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Negative SEO is real, and it can have a serious impact on the overall search ranking of your business.  Learn what this means and how you can prevent damaging attacks.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still the stuff of legend for many business leaders and marketers.  Even though the term is familiar and you know that it has to do with your ranking on search engines, exactly how it happens and the various factors that impact your ranking may feel as though they’re a bit cloudy.  Unfortunately, not only do you have to be concerned with SEO rankings, but there are ways that your competitors could unleash a devastating negative SEO attack that has the potential to cause long-term damage to your search unless you catch the problem quickly and take steps to reduce the impact.  Protect your business and make your competitors play fair when you steer clear of these negative SEO practices.

Importance of SEO

One of the most important things to know about SEO is that it’s a great leveler:  a small business who has a laser focus on SEO could easily rank above a much larger competitor in search results. The higher you are in search results, the more likely it is that you’ll get that customer, deal or offer.  Plus, a higher rank in major search engines often equates to credibility in the eyes of consumers.  Good SEO starts with a solid plan for keywords that are important to your customers, which can easily be discovered through a little work, brainstorming ideas and using tools such as the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to see the types of terms customers use naturally when searching for your business.  When you incorporate these keywords into the content produced either via a blog or on social media and your website, you’ll see your organic traffic begin to grow.

What is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO is often considered an attack by an unfriendly competitor or other organization and can be used to describe a variety of different tactics.  These include spammy links and forceful crawling, both of which can cause long-term damage to your site’s traffic and overall search results ranking.  Plagiarism is another potential cause of negative SEO.  If a site happens to grab your content, publish it, and have it indexed by Google before your site is crawled, there’s a possibility that you can be penalized for duplicate content.  While this doesn’t happen as often as some other causes of negative SEO, it does happen.  Forceful crawling is when a cybercriminal causes a heavy server load on your website, which can lead to slow loading times and reduce your SEO ranking and user experience overall.  Spam farms are the most likely cause of negative SEO and are also the easiest for outsiders to perpetrate against your website.

Shutting Down Spam Farms

Poor quality backlinks are the bane of Google, and it penalizes sites swiftly and harshly for this practice.  Unfortunately, that makes this an excellent tool for negative SEO practitioners who are looking for ways to reduce the ability to discover your website.  This manipulation of search engine rankings has led to an excellent tool that can be utilized to help shut down spam farms, the Google and Bing Disavow Links tool.  At it’s simplest, anyone can go to a bulk link-building service and generate tens of thousands of spammy links in a very short period of time.  While previously this practice was difficult to protect against, the Disavow Links tool from the two major search engines allows webmasters to take back some power by submitting links that appear to be spam back to Google and Bing.  By reporting these links, you can reduce or eliminate the impact of any negative SEO practices that include spam links.

Fighting the Fire

Perhaps one of the best ways to guard against any type of cyber attack is to ensure that your security procedures are in full effect.  This includes applying patches in a timely manner and only utilizing CMS (Content Management System) software that has top-notch encryption capabilities. Security protocols are especially important as they can protect against potential hacks to your website that could tamper with your robots.txt file — which could lead to a massive drop in rankings should your entire site be de-indexed.  Staying vigilant involves keeping track of your site’s overall search ranking and taking immediate action to remediate should your ranking fall dramatically.

Negative Reviews

Finally, negative Google reviews for your business can be nearly invisible unless you’re looking for them — yet they are a strong indicator of whether or not your site will show up well in search rankings.  If your competitors suddenly submit a large number of negative reviews against your brand, you may find that your search ranking is falling fast, and for no reason that you can quickly identify.  This is why it’s important to Google your business often and ensure that you stay on top of any reviews that are suspicious.

The ways that negative SEO can be leveraged against your business can be subtle, but the impact to your business can be significant over time in terms of lost traffic to your website and even lost business.  Protect your organization by ensuring you have the latest security patches in place, checking your ranking often and staying aware of incoming links on your sites.  Want to learn more about best-practices for security on the internet?  Contact our Omaha professionals by contacting InfiNet Solutions at (402) 895--5777 or via email to [email protected].

Upgrade your outdated PBX phone system with 3CX from InfiNet Solutions.

The biggest hurdle to adopting a new business phone system is the setup. Installing and maintaining any new technology infrastructure is tricky without the right support – so why not leave all of that hassle to the experts?

With both on-premise and cloud deployment options to choose from, your business can take full advantage of a PBX system that suits your specific needs. Whichever option you choose, your business will benefit from:

Straightforward Installation and Configuration:

• Use pre-configured templates to connect with prominent SIP trunks within minutes
• Plug-in an IP Phone or Gateway to your network for automatic configuration
• Avoid interop Issues with 3CX tested IP Phones

Use Of An Easy Management Console To:

• Create, edit and delete extensions and DIDs
• Upgrade IP Phone Firmware.
• Reprovision & reboot IP phones remotely
• Import or delete all your important contacts at once

Anywhere Access From Any Device:

• Take your extension wherever you go and work remotely from anywhere
• Make free VoIP calls with your smartphone
• Save battery life with “PUSH” notifications
• Connect all clients simultaneously via SIP Forking
• Most Progressive Android & iOS VoIP clients in the UC market
• Initiate IP Phone calls from your desktop with CTI mode
• Use the Receptionist view to make calls, then drag and drop calls for a swift call transfer
• Launch calls directly from your CRM; integrate seamlessly with Office 365, Google contacts or Internal Phonebook
• Automatically obtain reports on customer and agent activities and view the presence of your colleagues
• Includes Wallboard and Q-Manager view
• Integrated WebRTC technology resulting in reduced bandwidth usage
• Click to Call Chrome Extension

Integrated Video Conferencing:

• Free for up to 5 participants
• Unlimited users regardless of edition
• Initiate a conference with one single click
• Correlated operability between VoIP and video
• Bandwidth Management and Control
• Remote control assistance for quick and easy troubleshooting
• Pre-upload PowerPoint & PDFs before meetings
• Easy to use polling tool for feedback

Top-Notch Security and Backup:

• Secure web server configuration
• Automatic detection and blacklisting of known SIP Attack tools
• All traffic to 3CX clients is encrypted via SBC
• All voice traffic is encrypted via SRTP
• Automatic generation and management of SSL certificates
• Revolutionary VoIP Security with an A+ rating from SSL lab
• Automatic Failover for instant backup
• Encryption between the browser and the website via HTTPS

Budget-Friendly Solutions:

• Cut down on your phone bill by up to 80%
• Pay for licensing based on number of simultaneous calls instead of extensions
• Avoid per extension licensing and pay per PBX instead
• Make free Inter-office calls and branch calls
• Use prominent SIP trunks to reduce outbound call charges
• Reduce travel expenses with integrated web conferencing
• Eliminate 800 number phone bills with WebRTC integration
• Use International DIDs and IP Telephony so your customers can call in at competitive rates

Retire your old, outdated PBX solution and upgrade to the efficient, affordable, and feature-laden IP phone solution provided by our partners at 3CX. This is the business communication system your team has been waiting for.

Ready to learn more about what 3CX provided by InfiNet Solutions has to offer? Contact us at [email protected] or (402) 895--5777 today. We’re the business technology experts businesses in Omaha trust.

Proper planning allows companies to protect data, systems, and people while keeping the business operational during a disaster.

The recent devastating hurricanes to hit the mainland United States and Caribbean countries and territories destroyed entire communities. Families, businesses, and governments were left reeling, forced to pick up the pieces, where possible.

The catastrophic impact of the recent storms reinforces the importance of having a sound business continuity and disaster recovery plan. Creating such a plan allows companies facing a natural disaster to follow a deliberate set of actions. In a time of chaos, having clearly defined contingencies can help leaders and employees weather a storm.

Business Continuity Defined

Business continuity plans allow a company to continue providing essential products, services, and customer support. In some industries, these tasks are critical for the company’s short-term viability, customer safety or meeting legal requirements. Disaster recovery plans, a subset of business continuity, often focus on recovering IT assets.

Business continuity includes the plans and arrangements that ensure that the essential products, services, and support can be provided, which allows the company to recover its property, data, and assets. It’s also a means to identify the employees, equipment, data, infrastructure, counsel, and accommodations that support business continuity.

While the recent hurricanes are the most recent, visible example of why business continuity is important, they are not the only incident where such plans are needed. Other actions that can prompt the launch of a business continuity plan include:

• Other natural disasters such as blizzards, fires, earthquakes or tornadoes
• Sabotage
• Accidents
• Power or energy disruptions
• Environmental disasters such as spills, contamination or pollution
• Communications, transportation or safety infrastructure failures
• Cyber attacks and hacks

Threats and Trends in Disaster Recovery Preparedness

There are many threats, perceived or actual, that can shape a company’s disaster recovery planning. Here are some of the leading issues companies are considering:

• The increasing number of natural disasters worldwide. A New England Journal of Medicine study indicated that the number of climate-related natural disasters increased by 300 percent from 2000-2009 compared to 1980-1989.  The scale of these disasters has also grown and now affect more than 200 million people each year.
• Disruptions may be more predictable. With massive amounts of data, often generated by connected devices in the growing Internet of Things, there’s an opportunity to predict some threats.  With more advanced information, companies have more time to prepare for the disruptions, test plans and deploy resources accordingly.
• Malicious cyber attacks continue to persist. The massive Equifax hack is just the latest in a litany of attacks where data is being stolen or held hostage.
• Cloud computing offers an excellent defense. The growing use of cloud-based tools, data storage, and applications, gives companies more options when it comes to data recovery.  Cloud providers usually have built-in safeguards for their services, including multiple data backups, universal access via devices and locations, and physical and digital protection systems.
• Disruptions are the norm. The preponderance of natural disasters and rogue agents means businesses have no excuse for not having disaster recovery plans in place.  Organizations need to embrace business continuity and disaster recovery as a cost of doing business.
• Communications are expansive and expected. In the digital age, customers, employees, and the general public expect to have access to updated information about companies and services, even in the direst situations.  Fast communications and frequent updates are the norms today and companies need to incorporate communications into their planning.  Fortunately, the ubiquity of mobile devices and social media platforms means it’s relatively easy to disseminate key messages.

A Closer Look at Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery may vary depending on the industry and company but generally, focuses on a few core areas. Broadly, it’s the work a company does to maintain or recover access to data, software, and hardware needed to resume or continue critical business areas.

In addition, a disaster recovery plan needs to consider the human assets necessary to ensure continuity and ensure that the right people have the tools to ensure disaster recovery plans are acted upon. In some cases, those people may be dealing with their own personal issues in the throes of a disaster, so redundancies in personnel are important.

One key element of a successful disaster recovery or business continuity plan is the need to practice. Drills and scenarios should be developed to test systems, responsiveness, and efficacy.

How to Plan the Plan

How should a company begin the process of business continuity and disaster recovery? Here are a few key tasks:

• Develop a risk assessment. Having a clear idea of the likely and unlikely risks and having specific plans for each possibility is an important first step.  What natural disasters are likely in your area? What cyber attacks or events would have a significant effect on your business?
• Detail the impacts. Once a threat is identified, play out the potential impacts of that scenario.  Which customers would be affected?  Which employees?  Would inventories, documents, systems, services be impacted?  What are the long-term risks to your customer base and your business?
• Create the continuity plan. For each identified threat, a plan needs to be established, including the systems, data, people, and communications necessary.  While some of these contingencies may be the same for multiple threats, each one should have a clearly defined plan.
• Prep the people and technology. If key personnel is expected even in disasters, they need to be notified and trained about how they will be notified, where they need to report and what tools they will have.  Employees should also be aware of how to exit buildings safely in an emergency and have access to emergency stores of water, food, radios, chargers, and flashlights.  Services and data should be migrated to cloud solutions, backup facilities and alternate media well in advance of a disaster.
• Protect the business. You should check with your insurance provider to make sure you have the right coverage and protection to keep your company whole when disaster strikes.

Time dedicated to planning can ensure that your business not only survives but thrives when facing daunting challenges.

How to Use the Office 365 App Launcher to Work Smarter and More Productively 

Few people will argue that Office 365 offers many features that can help them work more productively. For instance, the cloud-based software and storage will let you work from just about anywhere, use multiple devices, and also collaborate with ease. Typically, Microsoft productivity products have a good reputation for functioning well and offering the features that most people need to do their jobs.

In fact, the main complaint about Office subscriptions is that they come with so many different features that it’s often difficult to find the right tool or document to start working. For example, in the past, lots of us have run into a few snags with these apps:

• Opening up the apps: When you want to open up Word, Excel, or other apps do you find yourself searching for existing documents that you can open just to get the app to open? Yes, we certainly used to do the same! Sometimes, it seemed quicker to just find a Word document than to hunt around for the Word App icon on the computer or other devices.
• Knowing which apps are included: The other issue with bundles of apps like the ones that we buy with Office 365 is that they’re first purchased for a few driver apps, like Word and Excel. Like us, you might not even be aware of every piece of software that you have purchased access to. Plenty of users waste time and money to find free or paid applications for certain tasks, and only later, they realize they already had paid for access to a Microsoft product that would have worked very well.

How the Office 365 App Launcher Will Help You Work Smarter

If you’ve ever found that the setup for Office products has hampered your productivity, you should take a few moments to learn more about how the Office 365 App Launcher can help you work smarter and get even more value out of your software products.

Since Office relies so much upon providing online and cloud-based services, you might consider the recent suggestions from the official Office 365 blog to use your products directly from the new app launcher within your browser.

Find Your Customized App Launcher at Office.com

To get started, simply log into Office.com directly. After you have logged in, you will find that the Office 365 App Launcher has already been personalized for you. For example:

• You will see icons for your own set of most-used apps at the top. You can get started without having to look around for them.
• On the lower area of the screen, you will see a list of recent documents. You can simply click these to continue working with them right away.

You won’t have to hunt around in different directories or app menus for the apps that you regularly use. Instead, you can just get started by clicking the app icons or one of the recent documents on the list. This feature should help you save time and frustration when you just want to resume work fast.

Explore Your Apps

The features described above will help you get started with common or recent tasks very quickly. However, because those features have been tailored to your typical usage patterns, they won’t help you explore features of Office 365 that you have never or infrequently used. In order to make sure you make the most of your products, the app launcher also includes a feature that helps you learn more about all of the products that you already have access too.

To start learning about different apps, find the link below the list of app icons that invites you to: Explore all of your apps. This exploration function can help you get the most out of your software:

• You don’t need to know the name of a particular app that you may want to use for collaboration, image editing, and so on. Instead, you should just have a task that you would like to perform in mind.
• This feature will base its first app suggestions upon your subscription and typical usage patterns. For example, you may see some suggestions that are based upon other apps that you use.
• Of course, you may want to perform some task that isn’t closely related to your typical work. In that case, you can improve the suggestions by using search terms in the search bar towards the top of the screen.

You can also use this exploration feature to do more than simply comb through all of your apps. For instance, you may have collaborated with a particular person on a document that you need to find so you can search for that person’s name to find the documents you worked together on.

Let the Smart Features of the App Launcher Help You Work Smarter

The new Office 365 Office App Launcher offers a great solution for people who want to make the most of their subscription. Its smart search and listing features can almost serve you as an office assistant that will rapidly help you find the documents and software that you need.

If you have any questions, you can rely on us here at InfiNet Solutions in Omaha. Simply contact us by calling (402) 895--5777 or sending an email to [email protected] for more information.