Seo Redefined

Google is expected to announce this week that they are looking for a piece of the Facebook pie.  No longer happy with the Search Engine or Cellphone business Google is now looking at adding Facebook type features to it's Gmail platform.

Since Facebook is currently adding a "Messenger" type service to its platform Google is looking to counter that move.  Google already allows its' Gmail users to leave short "status updates" much like Twitter and Facebook.  Google is planning on allowing these messages to aggregate, which will create a stream of notifications. 

Since Gmail currently has over 150,000,000 users it will be interesting to see how this unfold over the next year or two.

Recently John, a client of mine was becoming very frustrated with his Social Media endeavors.  He was spending about 90 minutes a day updating Facebook, his three blogs and Tweeting his fingers to the bone.  He could not understand why people were not commenting back about all the wonderful information he was sharing.  He felt that people should acknowledge his work by communicating back in some way to him.  I understand John’s frustration but is that what Social Media is really all about?  Is it supposed to be a two-way conversation?

Social Media in its truest form has always been about sharing with others.  A way we can share our life with our family, friends. colleagues and anyone who cares to stop by.  As a business tool it has always been a way to share our insightful thoughts or information we think others would find useful.  Each type of business has found a different way to use Social Media.  Whether to launch a new product, keep customers updated or pass on helpful advice it has been a tool to inform, change public opinion and increase our own brand or public awareness.

We all love to see that people read our blogs.  We love it even more when people comment on our blogs or leave comments on our Facebook pages.  But are these comments helpful?  Do they drive a meaningful conversation?  Sadly the answer is usually no!

Most blogs are not read and when they are few if any drive a meaningful Two-Way Conversation.   Sharing our thoughts, insights and experiences is what these blog are about.  Helping others understand a process, sharing understandings or just sharing a simple “How To” is what this is about from a business perspective.

We use Social Media from a business perspective to increase our business profiles so people see us as experts.  We blog like crazy for backlinks and exposure.   We spend time sharing so people will read what we have to say and will want to do business with us and not our competitors. 

Social Media is a tool.  A tool we should all embrace and use.  A tool that in time make you can expert in your field. It will increase your search engine rankings due to the amount of backlinks you have.  It will drive new clients to you that will ultimately increase your bottom line.

Keeping all of this in mind I asked John how his business was doing.  He said that even in this current recession he was doing as well as last year.  I asked him where his clients were coming from and he said mostly from his website.  John asks all his clients where they had heard of him and 80% of the answers are from his Page One Google listing or his blog.

Last year I had a very long heart to heart with John and why his business would do well if he would just embrace Social Media.  Though he fought me on the idea at first he quickly came around.  John has benefited greatly from Social Media.  John also understands now that a true Two-Way Social Media Conversation comes from the emails and phone calls he receives from people who are looking to hire him because they read his blog or found him through a very specific long tail phrase search on a search engine.

Long Tail Phrases are much easier to rank – The competition for long tail phrases is much lower which makes it easier to rank higher in Google. 

Long Tail Phrases attract targeted visitors – Targeted phrases leads to more indexed pages by Google and ranking for specific phrases that are related to your business.

Higher Potential – Targeted visitors from Search Engines have a higher conversion because they seek very specific information and studies have shown are more likely to subscribe to your site newsletter or blog feed.

Higher Conversions – Multi Phrases Searches are more ready to make a purchase. Their  search is so specific they are further along in the buying process and know what they are looking for in a home.

More great info for Point2 website folks!

This is a must read if you have a Point2 site

It looks like there are about 24 Real Estate Agents here in Camden County GA that are registered with Active Rain.  I think that is great but can't begin to tell you how many agents are in this county.  I was hoping there were more St Marys GA Real Estate Agents that keep up with their blogs here.  The few I have met are great people and seem to very professional and caring Agents.

So my call out here is to all of the St Mary GA Real Estate Agents to blog here on ActiveRain or on WordPress. Every Agent should feel The Power of ActiveRain and The Power Of WordPress.

I am interested to know what other blogging platforms you all use to blog.  Is ActiveRain your main blog or do you have others that you use as well?  I maintain several blogs myself for I do that for specific SEO reasons.  I do have a daily blog I do, that has over 500 subscribers.

I find that lots of agents believe in The Power Of ActiveRain and The Power of WordPress.   Which ones do you use?

This is a great alternative.  Give it a look

Anyone with an e-mail account likely knows that police can peek inside it if they have a paper search warrant.

But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They're pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.

CNET has reviewed a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for such an interface to be created. Eighty-nine percent of police surveyed, it says, want to be able to "exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process" through an encrypted, police-only "nationwide computer network." (See one excerpt and another.)

The survey, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, is part of a broader push from law enforcement agencies to alter the ground rules of online investigations. Other components include renewed calls for lawsrequiring Internet companies to store data about their users for up to five years and increased pressure on companies to respond to police inquiries in hours instead of days.

But the most controversial element is probably the private Web interface, which raises novel security and privacy concerns, especially in the wake of a recent inspector general's report (PDF) from the Justice Department. The 289-page report detailed how the FBI obtained Americans' telephone records by citing nonexistent emergencies and simply asking for the data or writing phone numbers on a sticky note rather than following procedures required by law.

Some companies already have police-only Web interfaces. Sprint Nextel operates what it calls the L-Site, also known as the "legal compliance secure Web portal." The company even has offered a course that "will teach you how to create and track legal demands through L-site. Learn to navigate and securely download requested records." Cox Communications makes its price list for complying with police requests public; a 30-day wiretap is $3,500.

The police survey is not exactly unbiased: its author is Frank Kardasz, who is scheduled to present it at a meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Kardasz, a sergeant in the Phoenix police department and a project director of Arizona's Internet Crimes Against Children task force, said in an e-mail exchange on Tuesday that he is still revising the document and was unable to discuss it.

In an incendiary October 2009 essay, however, Kardasz wrote that Internet service providers that do not keep records long enough "are the unwitting facilitators of Internet crimes against children" and called for new laws to "mandate data preservation and reporting." He predicts that those companies will begin to face civil lawsuits because of their "lethargic investigative process."

"It sounds very dangerous," says Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, referring to the police-only Web interface. "Let's assume you set this sort of thing up. What does that mean in terms of what the law enforcement officer be able to do? Would they be able to fish through transactional information for anyone? I don't understand how you create a system like this without it."

What police see in ISPs
Kardasz's survey, based on questionnaires completed by 100 police investigators, says that 61 percent of them had their investigations harmed "because data was not retained" and only 40 percent were satisfied with the timeliness of responses from Internet providers.

"You can be very supportive of law enforcement investigations and at the same time be very cognizant and supportive of the privacy rights of our users."

--Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer, MySpace

It also says: "89 percent of investigators agreed that a nationwide computer network should be established for the purpose of linking ISPs with law enforcement agencies so that they may exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process. Authorized users would communicate through encrypted virtual private networks in order to maintain the security of the data."

Some of the responses to other questions: "AT&T is very prompt." "Cox Communications seems to be the worst." "Places like Yahoo can take a month for basic subscriber info which is also a problem." "AT&T Mobility does not keep a log at all." "MySpace give (sic) me the quickest response and they have been very pro-police."

Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, said in an interview with CNET on Tuesday that: "You can be very supportive of law enforcement investigations and at the same time be very cognizant and supportive of the privacy rights of our users. Every time a legal process comes in, whether it's a subpoena or a search order, we do a legal review to make sure it's appropriate."

Nigam said that MySpace accepts law enforcement requests through e-mail, fax, and postal mail, and that it has a 24-hour operations center that tries to respond to requests soon after they've been reviewed to make sure state and federal laws are being followed. MySpace does not have a police-only Web interface, he said.

Creating a national police-only network would be problematic, Nigam said. "I wish I knew the number of local police agencies in the country, or even police officers in the country," he said. "Right there that would tell you how difficult it would be to implement, even though ideally it would be a good thing."

Another obstacle to creating a nation-wide Web interface for cops--one wag has dubbed it "DragNet," and another "Porknet"--is that some of its thousands of users could be infected by viruses and other malware. Once an infected computer is hooked up to the national network, it could leak confidential information about ongoing investigations.

Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute, says that he welcomes the idea of a police-only Web interface as long as it's designed carefully. "A system like this should have strong logins, should require that the request be documented fully, and should produce statistical information so there can be strong oversight," he says. "I think that's a good thing to hav

By Ellen Nakashima
Thursday, February 4, 2010; A01 

The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack.

Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google's policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans' online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users' searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.

The partnership strikes at the core of one of the most sensitive issues for the government and private industry in the evolving world of cybersecurity: how to balance privacy and national security interests. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the Google attacks, which the company acknowledged in January, a "wake-up call." Cyberspace cannot be protected, he said, without a "collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners."

But achieving collaboration is not easy, in part because private companies do not trust the government to keep their secrets and in part because of concerns that collaboration can lead to continuous government monitoring of private communications. Privacy advocates, concerned about a repeat of the NSA's warrantless interception of Americans' phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, say information-sharing must be limited and closely overseen.

"The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?" said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an organization of current and former intelligence and national security officials that seeks ways to foster greater sharing of information between government and industry.

On Jan. 12, Google took the rare step of announcing publicly that its systems had been hacked in a series of intrusions beginning in December.

The intrusions, industry experts said, targeted Google source code -- the programming language underlying Google applications -- and extended to more than 30 other large tech, defense, energy, financial and media companies. The Gmail accounts of human rights activists in Europe, China and the United States were also compromised.

So significant was the attack that Google threatened to shutter its business operation in China if the government did not agree to let the firm operate an uncensored search engine there. That issue is still unresolved.

Google approached the NSA shortly after the attacks, sources said, but the deal is taking weeks to hammer out, reflecting the sensitivity of the partnership. Any agreement would mark the first time that Google has entered a formal information-sharing relationship with the NSA, sources said. In 2008, the firm stated that it had not cooperated with the NSA in its Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Sources familiar with the new initiative said the focus is not figuring out who was behind the recent cyberattacks -- doing so is a nearly impossible task after the fact -- but building a better defense of Google's networks, or what its technicians call "information assurance."

One senior defense official, while not confirming or denying any agreement the NSA might have with any firm, said: "If a company came to the table and asked for help, I would ask them . . . 'What do you know about what transpired in your system? What deficiencies do you think they took advantage of? Tell me a little bit about what it was they did.' " Sources said the NSA is reaching out to other government agencies that play key roles in the U.S. effort to defend cyberspace and might be able to help in the Google investigation.

These agencies include the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

Over the past decade, other Silicon Valley companies have quietly turned to the NSA for guidance in protecting their networks.

"As a general matter," NSA spokeswoman Judi Emmel said, "as part of its information-assurance mission, NSA works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associates to ensure the availability of secure tailored solutions for Department of Defense and national security systems customers."

Despite such precedent, Matthew Aid, an expert on the NSA, said Google's global reach makes it unique.

"When you rise to the level of Google . . . you're looking at a company that has taken great pride in its independence," said Aid, author of "The Secret Sentry," a history of the NSA. "I'm a little uncomfortable with Google cooperating this closely with the nation's largest intelligence agency, even if it's strictly for defensive purposes."

The pact would be aimed at allowing the NSA help Google understand whether it is putting in place the right defenses by evaluating vulnerabilities in hardware and software and to calibrate how sophisticated the adversary is. The agency's expertise is based in part on its analysis of cyber-"signatures" that have been documented in previous attacks and can be used to block future intrusions.

The NSA would also be able to help the firm understand what methods are being used to penetrate its system, the sources said. Google, for its part, may share information on the types of malicious code seen in the attacks -- without disclosing proprietary data about what was taken, which would concern shareholders, sources said.

Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a privacy advocacy group, said companies have statutory authority to share information with the government to protect their rights and property.