‘Slap in the face’ to UK business, says SEO firm

The hosting of UK government sites such Job Centre Plus and the Pension Service in the US is a slap in the face to UK businesses, according to search engine optimisation firm NetCallidus.

Routine research and analysis performed by the the company discovered a number of .gov.uk sites being hosted in Sunnyvale, California.

“At a time when the UK economy is teetering on the edge of a recession, this is an out and out insult,” said Mark Furber, managing director of NetCallidus.

“There is no good reason why this work should be given to another country. It might save a few pounds, but sends the wrong message about how much the government cares about British business.”

Furber believes that this socially irresponsible and that the work would be better done by a UK business anyway.

“We always advise our clients to host their websites in the country they are aiming at, as it is one of the factors that can influence search engines like Google.”

“These sites are clearly aimed at UK people so should be hosted in the UK to ensure that the highest number of people find them.”

Furber also highlighted issues around latency, security and management as reasons for governments to host public service sites within their own country.

The various departments were not immediately available for comment regarding this issue.

Written by Ian Williams

One in three websites are infected, Sans Institute reveals

Nearly 33% of websites are infected with downloadable malware, after infection rates almost doubled in the past year, according to research from the Sans Institute.

Users’ confidence in online security is waning, leading small and medium sized companies to lose business, it said.

The security training organisation last week published its annual list of the top 20 cyber security threats.

Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at Webroot, one of the firms that contributed to the study, said, “Since January 2007, Webroot has seen a 183% increase in websites that harbour spyware. Infection rates for spyware and Trojans that steal keystrokes are currently at 31% and growing rapidly.

“In a survey of small and medium enterprises we conducted in September, 77% said their success depends on the internet, and 47.2% reported lost sales due to spyware.”

Rohit Dhamankar, senior manager of security research at security specialist TippingPoint, said 50% of the total vulnerabilities reported in 2007 were in web applications.

“But it is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “This data excludes vulnerabilities in custom-developed web applications. Compromised websites provide avenues for massive client-side compromises via web browsers, office documents and media player exploits.”

The number of vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office products nearly trebled in 2007, said Amol Sawarte, manager of security firm Qualys’s Vulnerability Laboratory. This was due primarily to new Excel vulnerabilities that can be exploited by getting users to open Excel files sent via e-mail and instant messenger.

Sans Institute research director Alan Paller said web application insecurity was particularly troublesome because so many developers write insecure code. “Most of their web applications provide access to back-end databases that hold sensitive information,” he said.

“Until colleges that teach programmers, and companies that employ programmers, ensure that developers learn secure coding, and until those employers ensure that they work in a secure development lifecycle, we will continue to see major vulnerabilities.”

Paller said new attacks use ­social engineering to expose internal company networks to exploitation. These attacks are much harder to defend against, he said. “They take a commitment to continuous monitoring and uncompromising adherence to policy with real penalties.”

Technical defences have improved, but hackers are using automated attack programs to constantly scan the web for vulnerable systems.

“So many automated programs are searching for victims that Sans’ Internet Storm Center (an early warning system for the internet) reports that computers can expect to survive only five minutes before being attacked, and will withstand the attacks only if they are configured securely before being connected to the internet,” he said.

Why IT must attract more women

 

Senior female executives explain why the IT industry is failing to attract women, what must be done to remedy the situation, and the benefits this would bring

It is crucial that more work is done to attract women into the IT profession; senior female IT executives in the IT industry told an Intellect roundtable event last month.

The group said that if the UK is to remain competitive, employers will have to work harder to plug the IT skills gap with talented female developers and project managers - who must be paid the same as their male counterparts.

Gillian Arnold, hardware outsourcing executive at IBM, said more resources should be ploughed into tackling the issue. “The IT sector should put forward a group of people, funding, and a location to work on this full-time for a couple of years. There are issues that need desperate attention, and while the current army of part-timers is well-meaning, progress is too slow if we are to make any headway.”

(more…)

Revealed: Top Two Google Ranking Factors

In this article I reveal what I believe are the two most important ranking factors used by Google.

My findings are as a result of my ongoing optimization experiments of my network of web sites on Google.

The top two Google ranking factors are:

1. PageRank
2. Incoming Text Link Keywords

I’ll explain each in more detail and what you MUST do to maximize the effectiveness of each element.
1. PageRank

PageRank is determined by the number and quality of links to a page. Both the quantity and quality of text links are important. Always try to get links from web pages with a PageRank rating of at least four.

Concentrate on getting as many different quality sites as possible to link to one page on your site, usually your home page. Do not spread the links to different pages. This will maximize the PageRank of your main page, plus those of the subpages.
2. Incoming Text Link Keywords

ALWAYS provide text links for linking to your site. Avoid image links.

Google does index image links, but without any text for it to index, it won’t help your link popularity rating for your important keywords.
In addition:

1. Include the most important keyword phrase in the text link, using the EXACT spelling.
2. Do not pluralize the keyword phrase, if people usually search the singular version of the phrase. And vice versa.
3. Avoid excess words, where possible.
4. The linked to page MUST have the text link keywords in the body of the page, otherwise Google will discount the page.
5. Include the text link keywords within the title tag of the linked to page. It is possible for a page without the text link keywords in the title tag to get top rankings. But I have discovered that around 80% of top 10 rankings have the text link keywords in the title tag, so always include it.

Well, there you have it. Those are what I consider the two most important ranking factors used by Google. Other factors are considered by Google, but their importance pales in comparison to the two I have discussed in this article.

Follow these tips whenever you optimize your web pages and they will quickly shoot up the Google rankings.