Category: information

Are Directory Submission Facilities Worth the Effort?

Online directories used to be a good way to find items of interest on the Internet. But since the search engines became highly efficient, online directories have not been needed for general searching.  Search engines are the starting point for most users of the World Wide Web and directories are out of favour.

There are online services that will submit your website listing to hundreds or even thousands of online directories and they make it sound as if it’s the best way to get your website noticed.  But search engines pay little attention to directories and few people use them and directories don’t feature much in recommended search engine optimisation for your website, so the value is questionable.

Free and Paid Listings

While most online directories all offer a free listing option, they will try to upsell you to a paid option – this is generally a range packages available for a monthly fee. For example $25 might get you a listing with a logo and a website link, whereas $50 might guarantee you an entry in the top half of their search results page.

A free, basic listing can be useful just for the sake of another return link to your website, but it’s difficult to justify paying for an entry unless it’s a niche directory that is still much used by people searching in that niche.  This true for some trade directories that list for example architects or plumbers.

If your entry in a business directory is to your profile on the directory then this is unlikely to help your position in the main search engines as only the secondary link is to your website.

A paid listing will give you more visibility on the directory but probably be no better for the main search engines.

Maybe you know good reasons why business directory listings are worth paying for?

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

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How to Improve Your TikTok Family Security

As with other popular social media networks, you need to be careful what you put in your TikTok profile, the various privacy settings, who you allow to see your posts and what you choose to post.

Family Safety Mode

TikTok has a Family Safety Mode to let a parent link their TikTok account to their child’s. Once connected, parents can use the Digital Wellbeing features, which include:

  • Screen Time Management: how long their child can spend on TikTok each day.
  • Direct Messages:who can send message to their child’s account or turn off direct messages completely.
  • Restricted Mode:restrict types of content that isn’t appropriate for a child.

TikTok Security Tips for Families with Children

  • Set Your Child’s Account to Private: On the discoverability page of your child’s TikTok account, set the page to private. This means that people the child doesn’t know won’t be able to read the posts
  • Set Time Limits:  This is part of the “Digital Wellbeing” feature and lets you restrict the total time spent on the APP
  • Set Restricted Mode: This will block any adult content and should have a password set to avoid anyone but you undoing it.
  • Set up Family Pairing: This links all of your family’s accounts so you can see the content and communications with your child.
  • Report Bad Behaviour: Teach your child how to report a user who does something inappropriate or anything considered bullying on TikTok.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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What Do the Scamwatch Stats Tell Us?

The graph below shows the most common scams being reported in Australia according to Scamwatch.

These scams are common across the world although the relative percentage of claims for each does vary between countries. The exact definition of, for example, investment scam also affects how the figures are reported in each country.

Investment scams shows the highest figure but in this case it includes any situation where the scammer offers something of high value in return for a small payment – not always what you would call an ‘investment’.

These percentages are relatively stable year to year except for scammers reacting to evens such as the Coronavirus pandemic, giving room for new scams and typically major catastrophes that scammers jump on.

If you have suffered any of these scams do let me know, by email.

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A Breakdown by Age of Scam Victims

Scammers hit people of all ages, usually with the same scams but some scams are targeted at specific age ranges e.g. retirement scams.

This graph shows the number of percentage of reports to Scamwatch by age group.

The age group 65+ shows the greatest prevalence of scams but that may just be that there are more people in that age group than the others.

Men and women tend to fall for slightly different scams, but there is little difference in the numbers reporting scams overall.

If you have any experiences with scams do let me know, by email.

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Stay Secure on TikTok

As with other popular social media networks, you need to be careful what you put in your TikTok profile, the various privacy settings, who you allow to see your posts and what you choose to post.

Here are some tips:

  • Make your account private: Any content you post on the account is only visible to people who you connect with on the app.
  • Only allow friends to send messages: Do not accept messages from strangers on TikTok.
  • Don’t suggest your account to others: This is about whether you want others to see your account. TikTok’s privacy features let you choose whether you want your account to be suggested to others. This will also stop your TikTok account from coming up in search engine results (unless you want that to happen).
  • Don’t let people download your videos: If you’re going to the trouble of making videos you don’t want people downloading them and using them for their own purposes.
  • Limit comments: Unless you really want to know other people’s uninformed opinions.
  • Set Two Factor Authentication: This provides better protection than just a password but can be more time consuming.

If you have any experiences with TikTok security do let me know, by email.

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