Instant Virus Removal Support From FixSmith !!!

 

The possible reasons for PC problems are multiple. Viruses Infections, malware or spyware are typical problems that are experienced with computers. These infections are seen as a a lack of files unexpectedly, programs which are acting randomly, and also the computer responding slowly to commands. If Skilled technicians have found a few of the symptoms  on your PC, then repair really should not difficult. It does not take too much time.

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How to Increase Your Business Clients to Improve Your Profit Margins

Authors: Guest Writer

Guest Post by Richard Muscat Azzopardi
Taking the step from being a computer technician fixing home PCs to someone running a business which thrives off planning, building, maintaining and repairing other businesses’ IT solutions is one which might seem daunting to some. However by doing so you can increase profit margins considerably and probably reduce your general stress levels in the process too.

Before you ponder on changing your business model, however I would advise taking a long hard look at the business you’re running at the moment. Have you ever thought of whether it is really profitable? If you were paying yourself (and your better half, who’s probably putting in quite a bit of hours with you) an honest wage would you still be running a profitable business? When was the last time you ran this exercise?

As part of this check I would also recommend analyzing the different jobs you’re doing. Which of them are profitable and which of them are you doing as a “service” to your clients? For example some home clients expect you to do the installation work for free when you sell them hardware. Even if you are charging them, there is a limit to what you can charge unless you want them to run to the Internet to look for advice and try it out themselves.

Business customers are very different. First of all they see IT as an essential tool. There might have been a time when a farmer would try and fix his own truck, but nowadays they all take them to mechanics. The same goes for computers – businesses see them as something they can’t live without (because they really can’t!) and therefore tend to do whatever is needed to keep their systems running smoothly. A home computer not working for a day means you can’t check Facebook for 24 hours. A business computer not working for a day implies loss of productivity and therefore precious income.

Because IT is so important to businesses, they tend to generate a significant amount of work. A successful business must take its maintenance seriously, its upgrades with enough foresight and its backups with the precision of a Swiss watch! In addition to generating more work per computer, when you’re hooked up with a business client, you usually have more PCs to work on too. If you take a look at the turnover generated by a single (small) business client over the course of a year you can probably equate it to four to five families’ worth of work.

It is not all fun and games, because expectations on your level of commitment increase too, but this is mainly the reason you can charge higher rates. It is also harder to win the client over because there is more competition and a higher chance that they are already in some form of a relationship with another supplier/technician.

If you have decided that it is worth exploring as an idea, you now need to find ways to get the word out there and start attracting business clients. I have a few suggestions that you might want to try out.

1) Tap your existing client base

Your existing clients are probably an ideal first step in trying to get new business. Statistically, most of them work at a small business, so if you approached them there is a good chance of them either being the decision maker at office or at least knowing who is. Don’t push yourself too hard with people who are generating your bread and butter income though, because you don’t want to scare them off from giving you their custom. You can either drop a hint when you’re at their place or else insert a new email signature which says you service businesses too. It might also be worth your while to offer a small bounty to friends and long-term clients who can introduce you to a new business client.

2) Approach the local business community

Targeting local businesses with direct mail, the local yellow pages or advertising in a local paper would be a great method to start offering services. Your major investment here could be your time. Offer a free audit of their systems – that way you can give them something of value. If you do your job well enough at this stage, you’re the one they’re going to want to implement the recommendations to fix the issues that arise.

3) Mixing at business events

Scour the papers and online notice boards for business breakfasts or any other business meetings organised in your community. These are a great source of new contacts and people are expecting you to discuss business opportunities. If there are talks, then try and get a speaking gig – even if you offer your time for free. Use this time to outline the importance of having a solid IT infrastructure. Businesses love having a thought leader consulting them – it inflates their ego.

4) Buy a set of golf clubs

Or join the local chapter of the Rotary Club. Every community has its own version of a place for businessmen to hang out informally. Whereas these might seem to be a place to relax, a lot of business wheeling and dealing goes on in between holes on the local golf course. You will have to take it more easily here. People are officially there to enjoy themselves and relax so you have to observe others and respect the etiquette in place.

5) Online

Building a good presence online is a crucial part of achieving your goal. I have left it to last for one simple reason – no matter which of the methods above you decide to go with, this should have to happen in tandem. Create a personal LinkedIn profile and build it up as much as possible. Get recommendations from former colleagues and current clients and keep the account active on a daily basis. Create Google+ and Facebook pages as a local business and post items to them regularly. Ideally you shouldn’t broadcast, but also interact with people who’ve liked your pages. Offer free advice online to business customers – and make these posts public so you can show your expertise.

Whichever of these tickles your fancy, I would suggest not trying out more than one or two of them to start off. Ease yourself into the market and there is far less chance of being overwhelmed. Slow and steady wins the race.

This is a guest post written by Richard Muscat Azzopardi on behalf of IT Channel Insight, a site related to managed IT services. Richard draws on his experience from over 12 years in the publishing industry to bring you top quality content that works. He now writes blog posts, white papers and e-books for the IT industry with the same passion that drove him to create his country’s most popular publication.

© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their Computer Business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit.

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Mobility Changing IT Field Services

Authors: Diana

Guest Blog: Scott Epple, OnForce Product Manager We’re living in pretty exciting times.  Most of us carry around small computers with us everywhere we go.  The same computing power that used to take up the size of a large room, now fits handily in our pockets.  Smartphones are connecting us to the people and places […]

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Using an iPad in the Computer Repair Business

Authors: Guest Writer

Guest post by Craig Lloyd:
The iPad is a great device for computer technicians to carry around while out in the field. It’s a small and portable, yet powerful machine capable of assisting computer technicians with their work. Here are just four ways that computer techs can take advantage of Apple’s tablet.

1. Organizing Client Information

A great iPad app that’s specifically targeted towards computer technicians is called iFix. It’s an app that aims to ensure that repair orders and client data stay organized and can be easily and quickly accessed. You’re able to add specific information about each client including info about their computer, a list of their service orders, status of said service orders, and a history of past repairs for each client. The app also has a handy search feature where you can quickly look up a specific client or bit of information in a very short amount of time. Essentially, every text field in the app is searchable.

The only drawback of iFix is multi-user support and the lack of database backup options. The developer said that these features are being worked, but that was a year ago, so just be aware of this if these features are important to you.

If iFix isn’t measuring up to your needs, an alternative is an app called mHelpdesk. It accomplishes some of the same features that iFix achieves and it can even schedule and sync appointments with your Google Calendar, as well as the ability to create and email invoices in PDF format. It even has a pretty comprehensive billing system of sorts that allows you to create estimates, email invoices, and record payments.

CommitCRM is another great piece of software geared toward computer technicians that keeps track of clients. While it doesn’t have a dedicated app for iPad, it has a feature-packed web interface that can be accessed through the web browser on the iPad. Just like other popular CRMs, CommitCRM is widely-used, so the community support is undeniable. However, it’s not free (or cheap), but a 30-day trial is available for anyone who wants to give it a try before diving deep.

2. Easily Accepting Credit Card Payments

The iPad is a great device to use as a register of sorts that you can use to accept credit card payments. You can hook up a Square credit card reader to it and begin taking credit card payments from clients right away. It’s an easier – and possibly cheaper option than having to open up a merchant account at a bank and purchase bulky processing equipment. There’s no cost to get started using Square – just a small transaction fee of 2.75% for every swipe.

If Square specifically doesn’t seem like your cup of tea, other options for easily accepting credit card payments via an iOS or Android device include PayPal Here and Intuit’s GoPayment, both of which have awesome competing features.

3. Remote Support

There are many remote support applications available. LogMeIn Ignition is just one option that’s wildly popular, but I find TeamViewer’s iPad app to be dead-easy to use. You simply enter in the TeamViewer ID and password for the computer you want to access and you’re controlling the desktop remotely within seconds. And just in the case the client is rather computer-illiterate, installing TeamViewer on a client’s machine is very simple and doesn’t involve multiple, confusing steps. They even have a standalone version that can simply be launched right after being downloaded — no installation required.

4. Inventory

Something that we all kind of loathe nowadays is doing inventory. However, the Computer Inventory iPad app can makes things a little easier. It allows you to manage your entire business’s inventory all the way down to what software is installed on which computers. It can also act as a more minimalistic CRM of sorts — being able to keep track of the type of machine a client has, as well as what software they have installed, that way you don’t have to keep asking them every time they report a problem to you. The app also allows you to export your lists to XML and email formats to send and store them accordingly.

Are you using an iPad app in your computer business that we didnt mention here? Let us know! Drop us a comment.

Guest post by Craig Lloyd. Craig has been tinkering with computers for over eight years and is CompTIA A+ certified. For the past three years, he’s been writing about and sharing his love of technology at various websites across the internet.

© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their Computer Business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit.

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The Ultimate SEO Checklist for Your Computer Repair Website

Authors: Guest Writer

Guest Post by Shawn Hutchison:

At the dawn of search engines, website owners quickly found that you could A) optimize your site for the search engines or B) optimize for human readability, which, due to the rudimentary nature of search engines at the time, meant you were likely the only one who knew about your website. Optimizing for both audiences was very difficult. As evidenced by Google’s recent update Panda (rewarded sites that were more useful to readers and devalued sites that were geared more toward search engines) it is Google’s goal for these two types of optimization to eventually converge. What is most valuable to humans will determine where a website will rank for a given search term. But search engines aren’t quite there yet. For website owners this means no straying too far to either end of the spectrum, and finding balance between the two audiences as the gap closes.

Following the steps and information in the Ultimate SEO Checklist will give your computer repair website a solid SEO foundation that will make sure you’re well on your way to finding that balance.

Forward

In April 2011 I decided I wanted to start my own computer repair business in San Diego, CA. I immediately started planning, designing and developing my computer repair website and business Pcbox. Unfortunately I allowed myself to lose sight of my website because a long string of well paying web design and SEO jobs fell into my lap. I still got a decent amount of computer repair jobs, but almost none of it was business driven from my website.

In hindsight, delaying the development of my website was both good and bad. Bad because I have a half-finished website that isn’t ranking well for anything worth noting. Good because although I already had a very good understanding of SEO at the time, I have learned a lot about SEO since then from the Panda update, and I would have had to revise my site anyway. On top of that, I’ve decided to start my computer repair business in Phoenix, AZ rather than San Diego so any links I would have targeted toward San Diego during that time would need to be redone.

My new goal is to rank on the first page for at least one search term within the next three months using the checklist below as a starting point. I thought I’d share my methods here in case any computer technicians out there looking to improve their SEO wanted to try the methods in this checklist at the same time, and share our results near the end of the three month period.

On to the checklist…

1. Use WordPress (or your CMS of Choice)

This may seem a bit biased, but really, do yourself a favor and use WordPress. The WordPress learning curve is a learning speed bump in comparison to Joomla or Drupal. The sheer amount of themes, plugins (SEO or otherwise) and community support available vs. other popular CMS’s is staggering. Best of all: it’s free. With WordPress, you just have a lot more options available to you.

If you’re already heavily invested in another CMS or are a die hard HTML purist, that’s okay; you can still benefit from this checklist and certainly achieve similar results, but it’s going to require a lot more time and effort.

2. Buy a Theme or Hire a Web Designer

Design may seem unrelated to SEO, but a poor design can affect bounce rate, time on site and ultimately your sales potential. Google keeps track of bounce rate and time on site, and if these metrics aren’t within reason, your relevance to search terms being used to reach your site will come into question in Google’s eyes. It doesn’t matter if you’re on page 1 for the most competitive search terms in the computer repair industry, if your web stats indicate that you aren’t providing value and relevance in relation to the search terms being used, your site isn’t going to perform as well as it could.

There are many affordable marketplaces and CMS/HTML themes to choose from such as ThemeForest or Technibble Jim’s (16k_zx81) Ultimate Tech Site WordPress Theme.

You want to instill value and professionalism in the mind of your website visitors, and if your site looks like Geocities’ Revenge, your conversions are going to suffer.

3. Find the Right Keywords

Proper keyword research is a must. The keywords you decide to target will be the focus of your entire on page and off page optimization strategy. So before you even create the first page of your website, you should have a list of 5-10 targeted keywords or keyphrases that receive a decent amount of traffic each month.

Brian Vest has already written an article on keyword research for Technibble. I don’t want to reiterate everything in the article as much of it is still very valid. Instead I recommend you read that article, then return to this section, which will will mostly improve upon the competitive analysis techniques used in the aforementioned article.

3.1 Competitor Keyword Analysis

One thing I found lacking in the above article was competitor keyword analysis, which not only gives you an idea of what keywords your competitors are ranking for, but also can spur many keyword ideas you may not have considered otherwise. In fact, this is often my first course of action when keyword brainstorming. It’s easy and takes very little time or effort when using the right tools correctly.

3.1.1 Google Keyword Tool

We are going to be working with the Google Keyword Tool   I suggest exporting the list of the keywords you decide to target from the Keyword Tool as a .csv file to Google Docs or your spreadsheet editor of choice. Having this list handy will help keep you on track for on page optimization and link building later on.

To check out what sort of keywords your competitors sites contain, first input a few of your competitors’ URLs, one at a time, check ‘Only show ideas closely related to my search terms’ and for match type select exact, which will give you more targeted search terms. After the results load, sort by number of local monthly searches, high to low, and choose the keywords that receive enough traffic, are relevant to your business, and aren’t too competitive.

Google Keyword Tool

 

3.2 Don’t only focus on the big, competitive keywords

Being on the first page for keywords like virus removal phoenix, computer repair phoenix, etc is nice, and will most likely pull in the most traffic, but they will also take the most effort to rank for. If you spend all your efforts targeting the major keywords early on, you won’t be ranking for anything else until you start ranking for those keywords, which means less revenue. There is a lot of value in spending a portion of your time targeting low to medium competition words. That way you have some revenue coming in to motivate you until your efforts to rank for the big keywords pay off.

Following the advice in this keyword research article and use the competitive analysis method above, you should be able to consolidate your research into a list of 10 keywords or less.

4. Optimize On-Page Elements

It’s true that a website can rank well by means of off-page optimization alone. While the same cannot necessarily be said of on-page optimization, it should not be underestimated. Why not? Here’s an example:

I did a Google search for ‘virus removal phoenix az’ recently, and at the time my site was sitting at the top of page 3.

As I mentioned, my site is only about halfway done in terms of content creation and on-page optimization. Aside from my signature link, which did boost my rank 3 spots, I’ve done little to no link building for Pcbox. Wherever I’m ranking for any search term is almost entirely due to half-completed on-page optimization.

Improving my ranking from page 3 for any keyword is going to be exponentially more difficult from here on out. But instead of having to work my way from the savage-lands that are pages 10+, on-page optimization gave me a ride to the starting line.

4.1 URL Structure

Planning your URL structure beforehand is imperative. If some of your computer service pages look like this: http://domain.com/example-service/ and others look like this: http://domain.com/services/example-service/ then I’m looking at you. There are arguments on both sides for why each iteration is better than the other, but the only thing you really need to worry about is that your URL structure is uniform and meaningful.

As a guideline, try to adhere to a 2-directory-deep URL structure limit. Not only are long URLs not user friendly, but the more keywords present in your URL, the more each individual keyword’s impact is diluted. In short, long URLs are bad for both audiences.

Tips – The SEO Ultimate WordPress Plugin automatically removes stop words (prepositions and other low value words) from your URL slugs to reduce keyword dilution.

4.1.1 One Keyword per page

Don’t just dump all of your services onto one page and dust off your hands like that’s that. Search engines crawl your site to determine it’s relevance to a search term. If you have a page full of info pertaining to different services, how relevant is that page for someone specifically searching for a Computer Tune Up? Computer Tune Up info is there, but so is all of the information pertaining to data recovery, virus removal, network installs, email set up, remote support and so on, which reduce’s the info pertaining to the tune up’s impact.

Don’t make the search engines have to think about it. A One Keyword per page strategy makes it obvious what information that page holds.

Example –  Page targeted toward virus removal: [yoursite].com/virus-removal/, one targeted for data recovery: [yoursite].com/data-recovery/ et cetera.

4.2 Snippets

If I happen upon a site while Googling, and it looks even remotely like the snippet above, I’m steering my click-ship away from your site like it’s the Bermuda Triangle. No one needs to be welcomed to your website. ‘CLICKING HERE’ isn’t going to provide some wild thrill for anyone. It’s 2012. The novelty of clicking a link has passed. Also, and this may seem very obvious, but if you are including ‘Virus Removal’ or something similar to your Title Tag, be sure the rest of the phrase after ‘Virus’ doesn’t get cut off, or else it will look like you’re trying to GIVE them a virus. The snippet above is an only slightly exaggerated combination of real snippets of computer repair websites I’ve seen recently.
This snippet is your elevator pitch to potential clients and search engines alike, in some instances it is your only point of contact with a potential client. Make it count.

Tip – Use this snippet optimization tool to see more or less how your snippet will appear in Google.

4.2.1 Title Tags

The Title Tag is the first and arguably most important element of snippet, as it is one of the main indicators search engines and humans alike use to determine the relevance of a page to particular search term.

If I could offer you only one suggestion on title tags, it would be this:

Keep it short. Keep it classy.

For the same reasons outlined in previous sections, try not to keyword stuff. Your home page title tag doesn’t need to contain every single service you offer and every city in a 200 mile radius. That information is better suited for subpages’ title tags and body text. Google and most other search engines truncate title tags at around 70 characters, including spaces. Search engines can interpret it, but humans aren’t going to see it. What happens if the service they’re looking for is at the end of your ridiculously long title tag? They’re probably moving on.

In short, limit your Home Page Title Tag to 3 elements: Who You Are, What You Do, and Where You Do It. Anything else is better suited for either the Meta Description (next section) or on the webpage itself. A 70 character limit should be observed for the Title Tag, excluding blog posts.

4.2.1.1 Business in the front, party in the back

Placing relevant keywords near the front of the title tag and the brand name in the back has shown increased click through rate in websites that are not well known, recognizable brands. I personally like the branding aspect of having the business name in the front, but I am seriously considering moving my brand name to the back, despite being so short and relevant.

Optimal Title Tag formats:

Brand Name – Main Keyword and Secondary Keyword | Service Area

(My current format, recommended for businesses with very short, relevant names, or businesses that are well known within their service region)

or

Main Keyword and Secondary Keyword – Service Area| Brand Name

For inner service pages, I recommend sticking with the second format exclusively.

Tip – Many SEO WordPress plugins allow you to easily modify your title tag. SEO Ultimate allows you to append anything you wish to the suffix of the Title Tag, which can save a lot of time.

4.2.2 Meta Descriptions

Meta Descriptions are not directly valuable in determining rank, but the bolding effect triggered when a search term matches a keyword in the meta description leads to increased click through rates. Try to limit the length of  Meta Descriptions to about the size of a tweet, 140 characters. These are only valuable for human readability so try to avoid keyword stuffing here, and instead succinctly give your prospective clients a reason to visit your site, while also including an appropriate amount of keywords.

Tip – Create a unique Meta Description for each page in your website.

4.3 Heading Tags

The H1 Heading Tag is another significant on-page indicator of a page’s relevance. Your H1 tag (you should only have one per page) should match one or more of the main service keywords in your title tag.  H2′s should be reserved as subheadings to the H1 tag or for secondary keywords on the homepage. H3 tags should be reserved for site elements such as header, footer and sidebar headings.

4.4 Body copy

It is important to have enough body text for search engines to grab onto and determine your site’s relevance, but that doesn’t mean you should write more content than you need to provide an ample description. Try to use the main keyword of the page at least 3 times, one of which in bold text, so that reading the text feels natural as well as giving search engines a good idea of what’s going on. Keyword stuffing body text to the point where a cipher is needed to figure out what you’re talking about can be very frustrating and lead to a higher bounce rate, which in turn is totally counter productive. Imagine, you spent all that time throwing keywords around like confetti because you ‘heard it’s good for SEO’ (not true by the way) and by the time potential clients get to your page, they couldn’t hit the back button faster if they tried.

Make your body copy as descriptive and pleasant to read as possible. Break up the monotony of reading a giant brick of text with formatting, spacing and headings for easy scanning.

4.4.1 Optimize images within the body of your site

Be sure to include relevant keywords in the alt attribute with every image you use, as well as using keywords in the file name itself.

4.5 Internal Linking Structure

Internal linking is very valuable in establishing your site’s information architecture to search engines and humans alike. Not everyone who visits your site visits the home page first, and presenting visitors with header, footer, sidebar and body navigation links can reduce bounce rates by increasing the usability of your site.

4.5.1 Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are named after the story of Hansel and Gretel, who leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way home , which is actually a pretty terrible idea. Animals love bread.

Website Breadcrumbs, on the other hand, are a great idea. They provide one-click access to higher levels of your site as well as strengthening your internal linking structure.

Tip Breadcrumb NavXT is an excellent WordPress plugin for adding basic breadcrumbs to your site.

4.5.2 XML and HTML Sitemaps

A sitemap is essentially a table of contents for your website. XML Sitemaps allow for easier indexing of your site for search engine bots. Anything that makes life easier for search engines is something you should consider doing. HTML Sitemaps are more beneficial to humans. They provide a quick overview of your site’s hierarchy, which can come in handy for you when making changes to site navigation, and to users who are searching for something very specific and don’t have the time to find it otherwise.

After creating your XML sitemaps, be sure to submit them to all 3 major search engines.

There are many tools that will automate the creation and submission process, such as the Google XML Sitemaps plugin for WordPress

For more information on sitemaps, visit sitemaps.org

Tip – Install Google Analytics to keep an eye of your site metrics.

5. Start Link Building

Link building, if done properly, will likely yield the largest return of all your SEO efforts, but will also take the most time.  There are far too many ways to go about link building to completely fit within the scope of this checklist, but I will outline some of the first linkbuilding steps to take with a new or underperforming computer repair site.

One thing I can’t stress enough when starting your link building campaign is to strive for quality before quantity, at least at first. Having a handful of links to your site from quality, relevant sources will really help boost and stabilize your rankings.

Time to bring out your keyword spreadsheet again, both to use for the anchor text of external links, as well as keeping track of the status of your link building. Keep track of what steps you’ve taken for each link you’re trying to get.

5.1 Claim your Business Listing pages

Local Business Listings are an easy and (usually) free way to gain back links. Not claiming your listing can work against you. If you don’t claim a spot on the list of local computer repair businesses in your city, someone else will.

Unfortunately the entire online local business ecosystem revolves around having a physical address, rather than being based on service area. If you do not have a physical address, you are unfortunately at somewhat of a disadvantage against computer repair businesses that do, at least when it comes to ranking for search terms that explicitly include the city name. Mobile businesses have been able to get around this problem by stating their business address as a P.O. box, but Google caught on to that pretty quickly and yanked the rug out from under some of them. You may still be able to get by with this in some areas.

Google Places

This is the one to focus on first and foremost, for obvious reasons. For computer repair businesses that aren’t ranking for the first page for computer services [your city], this is your opportunity. Don’t squander it. Take an entire day or two to completely max out your Google Places Listing. Be sure to include all the basics: name, address, phone #, and as many additional details as possible. Max out the pictures and videos if you can. Choose 2-3 categories. Write a detailed business description sprinkled with the occasional keyword. Include an offer for a discount on service. Encourage and respond to customer reviews.

These are all, albeit small, opportunities for you to demonstrate your businesses’ value. Carpe diem.

More Listings To Claim: Yahoo Local, Bing Local, CitySearch, Yelp, Manta, Yellow Pages, et cetera.

Tip – Avoid data confusion by using the exact same phone #, address and other business info across all listing sites.

 5.2 Examine  Competitors’ Back Links

One of easiest ways to find quality, relevant links is by snooping around your competitors’ back link profile.  Open up Open Site Explorer – a free site analysis tool. (The free version of OSE is limited to 3 searches per day, but you can gain full access by signing up for the free 30 day trial for SEOmoz pro.)

Start with your competitor that is ranking for the keyword you are most interested in ranking for right now. You can also click ‘Compare pages’ to input 4 more competitor domains to view other useful link metrics, but you may only view once competitor’s inbound links at a time.

After the list of back links populates, filter by ‘followed + 301′, ‘external links’ and ‘pages on this subdomain’. Add the top five back links (by page authority) to your spreadsheet and move on to the next competitor.

After your list has about 20 or so links, visit each link to determine what is required on your part to add a link to your site. Some sites will limit your anchor text to your domain name only, but if you have the option, utilize your list of keywords.

Tip  – Use the SEOmoz Link Acquistion Assistant to discover new linking opportunities that your competitors may not know about.

For a more detailed overview of linking, read SEOmoz’s Growing Popularity and Links

 

SEO is a vast subject. There are ideas and techniques that are not listed in this checklist, as well as ways to expand upon each section that is in the checklist.  Following the advice listed here will give new and underperforming sites a solid SEO foundation and a boost in the SERPs, which can then be augmented and fine tuned.

Think there’s something missing from this checklist that would be beneficial to computer repair businesses just starting their SEO campaign? Say so below in the comments, the more we share our ideas and experience, the better.

 

Additional Reading

Local Search Ranking Factors

SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Call That Girl’s Guide to Social Media

 

Recommended Tools

Open Site Explorer

Google Keyword Tool

SEO Ultimate WordPress Plugin

Ultimate Tech Site WordPress Theme

WooRank

 

Guest Post by Shawn Hutchison. Shawn is a Web Designer/Developer, Computer Technician with 10+ years experience and the Owner of Pcbox, a Mobile Computer Repair Business based in Phoenix, AZ.

© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their Computer Business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit.

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Fabar Service Scanner (FSS.exe) – Identify Internet Connectivity Problems

Authors: Bryce Whitty

Farbar Service Scanner is a small, portable and free application that gives a detailed report on the files, registries and services that are responsible for network connectivity. The purpose of this report is to help you identify the source of connectivity problems if one of these files is infected or corrupted. This is especially useful after you have removed Malware from the operating system system but it is still unable to connect to the internet.

Here is a typical logfile created by Farbar Service Scanner:

Farbar Service Scanner Version: 18-01-2012 01
Ran by TN(administrator) on 01-02-2012 at 22:49:44
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1 (X64)
Boot Mode: Normal
****************************************************************

Internet Services:
============

Connection Status:
==============
Localhost is accessible.
LAN connected.
Google IP is accessible.
Yahoo IP is accessible.

Windows Firewall:
=============

Firewall Disabled Policy:
==================
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters
\FirewallPolicy\DomainProfile]
“EnableFirewall”=DWORD:0
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters
\FirewallPolicy\StandardProfile]
“EnableFirewall”=DWORD:0
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters
\FirewallPolicy\PublicProfile]
“EnableFirewall”=DWORD:0

System Restore:
============
SDRSVC Service is not running. Checking service configuration:
The start type of SDRSVC service is OK.
The ImagePath of SDRSVC service is OK.
The ServiceDll of SDRSVC service is OK.

VSS Service is not running. Checking service configuration:
The start type of VSS service is OK.
The ImagePath of VSS service is OK.

System Restore Disabled Policy:
========================

Security Center:
============

Windows Update:
===========

File Check:
========
C:\Windows\System32\nsisvc.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\nsiproxy.sys => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\dhcpcore.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\afd.sys => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\tdx.sys => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\tcpip.sys => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\dnsrslvr.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\mpssvc.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\bfe.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\mpsdrv.sys => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\SDRSVC.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\vssvc.exe => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\wscsvc.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\wbem\WMIsvc.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\wuaueng.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\qmgr.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\es.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\cryptsvc.dll => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe => MD5 is legit
C:\Windows\System32\rpcss.dll => MD5 is legit
**** End of log ****

Screenshot

Farbar Service Scanner

 


Downloads:

Download from BleepingComputer.com – 328kb

Special thanks to forum member dk99 for recommending this one.

© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their Computer Business
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Boost Your Revenue with Cloud Storage Backup

Authors: Guest Writer

Guest Post by William Conner
I started selling cloud services 7 years ago; I was a reseller of Carbonite a few months after they opened their doors and haven’t looked back. It’s easy to be afraid of cloud services, watching how they encroach on what used to be our exclusive domain, but really it’s the natural evolution of technology and we need to figure out how to leverage it to our advantage. The great thing about cloud services is they’re like any other IT product, diverse and ever changing. That still leave the IT Pro in the position of trusted expert to recommend products based on client needs.


When talking about backup, let’s keep in mind the 3-2-1 Rule of Backups. Keep three copies, the primary data and two backups, store the backups on two different media, cloud, magnetic, optical, etc., and keep one copy offsite. Cloud services allow for offsite backup beautifully. The 321 strategy gives us many options for disaster recovery in the event of fire, theft or seizure. A typical deployment for us is to back up to a low cost NAS like the D-Link DNS-320 and have a mirror of that backup in the cloud via BackBlaze or SymForm which works quite well.

I’m not going to shill for a bunch of different products, I still recommend Carbonite, and get my cut when I do, but I also use SymForm, Backblaze, Keepvault, Vembu, Acronis and others. Each caters to specific needs, so all we need to do is identify their strengths, figure out what the customer needs, and make the sale.

Let’s look at what might be important to a given user based on their usage profile:

Typical Demands Home – Light Data SOHO – Medium Data Small Business – Larger Data
Configuration Zero Configuration Little configuration needed Handled by IT contractor
Storage Space 100 GB or less 100-1000GB 500GB+
Backup Speed Quick, but not a huge concern Within a few hours As quickly as possible
Recovery Speed Can tolerate a multi-day redownload Needs unthrottled ASAP recovery options Unthrottled recovery and overnight delivery of storage media.
Remote access Handy access via smartphone or tablet Smartphone/Tablet or Web interface access to data. Generally only needs web access to datasets.
Encryption Strong Encryption – Provider managed keyset Strong encryption, controllable keyset Strong encryption, controllable keyset
Partner Support Can rely on vendor techsupport Expects VAR/IT Pro to provide support. Expects VAR/IT Pro to provide support.
Vendor data centre location Generally not an issue. May have concerns or regulatory compliance issues regarding foreign storage. May have concerns or regulatory compliance issues regarding foreign storage. May see foreign storage as an advantage.

 

When evaluating services, it’s important to pay attention to what they offer based on the chart above. Offerings are always changing, and much like anti-virus vendors, what may be great this year may be really bad the next. Carbonite was a really great provider, but they throttle daily backup amounts, Backblaze doesn’t. Symform recently started selling direct to consumer and included 200gb of free backup, changing their initial partner strategy and KeepVault has lagged in its pricing, moving from very competitive to very expensive.

Ok, so now you’ve determined your clients need, your vendor’s strengths and you need to figure out how to make some money with this information. Most providers offer partner programs that allow you to either take a cut of the sale through referral commission, or offer wholesale prices if you’ll handle billing and support. I like to do the latter, as my clients generally don’t care who the vendor is, just that product works and that they don’t have to deal with many invoices or helpdesks for their technology products.

I typically bill above retail, because of this added support, thereby extending my profit margins and taking responsibility for the product myself. With cloud backup, this is pretty easy to do because the servers are very much set-it-and-forget-it products that require little effort to maintain.

There are really only three ways to sell cloud backup; by using passive links on your websites and promotional products, as direct recommendations to clients on-site, and as part of your MSP (Managed Service Provider) packages. For the most part, the revenue from the first two is minor, maybe $10-15 a year per seat depending on the client and package, but as part of a MSP package, they’ve been invaluable to me in two ways.

The first is by including off-site backup in my packages by default I’ve created have a competitive advantage as I’m not aware of any local competitors who do this. The costs of the service are built into the package, but to the client it looks like a freebie, one that they may never thought of or heard about before. Some might be have been confused by the amount of vendors in the field, or by pricing schemes and previously been scared off, but when I bring it up they greatly appreciate it.

They’re hearing about the cloud in the media but they don’t understand it. This gives us credibility in the sales process thanks to Microsoft’s advertising, and we get to direct the content of the conversation. Cloud backup has allowed me to close more MSP contracts since I started bundling them by default because my clients see that I’m looking out for their interests and starting disaster planning from the get go.

Second, because of the success in boosting MSP contract sales, I’ve created residential MSP contracts for pre-qualified clients. These residential contracts sell easily with cloud backup as I’m able to talk to the prospect about total security and protection. I’ve cemented myself as their only vendor because their AV, cloud backup, remote access and support services are now channelled through my one single invoice. Not only does this allow me to completely own the client, but I can take that client portfolio with me to a vendor and negotiate better pricing.

No matter how you decide to integrate cloud backup into your offerings, whereby as a single sale add-on or as an integral part of your service packages, I highly recommend you do. You’d be putting yourself and your clients at a severe disadvantage if you don’t. I’ve seen a 15% boost in sales, greater stickiness and stronger relationships. I’m offering more comprehensive services and eliminating the feeling of being nickel in dimed clients often resent when dealing with multiple vendors in regards to their IT infrastructure.

And a final thought, the pitch for cloud backup is simple: “With cloud backup your data is encrypted and stored offsite within minutes, protecting you from accidental deletion, theft, seizure or god forbid a fire, local backup isn’t enough. You can always buy a new computer, but you can’t buy back your data, ready to sign?”

Note: substitute data with pictures if it’s a residential client.

Guest Post By William Conner: William Conner is the owner of MyComputerHero, an IT consultancy in Calgary, Alberta since 2005. He has been in the SMB IT industry for 15 years, holds various vendor and industry certifications and is finishing a BSc. in Computer Information Systems at Mount Royal University.

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To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit. Boost Your Revenue with Cloud Storage & Backup

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17 Useful Windows Phone Tools For Computer Technicians

Authors: Guest Writer

Guest Post by Ric Chapman.

I think I’m somewhat safe in saying that Windows Phone 7 arrived late to the game and is still very much the underdog in today’s smartphone market. But whilst Microsoft are busy playing catch up their hard work is slowly paying off as it starts to carve its place among the Android, iPhone and Blackberry competition. Its ease of use and excellent integration into the Microsoft ecosystem is what’s starting to make it popular among home, business and now the technical community alike.
Having said that there’s still a bumpy ride ahead, at the time of this writing there are only 45,000 apps in the market place compared to Apple’s 500,000! When the phone was released, Technician apps were practically non-existent. I know, I was there, eagerly looking for what I could use out in the field. I didn’t find much, and what I did find didn’t work.. at all. But thankfully today is a much different story and I bring you the apps that I’m using on an almost daily basis as a Computer Technician.

Lync 2010

Lync 2010 arrives on time as promised and is an excellent app for staying in touch with colleagues, clients and family whilst on the move. Although it integrates nicely with the OS it would have been nice to see something similar to the Messenger integration deployed with Mango, but I’m just nit-picking. It’s a great app and although the app is free, you do require access to a Lync server. Mine comes courtesy of Office365, it just works and works well.
Price: FREE – Lync server required
Link

My Home Server

I absolutely love this app and is a must for anyone who owns their own or installs and maintains home servers for their clients. You can connect to any Home Server whilst you’re on the move allowing you to check important notifications, disk space, access files and manage user accounts including user creation and password resets. If your clients are happy for you to have access you can monitor and provide basic support from wherever you are at a touch of a button.
Price: FREE
Link

My Business Server

Almost identical to the My Home Server app with a focus on Microsoft Small Business Server Essentials only, would have been nice to have seen this for the SBS Standard but perhaps something will arrive later down the line. The SBS Essentials edition is the server of choice for my small business clients and as a support app is indispensable. The Live Tile only adds to my excitement by providing an instant indication of available disk space and the number of important / critical alerts you have pending right on the phones home screen.
Price: FREE
Link

Sky Wallet

Sky Wallet is a powerful password management app and I would be lost without it especially as clients are increasingly becoming reliant on their support techs for remembering their account details. Where Sky Wallet shines is its integration with SkyDrive, your details are synced and encrypted on your SkyDrive storage. If you need to reset your phone, you needn’t worry about losing the data. Secondly there’s a desktop companion app which comes included with this app allowing you to access your passwords directly from your PC avoiding the need to move back and forth between your desktop and phone.
Price: £2.99 / $3.99
Trial Available: Yes
Link

Flashlight 7

The flashlight tool is a very easily overlooked app and I’ve simply lost count on how much I’ve used this, I often find myself under a dimly lit desk or a dark comms cupboard. As I’m always carrying my phone, it makes sense not to be carrying a torch. There is a large array of flashlight apps which offer a variety of features so do shop around.
Price: FREE
Link

Subnet Calculator

Any technician working with medium and larger businesses should already know how to do this sort of thing without a calculator. But who would want to? We all work to a schedule and unless you can do this sort of thing in your head in less than 10 seconds then you might as well reach for your pocket. There are plenty of calculators out there, this one works great and has the added bonus of being free.
Price: FREE
Link

Connect Anything

The title of the app can be a little misleading and is simply a reference tool. I specifically use it for the Ethernet Pinout information when making up my own network cables.
Price: FREE
Link

Remote Desktop

Whilst there are plenty of remote desktop tools out there this is by far my favourite, not the cheapest but the one I generally get the best performance from overall. Most of these apps come with free trials and I’d recommend you try them before making a final decision.
Price: £4.99 / $5.99
Link

Amazon Kindle

Being a Kindle fan I downloaded this app the moment it became available and whilst I do read for pleasure, a lot of my reading also involves tech or reference books. Whilst not strictly a technical tool it can be a great informational tool avoiding the need carry the large books that plague most students and technicians. A quick and easy EBook reader on the go.
Price: FREE
Link

Network Tools

0 0A small collection of network connectivity tools providing ping tests, tcp port connection tests, http and https connectivity tests as well as the ability to save a selection of URI’s for periodic checking, useful if you’re wanting to check the health of multiple web sites quickly. It’s absolutely free if you don’t mind the adverts which are not intrusive.
Price: FREE with ads or £2.29/$2.99 for the ad free version
Link

The SSH Client

1 1A very simple and free SSH client that works brilliantly, the paid version comes with telnet support and a ton of customisation and configuration settings.
Price: FREE or £2.49/$3.49 for the PRO version
Link

IP Camera Viewer

2 2I find these are quite popular tools among the tech community so I’ve included my favourite, originally acquired to keep an eye on my home office as I struggled to find anything that I was certain I had left on my desk. Turns out wife likes to clean my desk …. a lot. IP based cameras provide an excellent option for security and this app extends their use allowing you to keep an eye on things whilst on the move.
Price: FREE
Link

As mentioned previously, the Windows Phone integration with Bing and the Live services are what helps this phone stand out among its peers and may play a large part in its future success. The following items are not apps but integrated features within the OS that work exceptionally well and can prove invaluable whilst out in the field.

Office Hub

The Office hub provides excellent mobile office apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the ever popular OneNote. I live in OneNote and much prefer this to carrying around a notebook and pencil, an excellent note taking app regardless of your situation.

Maps

Finding new addresses is always a daunting task but Bing Maps makes the whole process a lot easier, I did have concerns about how it would stand up against Google Maps on other smartphones but I needn’t have worried. If you have a phone holder in the car it even serves well as (very temporary) sat-nav replacement provided that there is decent data coverage of course. Mileage is presented to the user but is not recorded so I use OneNote to take down mileage and the phones multi-tasking features make it easy to flick between the two apps.

Office 365

Microsofts cloud based service Office 365 was made for Windows Phone, whether you need an Exchange based email service, SharePoint file access then you simply cannot go wrong. Email access is powerful and SharePoint makes easy work of file collaboration with colleagues and clients. Office 365 is beyond the scope of this article but I do urge you to check it out.

SkyDrive

Cloud based file access with SkyDrive is simple and easy and was a missing key feature in the original release. I now store all my client notes and access them from the cloud whilst onsite where necessary using the free SkyDrive service.

Bing – Local Scout

Nowhere near home or the office? Need that coffee to see you through the next appointment? Then the local scout integrated with the Bing Search app is what you need. Food/Drink located and mapped in a couple of moments … a true techy life saver.

45,000 apps compared to 500,000 is quite a small number and Microsoft has some way to go before it’s covering all our technical needs. There’s no news on an official DropBox app (although there are plenty of alternative third party DropBox apps available) and presently there’s no word on how Skype will integrate with the phone. But I sense these things and other much needed apps are not too far away. 45,000 whilst comparatively small is still too large for one tech to cover so if there’s anything I’ve missed that you feel deserves a mention then please comment and let us know.

Guest Post by Ric Chapman: Ric has been in the IT support business for 12 years driven by his love of tech and passion to help others. Ric carries several certifications from both Microsoft and CompTIA and worked in a myriad of support environments, that experience he now puts into developing his own IT consultancy business.

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To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit. 17 Useful Windows Phone Tools For Computer Technicians

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3 Ways for Computer Technicians to take Advantage of the Mass Adoption of Tablets

Authors: Bryce Whitty

The computer market is constantly changing and one of the big changes in recent times was the introduction of cheap netbooks like the Asus EEEPC. Now we are seeing the mass adoption of tablets like the Apple iPad and in both cases, some computer technicians have expressed fear that this will reduce the amount of desktops and laptops we have to repair.

It is quite possible that they will change the computer repair scene but I don’t see it as a problem, I see it as an opportunity. Most industries are constantly evolving and the repair work we do needs to be slightly altered to keep up.

In this article, I’ll show you three ways to take advantage of mass adoption of tablets.

 

Setup & Syncronization

We all know that tablets can be used for watching movies and playing some games, but the real power comes from when they are hooked up to other devices and services. It could be connected to the internet so clients can download their emails, stay current with the news, watch their stocks and know what the weather is going to be today.

You would think that if a client was this well connected that they would probably know how to set all of this up themselves, but with the simplicity of the Apple iPad, there is a huge generation of people entering the digital realm that previously wouldnt go anywhere near it. As intuitive as these modern devices are, they still need someone to enter their POP and SMTP settings, they still need to hook it up to their wireless (if they have one at all) and still need to setup an account with the App store.

A good example of this is one of my clients who has an iMac, iPhone, iPad and she would be an intermediate user who knows how to use most of the functions. When I was called out there was a few problems she wanted me to look at but one of them was that she wanted her emails to appear on all three devices because with the current setup, if the iMac opened it first it would not appear on the other two devices.

All I had to do was turn on the “leave a copy on server for X days” option in her iMacs email application. It is simple work for you and I, but there are so many people who dont know there is even an option like this. Apple claims that the devices “just work” and stand alone they are pretty good, but they dont always play nice with other software which means there is plenty of work in this area.

Education

As intuitive as tablet operating systems are, plenty of people still dont know how to use the device. They are well aware of what it is capable of thanks to the commercials but have no idea how to actually do it. In my personal experience with iPad clients, most people wanted to be able to check their email, check the weather and maybe play some music.

I would show them how to download an application if their device needed it to use those features (after setting up their app store accounts), showed them that there is now an icon on the home screen, press this and then that. I billed many hours this way and the clients loved me for it because their children and grandchildren would either go through it all too quickly for them to learn or get frustrated trying to teach them.

Hardware Repairs

Last but not least, tablets are portable and they will get damaged so there is an opportunity in repairing them. There are many resources out there to learn how to repair tablets but one of the best I have found is the iFixit.com tablet section. They have instructions for repairing Apple iPads, Nooks, Dell Tablets, HP Tablets, Motorola Tablets, RIM Tablets, Amazon Kindle Fires and the original Amazon Kindle. They do have a parts link on the right hand side where you purchase parts, but eBay has far better prices.

Of course, you shouldn’t learn the basics on your clients expensive devices. Instead, buy some broken devices and spare parts on eBay for dirt cheap, fix them and learn along the way. You can even sell the fixed device afterwards and make money from your education.

I don’t see the mass adoption of tablets as a threat to our industry, just an opportunity. They dont replace Desktops and Laptops, but work along side them and actually pulls people further into our world with a heavier reliance on technology.

© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their Computer Business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit. 3 Ways for Computer Technicians to take Advantage of the Mass Adoption of Tablets

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