Namely, I would like to take this time to call for the absolute destruction and subsequent shredding of the paper product driven office environment.  So, if you want to join the struggle against the tyranny of 8.5 X 11 and feel good about saving not only trees but our environment then consider some of the following strategies that will help you move  towards a paperless home or office environment.

1. Make digital backups! 

Now that you’ve incinerated your surplus paper stockpiles in order to barbeque your Xerox machine you’re going to have to take all of the important documents you would have filed in a bulky filing cabinet and store them somewhere safe, and accessible.  Creating a filing system that mimic old paper systems is relatively straight forward- using folders and descriptive titles is just the begging of  storing your documents.  It is not enough to just create all of these files on your computer,  they have to be backed up as well.

You have a couple of options depending on the size and scope of your operations, you could back up to:

• Secondary hard drives
• Removable drives
• Could/Internet drives
• Off-site locations

Choosing to put your backup off site minimizes the risk of a fire or other natural disaster destroying  all of  your data in one go,  but the further it is away from you the less accessible it could be.  You’ll have to make the decision based on the facts on the ground for your business; often the solution can be as simple as doing a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B.   Diversity gives you the advantage of having a choice when choosing a disaster recovery plan, so as long as you have a system in place for regular and consistent backing up of your information you should rest easy knowing your paper days are far behind you.

2.  Nothing major happens overnight

Although you may be excited about your paperless office, you have to realize that it does not happen overnight.  All things have a natural progression, so testing your paperless strategies in one aspect of your business – such as storing all invoices digitally- before rolling it out to every single department will let you iron out wrinkles in your system and deal with obstacles you may come across on a much more manageable micro scale.

Chances are you’ll probably learn a whole lot about what going paperless means in your business in this initial test, and you should take your employees’ opinions into account at this stage of the process as they’re likely going to be the ones doing the bulk of the digitizing of  all existing paper documents.

3. Get ready to rearrange your workspace.

Since you’ll be switching from focusing on giving your employees easy access to the paper systems and filing cabinets currently populating your office to making their paperless experience pleasant there is going to be some necessary redecorating coming up on your docket.  This is actually a good thing- you won’t notice during the initial stages of the switch over likely because you won’t be getting rid of those filing cabinets right away but replacing a wall of metal boxes with a digitizing station (as simple as a scanner on a table) will free your office from looking like it doesn’t belong in the future.   In replacing document and paper supply storage with hardware and peripherals to assist your transition to digital documents won’t explicitly help your feng shui but it certainly can’t hurt.
4. What we really mean is “Less Paper” or “Not such an obscene amount of paper”

Ok so you COULD scan and digitize every scrap of paper and every single post it note that gets passed through your department, sign and date contracts digitally, eliminate paper faxes by using e-fax for outgoing and having in-bound faxes received in your IT system.  Though chances are you’d still have some paper floating around your business- and it won’t really depend on you in this case.   Certain clients will necessarily have the capacity to be billed electronically, and some correspondence will undoubtedly be initiated by snail mail.  So you should not panic if you see some paper products in your office, but as long as your desk doesn’t look like Santa’s mailbox you should not be discouraged.  Besides, it is always good practice to keep tax and regulatory information stored as hard copies, as unfortunately the Government has a tendency to be in the slow lane when it comes to  environmental and business friendly e-initiatives.
5. This project requires complete buy in by your workforce.

As the case may be, simply making your will be known to your partners,  staff or family members (if you’re implementing this in your home office) may not be enough to change the entrenched ways in which people feel they do their best work.

Change can be difficult. People who have been making photocopies, sending paper faxes, putting documents into legal sized folders—or saving mounds of mail and catalogues that they just can’t part with—are going to have to change their perceptions.

6. Less paper is just a marginal payoff

Initially it may seem that the only benefit to a paperless office is the reduction on printer toner, mailing, shipping and dealing with purchasing/storing paper, but the real time saver is the superiority of electronic systems when it comes to finding files and documents.

Where as it might take a new employee several months if not years to get so comfortable with the filing system that they can find anything within a minute, now thanks to the power of a computer search the right file is always just a few keystrokes away no matter how long you’ve worked at your job.

Let us know if  you’re taking on the paperless office challenge, and what some of your strategies or experiences have been.  Has it been easy? Or do you wish you had never started?

Stefan Avlijas @ XiiTec  Vancouver

Sure we may get irritated from time to time when we can’t seem to find that post it note we stuck to that install disk, but you won’t see me renouncing my ways, no sir. I will probably continue to be an insufferable disaster akin to a rather popular Canadian television cartoon pictured below.

A somewhat cruel portrayal of this blogger

But what could this ever have to do about  websites!? Well I’m glad I asked, because otherwise this was going to be a rather nostalgic post about a cartoon I particularly liked, and while that is rather captivating (if I do say so myself) it might be a little off message!

The reason I invoke our good friend Whatamess is in part due to my recent adventures on the net trying to do normal every day things like: find a product, or locate a business’ contact information.  My experiences have led me to the conclusion that many individuals have in fact been contracting our subject of interest to head up the structure of their website.  Duplicate links, links missing and of course the all time favourite 404 redirect when trying to find contact information or help documents.

So why are so many people satisfied with a slop-job website? Do they not realize that it is the single leading cause of market share loss online?  What possible incentive do I have to trust your site if it is not organized to feel like my trust belongs with you?  The internet is increasingly a hostile place in terms of phishing and malware- so presenting a clean cut and official portal on the web is going to be of paramount importance if you are going to be drawing users into your site.

Honestly, what good is having a top search ranking on Google, if your customers are going to just hit the back button 5 seconds into loading your eyesore of a page?   In the name of decency for all who use the internet then I present my top list of reasons I burn rubber as fast as I can away from your domain:

• You have a splash-page
• Your navigation bar is on the bottom, or  just can’t be found
• Your contact or about page 404′s
• Comet cursors
• Your home page has an auto play advertisement from a third party
  
• Your home page has an auto play full screen video
• You designed your site using tables
• Your site integrates with Facebook, but your product/service has no social aspect.
  
• Last updated- circa 1999

OK… so that may not be an exhaustive list- but it gives you a sense of what to expect from the majority of web users who quite frankly don’t have a mind to spend a whole lot of time on your site- especially if it looks like it was designed by a poorly animated cartoon dog.

Stefan Avlijas @ XiiTec Vancouver

Don't base your design off of this

Unfortunately for your potential customers they don’t particularly want to be spending much more of their life in front of a screen desperately trying to find the products catalog or services index that your company offers.  Your first priority should be to funnel internet traffic through the simplest click through steps.

A whole lot can be derived from your internal site metrics, like which pages are getting a lot of hits and which pages are covered in cobwebs.

If you find that a particular function of your site is being used a whole lot- like your “quote” or “contact” page consider integrating it into your design as a side bar.  If you know it is your most popularly used feature: promote it!  Its clearly working for you, so don’t fight the current.

By focusing on pleasing the end user rather than the “designer” some may decry the death of creativity or artistic expression in web design, and there is certainly a time and a place to be creative in the visual aspect of web design, you have to design with your specific intention in mind.  If your company trying to project competence at at delivering business critical materials or services, your website might not be the best place to tap into your inner  M C Escher.

Your clients will appreciate the fact that dealing with your company is painless and doesn’t require them to be sitting at their computer trying to figure which stairs lead up and which stairs lead down.  So it is important to listen to every comment you could possibly get on your website, not only from clients but colleagues, friends and family.

Getting a large sample for your survey will be key to being able to identify which cross sections of your demographic you should be targeting with your product, and which ones you need to work on.  Your market research should extend into the net, especially considering how systematically your web server logs such a treasure trove of metrics.

A lot of people shy away from free form comment boxes on their sites because they fear the negativity that lives online, and while this is a realistic concern, it harms your potential to grow as a site if you exclude the vibrant user-driven community that is the Internet. You’ll find the more you reach out to the online community for feedback the more good will you will bring- and that feeling of loyalty is something that no sponsored Ad Words, or quasi-spam paid links can ever help you improve.

Although white hat SEO seems like a slow and limited way to reach out genuinely to others online, you’ll find that people are looking for that genuine interaction.  The internet is a dubious place, and providing a visible human presence like the willingness to personally commit to improving your online service can set the positive tone you need to start building your successful brand

…stay tuned to our ongoing weekly SEO segment with an announcement on our first video release coming up this summer!

-Stefan Avlijas @ XiiTec Vancouver

Committing to the operational success of your website means constant evaluation and re evaluation of what works, what does, and what does not.  It is so crucial to analyze what:

-brings users to the site

-makes them stay

-makes them contact you

-makes them leave

There are tons of handy ways to do this through smart design, like including the last visited page before a contact form is submitted, or simply analyzing your web site’s traffic.  This is an easy way to find out if you should be giving better service to a certain regional demographic, increase or decrease your bandwidth and countless other things.

Of course web sites that are left unattended will undoubtedly fall by the wayside of something that is well taken care of and updated but a commitment to a site must go beyond simple posts and info updates.

At XiiTec we’re going to take the next week to outline  strategies to breathe life into your site and buoy your internet traffic.   So look forward to learning a wide variety of  strategies you can implement while in front of your screen, with a swish of your thumb or, in person while trying to promote your brand new site.

Be sure to watch our twitter and facebook for more interactive learning opportunities in May including the start of our very own video blog!

Stefan Avlijas @XiiTec Vancouver

Security blogs like the Kaspersky Lab suggest that From September 2011 to Feb 2012 users on social media sites were prompted to download a fake flash player update, a file called “FlashPlayer-11-macos.pkg”, “AdobeFlashUpdate.pkg”, etc.  In March the scope of the attacks widened to include collaboration with Russian cyber criminals who compromised thousands of WordPress blogs with a hidden redirect to a rr.nu domain containing malicious code.   The virus silently downloads and injects itself onto every launched application and every browser session conveniently exploiting every action on the infected computer.

Apple finally released a patch this month to address this java exploit get it now if you haven’t already! try and remember to update your antivirus and keep useful open source programs like Hijack This that can help you remove malware without necessarily needing to completely reformat your machine, but remember these programs are only useful on your computer before infection- you will likely be barred from installing them by the virus if it has had a chance to install itself.

Being prepared for these security breaches shouldn’t be exclusively bound to your OS, so make sure to keep up with the latest in tech security news and keep up to date  with all of your OS and Browser manufacturers patches and security blogs.  Never let anyone tell you that it is impossible to prevent downloading a virus, usually the key is surprisingly just a lot of common sense.

-Stefan Avlijas @ XiiTec Vancouver

Like all really cool things with amazing potential it risks being romanticized, but rarely does such a small and simple thing have the power to affect so much change.   Initially dreamt up in 2006 at Cambridge University the Raspberry Pi was created in response to a dip in skills among A level Computer Science students at universities, but this credit card sized computer has turned into so much more thanks to the limitless well of creativity that is humanity.

Consider that for many people struggling to make ends meet across the globe this will present itself as one of the first truly “affordable” computing machines that give a user internet access.  It has been speculated that the compact nature of these devices means that they could be secretly delivered, even having a positive impact on the ability of political dissidents living in closed regimes to speak out despite tight government controls.

Always hot on the heels of that ingenuity will always be controversy, with the Pirate Bay, the world’s most notorious bit torrent site announcing that the Raspberry Pi has made it possible for them to consider blasting mirrored servers into space, and whats more they’ve already hammered out a deal with Greece to put Low Orbit Server Stations into Greek Airspace. (More at http://thepiratebay.se/blog/211)

Head over to www.raspberrypi.org for more info, or to get your own.

Stefan Avlijas- @ XiiTec Vancouver

…at no time have Canadian authorities provided the public with any evidence or reasoning to suggest that CSIS or any other Canadian law enforcement agencies have been frustrated in the performance of their duties as a result of shortcomings attributable to current law, [ISP]s or the manner in which they operate.

This worrying trend is in line with many policy decisions being made abroad that in order to increase real time surveillance capabilities.  Monitoring all Canadian internet traffic is going to involve upgrading existing capabilities for surveillance.  The Canadian Association of Police Chiefs presented three alternatives:

• the telecom companies and Internet providers could pass along the costs in the form of a “public safety tariff” that would apply on monthly consumer bills
• the government could provide tax credits to telecom companies and Internet providers
• the government could establish a federal funding pool to cover the costs

Now I wouldn’t consider myself a cynical person, but considering the all too common shifting of tax burden onto the middle class you can bet that the telecom companies will be falling over themselves to point out the “fairness” of the first option.  After all, why should the poor ISP get slapped with the cost of the surveillance technology, they’re not the ones who’s loyalty is in question.

As consumers facing increasing taxes on all sides, we can be forgiven for being concerned about the impact an internet tax would have on IT.  Being  considered to be so high tech and intrinsically tied to people and their ideas rather than tangible goods meant that the industry was less exposed to the volatility of oil prices and the heavy hand of government taxation.   Will an internet tax kill the ability of smaller business to start up, as they have to devote precious capital to making sure that the government knows exactly how many pictures of cats with unfunny jokes Canadians go through a month?   It seems a steep price to pay at a time when austerity is the word on everybody’s lips.

Thankfully the Supreme Court of Canada seems set to challenge the newest incarnation of the Lawful Access Bills, on the notion that they do not provide for adequate enough oversight for officials in charge of actual surveillance provided for in the current bill.   This may be one of the precious few times that we are actually saved by the government’s incompetence at grasping the impact of internet related legislation.  Every delay means the bill is closer to following its predecessors C-50 C-51 and C-52 into the dustbin of internet safety strategies that Orwell’s estate should be claiming patent royalty from.

-Stefan Avlijas @XiiTec Vancouver

Demystifying the secrets of search engine optimization can go a very long way for a business of any size, as customers predominantly turn to keyword searches on mobiles, tablets, and computers to look for the goods and services that they, or their business require.

Ensuring that your website can be found when your brand is searched is fine and dandy, but what about all the other customers who are looking to connect with services like yours but may be unfamiliar with your particular brand? SEO can help you tap into a much wider audience at a minimal cost compared with traditional e-advertising.

Stepping out from obscurity

With millions of general keyword searches happening every day it is important to make it easy for your service to be found by people from all walks of life, not just those highly specialized in your sector’s jargon.  Luckily, the path to boosting your site’s search results is one that will also help grow the prestige and authority your company commands in your field, helping you to really stand out in a crowded market.

Many SEO tactics have been largely frowned upon because they rely on cheap tricks like duplication, often acting more like spam, so beware!  Cutting corners in serious marketing campaigns on the internet is often a poorly thought out choice often having a detrimental effect to your brand image, there is little worse than being associated with spam!

Maybe if you labelled it properly

Using descriptive and unique keywords in your domain name, and site architecture can go a long way to helping search bots accurately categorize your business under the keywords you want to be found under.  So the domain www.newcompany-automobiles.com would be indexed as more relevant, as would www.newcompany-cars.com or even www.newcompany-motors.com in just a regular keyword search that used the words “car”, “automobile” or “motor” than www.newcompany.com.

Good structure and organization with respect to file naming and default anchor link is  one of the most powerful tools available to would-be search engine optimizers today.  SEO is all about smart labeling, using titles that play into your overall keyword strategy.   Always remember to do some research about how competitive those search terms you’ve got in your sights are, and adjust your strategy accordingly.  The internet is constantly in flux, therefore you SEO strategy must be able to flex in order to stay ahead of the curve.

He said, she said.

Much like the real world, would-be online customers turn to what other people are saying about you as a barometer on who you are and what you represent, and search engines are taking notice!  For this reason many SEO specialists will tell you that getting others to link to your site is of the outmost importance in building a high ranking.  This is because search engines coming across your link on other sites will associate it with the terms in the anchor link text, giving your company name the added relevance bonus of being associated with the keywords in the link!

Those of us who rely on the net for information know that content is king, nothing attracts unique views like useful original content.  Adding any form of well labeled content:  graphics, text resources, or videos will increase the likely-hood that a wayward surfer will be directed to your site first, before a page that focuses heavily on links, or is merely a portal to content.

Onward, upward, outward!

In many ways good SEO drives the quality of the internet forward; since companies are competing for valuable market share they will be pressed to create more and more useful databases of information and content online for users to access.  This can not only help grow the individual company’s business, but inspire creativity and learning within their field by offering educational materials online.

The ongoing endeavor of companies to climb higher and higher on the search index via content producing methods may even begin to turn around what some on the net bemoan as “the death of original content”.  White-hat methods of SEO will hopefully finally catalyze the e-advertising industry into creative, user friendly approaches that prioritize the creation and digitization of useful content rather than banners,  click through ads, popups, and 15 second videos which for many consumers results in a negative brand image for being so associated with spamming , scams and malware.

Tragically I can not  promise that SEO will mercifully stop the apparent endless stream of annoying reposts from existing… but at least we can begin to bury them on page two of the search results where nobody will ever see them.

Internet marketing companies have been successfully serving the individuals with varying online business needs including SEO Vancouver, web designing, web development and much more. Competitor tracking and quality market analysis of Search Engine Optimization practices support boosting online presence and gaining visibility over major search engines.

There are several things or facts which one should know about SEO Vancouver. Go through the article.

High ranking with long tail keywords

It has been observed by leading Search Engine Optimization experts that use of longtail keywords can offer better and quicker results to boost a brand’s SERP. As per modern research done by leading SEO companies, arriving on a website from a longtail keywords search were about 2.5 times more likely to convert as compared to search done from shorter keywords.

Submitting sitemap is useless

It is said that submitting sitemap to Google can help in improving website’s SEO. But, now experts have been realizing the fact that submitting the sitemap including XML sitemap and HTML sitemap is actually useless. The reason is that once Google come to know where your pages are in order for Google to index such pages, it reflects that there is something wrong with your internal linking structure and it affects the user experience badly.

Page rank affects site’s ranking

Another SEO Vancouver fact is that page rank affects the ranking of websites on major search engines. But, it is also true that page rank is not the only factor to keep websites among top of search engine results. Low page rank websites can easily outrank high page rank sites. Ranking is actually done on the basis of quality and relevance of websites in the respective domain. Unique quality content pages with easy and friendly navigation also add to high ranking of sites.

Factors considered by Google

Next fact of Search Engine Optimization illustrates that Google considers around 200 factors to display results. This is the reason why SEO Vancouver firms focus on all essential factors likes use of keywords correctly & ethically, right density of keywords in content, avoiding content duplication, maintaining quality back links other than quantity, putting readers on priority and much more. Adding to it, they also consider maintaining information structure with meaningful information on the site.

From the discussions, it can be concluded that modern SEO Vancouver firms have become very much competitive as they keep check on all modern SEO practices and methods to support boosting of the growth and development of client’s website.

Black hat SEO is more result oriented, the idea is to generate traffic fast. The method is frowned on. Its methods that might actually get websites to the top of display pages quickly but would eventually get the site banned when the search engine catches on. Black Hat, like spamming is not considered as an honorable method of generating traffic. With the time and resources put into building a website, this might not be the best SEO option for you.

White Hat SEO on the other end of the stick focuses on building quality sought after content. That is the primary motive and if done well, it achieves the secondary method which is to use SEO techniques to achieve top search engine ranking. This method of SEO also makes use of automation and technology in building websites only that the goals here are different. The websites and its content are designed and written with people in mind first and search engines second. The main tools with White Hat SEO are quality content and sound internet marketing tools, not automated websites.

White Hat SEO users recognize that top engine rankings take time and consistent updated quality content among other things. They do not try to force or hurry the results, the philosophy is “Content is King”, and this method firmly believes that in the long run quality content would win.

When considering which SEO hat to use, remember these points:

• Black hat might be faster but in the end gets you banned.
• Black hat SEO is frowned upon. It won’t get you or your site any respect.
• Top search engine ranking takes time and consistent effort
• In the end, White hat techniques pay off better because it understands that quality content always wins.

Leave your thoughts on this. Until next time, happy freeSEOing!