SEO Mentor

If you already know about PCI Compliance but are yet to take action then you need to really understand why the importance of PCI Compliance and how it can save you money and make you money.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a collaborative effort to achieve a common set of security standards for use by entities that process, and store payment card data. There has been a lot of talk about how effective PCI Compliance is and will it really protect you and your customers. What you need to remember is that PCI Compliance is not the end all of security. Security is a mindset and nobody can ever say that they are perfectly secure. PCI Compliance is the first step to building up your security by following the current security standards and scanning your servers for vulnerabilities.

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Popularity: 35% [?]

Most of you already know that I joined the Trust Guard team in the middle of 2008 and we have been very busy with some innovative new products and services to help online marketers around the globe. Some of those being the new Video Security Seal and now PCI Scanning Services.

This new service gives Trust Guard the unique ability to combine the power of PCI Scanning with their industry leading 3rd party security, privacy, and business verification services, further solidifying Trust Guard as one of the leading brands in online trust seals. The best part about Trust Guard’s PCI scanning services is that the prices will be half of its competitors such as McAfee Secure and Control Scan.

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Popularity: 44% [?]

So I was on Sphinn.com today and found a blog post called “301 Redirect Explained” and was plesantly surprised to see something of this nature get to the top. Originally posts on Sphinn were more based on great articles like this that gave the users great content with articles that really brought value to it’s users (don’t get me wrong, there is still great stuff at Sphinn.com and I go there everyday). But finally an article full of great content that really gives value and education to the readers.

So I have titled this post “The long lost subject of 301 Redirect” because it has been a while since this subject has come up in the SEO community lately all it has been about is Jason Gambert (loser), Microsoft/Yahoo mess, Advanced Blackhat SEO, etc.

So getting to the point of this post I wanted to bring back the topic of the 301 Redirect. In the article posted by Ron Tovbin where he guest posted at Shimon Sandler’s blog ShimonSandler.com, he gives some great content with much value to help those understand in great technical depth what as 301 Redirect is and how it works.

Here are a couple things that I really liked from Rob’s post:

The new URL can also be 301 redirected, this is called chaining and should be avoided if you want play nice with the search engine spiders.

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Popularity: 31% [?]

So I have come across a lot of debate about putting Trust Seals on your website. First of all I am letting you know now that this post is going to be short and to the point: TRUST SEALS WORK! It is that simple. Personally I endorse Trust Guard seals and here is why:

Two Recent Consumer Reports™ National Surveys show that…

• The #1 concern visitors have:
  Is my personal information Safe and Secure?
  (88% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• The #2 concern visitors have:
  Can I Trust the site and the information on it?
  (81% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• The #3 concern visitors have:
  Does the site have a good Privacy Policy?
  (76% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• 95% of those surveyed want access to a websites;
  Email address, street address, and phone number.

Trust Guard takes care of all these consumer issues, and this is the simple reason why I choose Trust Guard seals over HackerSafe, TrustE, BBB, and Comodo.

But don’t take my word for it check out a couple of their great testimonials:

“After putting Trust Guard on my web site my conversion rate went from 6.8% to 9.6%! (A 41% Increase!) It has been a tremendous asset for my company! Thank you!”

-Bryan Hoover, RadiantSmile.net

“In the two weeks following installing the Trust Guard seals on my site, sales increased 116% over the prior two week period! Clearly, I’ve been losing sales for months by not having a third-party site verification like Trust Guard. On the Internet, Trust is everything. Thank you Trust Guard! I’m glad I found you.”

-Larry Weaver, FunnyEmployeeAwards.com

 

I also add my testimonial that Trust Guard seals work I have had much success with using the seals on my LearnSEOLive.com site and many others. But the best thing about Trust Guard seals is that they are effective and affordable. Go to their Comparison chart and you will see that you can save $1000s.

So there you go, but don’t take my word for it check it out yourself.

Popularity: 24% [?]

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This SEO Podcast I talk about some of the following news items:

Google Joins Venture for Mobile WiMAX Next-Gen Wireless Internet Access

Yahoo and McAfee Offer a Safer Way to Search with SearchScan

 Yahoo Shares Tumble After Microsoft Pulls Bid

The SEO Tip for this podcast I talked about Loren Baker‘s post about Subdomains or Subfolders : Which are Better for SEO?!

“Subdomains or Subfolders? What’s better for a blog/forum/etc: a subdomain (eg. http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/) or subfolder (eg. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/)?

Subdomains and subfolders both have their advantages, especially when setting up blogs.

For blogs, I prefer a subfolder (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/) because the link juice which is sent to that blog is going to be naturally distributed to that main domain, and other subfolders under the domain.”

Popularity: 37% [?]

So have you ever wanted to know how to design your website for the Search Engines let the SEO Rapper below give you the down low:

Design Coding Video – SEO Rapper

I really thought that video was hilarious and also had some great content as well. I also found this great article from Shari Thurow of Searchengineland.com.
The “Design” Part Of Search Engine Friendly Design

She writes, “What concerns me is how the term “search engine friendly design” has been twisted to have different meanings, mostly centered around URL structure. Granted, part of having a search engine friendly web site is providing access to keyword-focused content…..A site’s URL structure is crucial for search engine access. Additionally, in search engine results pages (SERPs), keywords in the URL are highlighted to increase user confidence in search results. However, a page’s URL structure is not the only part of the interface.”

Popularity: 12% [?]