3 Activities to Increase Your Internet Visibility

Internet, self-promotion Tagged with:
Apr 052010

In a recent article, we reminded you that in the Internet age, there’s no excuse for prospects not being able to find you.  Start a blog, establish a Facebook page, create a profile on LinkedIn:  these are the minimum requirements for creating an Internet presence so a colleague or potential client can use Google to find you.

But “starting” isn’t enough.  It’s just as important to stay active.  The more active you are on the Internet, the easier it becomes for someone to find you; your name pops up more times when searched, prospects can see and learn more about you, your credibility grows.  So, the real key to Internet visibility is to stay active online.

An important part of staying active is posting regularly to your blog.  But there’s more you can do. Here are three additional activities you can undertake on a regular basis to increase your visibility on the Internet:

  • Comment on other people’s blogs. Add thoughtful ideas or follow-up suggestions to the comment sections of the blogs you read (You do read other people’s blogs, don’t you?)  The keyword here is thoughtful. Be positive and respectful; make sure your comments add value.  Comments on Active Rain are great, but for maximum visibility step outside the box and comment on blogs beyond real estate.
  • Write articles for online magazines. These can be rewrites of your best blog posts that you think will have universal appeal. (Don’t just copy and paste, but actually reword your magazine article to get it recognized properly by search engines.  The best known online magazines are www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com.  Both give you a space at the end of the article to tell more about yourself and to include a link back to your blog or website.
  • Submit press releases. When newspapers, magazines, and online publications need material or someone to interview, they read press releases to get ideas. Often journalists copy press releases word for word into their own publications.  That puts information about you in front of more people.  Anyone can submit a press release about themselves and the Internet makes it easy to do.  Visit www.prlog.org to get started.

These activities have the added benefit of helping move your website closer to the top of the search result when someone googles your name.  So stay active and do a little bit each day.

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Internet Security: Easy as 123

Internet, passwords, security Tagged with: ,
Jan 252010

A recently-released report by a California-based security company revealed that millions of computer users are selecting passwords that make it easy for hackers to gain access to their accounts.  Are you one of those people?

The company, Imperva, analyzed 32 million passwords in December 2009, and discovered that:

  • 30% of all computer users select passwords of 6 characters or less.  The shorter the password, the easier it for a hacker to guess.
  • Nearly half of all computer users create easy to remember (and therefore easy to guess) passwords, using slang words, dictionary words, or familiar number combination.  The most common password, for example, is “123456”.  Among the top 5 passwords are:  “12345”, “123456789” and “password”.
  • Half of all computer users use the same password for all the websites they visit. This means that once a hacker figures out a victim’s password at one site, it’s easy to invade that person’s accounts on other sites.
  • Almost 60% of users create passwords from a limited number of characters.  Passwords should not spell out a recognizable word and should contain upper and lower case letters along with numbers and special characters such as “!@#$%%^”.

If you’ve made any of these mistakes, you should take the time to review and change your passwords. Choose strong passwords and use these techniques to help remember them.

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