Web Design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips

Lately, I have noticed an increase in hacker activity on several of our clients sites. We have even had to do a few repair jobs after a hacker has gotten into a site. Some fixes are easy, most are not. All site security breaches can be very costly to your business, your reputation and to your revenue stream. With that in mind, I wanted to share some tips for improving your site security.

First Things First

1) Use a good, strong password. A password with a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters is a good way to go. Also, this is one of those cases where more is better. Studies show that a 5 character all lower or upper case password with letters only can be broken in 60 seconds or less. Adding upper and lower case letters increases this to 6 minutes and adding a number and upper and lower case to that raises it to 15 minutes. An 8 character upper and lower case password with numbers raises the time to about 7 years and a comparable 10 character password could take 26,984 years to break.

Also, don't use a password that is a real word. If you want to remember a password then try using numbers to replace letters. For instance if you are a Dallas Cowboys fan and Tony Dorsett (#33) is your favorite all-time player try something like this: C0w80ys33. It has a capital letter C and the letter o has been replaced with the number 0 and the letter b has been replaced with the number 8. It is not hard to remember and is pretty strong.

2) Change your password. Now that we have talked about what makes a good password, let's go a step further. Change your password once in a while, especially if you think your site has been compromised. As a matter of fact, do me a favor, and go change it now. I'll wait.

3) Don't share your password. Don't tell it to co-workers and don't let someone else login as you. All it takes is one angry employee or ex-employee to create a world of havoc.

4) Log OUT! When you are done, log yourself out. This is especially true on a shared or public computer.

5) Keep up to date. This is the reason for this notice. Always keep the scripts and documents on your site up to date. Hackers are always looking for security holes in the server and the scripts on them. The older the script, the more time hackers have had to find these holes and breach them. There are hacker groups who share this information with each other.

6) Back up often. No matter what type of site you run, it is a good idea to regularly make a back up copy of the site. On a shared server, which is where most sites are, hackers will break in and it may be because of your neighbor on the server. Servers also can crash or you just might want to move to a new web host or server. A good, clean backup is a great thing to have.

There are many other more involved techniques that can be implemented to secure your web site, but these basic steps will go a long way toward keeping you safe.

Things To Consider Before You Build, Part 2 - Who Is My Audience?

In the last post we talked about some basic things to consider before you build or update a web site. I placed "Who is my audience" at the top of the list and noted that it was a biggie. Allow me to elaborate.

Knowing who your audience is can be one of the most important factors in any situation where you wish to get information to someone else. It is true in advertising (whether online or not). It is also true for someone who simply wants to write a blog. You have to know something about your audience in order to reach them. The more you know about them, the better you should be able to reach them. Advertisers have known this for a long time. Why were there people selling doves in the temple area during the time of Jesus? They knew that people would want to buy them for their offering in the temple. The same reasoning holds true today. You will probably not do too well selling automobile tires by advertising in an Amish newspaper. You might, however, do well to advertise in Car & Driver Magazine.

If your company sells children's clothing, then having a web site that has a metallic green color scheme with images of motorcycle parts in the background is probably not going to appeal to your customers. However, a site with images of children's toys and a nice pastel color scheme, just might fit the bill. Think about what might appeal to your customers and not what has the most dazzle. If your average customer is a 30 to 40 year old woman, build a site that would appeal to her. If you are writing a blog about the glory days of the 1950s, then build a site with images of that period with topics that interest someone who lived in that era.

The bottom line here is to target your audience. Build a site that fits into the overall feel of your business that is geared toward your most likely customer or visitor. Be as specific as possible. If you do not know who your customer is, the do some research and find out. Ask your current customers questions. Go online and see what your competition is doing. Read reports related to your field of work. The more you know about your target audience the better the chances you will have of knowing how to reach them.

Things To Consider Before You Build

It has been my experience that many people want to build a web site without thinking about what they really want from a web site. There is a tendency to "just get a site out there" and that can be problematic, as well as just not very smart.

I frequently have clients contact me when they begin thinking about a site to get general information about what is involved, how much it will cost, how long it takes and so on, and then I don't hear from them for a long time. Then, they will call me in a semi-panic because they are about to launch some new campaign or product and they have to have the site in a week. Really. It happens a lot.

This attitude tends to make for a hasty judgment call on what to put on the site. That can lead to a poorly thought out site design and useless content for the end user. With that in mind I wanted to share some thoughts on what every site owner needs to consider BEFORE building a new site or upgrading an old one. I will cover this in a few posts in the near future, but for now I am just going to list some things that should be at the front of your mind when planning a site.

Things to Consider

Who is my audience? (This is a biggie)
What information is my target audience most likely to want when they visit my site?
What is the best way to present this information?
How can I interact with potential customers who visit my site?
How large will my site need to be?
How much traffic do I expect to have?
How can we integrate our site into our current and future marketing / advertising?
How will I promote my site?

As I stated above, I will go into more detail on a few of these topics in the near future, but for now, take a little time an think about these questions. It may give you some great ideas to implement into your site now or in the future.

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