News
Here is our news. It includes relevant articles about outsourced business operations, their costs, benefits, and potential pitfalls.
Solid State Server Speed Test
Smart SSD raises the ceiling of what was previously considered “fast” in any line of servers. In a recent benchmarking test, Smart SSD 12GB performed 4K Sequential Write at 225,000 IOPS. By contrast, an 8GB Smart Server performed the test at 15,000 IOPS with Amazon EC2 m1.large cloud clocking in at 4,900. This is the level of performance our users will come to expect from a product designed to use the lowest possible server load and maximize your performance.Benefits of Smart SSD
- Unrivaled database performance
- High I/O performance, eliminating starved CPU states
- Eliminate “bottleneck” effect
- Increased power, speed and performance
- Full redundancy
- Reduced I/O queues
Complete Test Results:
| Amazon EC2 m1.large |
Smart VPS 8GB | 12GB Smart SSD | |
| 4K Sequential Write | 4,900 IOPS | 15,000 IOPS | 225,000 IOPS |
| 4K Sequential Read | 7,800 IOPS | 28,000 IOPS | 475,000 IOPS |
| 4K Random Write | 265 IOPS | 204 IOPS | 20,000 IOPS |
| 4K Random Read | 210 IOPS | 700 IOPS | 35,000 IOPS |
| Testing performed using iozone3_398 with the following command line options on each server instance: iozone -l 32 -O -i 0 -i 1 -i 2 -e -+n -r 4K -s 4G |
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Black Hat SEO
You get what you pay for...
Recently a client decided to opt for a cheap offshore SEO firm promising to increase their site traffic from under 3,000 visitors per day to 30,000 within a couple of months. "If we bring traffic to you, you'll sell more product" But, their target demographic is very specific with only 250 thousand people worldwide for their service. Their management is basing success on hits, not sales.
Seems odd and short sighted.
This brings to mind all the black hat SEO companies out there.
Here are a few posts from a black hat SEO forum:
Recently a client decided to opt for a cheap offshore SEO firm promising to increase their site traffic from under 3,000 visitors per day to 30,000 within a couple of months. "If we bring traffic to you, you'll sell more product" But, their target demographic is very specific with only 250 thousand people worldwide for their service. Their management is basing success on hits, not sales.
Seems odd and short sighted.
This brings to mind all the black hat SEO companies out there.
Here are a few posts from a black hat SEO forum:
Blocking access to your server from specific countries
If you spend time watching the security of your web servers you know in recent years the many hacking attempsts and security probs come from IP addresses in China. The Chinese hackers are the most common evidenced by the US government's Titan Rain investigation covered Google has expressed their concerns about hacking attempts from China.
Their government does nothing to stop or even discourage hackers. So, we must take precautions from the hackers and do it ourselves.
A simple method as a fist line of defense can be through your router's IPTABLES or by the .htaccess file.
Their government does nothing to stop or even discourage hackers. So, we must take precautions from the hackers and do it ourselves.
A simple method as a fist line of defense can be through your router's IPTABLES or by the .htaccess file.
eCommerce & SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is work. When you add eCommerce to your site there are unique challenges to overcome in your SEO planning.
Below are Nine (9) tips to help you tackle your SEO for your e-commerce site. Rank higher in search engines and get more visitors, customers and sales for your online store.
Do not copy the manufacturer's description. Write your own description. The result is candy for Google. Google's Farmer/Panda Update of 2011 favors sites with original content.
Below are Nine (9) tips to help you tackle your SEO for your e-commerce site. Rank higher in search engines and get more visitors, customers and sales for your online store.
1. FOR EACH PRODUCT - Create Unique Content and for the Product Categories
Unique and interesting content shows Google that a page is relevant, authoritative, valuable, and helps it rank higher. Be sure the content is well written and can persuade more of your visitors to make a purchase.Do not copy the manufacturer's description. Write your own description. The result is candy for Google. Google's Farmer/Panda Update of 2011 favors sites with original content.
2. Take time to find out what shoppers are actually looking for
What Google Says About SEO Firms
This is taken directly from:
(http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291)
While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. Here are some things to consider:
(http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291)
While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. Here are some things to consider:
Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.
Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:How Bing Ranks Your Website
This is directly from Bing - about their ranking method
Bing website ranking is completely automated. The Bing ranking algorithm analyzes factors such as webpage content, the number and quality of websites that link to your webpages, and the relevance of your website’s content to keywords. The algorithm is complex and is never human-mediated. You can't pay to boost your website’s relevance ranking. However, Bing does offer advertising options for website owners.Each time the index is updated, previous relevance rankings are revised. Therefore, you might notice a shift in your website’s ranking as new websites are added and others become obsolete.
Although you can't directly change your website’s ranking, you can optimize its design and technical implementation to enable appropriate ranking by most search engines.