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Although we credit Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind. He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex. But there is a long list of great minds that have given us the information system we now use today. This article illustrates some of them. Here is the History of the Search Engine:

Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution. While Teds project Xandadu, for reasons unknown, never really took off much of the inspiration to create the WWW came from Teds work.

George Salton

George Salton was the father of modern search technology. He died in August of 1995. His teams at Harvard and Cornell developed the Saltons Magic Automatic Retriever of Text otherwise known as the SMART informational retrieval system. It included important concepts like the vector space model, Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), Term Frequency (TF), term discrimination values, and relevancy feedback mechanisms. His book A theory of indexing explains many of his tests. Search today is still based on much of his theories. History of the search engine uses some of the same techniques even today.

Alan Emtage

In 1990 a student at McGill University in Montreal, by the name of Alan Emtage created Archie; the first search engine. It was invented to index FTP archives, allowing people to quickly access specific files. Archie users could utilize Archies services through a variety of methods including e-mail queries, teleneting directly to a server, and eventually through the World Wide Web interfaces. Archie only indexed computer files. With Archie, Alan Emtage helped to solve the data scatter problem. Originally, it was to be named archives but was changed to Archie for short.

Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill

Archie gained such popularity that in 1991 Paul Linder and Mark P. McCahill created a text based information browsing system that uses a menu-driven interface to pull information from across the globe to the users computer. Named for the Golden Gophers mascot at the University of Minnesota, The name is fitting, because Gopher tunnels through other Gophers located in computers around the world, arranging data in a hierarchical series of menus, which users can search for specific topics.

Tim Burners-Lee

Up until 1991 until there was no World Wide Web. The main method of sharing information was via FTP. Tim Berners-Lee wanted to join hypertext with the internet. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire (a prototype created with help from Robert Cailliau) to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor, called WorldWideWeb, and developed on NeXTSTEP. He then created the first Web server called httpd, short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon. The first Web site built was at:

http://info.cern.ch/

and was first put online on August 6, 1991. Tim Burners-Lee created the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994. Tim also created the Virtual Web library which is the oldest catalogue of the web. The history of the search engine is a fascinating story.

Author:  Jeff Casmer is an internet marketing consultant and work at home business owner. For more information on search engines optimization please visit his “Top Ranked” Improve Search Engine Rankings Directory gives you all the information you need to Work at Home in the 21st century.

Sadly, not everyone in the world knows everything about search engine optimization. In fact, very few people know anything about SEO or even what it is. Even fewer know any search offerings that may help your experience as a search engine user, a website navigator, a webmaster, or researcher.

I have compiled a list of free search engine and internet tools handy for everyone to use and improve their experience with some useful resources. Please note that if you are an SEO practitioner, none of these are news to you and you are well aware of these resources. For everyone else, this is a nice little database of handy stuff.

Google Products
Google has developed a smorgasbord of handy tools and products offered for free use to everyone. You can bet that they have developed something to almost everyone’s interest. Some of the products I frequently use are Alerts, Blog Search, Earth, Analytics, Toolbar, Image Search, Trends, Page Creator, Maps, Gmail, Talk, and YouTube. These are only some of the products—Google offers many more!

Search Engine Commands
Very often used by search engine professionals such as search engine optimizers, very few others know about these search engine commands. Knowing them can really bring information about a specific site and its standing in the World Wide Web to light. Here are some of the most important and generally supported commands:
Site: - Displays all of the pages indexed by the engine of the site.
Link: - Locates some links pointing to the site.
Cache: - Shows the last indexed and cached version of a site.
Info: - Displays general info about a site with other search commands.
Related: - Shows websites that may be semantically or directly related to the site.

Google Webmaster Tools
Google’s Webmaster Tools are a godsend. Once verified as the owner via Meta tag or HTML file, you have access to a wide variety of information from sitemaps, to links, to anchor text, to crawl rates and errors. Best of all, GWT are always expanding the information that is being provided and is sure to provide more great features in the near future. In the meantime, I will keep using it and so should you.

Site Explorer
Yahoo Site Explorer is a handy tool, similar to Google Webmaster tools but not as robust yet, that can provide some helpful information about a site. It can display all pages in the Yahoo index which is always helpful in finding indexation and duplicate content issues. But Site Explorer’s bread and butter is its “Inlinks” feature which is the most comprehensive external link reporting tool available via search engine. The links can be filtered by domains and URL’s, but most importantly, they are sorted from most important to least. Best of all, you can export all of the data to a TSV file.

Keyword Research
Probably not as useful to the casual user, but for the paid search practitioner, webmaster, or business owner, keyword research is an important factor for developing campaigns, pages, and business models. As free tools, I like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery although the paid versions of these tools are much more robust.

Markup validation
The World Wide Web Consortium has developed a standard of markup code compliance that all sites should attempt to adhere to in order to ensure cross-browser compliance, proper rendering, and complete search engine indexation. The W3C attempts “to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the web.”

DMCA
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a US law that criminalizes the reproduction and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that use methods to allow for the access and ungranted use of copyrighted information. Basically, this law provides that you cannot steal other people’s intellectually copyrighted information off the internet. If you operate a website, make certain to understand this.

Quoted Search
The quoted search is a searching technique that is not used as often as it should be. By employing quotations around a phrase, you are searching for the appearance of that exact phrase in that exact order and not just a relevant collection of those same words on a webpage or in links pointing to a page. This is very useful when you know exactly what you need such as product or a famous saying.

FireFox Extensions
FireFox is really cool! I use it all the time and cannot live without it. It also allows for contributions from anyone willing to do some programming and offer up a free tool. With that said, there are many SEO tools available as FireFox extensions, but there are also many very useful non-SEO tools for general use on the internet, for developers, and for searching that are extremely handy.

Google In-Search Features
Ever need a quick reference search for a definition of a word? What about a handy calculator? A search for specific file type? Ever need to look for movie information online? Do you need a handy weather report right out of your Google search bar? All of this information and more is available via quick Google search. Here are some of the commands:
Define:
Form:
Movie:
Weather:
Book:

Author:  Gennady Lager is the Senior SEO Specialist for SendTraffic.com, a full service online marketing firm specializing in Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. In addition to the SEM and SEO offerings, SendTraffic provides Paid Inclusion and Feed Management, Website, and Phone Sales Analytics. Our People, Process Proprietary Technologies and Pricing make SendTraffic the leader in providing Online Marketing solutions.

One of the most important aspects of running a website is monitoring the site and its progress. By monitoring your website you will be able to see how it is performing and how it can be improved. This article covers 10 free tools that can help you to optimize your site for maximum results.

1 – Google Analytics

Google Analytics has become the preferred option among free statistics programs. Like any other stats program, Google Analytics provides data on the number of visitors, and page views, referral sources, entry and exit pages, and more. Unlike most other programs, Google Analytics includes the ability to track and monitor pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Other useful information includes the geographic location of your visitors, their internet connection speed, and their screen resolutions. You can sign up for Google Analytics at http://bizsolutions.google.com/services/.

2 – Google Webmaster Tools

Want to know how the largest search engine in the world sees your website? Google’s Webmaster Tools will give you loads of information such as the pages that are indexed, errors found by the Googlebot (dead links), your search engine rankings for specific search phrases, your anchor text on inbound links, internal and external link data, and robots.txt and sitemap data.

By knowing how Google sees your site you will find some basic items that you’ll need to change in order to reach your maximum potential in search engine traffic. You can sign up for Google Webmaster Tools at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/.

3 – SEOmoz’s Page Strength Tool

SEOmoz is one of the leading search engine optimization (SEO) firms and their website provides a wealth of information through their blog, articles and tools. Their Page Strength Tool shows you the “relative importance and visibility” and the “potential strength and ability of a page to rank in the search engines.” SEOmoz provides a quick way to get a basic look at the strength of your page. The Page Strength Tool can be used at www.seomoz.org/page-strength.

4 – Sitening.com’s SEO Analyzer

Sitening is another leading SEO firm with several valuable tools on their website. The SEO Analyzer differs from SEOmoz’s Page Strength Tool in that it checks the internal structure of your site to determine how well it is constructed (in terms of search engine optimization). The structure of a website is the framework for a good SEO campaign, and Sitening.com’s SEO Analyzer will help you to build the right framework. Sitening.com’s SEO Analyzer can be found at www.sitening.com/seo-tools/seo-analyzer/.

5 – Mike’s Marketing Tools

MikesMarketingTools.com has two tools that every webmaster should use regularly. The Search Engine Rankings Tool will show you where your site ranks in several of the top search engines for a specific word or phrase. You can save time by using this tool instead of visiting each search engine and clicking through the search engine results pages to find your website.

The Link Popularity Tool will quickly show you how many inbound links each search engine recognizes for your site. Inbound links are a major factor in search engine rankings and each search engine recognizes a different number of links. From this tool you can also click through to see the specific pages that are linking to you. To use these tools visit www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/free-marketing-tools.html.

6 – Summit Media’s Spider Simulator

The spider simulator shows you “how a search engine reacts to your pages and what can be done to boost your usability.” Search engine spiders see web pages much differently than human visitors do. A page may look attractive and well-designed to a human visitor, but a search engine spider may not be able to find what it is looking for. This page is a great tool to assure you that your site is built for maximum search engine results. The spider simulator can be used at http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/.

7 – SelfSEO Page Speed Checker

Your average website visitor will have a very short attention span. To have the best chance of making a positive first impression on new visitors your page must load quickly enough that they do not leave right away. SelfSEO has a Page Speed Tool that shows you how long your page takes to load. The tool allows you to enter multiple pages to check at one time. It is a good idea to compare the load time of your page against pages from several other websites. Try entering your homepage and the homepage of several of your competitors. If your page loads considerably slower than the others try to make the file smaller by reducing the number and size of images or by cleaning up the coding. The Page Speed Tool can be used at www.selfseo.com/website_speed_test.php.

8 – Dead Links Checker

Having dead links on your website can frustrate visitors and damage your search engine rankings. However, checking all the links on your site manually is not realistic. Fortunately there are a number of tools online that will automate the process. The W3 Link Checker will crawl through your pages and report which links are broken. To use this tool visit http://validator.w3.org/checklink.

9 – GoogleRankings.com

GoogleRankings.com will show you which words and phrases appear most frequently on your website throughout the text of the page, title, headings and meta tags. This is a useful tool to be certain that your pages are optimized for the words and phrases that you are targeting.

10 – FeedBurner

If you publish a blog FeedBurner’s service is a must have. Feedburner will provide you with statistics regarding your blog’s feed and you can give our readers the option to subscribe by email instead of RSS. There are a number of other features that you can read about at www.FeedBurner.com. With FeedBurner you can always see how many subscribers you have and how many of them are clicking through from your feed to your site.

Author:  Steven Snell is a web designer for Vandelay Website Design. Steven regularly writes new articles on the topics of design, blogging, marketing and eearch engine optimization. His articles can be read on the blog at www.vandelaydesign.com.

Do you have a website that is getting very little or no traffic at all? Well, there are ways that you can change that even on a small marketing budget. We will review each of the strategies you can use to promote your website, and then we will try to assimilate them into a single, uniform strategy that is both highly effective and affordable.

First of all, TV commercials, radio ads, and print advertising are very expensive. This is undoubtedly the best way to launch a business, but the costs are prohibitive. A full page ad in a prominent magazine or other publication can run as high as $50,000 per ad. TV commercials can run just as high; if the commercial runs during a popular television show or sporting event, the cost will be enormous.

So, if you do not have enough money in the coffers for traditional advertising, you will likely have to use online marketing. This is not a bad thing. Offline advertising (i.e. radio, TV, print ads) is sometimes not effective. Marketing on the Internet is cheaper, and if done correctly, can give you much more bang for your buck.

Obviously, the cornerstone of Internet marketing is search engine submission and optimization. There are hundreds of different search engines and directories on the Internet where you can submit your web site for a listing. This is fairly easy to do. Simply sign up for a monthly submission plan with a credible search engine submission service. There are literally hundreds of these submission services on the internet; you can find them by performing a search on Google.

However, be wary of submitters that claim to be able to submit your site to 75,000 search engines. Such services are scams, and they will submit your web page to FFA pages and bogus link pages that can actually get you banned from the search engines. You should only do business with submission services that submit to the major search engines and directories.

Now that we have covered submission, we need to talk about search engine optimization (SEO), which is even more important. To optimize a site, you need to maximize keyword density and optimize the positioning for the words or phrases that best characterize the subject matter of your site, and you need to use proper Meta tags so that the search engines can interpret your web pages.

If you do not know how to optimize your web site, you should search for an optimization professional on Google. Steer clear of SEO experts who want to charge $1,000 per month or more. Their goal is to bleed you dry before you figure out that they really can not help you get to the top of the rankings. Stick to providers who will optimize your site for a one-time fee.

More important than SEO is link popularity. Link popularity is the number of web sites that currently link to your site. The more inbound links you acquire, the higher your search engine ranking will be. There are more than a few ways to acquire links, but I have a certain strategy that worked well for me.

My advice to you is to write articles and press releases and submit them to article directories and press release distribution services who will then distribute your articles and press releases to other websites who will publish them and in return link back to you. Also, you can submit your site to bloggers through a popular service called Blogitive (Blogitive will get blogs to post one-way anchor text links to your site in their blog, which will greatly enhance your search engine ranking).

If you are not patient enough to wait for your search engine ranking to improve, you can attract visitors to your web site instantly by using pay-per-click advertising (PPC). With PPC, you pay a certain cost per click to have an ad for your web page run at or near the top of the search engine listings for certain keywords. This can be extremely costly and ineffective. It is not uncommon for webmasters to blow thousands of dollars on PPC advertising and make only a few sales.

The best way to promote your site, if you are actually selling something, is through an affiliate program. You need to provide an affiliate code to other online merchants so that they will place your banner on their site; every time you make a sale that resulted from an affiliate referral, the affiliate gets a commission. Some internet companies have thousands of affiliates, and get all the business they would ever need or want this way; and it costs you nothing.

To recruit affiliates, you should submit your affiliate program to as many directories as possible (there are directories where you can list your affiliate program for free). The best way to find affiliates is by listing your program on forums or message boards visited by webmasters who are looking to generate additional revenue for their online business. You will have to consult with an experienced programmer who can set up the affiliate program so that the codes used to track sales for each affiliate will work properly.

So, to summarize, you should first optimize your website and submit it to search engines. You should then begin submitting articles and press releases to article directories and press release distribution services. You should also submit your site to Blogitive so that bloggers will write a review of your site and link to it, further boosting your link popularity. You might want to join a link exchange, but trading links often proves fruitless. Also, you should set up an affiliate program. And finally, you should budget a small amount of money to spend each week on pay-per-click.

If you are persistent and use all of these methods, you will continually increase your traffic over a period of time. It will probably take approximately 3 years of performing each of the tasks outlined in this article, on a daily basis, to get where you want to be. Just stick with it and your efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

Author:  Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form

In this age of information, cookies are an essential element in making transactions faster and so much more convenient. We are not talking about the food item, of course. In the computer vernacular, cookies are actually files that store important information which are sent from your system to remote terminals in order to process certain requests.

These cookies have become the targets of some devious individuals who could be after some important information pertaining to you or your business. Spyware cookies stealers are programs developed by these unscrupulous people to make stealing information easier for them.

Whenever you perform an online transaction - say, you log on to a website to pay your electric bills - you enter your user name and other personal information. The website saves these bits of information so you don’t have to enter them again each time you log on in the future. What spyware cookies stealers do is look for this information in your hard disk and steal it from you. Usually, you won’t even know this has happened.

Once the spyware cookies stealer has acquired your information, this will be available to other people who can do whatever they want with it. In order to visualize the potential damage that spyware cookies stealers can cause, think of all the data that you enter into websites…user names, passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and other personal information.

Now imagine those information being in the hands of some malicious person. In these times when you can do practically everything online, an individual in possession of all your passwords and financial data can destroy your life, literally.

An online thief can empty your bank account with just a few clicks and you can be bankrupt in an instant without even knowing what hit you. People can use your identity in performing criminal acts and you can end up suffering the consequences of their actions.

The scary part is that this does not happen only in movies. It can actually happen to you, thanks to the many spyware cookies stealers that abound in the Internet.

The good news is that spyware cookies stealers can be removed from your system, and if they are detected early, you can minimize the damage they can bring. A good anti-spyware program can detect these spyware cookies stealers that may be hiding within your files.

When you have spotted and removed the spyware cookies stealer in your system, the next thing to do is to delete your cookies. You will then need to perform a thorough scan of your system to make sure that no threat is left behind.

To prevent future infiltration of spyware cookies stealers in your hard disk, upgrade your anti-spyware software regularly. You may need to pay a fee for these upgrades but when you think about the protection it can give you against spyware cookies stealers, a few dollars worth of protection is definitely worth it.

Author:  You can also find more info on Spyware and Spyware And Adware. Removespywarehelp.com is a comprehensive resource to know about Spyware.

Owning and operating a forum can be a tricky task. Not only do you have to struggle with the many obstacles of establishing the forum such as working on your initial member build up, getting rid of problem members early, and making sure your forum is easy to use, but there is also the major problem of monetization.

Forums are traditionally considered to be more difficult to monetize (if you are using ads to monetize the forum) than a regular website – mainly because of the type of visitor a forum receives. Typically, a lions share of the visitors on a forum are going to be from members who are there to participate in conversations, not click on ads. Regular forum members know what they are looking for and subsequently develop a very strong “ad blindness” which is difficult to overcome.

It is for this reason that many forum owners completely throw out the idea of using Google Adsense ads to monetize their forums.

But this is a mistake.

Forums, if optimized correctly, can experience clickthrough rates that rival those of normal websites. Of course, you need to go through the process of optimizing.

Adsense Optimization for Forums - The Basics

There is no end to downloadable guides on Adsense - and most of these guides are well worth their money in my opinion. But most of these guides all cover the same basic principles. I don’t want to spend too much time on things that you already know, so I’m going to cover the most basic principles quickly. These basics tend to apply to both forums and regular websites.

First, always test and record your changes. This is a rule that applies to anything that you do with your website, not just to Adsense optimization. Never assume that you know what is going to work best on your site - let your visitors decide that for you. You should test ad sizes, colors, formats and locations to see which perform the best. If possible, setup split testing on your site and track your results using Google’s channel tracking.

Be sure to give each version of your ad enough time to get real results. You should aim to give your ad at least 500 views (preferably 1,000 views) before making any changes. 100 ad views is certainly not enough to make any good judgment on.

Adsense optimization experts seem to agree that overall there is one ad size and color combination that seems to win most split tests. This ad size is the 336 x 280 ad size, with a blue headline (#0000CC), black text (#000000), and a dark grey url (#666666).

Although this is not always true, often blending your ads appearance into the content of your pages is a good way to increase your clickthrough rate. The reason behind this is simple: people have developed ad blindness. In general, if they recognize something as an ad, they will simply ignore it and move on to what they believe to be regular content. By blending your ads into your site, your website readers will be more likely to read the ad, and subsequently click it.

Now be sure to never “trick” your website users into clicking on an ad. Never use text that would mislead the person into thinking that the ad is part of your content, and never tell the user to click the ad in any way. Also, Google no longer allows publishers to place images next to their Adsense ads in a way that would make the images look like they are part of the ads.

Moving on to More Advanced Optimization Strategies

You know that 336 x 280 ads tend to have the highest clickthrough rates, and you know that you should blend your ads into your site. But users are getting used to these techniques and are growing a new “blindness” to these ads. What can you do to better increase the performance of your ads? Here are a few advanced optimization strategies.

Give Your Users an Obvious Ad and then Feed them a Blended Ad

This is one of my new favorite optimization techniques. The concept behind this technique is simple: when a user scans a page for content, often they will initially scan it and identify where the ads are on the page. If you give your user an obvious ad, they will become blind to that style of an ad, but not necessarily other ads on the page.

I have included an example of this from an earlier version of DebtManagementTalk.com – an Adsense revenue sharing forum that relies on having fairly high Adsense clickthrough rates.

Now this isn’t necessarily the best example of this principle in action (this site doesn’t necessarily lend itself to this technique), but using this method did produce an increase in revenue.

The ad on the left is obvious. It has a big border, looks like an ad that you would see on many sites, and is in a common location. When a visitor is scanning the page, they will see the obvious ad and assume that other ads on that page will appear the same. Notice that just to the right of the obvious ad is a Google ad that blends into the page much better, is styled differently, and doesn’t look anything like the obvious ad.

Source Order Your Ads to Get the Highest Paying Ads Listed First

There is a rather significant problem with the example above. When you use multiple ad units on one page, Google will typically serve up the highest paying ads first and the lowest paying ads later.

In the example above our obvoius ad, which was inserted not to create a lot of clickthroughs but rather to set a “tone” for ad design throughout the page, appears first in our source code. This means that this “diversion ad” will hold the best paying clicks, but will probably rarely be clicked on.

It is not always true that ads that appear first on your page will earn you the most money. When optimizing your Adsense ads, try setting up channel tracking on each of your ads to see which ad spot gets the most clicks and which ad spot receives the most money per click. Once you have determined this, you should rework your code to try and get the ad with the most clicks to appear in the spot of the ad that receives the most money per click.

Watch Out for Cannibals

This goes along with the topic that I just talked about, but there are a few more things to consider. If you have an ad that realizes a lower amount of revenue per click and outperforms your ads that have a higher revenue per click, your ads are said to be cannibalizing each other.

A classic example of this is with Google’s Ad Links. Many people include Ad Link units on their page because they are so easy to “blend” into the content on your site. However, ad link units also typically have a lower revenue per click than regular ads.

If you have an adlink unit that is getting a significantly higher number of clicks - and your users leave your page for good, you may be losing money.

Cannibalization can also occur when you place other types of ads on your website. Do you have another approved contextual ad unit on your page that is not as profitable as Adsense? Is it taking clicks away from your adsense ads?

Not all competiting ads will cannibalize each other, which is why it is important to always test your results.

Finally, Sometimes a Redesign is in Order

Most forum designs, unfortunately, are not designed to work well with Adsense. They tend to have fluid layouts which do not fit Google’s fixed ad sizes well, and it is often difficult to blend the ads in such a way that it flows with the rest of the content on your page.

There may come a point when you have tested, tried, and incorporated every conceivable ad variation, style, and color on your website only to see marginal improvements. If this is the case, you may want to consider an entire redesign of your forum.

I ran into this problem with DebtManagementTalk.com. Since the site is a revenue sharing forum, it relies heavily on the ads performing well. Although Google’s terms of use restrict me from saying what the clickthrough rate was on the site, I can say that it was lower than I had desired, and much lower than what the members on the site were looking for.

Through using the techniques I listed above, I was able to make small improvements to the ads performance, but the overall performance was still less than desirable. It was time for a redesign.

DebtManagementTalk.com moved from a fluid (full screen) layout to a fixed width layout. The colors were changed to be more vibrant and to offer more possible color options with the Adsense ads. The discussion layouts were stylized differently to allow for a much more natural incorporation of ads.

Although testing is still ongoing, the redesign improved the Adsense revenues on the forum significantly.

Adsense and Forums Can Work with Work

Forums obviously have the potential to bring a very large amount of traffic, and contrary to what many people believe about forums, they can actually incorporate Adsense ads very effectively.

It simply takes steady efforts of optimization, recording your changes, and an obsessive desire to always beat your best ad performance.

Author:  Mark Daoust is the owner of AffiliateKB.com, your Sherpa Guide to Affiliate Marketing

For all of the technical jargon associated with the internet and web design, there is one word that trumps them all in importance and it’s a word that should be familiar with everyone. That word is usability. Usability is important to create Web sites that your customers will want to return to.

If no one can use your site, then no one will bother staying on it. Your website needs to be user friendly or you won’t see much of a return on your investment. To keep in simple, no matter what type of subject your website is about, it needs to be designed as user-centered.

Users need to be considered constantly throughout the website design process. The best approach to take is to a proactive approach to the design process and takes care of any potential issues before it’s too late. While there are a good number of specific suggestions, here are some quick tips you can use to create a site that is useful for your visitors.

HTML - There are some version-specific elements of HTML which will cause some problems for some of visitors of your site. The only way for your site to be completely user friendly is to limit it to HTML 1.0. It won’t be for few years to come until the majority of web surfers will be able to access new technology due to old computer hardware and other factors. The best recommendation is to avoid beta-level software and technology until it has been established for at least a full year.

1. Download Speed - More and more people are gaining access to the internet but that doesn’t mean, they’re connection are as fast or as good as yours. This means don’t go making a site that is bigger and fancier that it actually needs to be. All of the latest studies show that the speed of a page downloads ranks as a sites most important factor. A potential customer will lose interest in your page after ten seconds no matter what the topic is and if they interested or not.
2. The layout of the page - The importance of the layout of the page is similar to that of its content. They are pretty much intertwined. You could have written some of the greatest content ever, but if the layout of on the page is sloppy and disjointed, no one is going to try and read it. They’ll just find another website that is easier to navigate. Keep your pages clean and simple. If your page doesn’t need certain elements on it, then remove them. If it functions the same after removing a function, do the same and take it out.
3. Content - All web design experts will agree that content is king. It’s what Google sees when they index your site and more importantly it’s what your site’s visitors will see. Your web site needs to be about something that you feel passionate about and your visitors should too. Show that excitement on every one of your pages. If your readers see that excitement and feel the same way, they’ll keep coming back.
4. Colors - Colors can and will play an important part of your website, much more than you may realize. They affect the usability of your Web site. There are some colors which look great together, and then there are other colors that are almost so painful to look at that you need to click away before you burn your eyes.

   Author:  ComCastInfo is the premier one stop shop for all of your broadband and cable shopping needs. Be sure to visit www.comcastinfo.com for the best in broadband internet and highspeed internet service packages and cable such as Comcast cable plans.

Ironically — or perhaps appropriately — the quickest way to find out about alternative search engines is to search on that phrase in Google. The first site that comes up is Search Engine Watch, a regular stop for anyone who does SEO. After all, they’ve been covering the field since 1996. If you visit this page on the site, it takes you to a list of links. These links take you to specific categories of search engines, such as news search engines, shopping search engines, multimedia search engines, kids’ search engines, specialty-related search engines, and more. If you have a fascination with knowledge in general and a few specific areas in particular, you might want to line up a number of pointed queries, get comfortable with this site, and spend a day or two poking around. Depending on how lucky you’ve been finding that kind of information on Google, you just might find some new favorites.

Another web site worth checking is altsearchengines. The entire site is devoted to coverage of alternative search engines, though it does cover the majors as well. You can subscribe to the site via email or RSS feed. While the site definitely has the feel of a professional blog (which is what it is, essentially), it’s better organized, making it somewhat easier to find things. There are colorful tabs labeled “alts,” “majors,” “updates,” “in beta,” “newcomers,” “news” and “verticals” to help you navigate. There are also ads from alternative search engines on the site. Each month, they compile a list of the top 100 alternative search engines; it seems to have turned into a mission for Charles Knight, the man doing the compiling. Here’s a link to the list for April 2007.

To coin an analogy, think of Google as the biggest department store in the world (I know, that’s either Wal-Mart or Amazon, but bear with me). For most of your needs, you’ll probably be able to find the right item at that department store. But say your portly Aunt Edna just fell and did something nasty to her knee, for which she now needs a custom-built brace. You wouldn’t go to the department store for that; you’d go to a hospital, which would be able to refer to you to the right place to have that made.

By the same token, if you’re looking for the most up-to-date medical information on a particular condition, you might go to Google if it’s a well-known and much-discussed condition such as breast cancer, but not if it’s something that’s more rare and unusual. For that, you’d be wise to consider some of the vertical search engines that explicitly cover the health and medical field.

Yet another site to check is About.com. Of course, it’s an alternative search engine itself these days. It has a guide, Wendy Boswell, for the Web Search topic. One of the areas she covers is search engines. The link I gave will take you to articles that review and discuss the alternatives. She even has an article titled “Web Search 101,” which gives you answers to frequently asked questions about search and helps you zoom in on the kind of search engine you want based on your needs.

Author:  Steve Buchanan writes article on many topics including Article Submission Service, Directory Submission Service, and Website Submission Services.

There’s a frightening new batch of scams going around now that can damage your reputation as domain “squatters” steal your domain name.

There are a number of ways the “game” is played. The first is entirely legal, if more than a little questionable. In this version, the name of a city or geographic area is grabbed by a domain squatter and pointed to… “sites that you wouldn’t want your children visiting. (ie: porn)”

A prominent notice is placed on the sites, offering them for sale at prices that range from $2500 to as much as $500,000!

The idea here is that city officials will feel that enough damage is being done to the reputations of their towns that they’ll pay to keep them from being associated with that type of material.

It’s obviously safe to say that it’s not appropriate to pop those kinds of images into people’s faces while they’re looking for info on a completely different topic.

That’s where the pressure on the cities comes from, and why this is such a disgusting scheme.

In essence, the domain squatter says: “Pay us, or continue to watch as your city’s reputation suffers.”

Many would call this blackmail…

The second variation on the theme is not always legal. When someone takes a trademarked name (or variation of the spelling of one) or a famous person’s name, and does the same thing.

For trademarks or close variations, there’s a specific procedure for addressing the problem. (See the resource section at the end of this issue.)

For the names of famous people, there MAY be a remedy. But, it can be tricky — and expensive.

For example, if someone named John Jones registered http://WalterCronkite.com and pointed it to one of “those” sites, Walter Cronkite could probably force the domain away from him.

However, if someone named Steve Cronkite registered http://Cronkite.com and did the same thing, Walter Cronkite would have no recourse. It would be very hard to demonstrate that Steve registered the domain in bad faith. And if Steve’s son’s name is Walter, the same is true for http://WalterCronkite.com.

If you feel that your name is likely to be typed into a browser when people are looking for information on you, you should consider getting both the .com and .net versions of the domain if they’re available.

It will cost you a few bucks to prevent the problem. Fixing it, assuming you win, will cost you hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars.

And there’s no guarantee you’ll win.

A third version is a bit more benign. It’s common among members of affiliate programs. In this version, names very close to, or even including, the trademark are registered. The sites are created to drive traffic to the affiliates’ URL at the main site.

This may or may not be acceptable to the affiliate program owner. If it is, it’s a good technique for getting traffic. If not, it could get you into hot water. Check with the owner of the trademark before doing this. Less benign is an alternative version of this technique where someone grabs domain names that are close to the trademark of a competitor and uses them to grab competitor type-in traffic. This is often done by finding out the most common misspellings of the real domain name or trademark. Watch for people doing this with your domain. Here’s the worst version of this — and it can hit anyone if they have enough traffic and don’t pay close attention to when their domain registrations expire.

In this situation, someone grabs expired domain names and points them to “those” kinds of sites. This is a “no lose” for the hijacker, as they will profit from the traffic even if the previous owner doesn’t pay the requested ransom for the domain.

The more traffic the URL gets, the greater the clickthrough value to the hijacker. This means more potential damage to the original owner — and a higher ransom to get it back.

In effect, your own popularity is your worst enemy in this case.

The solution to this one is simple — and very important: Don’t let your domain names expire!

Useful Resources:

If you find yourself a victim of domain hijacking, there is hope for correcting the problem.

For a more formal explanation of the legal aspects of this problem, visit: http://www.llrx.com/congress/100200.htm

For specific information on the UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy), the procedure for taking domain names that are being used in violation of a trademark, see http://wipo2.wipo.int/process1/index.html .

For information on taking action under the Anti-Cybersquatting Act (A US law that provides for damages in addition to the less severe penalties of the UDRP) see:

Editor’s note: Author’s suggested resource link was dead and replaced with those below:

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
FAQ: The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act vs. Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy

If you have a famous name or trademark, the best defense is to make sure that you register the main variations in both the .com and .net form. The .org is probably only necessary if you are heavily involved with charitable activities. Protect yourself. Scammers come up with new schemes all the time…

So, keep your eyes open.

Author:  Douglas Miller is a retired fire service captain, now making a living working from home. His company Hundred-Fold-Life is not just a name but also a belief. To learn how to find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.clixgo.com

Indeed, choosing a right web hosting service for your website is not an easy task especially when there are thousands of web hosting providers all offering almost identical web hosting packages. Therefore, it is important to know few major considerations even before you start your web hosting search. Below are three major criteria for web host seeker:

1Web hosting features requirement

This is probably the most important consideration to start finding a host for your site. You need to decide the technical requirements for your website, this including:

a) Server platform and hardware requirements If you plan to set up a website that uses programming environments such as Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic scripts, Cold Fusion or Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database, in this case, you will need to find a web hosting service that supports Windows platform such as Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers.

Likewise, if you plan to use programming languages such as Perl, CGI, SSI, PHP or mySQL database, then any web hosting plans that support Unix/Linux platform should be sufficient to meet your hosting requirements. Once you have these server platform and hardware requirements in mind, you can decide the best web hosting plans for your need. For more information, you can read “How to select a web server and server platform?”

b) Disk space & Bandwidth requirement Here is another technical requirement that you need to consider before selecting a web hosting plan, i.e. disk space and bandwidth. If you intend to publish a website that does not have a lot of contents (meaning, web pages), then the disk space requirement may not be a big concern to you. In general, a disk space with 200MB to 500MB should be enough to meet your hosting requirement. In contrast, if you plan to host a website with enormous amount of graphic pictures, mp3 or video files, then you should consider a web hosting plan that provide huge disk space, for example, 500 MB to 1,000 MB.

Similarly, the bandwidth requirement will depend on your site traffic estimation. Obviously, a website that expect to attract high traffic will consume the monthly bandwidth allowance very fast. If so, you will need to find one web hosting service that offer huge bandwidth with 40 GB to 100 GB per month. Depending upon your website requirement, choosing a web hosting service that provide sufficient amount of disk space and bandwidth is crucial consideration to prevent paying extra costs in the future should you overuse the monthly disk space and bandwidth allowance.

c) Other hosting features While the above requirements are utmost important, there are other hosting features that you have to consider too. Can web hosting provider support video clips on your website, if you have? Is the web hosting service compatible with Dreamweaver or FrontPage web authoring tool? Do you plan to set up a virtual store online? Can the host support the e-commerce features without adding extra cost to your monthly payments? On top of that, you may also want to find out the number of email accounts provided, number of FTP accounts, web statistic software (analyze your web traffic), type of control panel supported (manage your web hosting account), database and scripting languages supported and etc.

2Reliability and scalability

A first-class web hosting provider offers reliable server uptime and fast Internet connection. You should only choose a web hosting service that guarantee at least 99% server uptime with high-speed Internet backbones using at least OC3 (Optical Carrier) lines (155 Megabits per second) or above instead of T1 or T3 lines. A reliable web hosting provider usually invests heavily on their data center infrastructure with high performance servers, high speed multiple backbones providers with fail-over redundancy, backup power generators and firewall software protection in place to ensure they meet the uptime guarantee specified in the terms of service.

Similarly, you should choose a web hosting service with hardware facilities that designed for scalability, so that they can grow with your business. For example, if you need to increase more disk space, bandwidth or number of mySQL databases, you should be able to upgrade as needed without any problems.

3Customer service and support

The last major consideration in choosing a web hosting service is to find a web hosting providers that offers excellent customer service and support. You should always search for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support that fielded with highly experience technicians, so that any web hosting problems will be resolved within a reasonable amount of time. You may also want to consider to test how responsive is their customer support by sending few inquiry emails to the web hosting provider. In general, any response in less than 24 hours is considered acceptable. It is a sign of poor customer support if they take more than one day to response.

In addition, a web hosting provider with excellent support should also provide multiple support channels, such as toll-free phone support, 24/7 email support, live chat, online knowledgebase, Interactive flash tutorials and FAQ.

Above are few major considerations before you choose your web hosting service. In addition, how long has the web hosting provider in business and the number of customers that they currently have are also a good indication of the quality of their hosting products as well as the stability of the company. Even though cost of the web hosting service is also important but it should not be your major consideration. Because the price of a web hosting service has been declining over the years due to competition, as a result, the price of most of the web hosting services offering quality hosting features has been converging to less than US$10 per month. If you can’t afford less than $10 per month, you probably isn’t in the online business for the long haul. Therefore, price should not be a major deciding factor.

On the other hand, it is more important to ensure the web hosting service that you choose is able to meet your website hosting requirements, guarantee your website is always accessible with satisfying speed, provide scalability to grow and expand your website as well as offer excellent customer supports.
Author:  Corey Geer is an author and marketing expert. Other works by Corey can be found at, http://coreygeer.blogspot.com/