How To Discover Your Perfect Domain Name

Before you set up shop on the internet, you need to find a home… page. The domain name (www.yourname.com) becomes like your physical address. It’s a big pain to pick up and move, so you want to choose the right name at the outset. Here are some tips and tools for finding your new web home.

First, let’s talk about the extension. This is the final few letters of a domain name. .COM, .NET, and .ORG are the big three. (Actually, those three are called Top-Level Domains or TLD) Originally, they stood for Commercial (business), Network (like an internet provider), and Organization (non-profit) but due to mixed use and the real-estate value of names, those meanings have basically fallen to the wayside. Ideally you want to find a .COM name. In the minds of your customers, it’s the standard. If they don’t know your website, the first thing they will guess is yourcompany.com. Even if you have a .NET domain on your business card, there’s a good chance of people typing in .COM first, just by habit. It’s worth getting a different .COM domain name rather than settling for a .NET. (Although, at about $8 per year, I encourage you to pick up multiple variations of your domain name)

The other domain extension you may consider is a country code. Every country in the world has its own domain extension. I have a .CA domain for Canada. You’ve also likely visited a .CO.UK for a site in the United Kingdom. I don’t recommend going outside your own country for a domain (to avoid confusion) but certainly check out the options.

Now comes the task of finding a domain name that is available! Chances are, the domain you really want (RyanIsCool.com) is already gone, and you need to do some creative adaptation to find a match. There are two tools I use in the hunt for a new domain. Hop on the internet and go to http://www.whois.sc/ . They offer a tool called the Name Spinner. When I type in a couple words like “your company” it tells me the availability of domain names using those words. (While yourcompany.com is taken, it offers suggestions like shopyourcompany.com and yourboxcompany.com… both of which are available) If you want to get serious, click on the next tab for the Domain Explorer. This offers a more advanced search, and more results.

The other tool I mentioned will save you when you hit a dead end on finding a good domain. It’s the new version of an old book… http://www.thesaurus.com/ ! You can find other related words to use in your search for an available domain name, and perhaps stumble upon a better name that you had to begin with.

Tips and Tricks For Higher Page Rank

Myth #1: The Higher Your Google PageRank (PR), the Higher You’ll be in the Search Results Listing

This myth is frequent, and is the source of many complaints. People often notice that a site with a lower PageRank than theirs is listed above them, and get upset. While pages with a higher PageRank do tend to rank better, it is perfectly normal for a site to appear higher in the results listings even though it has a lower PageRank than competing pages.

To explain this concept without going into too much technical detail, it is best to think of PageRank as being comprised of two different values. One value, which we’ll call “General PageRank” is nothing more than the weighting given to the links on your page. This is also the value shown in the Google Toolbar. This value is used to calculate the weighting of the links leaving your page, not your search position.

The other value we’ll call “Specific PageRank.” You see, if PageRank equated to search engine results rank then Yahoo, the site with the highest PR, would be listed #1 for every search result. Obviously, that wouldn’t be useful, so what Google does is examine the context of your incoming links, and only those links that relate to the specific keyword being searched on will help you achieve a higher ranking for that keyword. It’s very possible for a site with a lower PageRank to in fact have more on-topic incoming links than a site with a higher PageRank, in which case the site with a lower PageRank will be listed above its competitor in the search results for that term.

PageRank aside, there are also other factors that contribute Google search results — though PageRank remains the dominant one.

Myth #2: The Google Toolbar will List Your Actual PageRank

When Google created their toolbar it was a boon for many Webmasters as this was the first time we got to see any value related to our PageRank. However, the toolbar has also caused some confusion.

The toolbar does not show your actual PageRank, only an approximation of it. It gives you an integer rank on a scale from 1-10. We do not know exactly what the various integers correspond to, but we’re sure that their curve is similar to an exponential curve with each new “plateau” being harder to reach than the last. I have personally done some research into this, and so far the results point to an exponential base of 4. So a PR of 6 is 4 times as difficult to attain as a PR of 5.

The exponential base is important because it illustrates how broad a range of pages can be assigned a particular PR value. The difference between a high PR of 6, and a low PR of 6, could be hundreds or thousands of links. So if your PR as reported by the toolbar increases or drops, it’s important to remember that it could be the result of a small change, or a large change. Additionally, it’s possible to lose or gain links and see no change in your reported PageRank.

The other issue with the toolbar has to do with the fact that sometimes the PageRank it displays is only a guess. People will often notice pages on Geocities or another free hosting provider having a high PageRank. This is because when Google hasn’t spidered a page, but has spidered the root domain, the toolbar will guess a PageRank based on the value of the root domain. Therefor it’s common to see pages on Geocities with a PR of 6 or 7. The PageRank does not equate in any way to a high Google listing, in fact in this case it indicates the opposite: that the page isn’t even in Google. Once Google spiders the page, it will be assigned a more appropriate (and usually lower) PageRank.

Myth # 3: PageRank is a Value Based on the Number of Incoming Links to Your Site

This myth is a frequent source of incorrect assumptions about Google. People will often see that a site with fewer incoming links than their own site has a higher PageRank, and assume that PageRank is not based on incoming links.

The fact is that PageRank is based on incoming links, but not just on the number of them. Instead PageRank is based on the value of your incoming links. To find the value of an incoming link look at the PR of the source page, and divide it by the number of links on that page. It’s very possible to get a PR of 6 or 7 from only a handful of incoming links if your links are “weighty” enough.

Also remember that for PageRank calculations every page is an island. Google does not calculate PageRank on a site-wide basis — so internal links between your pages do count. This is very important, as instituting a proper structure for your internal links can drastically improve your rankings.

Myth # 4: Searching for Incoming Links on Google Using “link:” will Show you all Your Backwards Links

Similar to Myth #3, people will sometimes look for backwards links to a site on Google and fine none, but if the site does have a PR listed and it is in Google’s cache, they know that the toolbar isn’t just guessing.

The reason for this is that Google does not list all the links that it knows about, only those that contribute above a certain amount of PageRank. This is especially evident in a brand new site. By default, all pages in Google have a minimum PR. So even a page without any incoming links has a PR value, albeit a small one. If you have a brand new site with 20 or 30 pages, all of which Google has spidered, but you have no incoming links from other sites, then your pages will still have a PageRank resulting from these internal links. As your home page is likely linked to from every page on your site, it might even get a PageRank of up to 1 or 2 from all these little boosts. However, in this situation searching for incoming links will likely yield 0 results.

You can also see this happening on pages that have been around for awhile. For instance, this page has 0 incoming links listed in Google, yet it has a PageRank of 3. We can see that Google has spidered it by checking its cache, so the PageRank is not a guess. We also know that Google has spidered this page, again by checking its cache. Therefore, we can be sure that Google knows of at least 1 link to the page in question, both by its listed PR, and the fact that Google has spidered a page that links to it.

However, if you look at the DMOZ.org page with the Google Toolbar installed, you’ll notice the page has a PR of 0, which is very low. Furthermore, if you count the number of links on the page, you’ll notice it has over 20. So you’re dividing a very low PR among over 20 links. Thus each link carries very little weight, so Google doesn’t list these links when you search for them. However, Google does count the links, which is why the page in question has a PR listed.

It’s very important to remember how Google lists incoming links. Often, people see their number of incoming links drop, and they think they have lost those links. In reality, the linking page could have lost some weight and consequentially, the links might have dropped below the value threshold that’s required in order for links to be listed. Or the linking page could have added more links, causing each link’s share of the weight to be lower, and again causing the link to drop below the value threshold. In either case the link is still counted, it just isn’t listed.

Why does Google do this? Perhaps the answer has to do with technical limitations. If the average number of links per page is 20 then Google would have to deal with over 60 billion links, which might create an index that was too large to be publicly searchable.

10 Smart Ways to Protect Your Computer against Viruses

Virus infection on your computer may cause a very serious damage and even loss on your business. You can just imagine it may wreck your system registry or your entire computer (with all your receivables data on it!) or all your HTML programs! It will come to total black out screen, it will not boot at all. But that is actually the worse scenario that may happen. Are you going to wait for this worse scenario in your life to happen? I guess NOT, right?

Here are the 10 smart ways that I personally do to protect my computers against viruses, malicious dialers and spywares.

(1)If you are using Windows XP, always turn on the firewall.

(2)Always run all necessary latest updates & service packs (all windows! including all your programs & software!—keep them updated)

(3)Run your anti-virus program everyday (some do it every week) There are many virus programs that you can get for free scanning.

(4)Run your anti-spyware/adaware once a week (I run Spybot Search & Destroy & Lavasoft Adware Personal — they are shareware, meaning it’s free!). What I do is that, I run the Lavasoft Adware first, then run the Spybot Search and Destroy (I also run it with “immunize” tool). These two tools are always on top of my desktop for easy access.

(5)Turn on the pop-up blocker – this feature is available on Windows XP (you can see this under tools>Internet Options >Privacy>click Block Pop Ups. In addition to this, I also download another pop up blocker, the Google Toolbar. I find their pop up blocker the most effective in blocking pop ups.

(6)Never open mails that are suspicious to you or not known to you. If they are in your bulk mail, send it back to your provider as “spam”! I never enable my bulk mail. I automatically delete emails from my bulk mail.

(7)When using messenger (IM) services, be very careful with files being sent through instant messenger. Rather choose to have it emailed it to you. Most of email services now has virus check and clears it if the file has virus or not.

(8)Be very careful when downloading files or any programs from the internet, pay attention on the instructions while downloading it. Downloading may sometimes cause error on the system registry or the entire computer system (one example, my nephew got his computer badly infected with viruses because of heavy downloading of games and music! – I guess!)

(9)Be careful with files that come from a floppy disk or any other external storage when you open it in your CD ROM of floppy drive. You should know its source, or better yet, when you insert it, have it scanned with your anti-virus program before you open the files.

(10)Run defragmentation, disk clean up, registry scanner at least once a week. You can find defragmentation by simply pointing your mouse on drive C: (which is usually the hard disk main logical drive)> right click the mouse>click on properties>click on tools>click on defragment now!

There are so many shareware on the internet that you can get for free! (that is the reason it is a shareware!). Keeping your computer healthy can make you more productive (if you have a business!) or it will make you enjoy more surfing and browsing the internet!

About the Author: Pinky Mcbanon is a Systems Engineer and a Medical Biller/Coder.

What Is SEO? And Some Of Its Techniques

What is SEO (search engine optimization)? SEO is the things you do in order to optimize your page so that it gets picked up with high rankings in the search engines. First of all you must learn about the terms.

Keywords are the words you use to target visitors to your site. Keywords are used in the html code in meta tags, as well as your page content. Be sure to keep your page rich with content targeting your keywords.

Anchor text is the actual text used for a link. Anchor text is very important because is a factor in the search engines picking up your site. And try to use Anchor text for your most targeted keywords.

White Hat SEO is a term used for seo practice that is the “right way” to do it. White hat seo is the way ethical webmasters follow, and is the best way to go if you want to stay out of trouble.

Black Hat SEO is the term used for the type of seo that is usually frowned upon, such as cloaking, or keyword stuffing. Some may call black hat seo to be cheating, and in some cases it may get you banned from search engines or other programs, and once you are banned it is very difficult to get back in if even possible.

One very important thing you absolutely need if you want to get top ranking in search engines is inbound links. Search engines will look for other sites that are linking to you, and depending on how many sites link to you and thier search engine ranking, that will be one factor determining your page rank. If you have lots of links from high ranked, well known sites, you will be much better off than if you just had incoming links from your family or friend’s sites. One thing you may need to do is to actually e-mail those sites with high page ranking asking them to add your link, now you need to do this professionally and telling them you will put their link of your site as well is a good idea. In order to find out a site’s page ranking you could download the gogle toolbar for free and they have a nice feature telling you the current page’s ranking, from 0 to 10.

You need to make sure that your site does not have excssive outbound links, this will give your site a negative affect on your search engine results.

Some experts say that it is a good idea to use dashes or underscores in your urls. This way the search engine spider programs will be able to read each word in the title and web address, giving your keywords a better chance if (and they should be) they are in your title. And you should also try to avoid using a url address that isn’t “clean looking” such as “yoursite.com/articles.php/id=123″ instead it should look like “yoursite.com/article-name/123.html as this has been known to help.

The SEO favorite is web content. One of the big factors for optimization is your page content, and better yet, unique content. It is a good idea to place relevant articles on your page, and you need to be sure it is unique content. If the search engine spider programs find your page and see on it content that it has seen on other sites, it will not place much importance on your page and this will only hurt your chances of placing highly on search results.

And it is important that you constantly update your site, because that is one thing search engines look for. If they see that your site updates regularly that will score nicely because it apears as if there are things of importance for you to always be updating.

I wish the best of luck to you and your site.

What is SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and how it works ?

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a security protocol to provide security and privacy between web server and website browser. SSL is widely used by millions of websites to protect online transaction with customers. To connect to secure pages you have to access site using https. Firstly, you need to install ssl certificate on your site then able access secure pages on your site.

To install ssl certificate .csr .crt .ca-bundle and .key files are required. .csr and .key files are provided by your web hosting provider and .cert and .ca-bundle files provided by your ssl provider. CSR certificate is required at SSL provider to generate ssl certificate.

When you try to access ssl certificate for any site browser request to digital certificate for authority, it checks certificate is valid and related to site which is added in browser. Then browser uses public key to symmetric encryption key and request web pages through encrypted url. Web server decrypts symmetric encryption key using private .key to decrypt the request url. Web server sends back requested url and http data in encrypted format then browser decrypt it first and then display the website content in browser.

When you access any site through https, you will see a padlock at the right hand corner click on the padlock to verify the certificate. SSL certificate contains following information domain name, company name, address, city, state, and country and most important is display expiry date of the certificate and certificate provider. If there is any problem with domain name or certificate authority(CA) then browser instantly give error/warning messages.