The other week, I stumbled upon a website that claimed to help build backlinks for websites.  Being a litle skeptical, I couldn't resist trying out their product just to see if it would actually work.  After all, the price was only $10 for 1000 backlinks.  I figured, it couldn't hurt.

A couple of days after registering, I received an email from the company saying that they would provide me a report 5 business days after the order submission.  Sure enough, five days after, I received my report of the sites that where used to create back links to my site.  I have included the report at the end of this blog post.

Long story short, I'm not totally sold or convinced on this Backlink program.... Why?  For starters, the majority of the links are to sites that have nothing to do with any relevancy to my site content.  They simply are pointless sites with links back to my site.  In fact, some of the sites are sites I would not like to have links coming from, ie. adult related sites.

All right boys and girls, it is story time.

A long, long time ago, in a city not too far away was a web developer named Frankie who wanted to publish his website in the great and powerful directory called DMOZ!  For years he toiled and submitted his site over and over to no avail.  Frankie tried everything he could think of... He changed his title, his keywords, his description and more.... nothing seemed to work.  Unfortunately, Frankie developed a site in a time when darkness ruled the land... Evil Editors controlled his local market and made it impossible for him to list his site.  For years, they controlled all that happened in the directory in Frankie's home town.  No new sites where ever added and his town looked very small online.

Finally, after several years, Frankie finally submitted an editor abuse complaint and waited, and waited, and waited.  Then one day, many months after he submitted the complaint of editor abuse to the great and power DMOZ, he was finally IN!!!!!

This is a back link test.

The other day I had a meeting with State Representative Cliff Hite to discuss the issue of Professional Licensing for the IT and Internet Professionals in the State of Ohio.  Mr. Hite, a Republican has a voting record of being more of a centrist than a right winger and has earned a reputation in Ohio as being able to work with the Democrat party and pushing for positive legislation.  He and I both agreed that some sort of legislation is required for professionals who have access to key personal and financial information pertaining to the general public.  How that would be achieved would be no easy task and would meet a lot of resistance.

We both felt it would be a move in the right direction and would allow honest professionals the ability to conduct business without the light of suspicion and doubt being cast upon them by the few who abuse the system.  We also agreed that it would be important for the professionals to be included in discussions about how to draft the professional licensing.  However, I explained to him this would be a hard sell to the professionals in the industry as they feel it would be a move to control and legislate the industry.  Regardless of their stance, the industry is ripe with abuse.  Web and IT professionals have more access to the public's personal and financial information and require no security clearance in order to gain access to that information. 

In 2007 and 2008, the online publisher "A List Apart" released surveys of the IT and Internet Professionals.  Each year, over 33,000 people participated in the survey.  In both years, nearly 25% of the respondents listed themselves as self-employed or freelance.  Because there are so many individuals involved in the industry and have access to the public's personal and financial information, there is a greater chance of abuse of the system if nothing is done.  With licensing, one could theorize the ability of preventing those who would abuse the system from accessing it in the future.  Thus, if someone steals personal and financial information, sells it on the black market, gets caught, goes to jail, gets released; they would be unable to regain access to sensitive systems.

Is it time for Web Developer Licensing?

Here is a dangerous thought... Need some opinions, but expect to hear mostly negative.
As a professional web developer, now in my 12th year, I have run into untold number of clients who agreed to have an "unknown" developer or company develop their website. All too often it is the same outcome... the developer vanishes without a trace and the client is out their money.
Additionally, in Ohio, Ohio Revised Code 1329.01 and 1329.10 stipulate that all persons or businesses must register their DBA with the state. Unfortunately, Ohio's AG office and Secretary of State office refuse or are unable to enforce these rules.
So, would a national "Web Developer License", with similar screening to that of an Accountant be worthwhile in our industry? Would it help to weed out the unscrupulous individuals that prey upon unsuspecting clients and businesses? After all, many of these developers have access to a clients' e-commerce system and access to all the customer data within the system. Shouldn't businesses have some assurances that the people behind the scene are ethical, honest, and have been screened through a licensing process?

Should search engines give favor to registered businesses?

For the past several years I have been doing all I can locally to push for web developer licensing and business registration. I have been doing this to encourage those who are not a registered business to file for registration. Every year I hear from dozens of clients who fall victim to web developers who are not on the "up and up". These clients are swindled out of their money and never get their site developed.
Therefore, I have been pushing Ohio representatives to enact laws that will require a state/federal license requirement for web developers, more specifically, e-commerce developers. After all, if you have to have a license to cut hair, shouldn't you have a license when you have access to hundreds if not thousands of sites and customer financial information.
Until that day happens, I'm hoping the search engines will take a pro-active stance on this and start adjusting the search results to give higher preference to search results of registered businesses (llc, ltd, inc, corp, etc).
If Google were to implement this criteria in their search results, the unregistered web developers and other unregistered businesses would not get higher preference in the results. This would force businesses to have to register themselves as a company. This would have the following impact on the industry.
1. It would give Google a positive light as it would be encouraging people to be honest and ethical and register their business within their state or federal government.
2. This in turn would protect the general public from un-registered hobbyist or the unscrupulous.
3. The increase in registrations would help to add revenue to state coffers because of the increase of business registration fees.
4. It would temporarily give a boost to the honest and ethical businesses that are already registered as a business in their state or federal government.
I hope Google and it's board will give consideration to this and help me in my goal of creating a more ethical and honest internet. Together, we can encourage legislation to promote this agenda and at the very least promote self regulation in the industry that has run a foul with dishonest web developers and other fly by night operations.

When it comes to PCI Compliance and Joomla websites, you really have to give it up to the Joomla Core Developers for thinking ahead of the Government!

For the past week I have been working on securing two websites in regards to PCI Compliance.  For me, this is the second go around with Compliance testing.  Quite honestly, the whole process makes me want to vomit every three months I have to do this.  It is an absolute nightmare.  I'm now into my 7th day of testing and have run over 5 tests during the past seven days.  Each time, I have to hunt down the culprit issues and secure them.  This whole process involves talking to McAfee Secure Support to get a clarification of the report and then twisting the arm of my Host provider and convincing them of the PCI issues.... not an easy task.  Fortunately, since I'm on my own dedicated server, I have more leverage in getting what I want!

Any ways, thank the Joomla team for making a portion of this process a little easier.

The following companies are business that we would refer our clients to for services above and beyond our capabilities and for second opinions and comparison estimates.  In our opinion, they provide excellent quality service, good pricing, and are dependable and trust worthy.  These companies we have selected are based on companies that outsource less than 20% of their work to outside firms.

First Communications Group Inc - www.firstgrp.com

Harvey Advertising & Design - www.harveyad.com

Aardvark Inc - www.aardvarkmedia.com

What are the following businesses hiding?  Why won't they register with the Secretary of State?

The following companies are located in or near Findlay, Ohio and operating a business in violation of Ohio Revised Code 1329.01 and 1329.10

Please review the following pages to verify the consquences of doing business with a business in violation of ORC 1329.01.  Please consult your attorney before signing any contract of a "Company" that has not filled ORC 1329.01.

Google changes are coming soon!

Some activity in the search engine indicates some changes in the Google Algorithm are currently in progress.  How do I know?  Well, for starters, since 2002, www.dynamicwebs.com, will drop in and out  and bounce around from page to page of the search results during what I call an "Algorithm Purge".  During this algorithm purge sites are re-indexed, spidered and ranked based on their site content.  For the past seven years, dynamicwebs.com has consistantly ranked in the top 1-3 pages of the search engines for the term "Ohio Web Design".  As of today, 5/26/09, dynamicwebs.com has been dropped completely from the search results.  This means that the domain has been removed from the results for further inspection by computerized means or for human inspection.  The reason for this could be for any reason related to algorithm changes or it could be the result that dynamicwebs.com has recently gone through a complete content make-over.  Regardless, because the site is no longer in the google index for "ohio web design", it is a pretty good indication that a algorithm purge is going to take place in the next few days or weeks.  It will also mean that a lot of sites will re-shuffle in the results.  Let's hope this purge and re-indexing is a little more accurate than previous purge/shuffles.