they have a habit of forwarding anything and everything they see? It is often in good fun, but you should still be careful. Just because you trust them doesn’t mean you trust wherever they got… Read the rest
Tags: internet, Internet Marketing, seo
Posted in Internet Marketing |
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Hey everyone! It’s Josh from the Internet Beacon, again. This week I want to talk about basic browser maintenance. There are a lot of programs out there that claim they can solve all your Internet woes, but in reality, many of them (usually the cheap ones or the ones advertised on shadier websites) really just automate things you can do on your own. And before you panic, this is some really simple stuff!
A great way to get your internet browser of choice to speed up a little is to clear out some various files that it keeps on hand. Things like Cookies (which you cannot eat) and Cache are two things that really tend to build up over time. They are just files that accumulate over time. They aren’t inherently dangerous or anything, but can clutter up your browser quickly. A quick warning: After doing this, sites that save your login information, for example Facebook or Hotmail, will ask you to log in again. Make sure you know your passwords before you do this! Otherwise, you have to go through the whole “lost password” thing; and no one wants to do that.
According to statistics, most people use Internet Explorer. And so, we’ll go through how to clear these items in the latest version, Internet Explorer 8. First, open Internet Explorer. Next, click on “Tools” located on the bar at the top of the window and select “Internet Options”. Once in “Internet Options”, on the “General” tab, you should see a segment called “Browsing History”. Underneath there is a button labeled Delete. Click it. Don’t worry; you haven’t gotten rid of anything yet.
Now that you have the Delete window open, you have a lot of options and checkboxes. There may be several options checked already. The only ones you want to check are “Temporary Internet Files” and “Cookies”. A little window will pop up letting you know Windows’ progress completing your task. If you’ve never done this before, it may take a while. It should close automatically… Read the rest
Tags: internet, internet explorer, seo
Posted in Browser Modifications |
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Hey all, Josh here from the Internet Beacon. We’re a Search Engine Optimization firm in Baltimore, Maryland. Today I’d like to share some a helpful Mozilla Firefox addon that I think will make your web surfing experience a little better. For those of you who are used to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Apple’s Safari, an add-on does exactly what it sounds like, it adds to your browsing experience.
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Today, I’d like to talk about NoScript. NoScript acts like a switch that allows or disallows Javascript to run on certain pages. This sounds like a great idea for security right off the bat. This is largely true. However, I would caution novice users to do a little research before implementing this add-on. Javascript is running on almost every webpage you visit and with it disabled, they will look very strange at first. Even after you allow certain sites and not others, they may still look strange. This is to be expected.
After following the link above and telling Firefox to install the add-on, your browser will need to be restarted. Go ahead and do this. Once Firefox restarts, you will now see a little blue “S” logo with a red “No” sign over it. This is the NoScript logo. It is informing you that it is now blocking scripts. This is in addition to the message you notice across the bottom about how many scripts it is blocking. Now you can choose which websites to trust to run Javascript in your browser by clicking on it.
The best advice I can give here is to carefully look at the list of sites running scripts through your current site. Obviously you trust the site you visited (if you don’t, stop going there!) so that one is probably safe. Again, that is your call. I can’t say for sure that certain sites are 100% safe and others aren’t.
Once you have set up the filters the way you want, try out a couple of sites.… Read the rest
Tags: scripts, seo
Posted in Browser Modifications |
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Three Ways to curb Spam on Your Blog
A blog is a great way to get your particular message out to people around the world. Whether you are sharing recipes, business strategies, or trading baseball cards, a blog can become a hub of activity. Naturally, there are people drawn to these places to take advantage of the amount of activity. These people are called spammers. You can tell who they are because they don’t usually add to the conversation, but rather promote their own site. Keeping these people off of your blog will go a long way towards building its legitimacy. Here are three ways to do that.
1) CAPTCHA Them.
First, please forgive the play on words. Okay, a CAPTCHA is a tool for many
blogs and other sites which requires the user to enter the text they see in an image that looks slightly garbled of distorted. We’ve all seen them. CAPTCHA is used to prevent automated software from just scanning a website and filling in their information. This is a classic method for spammers. The best part of this is that implementation is free and has very little impact on the end user. It is readily available for WordPress as an add-on called “SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam 2.2.9”. It’s free so go out and grab it if WordPress is powering your blog.
2) Papers Please
Another way to ensure that the comments left on your blog are legitimate is to require users to register themselves. This is an almost surefire way to make sure that comments left are legitimate. The biggest downside here is that many users may not wish… Read the rest
Tags: Blog Hints, captcha, comments, internet, marketing, seo, spammers
Posted in Blog Hints, Internet Marketing, Web Development | 1 Comment »