Shop and do business safely on the Internet. Firefox gets a fresh update of web forgery sites 48 times in a day, so if you try to visit a fraudulent site that’s pretending to be a site you trust (like your bank), a browser message—big as life—will stop you.
Most website owners know that organic search engine results are the best way to get visitors to their site. Organic search engine results are the websites that come up when a user searches on one of the major search engines such as Google, MSN, or Yahoo. Internet users trust these search results much more than paid advertising and a large percentage of most website’s traffic comes from this source. This is why it is important to know how to get your website ranked high in search engines.
Search engine optimization is the process through which web site owners improve their chances of being ranked high in organic search engine listings. There are many ways to do this, including the use of content and keywords on the site, properly using meta tags, and building links. Theses are just a few of the ways that you can help your website rank high, and if you are serious about getting on the first page of listings, here are some more search engine optimization tips.
One of the most important things you can do to optimize your website is to add quality keyword rich content. Most people think of articles when they think of content, and while articles are a great way to add keywords and value to your site, content can also include descriptions, headings, and alternate image tags. You can include relevant keywords in all of these areas that will help to boost your search engine ranking. Just make sure that you use keywords in the proper context.
Another way to boost your search engine ranking is to create links on your site to other related sites and to build a network of links from other sites to your site. Links help to boost your search engine rankings because the programs or spiders that search engines use to index sites will come across these links and they will add value to your site.
An often overlooked way to boost search engine rankings is meta tags. While meta tags are not as important today as they were during the internet’s early years, using meta tags properly will help to boost your search engine rankings. Meta tags are part of your website’s html code and appear at the top of each page in the header tag. You can include keywords in the meta tags that will help to get your site ranked higher. Be sure to use keywords specific to each individual page as you fill them in for your entire site.
One of the fastest growing sectors of the Internet is eCommerce. People are becoming accustomed to buying things from Internet store fronts and every year the volume and value of sales increases substantially. If you would like to open up your own eCommerce web site here are a few basics to get you started.
The first thing you need, obviously, is a product or service that you can sell. If you already have a brick and mortar store you can offer the same items for sale on a web site. The number of products that you sell is a big factor in the type of hosting package you need. If you have let’s say less than 20 items, you could set the whole thing up on a very small hosting account. Listing hundreds of products is a different story – you will probably need more disk space, more bandwidth, and more features such as databases and a secure connection for accepting payments.
Since the most important part of eCommerce is getting paid, let’s look at the various payment options available. There are two basic options – collecting payment information directly or hiring a third-party service to process credit cards.
Just about anybody can create a presence on the Internet. Building a web site can be as simple as using a word processor, but once you have the site you need a way to publish it on the World Wide Web. This is where web-hosting companies come in.
A web host rents you disk space and provides all the services necessary for others to see your web site on the Internet. Barring technical problems, a web host operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that anybody in the world can access your web site at any time.
There are literally thousands of web hosts to choose from so choosing an appropriate host can be a difficult task. The prices range from free to hundreds of dollars a year. Hosting companies can offer a multitude of services that can be confusing to a newcomer. This series of articles will help you to sort out all the information available and give you the confidence to make the proper decision about choosing a web host.
Free or Paid?
There are plenty of hosting companies that provide free hosting, so why bother paying for it? The old adage ‘You get what you pay for’ is just as valid in the electronic age as it was 100 years ago. In web hosting, when you pay nothing you sometimes end up with nothing.
Most free web hosts offer limited services. Even though they are not charging you to host your website, they still need to make money. They often do this by placing advertising on your site. You probably won’t have any control over what kind of ads show up – it’s a matter of take it or leave it.
In addition, free hosts may restrict the content you place on your site. You may not be allowed to sell things or have certain content such as videos or music. Finally, your web site could simply disappear overnight. New companies that offer free hosting pop up almost everyday, but they also vanish with astonishing regularity. When your hosting company vanishes, your web site goes with it.
If you are serious about having a web site you need to use a reliable web host. Prices range considerably – some companies offer rates as low as $2 a month while others charge $60 or more. Be careful, though. High rates don’t always translate as high service. Some of the lower priced hosts offer reliable, stable environments that allow your website to be accessed day in day out for years.
Generally speaking the more you pay the more you get. Higher rates should bring you more storage space, more bandwidth to handle Internet traffic, and more services such as databases, email accounts, mass mailers, and the ability to add custom scripts. Higher rates can also mean better technical service if you have problems with your website.
What is a Web Server?
Whichever hosting company you choose, it helps to understand some of the technical details about their service. Every host has dedicated computers called servers which connect to the Internet and ’serve’ pages when they are requested. That is, whenever anyone wants to see a certain web page by clicking on a link the request is sent to the particular server where that web page is stored. The server responds by sending HTML data across the Internet. A web server must have fast connections to be able to serve pages quickly. For the greatest speed and reliability try to find a host that has multiple high-speed connections as well as reliable back up power supplies in case of power outages
Blogs are the fastest growing class of websites on the internet. No longer the sole domain of teenagers and the love lorn, blogs are now an established form of internet communication.
The online business community has recently discovered the power of blogging, and as such are faced with raising the blog site’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As a direct result of some of the blog characteristics, high search rankings are readily available for the careful blog writer.
Like any other website, blogs have techniques for search engine optimization (SEO), many of them the same as for traditional static websites, and many of them unique to blogs. Among the issues faced by some bloggers is the abundance of free blog hosting sites.
Not requiring any initial cash outlay, the free blog hosts have literally millions of blogs on their books. One of the most popular is the Google owned blog host Blogger.
Note that in this article, the capitalized word Blogger refers to the blog hosting company, while the lower case generic term blogger indicates the blog writer. Confusion between the two words will be avoided as much as possible.
Like all free web hosts, Blogger hosted blogs face unique optimization challenges. Unlike sites where the domain name is owned by the webmaster, free blog hosts maintain ownership of the blog. In fact, the blog name is a sub-domain of the blog host, making value from the blog URL a less powerful optimization tool.
Despite the limitations faced by a blog hosted by Google owned Blogger, there are many very powerful optimization techniques available to the blogger. As we will see, blogs have some optimization methods, that are only available to blogs in general, regardless of host.
When considering the optimization techniques to apply to blogs, the basics of fresh keyword rich content, theme relevance, incoming links, and link anchor text all apply to blogs. In that sense optimization for blogs is no different from other websites.
On the other hand, some additional methods and some restrictions in the choice of techniques are involved as well. The various restrictions are often a direct result of the placement of the blog on the free host.
In this case study, the free host is Blogger. These shortcomings must always be kept in mind, when considering the best course, to fully optimize your blog.
Free Blogger hosting for your blog
Blogger enables you to host your blog on their server for free. As a very simple use interface system, even a novice with absolutely no programming or blogging experience of any kind, can be fully operational in a matter of minutes. The procedure for starting a blog is very simple, and takes only minutes to complete.
The Blogger server offers the choice of having a free standing blog as a separate website, or the option of writing your daily posts on the Blogger interface, and file transfer them to your existing website via the built in FTP feature.
Blogger provides a choice of pre-written templates for the blog layout, but all of them are changeable to include different color combinations and page formats.
Blogger freely permits the use of third party add on features, including commenting systems, track back, visitor counters, RSS site feeds, and most scripts often seen incorporated into traditional websites.
Note that Blogger offers all of those necessary blogging functions, including a site feed through Atom, with the exception of track back, in its blogging service package. Other third party feeds can be freely added to the Blogger template. I use several on my blogs.
The user is under no obligation to use the Blogger supplied versions, however. The company agreement does require that the Blogger logo icon remain on all of the pages, however.
When choosing a URL for the blog, it will appear as http://yourblogname.blogspot.com or if you prefer, as http://www.yourblogname.blogspot.com making the blog URL a sub-domain of the Blogger system.
The main domain is indicated by the “blogspot.com portion of the URL. With being a sub-domain, there are some unique, but not insurmountable challenges to optimization, as we shall see.
A Blogger user is not restricted in the choice of blog titles, and careful title and URL selection can help greatly in the optimization process. Many blogs suffer from having very poorly selected titles, that contain no relevance to the overall blog theme. Keep that in mind when selecting a title.
Keywords within the blog title and URL are very powerful in ranking well, with a blog component, especially as a sub-domain from the Blogger host.
After creating a blog title, and selecting a blog template to be customized later, the Blogger registration process is completed. A new blog writer is ready to begin writing blog columns, which are referred to as posts.
Optimization and SEO power of blogs
Contrary to what many people believe, Google does not give preference to blogs hosted on Blogger, despite Google’s ownership of the popular blog service.
As a result, bloggers using the Blogger hosting system are on even footing with bloggers using other free or paid blog hosting services, and with blogs hosted under an owned domain name, or as part of an owned domain website. The playing field for optimization is as level as possible for bloggers using a sub-domain of Blogger, and for other bloggers as well.
Blogs rank well in the search engines by their very nature. They are regularly updated with keyword rich content. Most blog writers stick to a main theme for their blogs making relevance easy. Because of the blog’s versatility, the blogger can add more themes to the blog and tie them together, enabling a blog to maintain several strong themes.
Blogs are also link magnets, mainly from other similarly themed blogs. It is not unusual for a blog to receive a Google PageRank 4 or 5 after being live on the internet for only one month. The theme relevant links are often placed right in blog posts, and contain powerful link anchor text.
One way inbound links to blogs are freely given by other bloggers as many blog writers are not concerned about search engine rankings. As a result, the competitive level of the sought after keywords is not as strong as its overall potential, based on sheer numbers of blogs.
Bloggers maintain large link lists, called blogrolls, that usually sit on the blog’s home page. The weakness of the blog link lists is their volume, providing less than optimal PageRank and link popularity passage, as it’s divided among large numbers of receiving blogs and websites.
What the blog link popularity lacks in amount of what is passed along, is made up for in theme relevance and quantity. Blog links are literally a volume business. Note that reciprocal blog links don’t appear to suffer any downgrading, as is often the case for static sites. Incoming links, including reciprocal links, are effective for blogs.
On page blog optimization techniques
Blogs are optimized using the same techniques as static websites. Keep in mind that a blog is simply another website. What works in the search engines for other sites will also work for optimizing a blog.
Blogger assists the blog writer by building in many optimization features, that enable a blog to compete in less competitive searches, even if no other optimization techniques are applied.
The blog title is important, and should be chosen carefully to reflect the topics and themes of the blog. Many blog titles are frivolous, and provide little search engine value. Including at least one important keyword in the title is recommended.
The title is important as it forms part of the URL sub-domain. Combining a keyword enriched title with the blog URL is often enough to compete for non-competitive searches.
As the regular posts are added to the blog, each one generates a unique page with its own URL. Since the blog title forms part of that URL, it’s important that it contain some keyword, as the blog title is at the front of the URL.
The individual page URL contains all of a short blog post headline, and most of some longer ones. For that reason, place the targeted keywords early in a blog post headline to ensure their conclusion. Blogger publishes the page URLs, with the headline words separated by dashes, in accordance with the Google preference for dashes over underscores.
The blog title tags are readily and easily changed in Blogger, to reflect any targeted keywords and phrases. Because the blog itself is a website sub-domain, altering the title tag is a very powerful option for any blogger to utilize.
The Blogger supplied templates are pre-written with h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 tags. The headings are placed in the heading tags automatically, providing an instant search engine advantage for the blog. The templates are fully CSS compatible and welcome both additional CSS and html coding.
Blogs are well crawled by the major and lesser known search engine spiders. Because the posts are so frequent, the spiders return to reindex the blog, on at least a daily basis.
By pinging the blog, which is notifying the specialized blog search engines and RSS aggregators of an update, the blog reaches a huge audience including media outlets. A good one stop multiple site pinger is Ping-O-Matic.
Three very powerful optimization tools are missing from Blogger templates, and would be very helpful in improving searches for Blogger hosted blogs.
One missing item is categories. Blogger users can’t place their posts into theme related categories. The ability of other blog hosts to provide categories gives those blogs a bit of a theme related SEO advantage. That is to say nothing of the benefit to the blog readers of neatly organized categories for related links.
Blogger doesn’t provide a related links feature that lets readers find additional posts on the same blog topic. Another benefit to readers, and to the search engines due to the loss of an internal link, is missed by Blogger.
The latest statistical figures released by the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center reveals that China is due to surpass the United States as the nation with the most Internet users, some time this year.
The figure reported by the Chinese government institution was a 53 percent jump from 137 million Chinese Internet users reported at this time last year. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: China says number of Internet users rises to 210 million, could overtake US this year
“Currently China’s online population is about 50 million less than that of the United States and is the world’s second-largest,” the agency, also known as CNNIC, said on its Web site. “CNNIC forecasts that (China) will become the largest online country in 2008,” it said.
The U.S. Census Bureau said last year that about 218 million of the country’s 310 million people used the Internet.
China promotes Internet use for education and business but tries to block the public from seeing material deemed pornographic or that opposes communist rule.
This latest figure only consolidates the fact that China is a very ripe market for web hosting. With a population of 1,323,128,240 [over 1.3 billion], China currently ranks as the most populous country in the world with the USA coming 3rd after India. China’s current population is 19.83% of the world’s total population whilst that of the USA is 4.55%. Economists are predicting that China and India would be the world’s next super-powers in as soon as ten years time, going by the strong annual economic growth the two countries have been marking over the years.
Having realised all the above-stated points, many of the leading dot-com companies have opened shop in China to reap from the economic windfall: Google, Paypal, ebay, Microsoft, Yahoo etc
Now, China is not exactly a virgin market if the figures by WebHosting.info are anything to go by. Chinese web hosts share 2,735,314 domains amongst themselves whilst Chinese ICANN-accredited registrars have registered 3,275,345 generic domain names.
My point is simple: web hosting firms in other parts of the world that can target a section of their marketing website at the Chinese population stand to reap economic benefits from China’s fast-growing Internet population. A website with a Chinese language version would be a first step though its important to point that many educated Chinese individuals can handle the English language fairly well. Read my previous post for some more ideas about how to go about this: SEO Web Hosting and how its good for you
Google have recently released a Google Earth plug-in and API. So now you can easily view Google Earth-based applications – with functionality defined by the developer of a site – in your (Windows) browser. It’s like a framework for Google Maps browser-only application. I’ve tried using it in Internet Explorer and it works like a
Putting a very thin silver lining on the dark cloud of petroleum dependency, Google’s Vint Cerf (who is commonly referred to as the father of the Internet), made a statement at the 2008 OECD Ministerial Meeting in Korea about how high oil prices could be seen as beneficial to the Internet.
“Although I’m not happy with increased oil prices, the Internet (industry) may actually benefit from that as people turn to it as an aid to improve their efficiency,” said Vinton Cerf, vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, at a press conference.
The rise in oil prices is slowing some global economic growth and making it very difficult for those dependent on gas and oil to live, however Google feels that the need for businesses to save money and cut corners may fuel innovation.
“We may turn increasingly to video conferencing or other kinds of electronic media in order to avoid having to travel,” Cerf said.
Cerf also noted that there may be more use of “computational capabilities” for calculating car and aircraft routes to minimize petroleum usage.
High oil prices are also going to have a positive effect on Google outside of their search business, as the company is investing heavily in alternative and practical renewable energy development like solar generators and other utility oriented investments.
We have seen a large number of computers coming in with problems navigation on the Internet. Also unable to go to Windows update and virus update sites. Here is a quick fix that also seems to speed navigation up some.
Just for safety create a copy of the file before making changes.
goto
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ (Windows XP)
C:\I386 (Windows 2000)
Open the host with notepad.
remove all entries bellow
127.0.0.1 localhost
then save and close.
The Internet Explorer toolbar looks pretty simple. Want to make it fancy and kewl? Why not add a background image to it. To do this kewl hack launch the Windows Registry Editor and go to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Internet Explorer\Toolbar\.
Now in the right pane create a new String Value and name it BackBitmap and modify it’s value to the path of the Bitmap you want to dress it up with by rightclicking on it and choosing Modify. When you reboot the Internet Explorer and the Windows Explorer toolbars will have a new look.
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