Web design is one of the most popular ways of advertising your business or your own personal interests. The explosion of the internet has been mighty, making it a place where everyone comes to for information about services, products or news. There are web sites that you can use that have web site building wizards; this helps the average internet user to be able to build a web site without having to know the HTML codes.

Web design is what makes each web site individually unique. If you’ve visited different web sites, you’ll notice that many of them have styles and designs that are different than the others. The layout is one of the most important aspects of web design - it is the one that helps your visitors and potential customers access the info on your site.

The key to having a successful web design for your site is to have it simple. A lot of people mistakenly believe that to design a good web site, it has to have lots of graphics and crazy colors, but this isn’t necessarily so. When deciding how to build the site, you should take into consideration the people that will be visiting it. If you own a corporate business that sells IT services, you would likely want a web site that is easy on the eyes, but not too plain. It is important that all the links are easy to find, so that they can easily navigate through the web site and find what they’re looking for.

Having too many graphics and media add-ons, like videos and music could end up slowing down the download of your web site. If the visitor of your web site doesn’t have high speed internet, it could take forever to get onto your web site - then eventually they will leave and visit one of your competitor’s web sites; this is something you are trying to avoid with your web design.

One of the other keys to web design is using codes that will be flexible with different browsers. Not everyone uses the same web browser - some may have Internet Explorer and Firefox, while others may have Safari or Netscape. If you decide to use a web designer, make sure that he or she uses the most up-to-date codes to ensure that different browsers can view your web site properly. A lot of times this happens when one browser can view your site flawlessly, while others may see missing links or non-working links and images.

It is basic to define the meaning of SEO. If you have a great website, but no traffic, then you may need to learn the basics of SEO. Search Engine Optimization is presently a part of an online marketing approach, but it is the primary part. When a search engine user enters a search term into their favorite search engine, those search engines use a ranking system to return websites based on relevance and popularity of the site.

Increasing the density of keywords on site is one of the fastest and simplest ways to add chance of webpage’s visibility in the search engine results Search engine optimization. Using search engine optimization is the best way to get your site noticed by the search engines. Search engine position and keyword related promotion can be counted for 85% to 95% of general web traffic. There are literally hundreds of factors used by the search engines to rank you site and all are important. The technique to great SEO outcomes is to make out exactly what goals you want to achieve and with what priorities. People employs search engine optimization techniques to get large nos. of hits for their sites.

Many people think that the major search engines have virtually every page on the internet indexed. Search engine optimization is an issue of learning as much as you can about search technologies, and tempering the acquired knowledge adding a bit of business knowledge of the search engines themselves. Most people don’t look past the third page of search engine results when they’re searching for something online. Business Intuition helps you to recognize not just what technologies are in position now a day but more importantly where to they are heading. The web page, which may be in place 3 months down the line when your web pages lastly pages finally are completely manifested.

Advanced technologies are always there to discover, understand and reckon from both sides of the search business. The higher your site ranks in the search engines rankings, the more likely the searcher will click on the link and land on your site. Different search engines verify ranking on their own different factors of importance or application. In the recent past the search engine Google has been the famous search engine providing the search results for Yahoo and to a lesser extent MSN and AOL. It is not a well known fact that less percentage of all websites is indexed. Sites that are just copies of other sites won’t be listed, or if they are too new they may be passed over.

The rise in hacking attacks on web servers is increasing and it is important that you understand a few basic facts about web servers and vulnerability security to ensure you protect your hard work from attack.

You’ve chosen your hosting provider, you’ve got the great idea for the website and started to build it but, there are things you need to be aware of concerning web server security issues. So take a few minutes to read this article on web server management and vulnerability security.

If you are developing the website yourself then it is essential that you understand the web server security issues associated with website development. The problem starts the moment you install a web server on your hosting provider account. This action opens a tunnel into your network for the whole world to look through and without vulnerability security you are dead in the water.

Although most people who visit your website are content to shop, a few will try to dig a little deeper into things you don’t want the general public to see on your website such as vulnerabilities, this is where vulnerability security comes in.

Of course you also have the main threat and that is the type of person who specifically wants to see the things they shouldn’t and will attempt to force there way in by any means available to them. The affects can range from the inconvenient, for example the discovery that your web site’s home page has been changed.

To the really damaging problem of theft of your customers personal data and your entire database, plus the inclusion of viruses and Trojans to spread to customers pcs the next time they visit your site. To stop this you must include vulnerability security in your system design.

It’s well known in website security forums that badly designed and updated software opens up possible security holes in your system, also that overly complex software also contains bugs that can be exploited. The problem is web servers are usually large and complex programs that can contain security flaws causing web server security issues and that’s why It’s so important to understand web server management.

CGI scripts can be executed via remote request due to the open architecture of web servers. There is a good chance that any of the CGI scripts installed on your web site could contain bugs or flaws and could be a potential security hole and this is not the problem of your hosting provider.

The general goal for all web developers in relation to web server management and vulnerability security concerning network security of their web servers is to keep the bad guys out and control their database and website. The irony is that the whole idea of a website is to provide the world with access to certain parts of your database and network. A badly configured and maintained website and web server can result in large holes in the most carefully designed firewall. Yet over eager controls can make the website hard to use and not customer friendly.

There is a general opinion by most web users that surfing the web from their home is safe but it is not. Web pages contain such things as active content like ActiveX controls and Java applets. These can introduce the possibility of viruses or other malicious code or software into the user’s system when they are browsing without their knowledge.

Active content can also cause major problems if not controlled properly. ActiveX is not the only problem the mere act of browsing the internet leaves a record of your surfing history for an unscrupulous person to reconstruct an accurate picture of your surfing tastes and habits.

Also the users and web developers implementing web server management need to worry about the lack of confidentiality of the transmitted data across the internet. The protocol (TCP/IP) was not designed to ensure security and so is vulnerable to eavesdropping over the network. Most of the data transmitted over TCP/IP is in the clear.

When a sensitive document is transmitted from the website server to the internet browser or a customer sends their private or personal home banking details to a website someone may be eavesdropping on that transmission.

To help you ensure that you are not taking unnecessary risks with your service and customer data remember these simple tips:

Remove unnecessary services like interpreters - If you don’t need services such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol) remove it. FTP is a protocol that comes with your website server and could be used by hackers. Spend some time analyzing your scripting languages and remove any that are not required for the website.

Make sure you enroll in the security list for your server vendor - You don’t necessarily have to join up with them but you must at least monitor their website on a regular basis for any new patches and make sure you apply them straight away. Also make sure you checkout your operating system for updates and patches as well.

Use strong passwords - Try to avoid easy to guess passwords and use alpha-numeric, this means adding numbers, symbols and capitals to make guessing and cracking much harder. But don’t make the password policy so strict that it makes remembering your password to hard . Make sure you always change the default password and remove unused accounts.

Monitor your server logs - All request and activity on your web server is tracked so review the logs regularly for signs of suspicious behavior.

Segregate you Data - Separate any private customer information from publicly available data by storing them on different machines if you can.

Learn how to configure your server properly - It’s important than you understand the basics about configuring servers so try to limit the executable files to your specific directories and make sure that the source coding cannot be downloaded.

Automatic directory indexing is another service you can disable if you don’t need it. Any automated security tools you can run that are supplied or provided by your OS or web server vendor. Some examples of such tools include Microsoft IIS Lockdown Tool. This will help to identify potential weak spots in your settings.

Check programs for security holes. An area that is particularly prone to security breaches is CGI scripts on web servers especially if the scripts do not validate the user supplied data before trying to accessing operating-system services or system files.

In any business, especially advertising or marketing solutions, I’m sure we have all been asked the question “How Can I Increase My PR”. And in most cases I think the person asking the question is thinking were going to spew out some scientific, rocket scientist answer, fortunately for you its not that hard! Search engine ranking for your website is one of the most important things for your website, and if you actually have even a small desire to succeed in your business there is absolutely no way you can afford to answer this question, if your the one asking, or the one being asked.

At least 90% of people searching for products and services on the Internet, find these sites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask, and MSN. The main reason you optimized your pages when you started your website, was to attract targeted customers to your site, who will be more likely to purchase something. The higher the rank on your website via the search engine results, the more traffic you will get to your website. This is obviously what you want, so if you STILL haven’t optimized your pages and your wondering why its been sitting there for a year not getting any traffic, now you know why! Get to it!

Now if you have optimized your site and its pages and your still not getting the traffic you thought you would, especially for a really popular niche, then its probably a good idea for you to make a few small tweaks to your website, usually with just a few small changes you will start seeing changes almost immediately in your rankings. One of the very first items you should be looking at on your website for optimization purposes is the title bar on your home page. The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on
your home-page’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Next take a look at your content. In general, search engines list sites that contain quality information rather that just words on a website. If your content contains keywords, then search engines and thus people will be able to find your site better, which is again what you want. A Guru I was once friends with told me that in order for search engines to “scan” your pages its a good idea to write at least 3 posts or 3 blogs per day every 2-3 days. This will keep the information fresh and it will also make it so the engines will constantly be scanning your pages for info, which in turn will show up on the search engines. Make sure your text is in HTML format rather than graphic form, if its in graphic form, the search engines wont pick up on it!

Write a small description about your web page including some relevant keywords, through Meta Tagging. If your site allows “tagging” when writing a blog or post, add a few relevant keywords about that particular blog. Make sure your navigation system is user friendly. Submit your website to several different search engines by using the “Submit URL” option. With Google it usually takes anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for them to actually add your site, but in the end it will be worth it. There’s a multitude of engines out there, take your pick, or pick them all.

Lastly comes link popularity. This is an extremely important factor in terms of rankings. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page. There are several million link popularity websites out there so its a good idea to put these websites to good use. Most all of them are free, so use this to your advantage. You can even use a site like Estibot to check PR, links, worth of the domain, etc. If you have a high link popularity then the higher your chances are that your website will show up when people search for certain things on the search engines. The lower the link popularity you have, the less your site will show up as being indexed by the search engines, and the lower amount of results will show up.

If its absolutely impossible for you to optimize your page yourself, you can of course go and hire someone to do it for you, but for the steps listed above, there’s a good chance you could just as well do it on your own, which I think is an important part of owning a website, and again brings us back to “tweaking” the site. Just because a person specializes in SEO doesn’t necessarily mean they will do it perfectly the first time, especially since there is no real exact science to all of this, such as 1+1= 2. For example, Google uses algorithms. And no one knows how these algorithms work exactly, its all a big secret really, all you can do is try to tweak the page the best you can, until you start seeing some real results! Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality people will be directed to your site!

Keyword density is the term used to indicate how many times a selected keyword appears on a webpage and it is always represented as a percentage of the total word count of the page. Keywords should only be placed in important and relevant places and should definitely not be over used as this is likely to render your site as either an artificial or spam site and it will be rejected by the search engines.

If you have one hundred words on your webpage, not taking into account the HMTL code which is used for writing the webpage, and you use a specific keyword five times within this content, the keyword density would be .05. This is worked out by dividing the number of times that the keyword appears, (in this case five) by the total word count (one hundred). You then multiply the result by one hundred to find out the keyword density percentage.

The normally accepted standard for keyword density is between three and five percent and in order to be picked up by the search engines this should not be exceeded. Bear in mind that this applies to each and every page of your website and it is not just for one keyword but for sets of keywords which relate to different services or products. Listed below are some simple steps you can take to keep a check on your keyword density.

Use a word processing software program copy and paste the content from a web page. Click on the edit menu and then on the select all option. Then go to the tools menu and select word count from the drop down box and make a note of the number of words on that page. The next step is to select the find option on the edit menu. With the replace tab open enter the keyword you wish to find, replacing that word with the same word so the text will not be changed.

Upon completion of using the replace function the system will show you how many words you have replaced and this lets you know how many times you have used the keyword on that page, you will now be able to calculate the density of the keyword by following the system mentioned earlier. In conclusion, there you have it now; next time your write an article or a post, make sure to check your keyword density in order to achieve the best results.