When data is lost on a hard drive, it can result in two scenarios: 1) the operating system is fine, hard disk is still accessible, but files are missing 2) the computer doesn’t boot up and weird noises are heard from the hard disk. Now let us see step by step procedure to tackle both the scenarios.
To tackle scenario 1:
a) Don’t write anything to the hard disk after the data loss. This is because whenever you delete the files from the hard drive, the OS does not delete the information permanently. It shows you that there are more free spaces but they are still occupied by the deleted information. You will not be able to see it, but data recovery software will.
b) If you have taken the backups of all the important information, check the backups and restore them to retrieve the lost information. If you have not taken the backup, follow the data recovery steps as mentioned in the steps below. It is always good to take back-up of important information on a regular basis.
c) Never install the data recovery software in the drive where the data loss has occurred. The reason is that if you install on the same drive, you might overwrite the lost data.
d) In order to be safe, always switch off the computer after the data loss. All the operations of the OS depend on the reads and writes with the hard drive and this may result in overwriting the lost data.
e) Remove the hard disk from the computer and connect a new hard drive. After you have installed an OS in the new hard drive you can connect the old hard disk to the computer as a secondary drive and access it without writing anything to it. If you prefer not to install an OS then you run a Linux live CD instead. You can also do this by putting your hard disk into a USB hard drive enclosure. Then connect it to the computer via USB to access the files.
f) If the data loss has happened due to a virus attack, make sure you have installed an anti-virus software on the second computer where you will be performing the data recovery.
g) There are several free data recovery softwares available on the internet, select the appropriate one and recover your data.
To tackle scenario 2:
Whenever there is hard disk failure, it is impossible to access the hard drive. One of the most common reasons is head crashes. The head is responsible for reading the disk’s magnetic surface. But a hardware failure means it grinds against the metal surface and makes the reads impossible. If you have a hard drive failure follow the steps below:
a) Switch off the computer and don’t try to start it again as this can result in further damage to the hard drive
b) Keep the hard disk secure, for instance if the hard drive failed due to the external problem like flood, preserve it in water and don’t try to dry it by your own.
c) Whenever the physical error occurs, we cannot fix it. So contact a good data recovery company and identify which components need to be replaced.
d) Most of the data recovery companies will not charge anything if they are not able to recover the data. They may give and estimation time for analyzing the hard drive. Use a wrapping material while handing over the hard drive. Also use foam to prevent the sudden movements and to secure the hard disk inside. Hopefully they will be able to fix the physical errors and recover your data.
Computers and their various parts eventually break down after repeated wear and tear. Some parts can become obsolete so they need to be upgraded. Other parts could have yet been of service, but unfortunately meet an untimely end due to improper handling or use. If you want to make the most of your computer — and spend less for replacement parts — you need to take care of it properly. Here are some tips to help protect your computer from an early demise.
* Properly shut down your computer.
Avoid unplugging your computer or turning it off by pressing the power button. This catches your computer unawares and prevents it from saving its current state. It can also corrupt the data on your hard disk drive. If your system files become corrupted, you may have to reinstall your operating system and all your other software. This will make you lose all your files! Practice a little patience and wait for your computer to shut down completely before unplugging it from the power outlet.
* Do not hit or drop your computer.
Computer parts are very sensitive! Do not strike your computer for whatever reason. Your hard drive could be irreparably damaged if jolted while it is spinning. Even a drop of a few feet is enough to render most notebook computers senseless and useless. If you have to hit something, try the wall or other object that can better withstand physical battery.
* Do not wet your keyboard.
This is extremely lethal for laptop computers. Wet keyboards will cause sensitive internal laptop components to short-circuit. If the damage is severe, you may need to get a new system. To avoid this problem, try not to eat and drink while using your laptop, or work by the pool or beach. If a binging session cannot be avoided, be very careful not to spill any drinks on your keyboard.
If you treat your computer with care, it will happily serve you many years and be less likely to hang up or freeze on you. You will also get to save on repair and replacement costs!
At this time, there is no way to remove or ban a user from being a fan of your Page. However, if a fan is abusive, you can block them from posting content on your Page. To do so, please click on the “Block” link found underneath the posted content.
Additionally, you can report the user or the user’s postings on your Page to Facebook by using the appropriate report links.
Facebook will review the reported material and remove anything that violates their Terms of Use. If warranted, Facebook will either warn or disable the user.
If you’re a business creating a profile on Facebook and decide you want to add a fan page to the mix, there are several very big “don’ts” you need to watch out for. Contrary to what you might think, its not enough to slap your logo in the picture area, add some info about your business and let it sit, hoping someone will see it.
In this case, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come, especially in today’s web environment where attention spans have whittled down to nothing. However, I’m going to give you a quick and dirty list to check against your Facebook fan page to make sure you’re not making some huge mistakes:
1) Don’t use a stock photo or logo. Use a real photo. If you want to add your logo or brand somewhere on the photo, that could be ok. I tell this to all my clients, with the exception of groups like non-profits, as they can usually get away with some kind of logo. If you’re a business, use a picture of a real person (don’t be silly and take it from a stock photo site either), someone visitors can relate to. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is this one.
2) Don’t use the corporate jargon. You want to sound professional, but warm and engaging at the same time. This doesn’t mean you have to be overly familiar – for example, just talk about what you do, what you’re interested in outside of work and what your goals are.
3) Don’t forget to add your phone number, website and email!
4) Don’t just expect people to come to you. Start spreading the word throughout your office and company, send emails to colleagues, search for people and invite them to become friends; essentially socialize and start building your community.
5) Don’t let it just sit there. If you just let it sit there, nothing will happen. Nothing. It will be as if you never created it at all. Either use it actively, find help inside or outside your company to help you monitor it and make sure it looks active and alive, not abandoned.
If you’re a business looking to promote yourself through social media, one of the key sites you’ll want to look at is Facebook. Facebook is one of the largest social media networking sites on the web and is great for people of all ages. MySpace is good too, but Facebook caters to a larger, more diverse audience.
After you’ve created a profile on Facebook, your next step as a business should be to create a fan page. A fan page is a GREAT way to add contacts, post gimmicks like contests and talk about your company. If you come up with a clever enough plan, you can easily gain many “fans.”
Here are the top 4 reasons to make a Facebook fan page for your website now:
1) All the pages include links to your website. While you can’t use anchor text, the link still allows people to visit your website, which ties into reason number 2.
2) Fan pages are public by default because they don’t require a login to visit (unless you set that option, then they’re no longer visible to everyone, only Facebook members or your allowed contact). If you keep your fan page public (and what’s the point of a fan page if you don’t), its easier for the search engines to index those pages, which in turn allows the possibility that someone will find you in a search. The goal then would be to have someone find you through a search, visit your fan page, then click on the link that takes them to your site.
2) Its free and easy to set up. Additionally, you have complete control over the area. You don’t have to rely on a webmaster or someone else to make additions or change it around, and you can be the first one to make a fan page for your industry, which only you control (nice for getting ahead of your competitors;p).
3) You can send updates to fans, which is key when you’re trying to build a social community and promote yourself. Also, don’t forget to offer information that benefits your users. Tips surrounding your industry, anecdotes, contests – all these make it fun and worth their while for people to become and stay a fan.
4) Besides the viral marketing options above, keep in mind that each time someone becomes a fan, they’re automatically subscribed to your feed, and you show up on their feed and their page. For example, say fan #1 joins company A’s site because they have a cool contest or a funny story. The fact that they became a fan shows up in their personal feed and on their page. A couple of fan #1′s friends visit your page from fan #1′s page, and they become fans. Then the whole process starts again.
Have other reasons?Let us know below!
Building links is one of the best ways to achieve rankings on the search engines and increase traffic to your site; more importantly, it tells Google how relevant your site is. However, people often make bad decisions when it comes to link building; here are the 25 don’t s of link building. Please feel free to comment with your own additions.
Don’t:
1. Hide links off a page.
This is a sneaky CSS trick Google doesn’t like.
2. Buy links where everyone else is buying.
Get off the beaten path; if you buy where everyone else is buying, you dilute the value of the links.
3. Purchase links from any link builder that lists their inventory online.
Google can see that list as well ya know.
4. Use automated link building software.
Talk about leaving a footprint.
5. Use the same anchor text over and over.
Your anchor text density should look natural and varied. For general ideas about anchor text density or variation, check out your competitors’ usage.
6. Overuse the same type of links.
Sitewide links, reciprocal, 3 way links, high or Low PR, social media, press releases, article directories…you get the point. Diversify!
7. Have unnatural PR patterns in your backlinks.
It’s not natural to have only high PR backlinks, or low ones, for that matter. You need a healthy mix of higher and lower PR backlinks.
8. Place links in paid or sponsored sections.
Search engines are getting better and better at spotting these and thus lowering their PR and ranking weight.
9. Spam Wikipedia for links.
Get a Wikipedia link you deserve and it will stick around.
10. Spam (insert favorite social media site here) with fake DIGGS.
Do you like your reputation? Thought so. Produce something DIGG worthy instead.
11. Spam .Gov or .EDU forums.
You want .gov or .edu links? Earn them. edu links are easy to get if you offer them content that fills a need.
12. Comment spam blogs or guest books.
Do this if you enjoy being hated by influential content publishers.
13. Create a onetime link spike.
While some links spikes are good (e.g. press releases, articles, viral campaigns), don’t buy or build 50 links that all go live in 3 days and then stop. Spread your campaign out over time.
14. Focus on keywords you already rank for.
Have you calculated what those rankings would cost your business if you lost them? I suggest some preventative maintenance.
15. Create a link directory on your site.
That’s so 1999. Oh, and it doesn’t work.
16. Send out random “link to me” requests.
Mass reciprocal link campaigns don’t work. This can also cause loss of reputation quickly. You don’t want a bunch of junky, non-relevant backlinks cluttering up your profile anyhow. Only send a link request if it makes real sense for both sites to become link partners.
17. Don’t send a generic letter if you’re requesting a link.
Nobody likes impersonal letters. Take the time to compose a nice email that lays your proposal out in a personal way. If you’re link building correctly, then any link you have to email or call for should be done with the utmost of care and sincerity.
18. Create an article exchange on your site.
Better to host high quality content you produce and link out to high quality content in your niche, rather than having a spate of links on a random page of your site.
19. Use link networks.
Search engines spot artificial link networks easily; those 5,000 instant links you got are going to come back and bite you.
20. Submit to 5000 directories for $19.95.
You get what you pay for and in this case it will be NOTHING! Instead buy or submit free to hand selected directories that have a relevant page for your niche. Make sure the exact page you are getting a link on has at least a PR1. Many directories will throw your listing 200 pages deep in a category. We have tested over 600 directories in fact and found all but a small portion of them were worthless (supplemental results) to submit to. So do your homework.
21. Forget to add anchor link text.
Anchor text is a must-have for any link you get, so make sure you include it.
22. Don’t spam forums.
Don’t comment just to add a link in to your signature. Forums are great for building your authority in your niche, but behave as a helpful expert, not a low-level sleaze. Also, keep in mind that some forums disable signature links, while you have to earn them by posting helpfully and gaining authority within the forum.
23. Use 301 redirect urls excessively.
Used in moderation this can be very effective, but do you really think 300 redirects to your site look natural?
24. Don’t send annoying updates.
You don’t have to email everyone in your community every time you make a post. It’s ok to be excited but moderation is good.
25. Stop building links once you reach the top.
Do you stop promoting your site when you become an industry leader? Then why stop building links?
As advances in technology move forward, the needs of online users change, the methods of advertising also experience an evolution over time. One of these more recent advertising methods has been link building. There are a lot of varieties of link building. Moreover, there are new rules that have to be followed to ensure the success of this method. But the benefits hardly ever change.
Link Building has great benefits and that is the reason why more and more number of website owners want to get it incorporated in their SEO process. The practice of link building is simply getting other websites to link back to yours. Despite how very important it is though, most webmasters don’t have a genuine link building campaign because it’s typically a very lengthy task to perform. But don’t let this be a reason you don’t do at least some link building for your website. You’d be doing your company a huge disservice by overlooking this vital Search Engine Optimization step.
1. It puts you in search engines.
Unless you’re found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, your online business is non-existent. It also doesn’t help if you’re found a lot of pages away in search results. Your main goal should be at least among the top 10 on the targeted keywords you’re using. Research says that online users click the first website in the list, believing it’s the most relevant answer to their query.
2. Links make your site – and the internet – more usable, and useful.
Links provide simple site navigation between documents and other website’s. In addition to surfing through sites, links substantially increase the usability of site information since words within an article, website, blog, etc… can be linked – or extended out in a tree-like manner.
3. Links Create Direct Traffic. More links = more traffic.
Clicking a link from a trusted source is one of the most popular ways for people to find a new website. If a user is on a website they trust, they are likely to follow links that it recommends or that a user finds interesting – or at the least, users will follow links that make the destination site appear to provide some valuable information.
4.Links Build User Trust in You – Word-of-mouth is the best advertising there is.
If users see a link to you on a popular or respected site, their level of trust in what you say or what you offer is likely to be higher.
5. Cheap One-way linking
Cheap Linking can come from many methods and provide many benefits. Writing articles and submitting to article directories can be one method. Posting your own blog with a link back to yours, link directories and social networking sites are all great places to link onto with no or very little costs involved, from which all highly benefit your site traffic.
6.Links Build higher page ranks
PageRank is still a major factor, the major search engines consider when determining where websites are ranked. The reasoning is simple: if you have many links pointing to your site from other unique sites, your content probably is quality, important information. Every webpage is given its own PageRank. Your PageRank will be determined by the PR of the pages that link to you.
7. Links Tell Search Engines and Users What Your Pages Are About
To determine what a web page is about search engines look at a few critical elements on a web page, but just as important is the text used in links that point to your page – from within your site and from outside sites. If you could describe yourself in two words, what would they be?
8.Links Are Trackable and Provide Market Intelligence – Find out who, what, where, when, why, how – and use it.
There are a few methods of determining who links to you, and this information can be very valuable in providing market intelligence such as;
- competitor strengths/weaknesses (find out who links to them, request a link)
- consumer/user opinion (what people are saying about you/competitors on blogs/forums)
- potential suppliers (industry insiders who liked/linked to your site)
- source of testimonials
- reveals potential PR hazards (negative posts/links)
To determine who links to you, you can first check your traffic logs for ‘referrers’. Once seeing who has generated some traffic for you, you can find out whom the search engines have listed that link to you.
9.Links Reveal Strategic Partnerships
Upon reviewing your traffic logs or doing a simple link check on any of the major search engines (as mentioned above) you may encounter some sites that link to you that can reveal sources of mutual benefit, such as;
- marketing partnerships (develop reciprocal ad campaign)
- service or product suppliers
- potential employees
- potential contractors
- or for support/education/help
10.Links Are Assets – They Add Value to Your Property
Your website is your internet property, and it has value. What gives your website saleable value is the amount of traffic the site can generate. As we’ve shown, links are one of the most important factors in generating substantial website traffic, search engine rankings, trust, publicity, market intelligence and more. A substantial link network offers significant value to the overall package when determining a website’s value.
Like everyone else you are probably writing unique high quality articles and submitting them to relevant sites and article directories. You’re done right? That’s all there really is to do right? Wrong!
There are a myriad of option for you to make your article stand out from the crowd and yes produce more links.
1) Reach out to the REAL websites who republish your articles.
At first blush, these seem simple and obvious- but think about the possibilities for just a second. Bear with me I promise it will be worth it. Right now you are submitting your quality articles to the same list of directories as everyone else. By contacting websites who already willingly republished your articles in the past you can establish a relationship with them.
The Idea is to give that website additional unique QUALITY content so long as they allow you to place a few links inside the article. In a short time you should be able to build up a really nice list of REAL websites that you can push content to in exchange for links while everyone else is playing in the same article directory sandbox.
Bonus Tip 1:
What’s that you say? You are new to this game and not a lot of REAL people have republished your articles yet? No worries. Simply head on over to Ezine Article’s expert authors section:
http://ezinearticles.com/?type=experts. Look at all those articles these authors are publishing! You can simply search for who is republishing their articles and contact that site to offer your unique content.
It gets even better. http://ezinearticles.com/?type=txcat&cat=Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO – You can actually go into any category on Ezine articles and see the top authors in that category. So now you can search for who is republishing articles in your niche.
Bonus Tip 2:
When searching for who is republishing articles? Simply search for “The title of the article” in quotes. You can also add in the author name in quotes as well. You will have the best luck with Yahoo usually but try Bing & Google as well.
2) Interlink Your Articles
Once you have a relationship with these site owners and are publishing articles consistently on their sites, be sure you link out to your other articles on different websites. By sending links to your articles from unique sites you make those pages much more powerful and therefore the links they give you more powerful.
3) Use Social Media
Make sure to setup a twitter account for your efforts. You can retweet each of your articles that a webmaster agrees to publish. Because your twitter post will be unique and relevant to your niche you should attract followers with similar interest. This can send traffic and links to the site who post your content. You can use this fact as leverage when trying to get content up. If you can send links and traffic to a site owner plus provide them with unique relevant content who would say no to that?
4) Turn your article into an RSS feed
Use sites like http://feedity.com/ or http://www.feed43.com/ to turn any webpage into an RSS feed. Then ping that RSS feed with http://pingomatic.com/ and submit to directories like http://www.feedagg.com/.
5) Create a podcast and a slideshow from your article
Turn your article into a podcast. Got a microphone handy? Then you can read your article and create a podcast. http://podcastingscout.com/ has some great tips to get started. Once you have a podcast you can submit it to tons of directories as well. As for the Slideshow, I would suggest using http://www.slideshare.net/. It is a fantastic tool, easy to use and could be a subject for later blog post.
6) Make a video from your article
Using free software like http://www.jingproject.com/ you can easily create a nice looking video using the slideshow you created with SlideShare or even PowerPoint .
7) Create an eBook out of your most popular articles.
This will be fairly easy to do as the content is already written and just needs to be repurposed into a 20 to 40 page eBook. You can then give the eBook away free on your site and use it as link bait.
Ping me on Twitter if you have any questions. Or post your comments below, we look forward to reading and commenting back. Also, feel free to share your ideas as well if I happened to be remiss and miss a glaring option.
This guide helps you avoid the serious damage that can occur to your website rankings & traffic by improperly moving your content to a new domain name.
Step 1: Traffic Loss
Be prepared for a dip in your overall traffic. It is going to happen! However, if you do everything right you can keep the pain to a minimum. Usually your traffic will dip for 1 week to 1 month depending on the size of your site. If the risk of temporarily losing traffic does not reward the benefit of moving to a new domain name, stop right here.
Tip: Because you know your traffic will dip it is a great idea to open or increase budget on a PPC campaign. Target your top performing organic keywords and use exact keyword matches so you don’t pay for non converting clicks.
Step 2: 301 Redirects
301 redirect your old domain to your new domain. Do not use a 302 redirect. 301 tells the search engines that this is a permanent move while 302 would mean the move is only temporary. You need to 301 redirect each page to its corresponding page on the new domain. Do not simply redirect all pages to the new homepage. The only time you should redirect to your homepage is if no other content on the new site is a good match.
When moving a large site you may want to move one section to test that you are doing it correctly before messing up the entire site only to find out too late that you missed a step!
Tip: Google recommends that you keep the 301 redirects up for at least 180 days. I would highly suggest you simply keep them live forever. You can remove your images, videos, etc.. off the server but keep the 301′s live.
Tip: You should also create custom 404 pages that suggest the user visit your new site.
Tip: In Google Webmaster Central go to Site Configuration > Change of Address – It will tell you to add and verify your new domain; once completed you can alert Google of your domain change.
Step 3: Update Sitemaps
In your webmaster accounts resend a copy of your OLD sitemap to Google, Bing & Yahoo (For Yahoo use the Site Explorer Tool). The submission pages are within Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center. The search engines will crawl your old urls and be notified of your move much quicker than waiting to be indexed again.
After that is done, create and submit a sitemap for your new domain on its webmaster accounts as well.
Tip: Use sites like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ if you do not already have an xml sitemap created.
Step 4: Update Your Links
Make sure that all your internal links were actually updated to the new domain. This can be more of a pain if you used absolute instead of relative file paths. However, most editing tools like Dreamweaver have a find and replace function for mass edits.
Once your internal links are in order start updating external links that are pointing to your old domain. You are never going to get everyone to switch but if you prepare a nice stock email you will be surprised at how many will update their link to your new domain.
Use Yahoo’s Site Explorer & Google Webmaster tool’s “Links To Your Site” section to find external sites that link to you. Both sites allow you to export the data to excel which is very handy.
Also, do not forget your paid directory links. Make sure your Yahoo Directory and Best Of The Web Directory links are pointing to your new domain.
Tip: Your analytics package is also a great source to find external links. Export a list of the top 100 (or more) sites sending traffic to your site and reach out to them.
Tip: Free tools like ISS Toolkit (Super Sweet) and the Xenu’s Link Sleuth should be used to make sure there are no broken links or images on your site and a whole host of other issues that may have happened in your move.
Step 5: Monitor
Be sure to monitor your webmaster accounts for search engine crawl errors and correct any issues you see immediately.
Step 6: Link Building
You really would be smart to start a link building campaign to coincide with your new domain launch. At the very least you should do the following as well as updating as many old links as possible in step 5.
Write and Distribute an Article – (low cost) easily net 20 to 40 links to your new domain.
Use Social Bookmarking – (Free)- Google some “Do Follow” bookmarking lists and add your site.
Submit a Press Release – Use PR Web or another distribution service. Go with the basic package all you really care about are the links.
Use Web 2.0: Create or update your blog on WordPress.org, Squidoo, Hubpages…etc. to include a link to your new site.
These simple and low cost techniques should easily net you 60 to 80 new links to your site and that is being conservative. Link Building and SEO Experts can of course offer you a more robust and custom made campaign.
Tip: Focus a good portion of your new links to internal pages. Search engines will have no problem with your homepage but can always use a good reason to dive deeper into your site.
Step 7: Pat Yourself On The Back!
By doing the steps above you will have made moving to a new domain name a piece of cake.
If you have any questions about a step or anything that was not covered please post in the comments bellow. I hope this helps save you from some of the domain change horror stories I have heard over the years.
There are several benefits for finding exact match domains for a website. There are probably many business owners with websites who are completely unsure about what the term, ‘exact match domains’ even means. This means that one should make certain that the domain name or web address of their website matches their business name or most targeted keyword. It is not a new method and is certainly one that is recommended. Regardless of the products or services that are offered, it is important that a good domain name is used.
It has been known for years that the name of a company should describe exactly what it does. If a company name is confusing, it deters new customers. The same is true when online. The domain name should describe quite briefly what it is that the website in question specializes in. This helps customers feel confident when clicking on the web address. This helps customers to remember the domain name. This helps customers to not have any confusion whatsoever.
Customers need to have an easy time finding what it is that they are looking for. By having exact match domains, they are able to search for the item they want and easily find the solution since there is no confusion. The average consumer is not professionally trained about how to do internet searches. That is why it is critical to make finding the website of any company one that will be easily found and understood. While it is important to avoid confusion, make searching easy and describe what the company does in an exact match domain, there is also another reason it is such an important choice to make.
The simple fact of the matter is that having exact match domains helps websites’ search engine rankings to be much better. Search engines use algorithms to decide which websites should be put at the top of the search results. These algorithms are based on a variety of factors and change continuously. Something that has been discovered, however, is that exact match domain names have proven to have better results with search engine optimization. That’s why a website that sells DISH Network, for example, should have the term, ‘DISH Network’ in the domain name if possible. Indeed, there are several benefits to having exact match domain names. So be sure to do that when selecting the website domain name for any webpage.