Wondering why it’s important? Let’s look at this as if this is strictly a brick and mortar retail establishment. Gift Baskets For All started out as a simple retail store, with no online presence. In order for the store to survive and grow, customers needed to know where to find the store. Advertisements, and placement within the Yellow Pages probably solved that problem. SEO is as important. If the customers don’t know you have a presence, and can’t find you, then your business will not continue to thrive or grow.

Now that you know what it is and why it’s important – let’s go over a few things that you can do to get that welcome mat out and ready to invite your customers and readers into your online location.

First, you should structure your blog to make it SEO friendly. When creating content for your blog postings, be sure to utilize relevant keywords within the context of the posting. There is a fine line between responsible keyword usage and Keyword Stuffing. A good rule to follow is that for every paragraph on your blog, you should have 1 keyword within the paragraph. Keywords should also be used within the meta tags and URL for each page.

After you’ve formed the words, sentences and paragraphs for your blog post, judiciously utilitzing keywords of course, there are a few more things you can do to help ensure the spiders (and the ghosts, goblins, wizards and witches) find your site. Embedding video, audio or images (making sure that they have accurate alternate text) can also help the SEO campaign that you’ve implemented. However, as with the use of keywords, too many images (or video/audio files) can harm your SEO efforts as well. Generally speaking, you should keep your image count to 2 or 3 images per page within your site – always making sure that the amount of text (original content and keyword rich) is greater to the amount of space allotted for images.

There you have it – How, Why, Where and What – in a nutshell. Remember that SEO is not a one-time deal. This is something that is consistently changing and requires your active participation in order to gain the most ROI for your efforts.

This video, a concept in keeping with the brand story of www.GiftBasketsForAll.com, is a call to everyone asking them to thank the heros in their lives, and in particular our US military service men and women. It is highly likely that for most all American’s, this video will engage them as they most likely either know a service man/woman or have one within their own family. The goal of the video is to encourage viewers to visit the website and purchase a gift basket to thank our heros.

One of the reasons that I love this video is the absolute conviction with which Will Smith speaks. The words he chooses are almost secondary to the conviction and depth of his message. He’s not trying to sell anyone on anything external. He encourages each viewer to look within themselves to find their passion, their dreams and their goals and to then pursue those with the fervor and dedication needed to make them happen.

I absolutely loved this video, but then I am a sucker for “feel good” videos. When I first viewed the video, I actually laughed out loud when some of the items came out of the machine. Coca-Cola has managed, once again, to come up with a marketing strategy that works. By offering rewards to consumers, and doing it in such a fun way, the company has created a fond memory that consumers will associate with the brand. The next time they are thirsty, regardless of where they are, they will most likely choose the Coca-Cola brand.

While most of us hear the acronym CIA and automatically assume a discussion on the Central Intelligence Agency will soon follow, the letters CIA also represent an important aspect of Internet security. In the context of information security CIA stands for Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability.

In today’s environment of digital theft, the preservation of privacy is essential for personal users as well as businesses. Confidentiality essentially refers to the restrictions placed on access to information within a file, document or website. This includes the means to “protect personal privacy and proprietary information” as stated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.  By utilizing effective scripts, the confidentiality can be preserved with minimal interruption to the user.

Integrity, in all business dealings, is a vital component to a successful endeavor. Within information security, integrity is the preservation of trustworthiness of information resources. This can mean anything from ensuring that information was entered correctly to ensuring that information is not corrupted in any way and that the information comes from the entity listed, not an imposter, according to the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine.

Availability of resources, whether online or at a brick and mortar establishment, is a key factor in the success or failure of a particular business. If the resources promised are not available, then consumers will go to the competitor to fulfill their needs. By maintaining the availability of resources, a company will remain one step ahead of their competitor that has availability issues. According to Foskett, “The final element in the CIA model, availability, is often overlooked.” Foskett reminds us that while adapting to “losses of connectivity by carrying more and more data along, but this opens the door to breaches of confidentiality and integrity of data”, meaning that we must preserve the integrity and availability of the information while maintaining it’s accessibility.

CIA, Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability, is different for each site, location and business. When looking at an online banking site, the expected level of information security would be much higher then the level expected at, say, Wikipedia. However, even with those differences in mind, the CIA model is very important to each of those same sites/businesses.

References:

Foskett, S., (2008, Oct). The CIA Model for Digital Nomads. Retrieved from http://whitepaper.digitalnomads.com/2008/10/the-cia-model-for-digital-nomads/

Privacy / Data Projection Project, (2006, Apr). Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability (CIA). Retrieved from http://privacy.med.miami.edu/glossary/xd_confidentiality_integrity_availability.htm

Radack, S., Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 199, Standards for Security Categorization of Federal Information and Information Systems. Retrieved from http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/bulletns/bltnmar04.htm