This blog post discusses the possible causes of prospect uncertainty, and some practical tips to help reduce the uneasiness felt by your website’s visitors.

Possible Causes

Prospect uncertainty can be due to several reasons, all of which you have probably felt yourself while browsing for products and services online. A prospect could feel uncertain because they have never heard of your business before, and prefer to conduct business in person. Uncertainly could also stem from commonly heard stories of being ripped off online and last night’s news report on cyber-crime. In short, there are many reasons why your visitors are weary about conducting business through the internet.

Build Trust in Your Online Presence

As a business owner that either sells products and services online, or simply has an online presence, you need to take actions in order to relieve these stresses on your website’s visitors. Here are some practical ideas that can put in place relatively easily:

These were just some of the ways you can inflict trust in you brand with your website’s visitors. The key is to be open and honest with your visitors, and make information that verifies the legitimacy of your business easy to find and understand.

If you require professional assistance with your web strategy and presence, please feel free to contact Insidedesign Web at 888-812-4727.

That is why every year, we investigate all available security suite options and choose one we believe to be superior. This year, we recommend our readers and Support clients to use Norton Internet Security 2009.

During our review of internet security suites, we looked at several areas:

• Certifications: independent organizations that set performance criteria for and certify security software.
• Performance: what is the software’s impact on system resources, how quickly does it perform scans, etc.
• Features: SPAM protection, IM protection, website filters, etc.
• Ease of Use: how easy is it to install and use, does it excessively prompt for user input, etc.
• Others: update frequency, program size, support features, etc.

In each case, Symantec’s Norton Internet Security 2009 exceeded our expectations.

Certifications

Norton Internet Security 2009’s anti-virus and anti-spyware have ICSA certifications. In addition, the anti-virus portion is VB 100% certified, and caries WCL Level 1 and 2 certifications. On the product’s website, Symantec claims that Norton had identified over 1.1 million threats by the end of 2007 – and these certifications give credence to such a claim.

Performance

This is where we were blown away. Norton has completely reworked their 2009 Internet Security suite with performance front and center – and it shows:

• Installation takes less than 1 minute, and does not require a reboot.
• 20% faster boot time, or more than 8 seconds faster than average.
• 79% faster scan time.
• 86% less memory, with an average system memory usage of 6 to 11 megabytes.
• 57% faster downloads, with web pages downloading almost  twice as fast.
• Initial software installation takes less than one minute.

These are some serious improvements, especially for a brand that has a history of exactly the opposite on performance. Additional metrics are available from the PassMark benchmarking report (from which the above numbers were generated).

Features

The features you expect from a full security suite are there, including:

• Norton Insight technology that targets only at risk files for faster, fewer and shorter scans.
• Norton Sonar protects your system from un-known threats by analyzing program behavior and monitoring network traffic.
• Norton Protection System provides a multi-layered approach to security.
• Other important features include SPAM protections (SPAM toolbar for your email client), recovery tools, identity and transaction protections, home network protections, and more.

Norton Internet Security 2009 offers a full plate of features and offerings; you can read more about them here.

Ease of Use

From the very onset, Norton Internet Security 09 is extremely user friendly. Installation takes less than one minute to complete, and only requires one mouse click to get started. With security updates automatic, and scanning times preset to begin when your system is idle, many people will find that this security suite is ready out of the box.

However, if you want to dive in and adjust some of the settings to work more in-tune with how you use your computer – this is no problem. Norton Internet Security 2009 features a sleek and easy to understand interface that allows you to change settings with ease.

More importantly, Norton will not bombard you with questions about what programs should be allowed to run or to have access to the internet. With “application intelligence”, Norton will make these decisions for you.

Other Areas

With so many internet security suites on the market, we look for additional features to help make our recommendation. Besides having a proven track record of identifying viruses, SPAM, and malware, security software should excel in other areas to make one complete package.

With Norton Internet Security Suite 2009, we really like these additional features:

• Pulse Updates ensure you are up-to-date on the latest virus definitions every 5 to 15 minutes.
• Smart scheduler that scans your system when your computer is idle or not in use.
• Automatic Silent mode ensures that you will not be bothered by Norton non-critical alerts.
• Auto-Fix capability that helps diagnose and fix most common problems.
• and if that does solve your problem, Free phone support is available.
• Easy uninstall, removes everything but your license information.
• Norton Community Watch gives you the option of joining Norton’s online watch community, allowing you to share security data anonymously with Norton in order to help identify global patterns in information threats.
• and finally, the performance improvements with Norton over other security suites on the market is phenomenal. No longer do you need to sacrifice computer performance for security!

Our Recommendation

For 2009, we recommend Norton’s Internet Security 2009 for your computer system. We feel that this security software will work great for your home office and small business network. You can pick-up the software for $59.99 from Norton’s Internet Security 2009 product page, which includes 1 year of protection for three separate computers.

If you require professional assistance with your computer system or network, please feel free to contact Insidedesign Support at 888-812-4727.

For some time now, Fire Eagle has been in a closed beta open only to some 50 developers. However, today marks the general availability and launch of Yahoo’s new location sharing service Fire Eagle. Here is how Yahoo! describes its new server:

“Fire Eagle is a site that stores information about your location. With your permission, other services and devices can either update that information or access it. By helping applications respond to your location, Fire Eagle is designed to make the world around you more interesting! Use your location to power friend-finders, games, local information services, blog badges and stuff like that…”

To those familiar with Twitter, the concept is very similiar: You post similple updates to the service (location information), and it acts as a distrubutor of that information to any that requests it (ex: location status on a personal website or blog). With the help of already developed applications, it makes spreading your location updates on other services, like facebook, easy. With the Yahoo!’s embrace of developers via an API, multiple tools, and documentation resources, you are bound to see the capabilities and prevalence of this new service explode.

To top it off, like most cool new social services, Fire Eagle is completely free. There is even Fire Eagle Mobile, granting you the ability to update your location via your cell phone with one click! Sounds scary, but this is a lot of fun for people – not mention useful. But, what about this privacy? And why would Yahoo! offer such a service for free?

What about Privacy? and why would this be Free?

Fire Eagle’s mobile website allows you to update easily on the go.

Right upon signup, users are given the opportunity to receive regular emails from Yahoo to ensure they are still comfortable with their decision on sharing this sort of information. They take it another step forward, because if you fail to respond to this email – the service is automatically turned off. There is also a simple keep my location private setting.

Jason Kincaid, over at TechCrunch.com, brings up an important point that Yahoo! has no current control on “remov[ing] location updates from partner sites”. So location history can continued to be displayed throughout these partner services, even when the user has full control over their location status on Fire Eagle. It is true that part of Yahoo!’s partner Terms of Service includes agreements on allowing users to delete their messages, but as Jason mentioned, this is nearly impossible to enforce.

So why is this free? Is Yahoo! is offering this service because it is such a cool idea? Probably not. In fact, I believe it has all to do with location based advertising. You see, with your location, comes the opportunity to display ADs for products and services near or related to where you located. Makes perfect sense, and local based commerce online is become more popular. It seems pretty clear to me in the Information Collection and Use section of Yahoo!’s Privacy Policy:

“Yahoo! uses information for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients.”

Whether you are weary of privacy, or simply do not like relevant ADs, or even ADs at all (nahhh, right?) – Fire Eagle is a neat service with tons of potential. If you are on the Internet, you have pretty much waived this issues off to begin with. So, anyone wanna see a Fire Twitter?

In addition to the recent commotion on jobs that wont exist in the future, I would like to add Link Brokers to that list. From a professional search engine optimizer stand-point, these guys are worthless and offer nothing valuable to my clients. There are many reasons as to why you should stand clear of these guys, but I will cover three:

1. Obvious
2. Quality
3. Over Priced

But before I jump right in and discuss these reasons, lets look at the history of the link brokerage industry.

The link brokerage industry was built on the fact that building incoming links to your website will help boost its position within search engines. With the increasing popularity and understanding of SEO, many companies have sprang up to help those that are searching for incoming links (these could be SEO companies, an in-house SEO specialist, or just someone trying to do it themselves).

For example, Text Link Ads was founded in 2003 by Patrick Gavin and Bill Fish later to be acquired by MediaWhiz in late 2006. Among others, Text Link Ads is by far the most popular. As an advertiser, you submit your contact details, budget, and a brief description of what you are looking for. A link broker is then assigned to your account, and which he/she will try to match you up with related websites that fit your overall strategy and budget. You even have access to their inventory for custom control. Sounds great right? Not really – its actually garbage. Here’s why…

Reason 1: Obvious

Screenshot taken from Blogtrepreneur.com

Google has stated numerous times that purchasing links to affect search rankings is against their Webmaster Guidelines and they will take action. They even provide an easy way for competitors to rat you out. But how is it obvious? Lets work with an example, please visit www.blogtrepreneur.com and view the screenshot to the right. From my review, the following stands out from an obvious point-of-view:

1. Each line has two to four words
2. All words are linked
3. Its in a list element
4. There is no capitalization consistency
5. No No-Follow tags (while this is necessary for improving ranks, it is surely a factor Google looks for when above factors are positive)
6. Links are generally low quality

I am sure there are many others you yourself could come up with too. So to put it simply, when you purchase from these large link brokers – you are thrown into a list just list this. This is not hard at all to spot by either a competitor or a search engine, such as Google! Again, garbage.

Also, in some cases, the direct name of the website or even the URL is given. A quick search of the name, or type-in gives you direct access to the website. While this can be great for reviewing the overall quality of the website you want to purchase ADs from, Google can do this as well!

Reason 2: Quality

In general, the overal quality of a link broker’s inventory is garbage. They are littered with crappy blogs that really offer no quality content, poorly managed and designed websites, and listings that offer no real substance to your SEO campaign. What makes it even more difficult for the advertiser is that, in most cases, the website addresses of these publishing websites are not even given. This is due to the nature of the industry, because if the URL of the publisher is given – there outgoing links will surely be discounted by search engines that rely on this ranking analytic. In its place, Text Link Ads, offers Link Pop. (which I could not find defined anywhere), # of Pages (provided by Yahoo), # of Ads Sold (including total number of AD positions), and Language. How am I supose to improve my link neighborhood with these indicators? It is simply garbage.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great sites that list AD inventory with link brokers. However, to get anything of quality, you better be ready to pay high prices. Which leads me to the next reason…

Reason 3: Over Priced

Screenshot taken from Blogtrepreneur.com

Here is the worst garbage, these listings are simply over priced. You got two people trying to make a buck: the publisher and the broker. From my understanding, a broker can charge anywhere from 35% to 50% of the listing fee. So in order not to scare the publisher off from filling their AD space, a publisher has to set the price higher than normal in order to provide the publisher a decent payout. This is a lose/lose, for both the publisher and advertiser. The publisher is losing out on money, and the advertiser is paying too much.

You could even argue that these link brokers are driving up inflation in the overall price of a link.

Coming back to our example, www.blogtrepreneur.com, please take a look at the screenshot to the right. Here you will see the ADs filled by Text Link Ads, as mentioned above. However, when you expand the picture, you will also see much more AD space – including both text link ADs and banner positions. So in total we have 21 confirmed AD positions (10 Text Link Ad positions, featured links, and banners). And I guarantee you those featured links will expand, as these are filled in-house. Now, how much do you think advertisers on Text Link Ads are paying? 10? 25? a month… NO, $48 a month.

While you might argue and say, “Well, he has some decent links, lots of organic content, has some traffic, etc, etc.” However, from my experience, it is over priced!

So in conclusion…

Death to the link broker! No not really. These guys are still useful, but if you are running a highly effective SEO campaign – you need to steer clear of these guys. If you are hiring an SEO company for link building and overal web strategy management, poll them on how they actually plan on building incoming links. Make sure they sound confident in what they are saying and ask followup questions. If they start sounding shakey, then move on.

From a publisher’s stand-point, these guys are really only useful for the little guys – websites without much tenure or traffic. While I see tons of bigs sites in their inventories, I just think how dumb they are for not being able to fill their own AD position inventory. If they are quality and have good traffic, advertisers flock to you. Even our buddy over at Blogtrepreneur.com understands how to fill AD inventory.

This a touchy subject in the SEO community, so I encourage your feedback below!

For those that follow our Twitter Feed and message me via Twitter, you will be able to take advantage of a 25% discount for any business listing purchase at AllBuziness.com. Once I receive your message, I will contact you for all your link details and will send an invoice via PayPal with the discounted price.

AllBuziness.com is a popular online business directory that allows business professionals to find the business resources they need to be successful. Traffic for AllBuziness.com comes from many business related searches and business websites. Join today to reach a wide range of professionals searching for products and services.

Check us out on twitter now!

What is Twitter you ask?
Think of Twitter as a blog, but a blog that only allows you to post in short 140 character updates. It’s fast, it’s easy, and more people are starting to catch on! You can learn more about Twitter and get started here.

Comodo AntiVirus FREE
Offering pay-for quality for free, Comodo AntiVirus free version offers everything you need to battle viruses, under most circumstances. Including:

• Constantly protects with real-time On Access scanning
• Daily, automatic updates of virus definitions
• Proactive Heuristic analysis intercepts unknown threats
• Schedule Scanning ability
• Low system resource consumption

Learn more and Download Comodo Free Antivirus here

Comodo Firewall FREE
To match your shiney free Comodo Antivirus, why not download the Comodo’s FREE Firewall? It is a great firewall that any computer layman can understand, while offering advanced options for those interested. Check out some of these features:

• Constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks
• Stay protected against new threats via automatic online updates
• Real time traffic monitoring enables you to react instantly to threats and identify bandwidth bottlenecks.
• Constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks
• Free maintenance upgrades

Learn more and Download Comodo Free Firewall here

Spybot: Search & Destroy
Considered by many to be the best Spyware scanner available, Spybot is an essential tool to protecting yourself on the Internet. It comes packed with features and spyware definitions are constantly being updated. Just check out all these FREE Spybot features:

• Removal of known adware, spyware, dialers, keyloggers, trojans, and other usage tracks
• Save removal of threats by shredding them
• Backups of every removed problem
• Integrated update process with weekly updates

Learn more and Download Spybot Search and Destroy here

Ad-Aware Free Edition
While Spybot is a great program for removing spyware and other unwanted tracking items, it is important to have a “layered” spyware removal system. What does this mean? Simply to use multiple spyware scanners to ensure you have removed as much as possible! Ad-Aware does the trick, and it is FREE! Check it out these greate Free Adaware features:

• Incremental Threat Updates
• Full-Feature Quarantine
• Code Sequence Identification (CSI) Technology: precise detection of embedded malware, including known and emerging threats.
• System Restore Point

Learn more and Download Ad Aware Free here

CCleaner
While more of a utility than a security program, CCleaner is an essential tool for keeping your system clean and clear of unnecessary files that could be slowing you down. If you don’t have this program, get it now! Run this program once a week and you will experience your computer running faster! Check out what it can do:

• Clears Temporary files, URL history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat
• Cleans Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files
• Registry Cleaner
• Temporary files of Third-party applications

Learn more and Download CCleaner here

Not limited to company listings, ThomasNet also focuses on offering supplemental content its demographic needs to conduct business. So whether a user is looking for a manufacturer of a product, or that product’s CAD drawing – the user knows exactly where to go and ThomasNet is able to retain that user.

A key point to the post is that ThomasNet puts the needs of their users first. Implementing a policy termed VSET (read at When Is A Directory So Much More Than A Directory?), ThomasNet has focused on building their directory from the shoes of their users. A huge lesson many amateur directory owners/managers should learn.

It seems as though Marco has unearthed an easter egg in Google’s new release of Google Earth, its popular free mapping software. While the new release stunned the world with its addition of mapping the universe, it has also secretly included a flight simulator!

To check it yourself, simply download and load up the most recent version of Google Earth and press CTRL+ALT+A or for a MAC, Command+Option+A. Upon doing so the flight simulator should load right away with a dialog that grants you the options of plane and airport (as see to the right).

You have the option of piloting two planes: the F16 or the SR22. Both are very different and enjoyable rides. Check it out for yourself, but be sure to familiarize yourself with the flight controls! If using the arrow keys is not your thing, you can also use your mouse to steer the aircraft (just click the screen with your mouse to activate).

Note: After you have entered into the flight simulator using the keyboard combination, simply access it again from the Tool drop down menu.

Check out some of the in-game screen shots:

Let me know how you fare at flying! The controls are touchy…

We all understand that users are strongly biased towards higher positions in the SERPs, it shows in our logs! However, and more interesting, the study goes on to conclude:

“While the participants reacted to artificially reduced retrieval quality by greater scrutiny, they failed to achieve the same success rate. This demonstrated trust in Google has implications for the search engine’s tremendous potential influence on culture, society, and user traffic on the Web.”

So, users are heavily biased towards the top listings on Google – even if the provided title and description is not relevant! They trust in Google, and truly believe what is being provided to them is the best results. But what does this mean to a search engine optimization professional? Here are some points that come to mind:

1. General, high traffic keywords bring lots of visitors – a high percentage being low quality and unqualified visitors.
2. Optimize for niche keywords to keep conversion rates high.
3. A high listing in the SERPs is an authority and trust builder with users.

Check out the study, an interesting read for any technical SEO professional.