More and more business entities are now opting to store their data in the cloud because they have discovered it saves them the cost of buying and maintaining servers and databases.

Cloud computing is a service that charges only on the amount of computing resources that have been used. Hence you don't need to buy a server and database infrastructure that stores your data. Instead you just need to pay for the computing resources you require for a given period from a company that provides cloud computing services.

It is a convergence of three major trends:

1. Utility computing - where a server's capacity is accessed across a grid area at a variably price shared service
2. Software as a service - where applications are available on demand and on a subscription basis.
3. Virtualization - this is separation of applications reliant on the internet from infrastructure

How Cloud Computing evolved
The idea of cloud computing was systematically initiated in the US (United States of America) during the internet boom period. Eventually the internet became quite fast and affordable allowing for a myriad of opportunities especially in the IT industry. Some IT entrepreneurs discovered that companies could avoid buying infrastructure such as servers,software and database storage and save on money. Their realization drew them to a conclusion that an application run on a particular computer can operate away from a user's computer. The only standard requirement was fast internet connectivity.

Following this realization, Software as a service was born. It was then possible to meet data storage demands and infrastructure for companies that required and chose to use this service.Companies that resolved to start the Software as a service business could ran applications for other business entities on their large data centers. Their clients were just expected to subscribe to any of the companies and access the application from any web browser.

Pros and Cons of Software service
Companies that subscribed to Software services were at an advantage of not incurring costs of server and database maintenance.For a subscribed fee, they could access services and put in more time and effort on other core business.
Despite the advantage, the one size fits all approach of serving different sizes of companies was limiting to some companies - especially those that needed complex requirements.The factor of cost versus usage caused these companies to re-evaluate the service as it did not match up to the subscription fees.

Then came........

Virtualization   
It was a timely innovation and become an instant solution to the challenge facing third party vendors offering data storage services.The challenge they were facing was the ability to deploy applications to a different environment separate from their server infrastructure.
Virtualization allowed for this magic to happen. This translated to having large groups of networked servers easily shared by many applications. These applications were able to run virtually anywhere as long as they were virtualized.

Virtualizing an application meant that each application had to be packaged with every element that was required for it to run anywhere and not rely on a specific server. This included: a database,middle ware applications and an operating system. These three elements qualified an application to run anywhere in the virtual world. A virtualized application made exempt the need for a company's data center or third party vendor data centers.

The utility aspect of having an application run anywhere independently is what bore the idea of Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing
 Cloud computing is a service that charges only the amount of computing resources that have been used. The "pay as you go" design is what separates cloud computing from its predecessor - the Software service.

The Software service like leasing a car with limitations of making any changes to it because you don't fully own it. You pay a certain amount of money monthly and get certain level of services on the car. Hence you get to lease the service and get benefits like updates. But you don't build or manage the application.

On the other hand cloud computing is like leasing a metered taxi and only pay for the distance you want without paying for maintenance costs. In our case companies or individuals who subscribe to the cloud( cloud computing services) only pay for the resources they use.These resources can be added or removed depending on what the company or individual wants. 


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Optimization of your website's pages is more than just On Page SEO and Off Page SEO which entails content and keywords and an influence of links passing to your website respectively.There are other practices to consider in your efforts to achieve high ranking in Google's search results.Practices that bring about Influence and Engagement such as Social Media which is a broad and effective platform to share and promote your site.

Blogging

To maximize on Social Media's influence you can either choose plainly to have Social Media accounts on popular networks like Facebook and Twitter or include a blog on your site which will have Social Media buttons embedded on it that link to your various accounts.

Including a blog(s) in your company's main site has been tested and proven to work as a catalyst to improving your site's ranking position in Google's search page results.Its also one of the key implementations to your inbound marketing strategy.Companies that have active blog postings have had monthly reports indicating generation of 55% more traffic than companies with no blogs. B2C (Business to Consumer companies) that blog once or twice a week generate 88% more leads in a month than B2C companies that don't own blogs.

Here is why a blog is a perfect complement to your site:

1. A blog helps create a platform to have fresh content and more pages of content on your site.This is a great SEO technique since the more content written with targeted keywords in mind, consequently lead to more chances for your site to rank for various keywords, that users may search for in search engines.
2. It helps build your site's Authority as a knowledge leader in various topics related to your company's industry.
3. More traffic is generated and driven back to your company's site by the provision of high quality educative content on your blog that can be linked to a comprehensive description of a product or service found on your company's E-commerce site.
4. Its a great channel to dialogue and engage with your audience and customers especially in commentary with most blogs having a provision of commentary text areas where customers can contribute or give feedback on your content.This in turn consequently creates User Generated Content which Google now considers as a factor to gauge your site's Relevance.
5. Its a great way to get invaluable inbound links back to your main site by sharing the blog's content on social platforms using embedded fixed social buttons strategically placed below an article or in a fixed position on the margins of your blog.

If you are a local business you need to consider the best local SEO techniques and Social Media that can influence high ranking of your business' online presence in Google search results.To play it right with social media techniques,here is what local businesses should write in their optimization To do list:

#1. Subscribe to Local Friendly Sites

As a local business you need to identify and sign up to local friendly sites such as foursquare,Yelp and Google plus which offer an opportunity to create Specials for your business.Hence people checking in to see Specials using any one of the friendly sites mentioned above can find you among the list of businesses operating.

Specials are an effective way to display your business in these local friendly sites that also run on online apps available to mobile and PC platforms.

Opportunity knocks on your door to try and lure people to try your business products or services for the first time.Specials also give a chance for customers to review your products or services.Reviews are great social signal for search engines.



#2. Have your Bio Photo on Google's search results

Google and Bing are now considering social signals as an indicator of your site's relevance.Consequently, Google plus has become a popular social network to help in creating social signals for your content in Google and Bing search engines.Hence for any author or writer producing content for your blog, it is encouraged to have them sign up for the Google Authorship program which displays their profiles in Search Engine results with their Bio pictures.

This display has been known to make content look and feel more personal.In turn, no matter how you rank in the Search Results this display will invoke a higher click through rate than a result with no Bio Photo.

Rule of thumb: Quality not quantity of content now takes the throne as king.Creating quality content and sharing it will attract quality readers who will then comment and share it to their followers and friends.The emphasis of quality therefore comes into consideration by the fact that Search Engines now consider the reach and quality of people sharing your content as a factor to influence the ranking of your content as well.

To rank better on Google's Search Engine Results Page requires for a site owner to embrace optimisation practices with the base foundation being On Page SEO. This type of optimisation practice is one among a couple of other practices available and is an influence of Relevance and Authority - both of which rely on your site's page content.

Authority in the context of Search Engine Optimisation is the number of links passing to a specific page on your site from external domains using keywords that you have targeted for.Hence by placing your targeted keywords within strategic areas of your page to make sure users find you on Google's SERPs(Search Engine Results Page),  can help you achieve Authority.The greater the number of links passing to your pages the greater your site's authority.

Relevance on the other hand is using the right keywords that have been targeted by other sites and have sufficient search volumes where users are likely to search using these keyword phrases.The trick behind using highly targeted keywords is to mix them up with alternative keywords that are closely related to them - technically referred to as long tail keywords.Otherwise you may have to compete with powerful and more established sites that are using the same keyword phrases which will automatically be picked first in Google's SERP.

Techniques on how to improve your On Page Optimisation

#1. Optimise Title Tags

When writing titles in your article there are three simple rules that should be followed:

• Since your title is the first item a user will see when Google lists search results,carefully craft your title to have a limit of 70 characters. This will prevent it being from being shed off by Google which has a standard limit of 70 characters for titles.
• Place the most relevant keywords among those you are targeting at the beginning of the title.
• Craft a catchy and compelling title that will lure users to click.It should be a unique title that accurately describes the content on your page.This also helps to improve your click through rate.

#2. Optimise your photos

As a site owner it is good practice to optimize your photo's file names before uploading  them on your site by naming them using your targeted keywords.Give a description of the photo in its alt tag to optimise for browsers that may not display graphic images i.e photos.

#3. Keyword Meta Tags & Keyword Stuffing

On your page in the section between the head tags lie the keywords and description meta tags.Though it is good practice to place your targeted keywords in that section,Google no longer considers Keyword Meta Tags when ranking pages in its SERP. Hence it should not be a compulsory practice to place keywords in your Meta Tags.

Despite Meta Tags not being considered,Google sometimes uses a matching Meta Tag description in its SERP if it does not find relevant keywords that match a user's search in the page's body section,especially the lead text.

Above all when optimising content on your website's page do not engage in Keyword Stuffing.That is using the same keyword phrase repeatedly on a specific page.Stuffing keywords even when placing them in specific areas will make you a candidate for a Penguin Update penalty.

Ranking high in Google as a Local Business

Being a local business you may want to get found  easily by people looking for products or services online in your local geographical area.To achieve visibility you need to have a business address citation listed in other sites matching your business operations.The sites will have a display of your business with a citation containing your company's name,phone address,physical address and a brief description of your business operations written with targeted keywords in mind. For a comprehensive guide on how to get sites for local citations of you business check out Direction SEO.

To better rank locally it is also helpful to have your company reviewed on high quality review sites such as Google Plus Local.

PRO Tips for novice site owners

Below are some few tips to get the ball rolling and get your pages indexed a little bit faster by Google:

1. Add your site to Google directly(recommended for beginners) by adding the "Add/URL" after the foward slash in Google's URL. i.e www. Google.com/Add URL
2. To make sure that Google has indexed your site's pages,confirm by doing a search on Site:www.yourcompany's URL.com.This will list the exact number of pages that Google has indexed to your site.
3. To help you get found easily in your local geographical area - especially if you are a small niche business, you need to submit your site to local listings such as Google Places,Bing Local and Yahoo local.

 For those site owners grappling with drops in their organic search traffic (Google traffic) and are willing to follow the 'rules', there is a silver lining to this drastic change by Google of lowering their site's rank.
Being a novice site owner and not having prior experience in site maintenance can be a pain point in the aftermath of this change.Here are some priceless tips and guidelines that should ease your pain.

Panda Update

Launched in February 2011 by Google's Search Quality Team, Panda has gone through more than seventeen different changes.It was built to focus on a site's quality or uniqueness and accessibility of its content.
Panda's purpose is to identify and penalize sites that have duplicated content as well as those that have promotional material such as Adverts dominating their pages.By standard rule a site's content should achieve 60% uniqueness so duplicating of content should not be practiced.Your site's content should be more dominant on the page in comparison to adverts on the same page to achieve uniqueness of content.

If you realize that your site has been affected by a drop down in organic traffic - that is traffic visiting from Google searches,there are ways to accurately analyse if the Panda Update has occurred on your site:

#1 Understand the Panda Update evolution

Comprehensive literature about the Panda Update change cycle can be accessed from various resources online .One of the best and most recommended is the SEO Moz site which is a one in all utility source of Panda Update's history.The literature there will give you insight on different dates of Panda Update's change cycle and with a date in mind it is then possible to then check with Google Analytics for a comprehensive web metrics analysis of your site.

#2 Analyse with Google Analytics

With a Panda Update date in mind use Google Analytics to process metrics of your site.Make sure you specifically request for Google's organic search traffic and a reasonable time period.The time period should be long enough to look at the trends of your site and short enough to notice the drastic drop of Google's search traffic on your site. With the Panda Update date in mind combined with analysis from Google Analytics, it will be possible to identify which Panda Update may have affected your site.

Solution to a Panda Update effect on your site

If by evidence from Google Analytics your site has been affected by the Panda Update, you need to identify your pain points such as:

• Do your webpages have duplicated content that has also been duplicated in other websites online.
• Verify if some pages have a higher average bounce rate than other pages in the same domain.
• Does your site have inbound links passing to it from a site that is considered a content farm(a site that allows self-submitting content).

Resolution Practices

1. Rewrite or revise the content on the affected pages to make them achieve 60% uniqueness in terms of originality.
2. Utilize the Rel="canonical" tag to help Google identify original sources of information and filter out sources with duplicated content.This also helps Google "guide" you to sites that have high quality content and don't allow self-submitting content.

Penguin Update

The much 'anticipated' Penguin Update due to its ability to deal with over optimization of websites by unscrupulous online marketers,was released in April 24th 2012 by Google's Web Spam team.The team's focus was to specifically deal with practices such as: keyword stuffing,link spamming and repeated use of keywords in anchor texts on sites.

To fulfill your suspicion that your site may have been affected by Google's Panda Update,it is recommended just like in the case of the Panda Update,to understand the Penguin Update from resources such as the SEO Moz site.Hence by identifying the dates of the Penguin Update versions, use Google Analytics which will give a comprehensive analysis of trends of your site within a given period.

When using Google Analytics make a point to specify results from organic traffic as well as an analysis within a three month period to identify the date of your site's drop in organic traffic.

Solution to a Penguin Update effect on your site

In the course of identifying that Penguin has indeed occurred on your site,you need to start a recovery action by first identifying which among the point areas below are the cause of a Penguin Update effect.

• Overuse of keywords you are trying to optimize for on the pages affected.
• Anchor links passing to your site from one page to another within your domain or from external domains containing anchor texts that have 1 2 3 or 4 specific keyword phrases.
• Links passing to your site from a link network.
• Spikes in links caused by a site linking to your site  from every page in its domain i.e from the site's footer.

Resolution Practices 

If any of the above point areas are the cause of your Penguin Update penalty, implement on the following recovery actions according to the cause/point areas identified.

1. Revise your on page content and metadata to clean up keyword stuffing.
2. Revise your links by diversifying anchor texts passing to your website.
3. Pursue link extraction initiatives to remove links from networks.
4. Pursue link acquisition strategies that are normal and up to date as possible.

NOTE: Sometimes in extreme and rare circumstances a website can be so extensively affected that it is recommended to have an overhaul re brand of the domain. However this is only pursued after all other options have been exhausted.