Many webmasters have resorted to using hosting multiple domains to increase their business’s outreach. While using multiple domains to diversify your traffic stream may seem to be an appealing option, the same outcome can be reached using a single domain. How you may ask? Well, with each domain you have the option of creating sub-domains. In this article we will discuss how sub-domains can accomplish the same results as multiple domain hosting, with no additional monetary investment.

Sub-Domains

A sub-domain is a secondary domain to your main domain. An example of a sub-domain would be subdomain.domains.com.In this example, “domains.com” is the primary domain, and “subdomains.domain.com” is the sub-domain. You’ve probably noticed that many websites have a support sub-domain setup for customer support purposes. The reason why sub-domains offer the same advantages as multiple domain hosting, is because the search engines view these sub-domains as separate websites. Sub-domains can have their own separate search engine ranking, thereby allowing you to capitalize on a wider range of keywords for your niche, much in the same way multiple domain hosting would.

Dominating Your Niche with Sub-Domains

Sub-domains give webmasters the ability to create multiple websites within a single domain. Each sub-domain is then centered around a particular keyword, thereby improving the search engine ranking of that particular sub-domain, and ultimately your entire website. Remember that sub-domains are seen as independent websites by search engines, which means that any links that point to your main website from your sub-domain are seen as backlinks! Backlinks are links that point to your website’s URL from other websites. Using sub-domains to create backlinks for your main website is a good way to create what is known as a “link farm”. The SEO benefits reaped from using sub-domains is almost unlimited, as you can have as many sub-domains as you’d like, each one focusing on a particular keyword. For example, if your niche is “electronic pets”, then you could create several sub-domains called “ElectronicDogs.ElectronicPets.com”, or “ElectronicHamsters.ElectronicPets.com”. Now whenever an individual searches for “electronic hamsters”, your site stands a good chance of receiving a high page rank!

Using Sub-Domains Correctly

Using sub-domains to boost your site’s search engine ranking can be a very simple task, as long as you use a bit of common sense when doing so. The key to using sub-domains correctly is to make sure each sub-domain is very relative to the main domain. Meaning you want to make sure your sub-domain is relevant to the niche of your main website. Creating a sub-domain centered around electronics attached to a main domain that concerns dog grooming would obviously not be beneficial.  Setting up sub-domains only takes a minute or so for each one, and most web hosting services allow you to set up sud-domains at no additional cost. For this reason, you should not be afraid to experiment with sub-domains to see what works best for your particular situation. Try gathering 20 relevant keywords t your niche and then set up a sub-domain for each individual keyword. The setup links to your main website on each sub-domain and place relevant keyword rich content on each sub-domain. Wait one week and check your search engine results. The key to enhancing your search engine optimization abilities is to practice with trial and error.

Often times when we think of ecommerce, we think of all the complexities that could be involved. Shopping carts, merchant accounts, payment gateways, integration between systems, auto-responders and virtual terminals are just a few of the aspects of ecommerce that could give you a migraine. The ecommerce maze is certainly confusing enough to cause some extremely busy entrepreneurs to shy away from internet sales altogether.

Years ago, there were very few options for selling your wares via the internet. You had to have good credit to get a merchant account. The merchant account funds were funneled through a business checking account and there were hefty fees associated with each account. Some banks even imposed charges for every transaction on a business checking account! There were also merchant fees that were duplicated with the necessity to have a payment gateway and a payment processor to make your system work. Even with zero sales for the month, you could easily spend nearly two hundred dollars per month for the gate way fee, the statement fee, the recurring billing fee, the web hosting fee plus a shopping cart fee. On top of the fixed fees, you still had to pay a percentage of each sale. Fortunately, in recent years, things have become a whole lot simpler (and cheaper).

If you are looking to accept payments as an individual, a small business, community group or association, you may want to start out by investigating one of the “easy ecommerce” options that are available today. With just a standard checking account and a third-party payment service you could easily take payments via email. You could write a short, informative email and then place a link within your email to allow people to make a payment for your product or service. You might even allow people to donate to your cause or your organization. For a more professional and customer-friendly option, a website, blog or social media page is the way to go. It allows you to provide more information about the items you are accepting payment for. With a website, blog or social media page, you can get as creative or fancy as you like. You could include an informative article, audio or video for visitors to digest before a purchase is made.

By now, you might be thinking, “This is easy. I can do this!” You’re right! Here is a quick overview to show you just how simple it is to do things the “easy ecommerce” way:

1. Determine what you intend to sell and what you will charge for it. Do online research for your market if you are uncertain about the going rate.
2. Write a brief description of 200 words or less for your product or service. Be sure to note the features and benefits of what you have to offer.
3. Using a simple template, create a website page, blog or social media page to house the payment link for your product or service. Remember to also create a “thank you” page for the customer to be taken to after their purchase is complete. If you are selling digital goods, place the download link or other special instructions here.
4. Open a third-party payment processor account. There are many to choose from. Be sure to choose one with the features that are important to you.
5. Add your product or service details to your payment processor account. An email link and/or the html embed code will be created during this stage.
6. Test the link or web code to make sure it looks like you want it to and works just the way it should.
7. Now you’re ready to take that information and add to your website or send out to your list via email.
8. Monitor your sales and fine tune your customer service process. Most of all, enjoy making money the “easy ecommerce” way.

There are still many companies who use the traditional ecommerce/merchant account system. It definitely has its place in the market. However, it’s nice to know that there are lots of options for people who are not quite ready for the traditional route.

Drupal is one of the most popular CMS solutions on the market, along with Joomla and WordPress. All CMS give you the ability to choose templates for your website, and most of them have the same features in terms of design function, however Drupal seems to simplify the process of using themes with your website, even more than the average CMS.

The beauty of Drupal is that the design of your entire site can be controlled within one central database. Although the process is fairly simple, to fully take advantage of Drupal’s design features, there are a few things you should know.

Choosing Your Theme

Obviously the first thing you’ll want to do is select several themes that would fit your website. You can find themes in many places on the internet, such as third party websites. Simply do a web search for website design templates and themes, and you will find a huge selection to choose from.  While selecting the themes it is important to note whether or not the theme is supported by the version of Drupal you’re using. If you’re having trouble finding a theme that suits your needs, then you may want to hire a web designer to assist you in creating a custom made template.

You can find web designers that are willing to work for a relatively low price on many of the freelancing sites and forums online. Make sure you only work with reputable freelancers, as this presents the least amount of risk possible. You’ll also want to hire someone that is familiar with Drupal’s compatibility, and you’ll need to make sure they are wiling to make revisions if you are not satisfied with the template. Designing a website has to be a collaborative process that involves team work and trial and error. Make sure you theme matches the goals of your website as well. For example, you wouldn’t a soccer theme on a site about American football.  Once you’ve selected your theme, it is time to install it.

Installing Your Theme

Now that you have the theme of your dreams, it’s time to get it up and running on the world wide web. The first thing you’ll need to do is go through any README files or other support documentation that was included with your theme, as they may contain important information regarding the correct installation of your theme.  Once you’ve become familiar with the installation process, you can upload the them to the correct location. Usually this location will be: /sites/all/themes/yourThemeName. (Note that your user name and hard drive precedes the previous file path.)

Now you’ll need to log into your site as an administrator to finish the process. You can access your site’s administrative interface by typing: “thenameofyoursite.com/admin”: in the URL address bar in your browser. Once you’re in the in the administrative interface, locate the Site Building area, and the click on Themes. You should see the theme you uploaded on the list. To set the theme as your default theme, simply check the appropriate boxes. You can make this theme your default theme by checking the radio box. Once you’ve finished clock on Save Configuration to finalize the process.

It seems as if the entire world has shifted their focus towards Google and has forgotten about the once ever-so popular Yahoo. Although Google has taken over the search engine industry, there are still a huge group of internet users that use Yahoo loyally, and excluding them form your marketing campaign can be extremely negative towards the growth of your online business. Even if 90% of your traffic is coming from Google, are you willing to throw away the other ten percent due to an oversight in your marketing venue?

You may be under the impression that all search engines follow the same rules when ranking websites but this is simply not true. Yahoo’s search engine standards vary slightly from that of Google’s so it is important to consider the difference when designing your website. The best approach is to build a website that appeases all of the major search engines, including Yahoo. The following information will give you an idea of what Yahoo is looking for.

Link Organization

When it comes to indexing of your website, Yahoo’s crawlers pay extra attention toward the internal structure of the site. Google focuses more on external links such as backlinks, which also matter  for Yahoo optimization, but not as much. In fact, it is possible to have  high ranking site in yahoo with hardly any backlinks! However if your site has  a disorganized internal link structure, then you are going to have a very hard time making it to the top page of Yahoo’s search results. This means you’ll need to devise a site map and submit it to Yahoo for maximum success.

Anchor Text

Instead of simply posting URLs, it is best to use anchor text containing keywords. Anchor texts that contain keywords will enhance your Yahoo SEO efforts by double. Make sure the keyword used in the anchor text is relevant to the page you are linking to.

Keyword Optimization with Title Tags

Of course this trick works with all search engines, but it is extremely important in Yahoo. By putting primary keywords in the main title tags of your web pages, you’ll find that many of your pages gain a very high page rank quickly. Yahoo pays very close attention towards tags of all sorts including meta tags.

Search Engine Optimized URLs

Make sure all of your site’s URLs contain relevant keyword. If you are using a good content management system then this step will be done automatically. A good way to optimize URLs to be search engine friendly is to place dashes between words on key phrases. For example, instead of using the URL “ example.com/lookatthislink” you could use the URL “example.com/look-at-this-link.” Using this simple trick will boost your search engine ranking in Yahoo greatly.

Quality Content

Yahoo places a high priority on the quality of the content. This means that stuffing your content with keywords and writing about anything will not work, in fact it will be very detrimental towards the ranking of your web page. To be successful ion Yahoo you’ll need to use quality content with the correct keyword density and placement.

Most of the security risks on the internet today are the result of faulty programming and exploitable code. Many developers do not place security high on their list of priorities, as they’re often rushed for deadlines that they must meet in order to finish a paid project. Sadly, most of the security flaws within their programs are not discovered until the flaw has been exploited and the program is the cause of a compromised site or network. Of all the programming types, PHP is the most common, and is said to be the most useful. PHP is also easier to use than any other programming tool, and as the popularity of PHP programming increases, more new programmers are becoming interested in using PHP. This  influx of inexperienced programmers designing web applications has resulted in an internet full of unsafe websites.

Web Applications and Security

Web applications enhance the functionality and productivity of websites in a variety of ways, and have therefore become very popular amongst website owners. Unfortunately, website owners don’t realize how much of a risk they’re taking by installing and using these applications. Web applications are installed directly into your control panel, which makes them part of a your administrative interface. If a hacker can gain access to your user interface, they can basically do whatever they’d like with your website, including deface it with questionable or inappropriate content. In fact, some web applications are designed by hackers specifically for this purpose. Before you install a web application you should make sure it is from a reliable source, and only install applications that are absolutely necessary towards the progress of your site. If possible, try to work with professional developers to have your own web applications made.

BruteForce

Another way hackers can gain access to your administrative interface is by sending requests to your website’s server repeatedly in order to receive certain information. Many times this information will be something as simple as a password or nickname. They use the information returned to see if they’re guessing the right password without having to wait for a long time. This method is incorporated into hacking programs called Bruteforce programs. These programs repeatedly input information into your sites login fields, in order to guess a correct username and password.

Since the process is done remotely, the hacker will need to know when they have successfully logged in to the account in order for the program to stop sending information. If they fail to realize they are logged in, then the program will continue sending login information which will reverse their success. Hackers avoid this pitfall by getting your site to send them a line of code when they have successfully penetrated the user area of the site. To prevent this from happening you’ll need to change a few settings in your administrative interface to restrict HTTP requests from unknown sources. You can also limit the amount of requests per a certain time frame, to stop the Bruteforce program from receiving information from your website repeatedly.