I suppose it was inevitable at some point but yesterday afternoon my dedicated server was compromised and all 12 of my websites were disabled.

I thought about it long and hard whether or not to blog about it as I’m sure it happens to many people on a regular basis. At the time I was distraught, I thought that over 2 years of work had been erased at the click of a button!

Luckily my server had been backed up by my hosting company so it was a matter of contacting them and getting the problem fixed within minutes. It made me think however that some bloggers and website owners out there might not be as lucky as me. I for one will be taking extra measures in the future to make sure I never feel like I did for that short period of time on Sunday again.

1.    Make weekly backups of your files from FTP
2.    Backup your databases on a regular basis
3.    Increase server security with an advanced software firewall or hardware firewall
4.    If you experience a hack, change all server passwords
5.    Choose a hosting solution that includes backup, it costs under $10 per month and is worth it for piece of mind.

Heart attack over, and look forward to a new week of seoing!

Reports of a new Google Page Rank have hit the long seo shores already. Before everyone started with the blasphemy, I couldn’t care less if it is or not.

Page Rank thread on Digital Point today had at least 3 or 4 people based in North America reporting changes in different sites. Screenshots were provided for different sites and people were assured this wasn’t a bug issue. Like I mentioned I have no interest in PR, I think it’s dated and does not accurately represent a websites true rank for anything.

What I will say for anyone interested in PR (shame on you) is that before the last update in October 2007, there were reports of websites listed in different countries receiving an update before others. This could mean an update is on the way for certain people.

Before you start jumping for joy or begin preparation for a noose, just bare in mind that page rank holds very little weight on search engine rankings. You should always build and maintain a website for your customers and readers to provide them with the best online experience you can offer, the rest will come free!

Link Baiting – with the paid links debate clearing up, it’s clear that obvious link purchases will result in penalties to your site. Reciprocal linking holds very little weight too these days so alternatives must be suggested for a link building strategy. I won’t go into exact details of link baiting but even a simple piece of interesting information can result in hundreds of one way links to your website.

Blogs – That’s right, corporate and e-commerce websites should have a blog associated with the business name. It’s 2008 and blogs are bigger and stronger than ever online, creating and managing a blog will open up opportunities for one way links, returning traffic and updated fresh content (“yum yum” says Google). More companies are starting to do this as it’s also a nice experience to offer some sort of relationship to your customers. I know I’d prefer to buy a product from someone I had some degree of trust with, be it through brand recognitions or online relationship – writer to reader.

Social Media – I’ve been blogging about this for a while too so just to cover this briefly. Create profiles on all social media/bookmarking websites and hire someone to manage the accounts all day long. It’s an investment that should be considered for a long term strategy, branding, relationship building and link generation are all positive outcomes from investment.

On site optimization – Still a very important investment from an SEO point of view. Seomoz recently posted a great update on title tags, Meta data and URL structures. All traffic increasing methods and should be maintained to the highest standard.

Analytics and traffic analysis – In my honest opinion you don’t need to fork out for highly priced analytic programs. Google Analytics offers a very comprehensive package for the amazing price of…nothing. An investment should be made into setting up clear goals for your website and then using the data to optimise your site structure and content. An increase in sales or conversions will be a guarantee and a clear understanding of where your traffic originates can help producing domain traffic reports.

For those of you that have still not heard about this idea from Google, I’ll catch you up to speed.

Google plans to create a user generated content site, similar to Wiki, where by information can be collected and distributed accordingly. An interesting section of the announcement was this paragraph:

“Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.”

It’s certainly a social approach to the Wiki and with revenue sharing available this will no doubt open up opportunities for people.

For more information on this visit the official Google Blog

Also check out the large screenshot of Google Knol

Well Facebook is once again making the headlines, once again involving one of the giants of the web.

• It has been reported, according to the Wall Street Journal that Microsoft are in talks with Facebook to buy a stake in the social media site.
• It is thought that Google are also interested in purchasing a steak in Facebook.
• Microsoft are believed to have valued Facebook in the region of $10 Billion dollars (wow)
• Microsoft already have a relationship with Facebook as they are the soul provider of online advertisements on Facebook.
• All parties have refused to comment about this.

Well I wouldn’t have expected Microsoft to do this if I’m going to be honest, lets see what happens over the next few days.