Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

The problem with eggs and baskets
Well, time to own up to another mistake. I got complacent. I relied way too much on organic search engine traffic and procrastinated on developing traffic from sources other than free search engine searches.

Not a good idea. I came back to my site after a couple of days of having been knocked offline by a power outage only to find that my traffic from Google has crashed. Keywords that rested comfortably in the top ten on Google for months and that gave me the bulk of my traffic are now nowhere to be found on Google. Fortunately, my clients' sites are holding steady, but mine are in the toilet.

Which goes to show that it is simply not feasible to rely on free search engine traffic alone anymore. The search engine landscape has changed greatly.

Algorithm changes are getting harder to reverse engineer and are changing so drastically when they do change that the resulting position shifts are dramatic. My traffic, driven mainly by free search engine results, had grown steadily at a rate of 20–25% per month over the past three months. Now in one algo change, they're back to where they were in May.

Granted, this may be only a fluctuation as the Google datacenters readjust for the latest major update this week. But it's not safe to rely entirely on free search engine traffic like I used to be able to do a couple of years ago.

It's important to diversify your traffic sources (as I should have done) so that the free search engine traffic becomes a pleasant bonus instead of your sole means of support.

I had started diversifying my traffic in the past few weeks, but not enough to cover this setback. Well, back to the drawing board for a little more diversification.
Jeff

Back online and thankful
Things are getting back to normal somewhat. After having our car die Tuesday, our area got hit by severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that knocked out power. We finally got our car back, with the problems that have afflicted it for the past couple of months fixed (we hope!) Friday afternoon. It runs like a remember it running before the problems that the mechanics we're able to find started hampering it.

And we've gotten partial power back—at least enough to save most of our refridgerated and frozen food and work out a workaround to get one computer up. We still have no way to cook other than on the outdoor grill. Repair crews still had over 40,000 customers without power last night and are working hard at restoring the rest.

We're thankful that going without power for an undetermined time frame is all the inconvenience we've suffered. Many people in our area lost their homes completely in the storms. Then there are the much more severe storms that have ragaged the Gulf Coast. We've got nothing to complain about.

But I should be able to continue my blog now as things get back to normal here.
Jeff

Just a little numb
No insights, good or bad tonight. Just numb. Car died right after I had picked up my daughter from her soccer game. At least it lasted until I got there or it would have been an even more stressful night. My mind's occupied with figuring out options. Sorry.

At least there's signs of growth in my reaction to all this. Where in the past I likely would have been asking, "What did I do wrong to cause this?" the thought that I'm dealing with now is, "What can I learn from this challenge?" I look on that as personal growth. That's nice to know, but still got to figure out those options.
Jeff

The "What If?" Trap
Another thing occurred to me today that fits in with my old Biggest Traps series of entries: the "What If?" Trap. A successful real estate investor once told me that friends have frequently wished they could duplicate his success in buying and renting out homes. So he encourages them to do it for themselves and even offers his advice in getting started.

Invariably, though, they turn him down for the same reason. They say, "But what if somebody's toilet backed up in the middle of the night? I don't want to get called out of bed to go fix somebody else's toilet."

This investor expresses amazement at that often-heard objection. "I've never," he exclaims, "in all my years of renting houses, ever had to get out of bed to fix someone's toilet."

It's not only would-be real estate investors that "what if?" objections stop, though. I know people who are so fearful that their reciprocal link partners might try to cheat them, that they spend a ridiculous number of hours every week checking incoming links to make sure that no one has removed them. They divert huge chunks of time they could spend promoting their site trying to instead protect themselves from experiencing even a week of linking to a unethical webmaster.

I know one talented craftsperson who resists any suggestion to sell her product on the Web, fearing "what if so many people want to buy that I can't keep up?" Honestly! She doesn't want to sell her goods because she's afraid too many people will want it.

Constructing a hypothetical "what if?" is a safe way of excusing yourself from venturing into the unknown and growing. But most "what ifs?" never happen. And those that do are usually easily solved. How does that real estate investor deal with the "what if?" that paralyzes most people who long to experience his success? "I call the plumber," he says.

In other words, all those "what ifs?" that hold you back can usually be solved with a little common sense.
Jeff

Favorite links—revealing hoaxes and scams
After a weekend away, visiting a son and daughter, I'm back with my Sunday night favorite links feature. This time let's look at some links that don't necessarily affect your bottom line, but can put your mind at ease—links that debunk common hoaxes and scams.

McAfee and Symantec virus hoax info
At least one of these sites should be on your Favorites list. There are plenty of virus hoaxes that circulate around the web, warning of bogus virus attacks and identifying files on your computer that they urge you to delete to remove these bogus viruses.

Almost always, these warnings about bogus viruses urge you to delete a file that is essential to your computer running properly. So whenever you receive a panicked email urging you to delete some file from your computer to destroy a potential virus, first check one of these sites to determine whether you're really deleting a virus or merely turning your computer into an expensive doorstop.

Current Netlore
This site doesn't protect you so much from actions that could damage your computer, but it does protect you from making a fool out of yourself by believing some of the urban legends that circulate around the Web. It contains a comprehensive list of shocking—and totally false—stories that many people believe because they "read it on the Internet, so it must be true!"

Brad Christianson Exhibit at Quatloos
This one's a personal favorite, not because it's particularly useful (although I have to admit that I've never checked out the main part of the site on tax and investment scams—for all I know, it might be quite useful), but because it's a real hoot!

Brad Christianson has entertained countless netizens with his hilarious documentation of his attempts to fool the Nigerian scammers whose offers to deposit $40,000,000 or more in your bank account if you only give them unfettered access to it. He has passed himself off as Richard Nixon and as the personal surgeon to Spongebob Squarepants to scammers not familiar with American culture.

If you spend any amount of time deleting such scam emails from your inbox, you'll enjoy the way he strings these scammers along with the most outrageous stories.
Jeff