If you’ve ever had an email address and have given that email address to family members and friends, then you’ve been the victim of FW: otherwise know as a email forward, chain letter, or some funny video, story, joke, etc. These type of emails are some of the worst emails to perpetuate, for a number of reasons.

Unless you believe that being gullible is a good thing and you want everyone you know to also believe anything anyone will say, then go ahead and continue passing on those emails to 10, 20, 100, or a million people so that your wildest dreams will come true, or so that you won’t have every single bad thing possible in the world happen to you…hey, it’s what the email said, right? (FW: Cute Story, Pass it on to 1 Billion People in the next 5 minutes OR ELSE!!!)

So you may ask, why are these emails sent so often? Is it just because someone something interesting to share and it continues to be perpetuated? No, I’m afraid not, if you believe that, you’re skating towards the gullible crowd.

Email like this and others are ultimately generated and sent out by spammers for one of two general purposes. First, to harvest new email addresses for spamming. and second, to clog email systems all over the world.

Spammers don’t make money from people buying the products advertised in the spam email. Spammers usually aren’t the one selling the products. Spammers are hired by shady companies to deliver the company’s advertisement to the greatest number of people possible. The spammer is then paid by the company per number of successful email deliveries of the advertisement.

So ask yourself, if a spammer had to get a very large number of VALID and ACTIVE email addresses (remember, they only get paid if the spam email is safely delivered to an email address, rejected emails don’t count), how would you go about it? Searching online? Too time consuming. Randomly guessing email addresses? Not guaranteed to get active email addresses. Email forwards are a spammers dream. In any given email forward, you can find anywhere from 25 to hundreds of valid and active email addresses, and they are guaranteed because when you forward it to your friends and they send it on to their friends, it perpetuates this cycle of sending the forward to valid email addresses.

Every time a forward is sent, the previous email addresses specified in the email are sent in the message so after a couple of rounds you find the joke or story of the email at the bottom of the message after scrolling through hundreds of email addresses.

Now imagine this giant email message being sent to 25-100 people everytime you forward and copy your entire hotmail or yahoo address book. Then each of those individuals does the same. After a couple of rounds, the giant message is being delivered to thousands and thousands of email inboxes all over the world. As a one time email administrator, I can assure you that email servers don’t like giant messages, they don’t work well and bog down the mail delivery process. Another sick pleasure of spammers and other Web sadists, to cause as many problems for servers and administrators all over the world.

So next time you get one of these messages, please don’t forward it. Trust me, you won’t get that $10. And if you really want to read some funny jokes and cute stories, that’s what search engines are for, just search: “cute story” or “funny jokes”. You’ll get much more than you would from that email. Then, reply to the person who sent you the forwarded message and kindly ask them to never include your email address in another message like that because it’s just a way for spammers to gain access to your email address. Hopefully they will respect your wishes and will be sure to never do it again. If all else fails, create a brand new email address and don’t share it with anyone, that’s always a safe bet.

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Ever found yourself in an organization that locks access to many technology features you’re normally used to? If you’ve ever been in a large corporate environment or in a university setting, you’ve probably been there. Even with the limitations placed on users in these settings, there are some easy ways to still be effective and efficient.

read more | digg story

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In the interests of full disclosure, I didn’t come up with this idea. I read about it in a computer magazine a year or two back but of course when I wanted to refer to it for this article, I couldn’t find it! But someone on Digg eventually managed to find it so here is the original article if you want to see it.As email providers give away more and more storage space, more and more personal information is being stored in those accounts. People are increasingly using their email accounts for more than just email – it has become their online document storage area with backup documents such as passwords, bank account numbers, account usernames, scans of correspondence and much more. Even if you don’t use your email for this purpose, you may still be inadvertantly revealing personal information in general conversation emails to family and close friends. A 6GB Gmail account or an unlimited space Yahoo account is potentially an information bonanza source for identity thieves who manage to figure out your email password and then go snooping. But if someone HAS cracked your email password, it may not be apparent to you. A snooper can easily read an email then mark it as unread again. So the best thing to do would be to set up an “electronic tripwire” so if someone breaks into your account, you’ll know about it.

Here’s how to do it :

1. Sign up for a website hit counter at www.onestatfree.com. You can leave a fake name and whatever URL you want (I used Google.com for mine).

2. You will then receive a welcome email from OneStat with a text attachment called OneStatScript.txt. Download this attachment to your computer and then delete the email (you don’t want any email snoopers finding it later). But before deleting the email, write down your OneStat account number as you will need it later.

3. Change the name of the text document to something that will make the email snooper salivate such as passwordlist. Also change the file format from a text document to a website page. So make it something like passwordlist.htm.

4. Email this newly-renamed file as an attachment to the email account you want to monitor. Make sure the email subject title also lures the snooper in (maybe something like List of Passwords. You get the idea .

5. The trap is now set. Basically if someone opens the email and opens the attachment, OneStat will record a hit. If you then log into your OneStat account say once a day, you will see how many hits you have had to your

The OneStat account page then gives you details on each “visitor” including the date and time they accessed the web document and more importantly their location and IP address! So how does having this information help you? Well first of all, it will alert you to change your password to something stronger. Secondly, if you see the snooper’s location and you only know one or two people there then it narrows down your list of potential suspects. By the way, I recommended signing up for One Stat because the author of the original idea mentioned them. But if you know of any other hit counter services that send text documents to your email address, then please mention them in the comments. I don’t have any financial advantage recommending One Stat so I am perfectly happy to consider alternative companies. (By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, writer and English tutor. Check out his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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It seems like with every new version of an anti-virus, spyware, ad-ware, etc. programs are being made to hog more and more of your computer resources. With anti-virus providers attempting to increase their user base, each new generation of anti-virus program attempts to do more than the last and by so doing, also ends up stealing more of your computer’s resources. When you’re in the middle of a game, or editing a video and feel your system slowing down and come to find out that your anti-virus program decided that it was the best time to run a on-the-fly scan of running files on your computer, it’s time to ditch that program.

I’ve personally tried Symantec, Norton, AVG, ClamAV for Windows, but settled with Avast. All of the other anti-virus programs just hijacked my system attempting to run all sorts of real-time scans which sap previous CPU time and RAM. Avast easily takes the backseat while I do what I want, then when the system is not being used, it takes care of its business.

Out of all of the programs that I have used and  worked with, Norton Internet Security has to be the absolute worst of them all. Not only is it a paid program with features that several free programs offer, but it also has to be one of the most resource intensive programs. Many of the features users rely on will be blocked by Norton, so you can expect to have issues with sending pictures in email, have problems with Internet connection, and not to mention if you rely on remote connections to servers for FTP, SSH, or any other remote administration, Norton will see to it that you jump through hoops to use those. Try disabling the program and it doesn’t allow you to disable it permenently, just until the next system startup.

AVGFree has also gone the way of the resource hog. I’ve been a big fan of AVGFree but the company has to begin to offer a smooth upgrade from one version to the next. When Version 7 was first introduced, users on Version 6 received a nasty message every time the computer was restarted stating that the program would no longer be supported after the release of the new version. Why not just offer a nice upgrade message? Not quite sure what the thinking was but you had to install a separate instance of the new version of the program to “upgrade”. The same thing has happened with the release of version 8.  Version 8 also has a number of complaints from users about the amount of system resources it uses, so it’s best to avoid it. It’s a shame that an excellent program has become so bad.

Avast!, at least for the time being, is a safe alternative. Free to download and install, you will just be required to register with an email address to receive a license. The license is free so why you’re required to do this is a mystery, but at least you have a program that will give you the strong protection but is light on resources as to not become cumbersome to you as a power users.

Avast! Free can be downloaded here (download offered by Download.com: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

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In laymen’s terms, a Windows Registry is a centralized database used in Microsoft Windows 9x, Windows CE, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 to store settings and options for the operating system. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, software, users, and preferences of the PC.

The Registry contains information that Windows refers back to again and again as you use your computer, referencing profiles for each user, the applications installed on the computer and the types of documents that each can create, property sheet settings for folders and application icons, what hardware exists on the system, and the ports that are being used.

It is important to keep your Registry clean and the only way to do this is to run a registry clean program, one specifically for the windows registry. A registry fix will identify and remedy any problems in your windows registry by removing the little bits of information that are left behind every time you have a failed installation or receive error messages when you add/update software on your computer.

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Let’s face it, Windows machines get hacked, and in some environments it happens a lot. Fortunately, Microsoft has built numerous tools into Windows so administrators and power users can analyze a machine to determine whether it’s been compromised. In this tip, which is the first of a two-part series, I’ll cover five useful command-line tools built into Windows for such analysis.

1) WMIC: A world of adventure awaits
Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) is not merely a command; it’s a world unto itself. Offering a command-line interface to the ultra-powerful Windows Management Instrumentation API within Windows, WMIC lets administrative users access all kinds of detailed information about a Windows machine, including detailed attributes of thousands of settings and objects. WMIC is built into Windows XP Professional, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista. To use WMIC, users must invoke it by running the WMIC command followed by the area of the machine the user is interested in (often referred to as an alias within the system). For example, to learn more about the processes running on a machine, a user could run:
C:\> wmic process

Output of that command will likely look pretty ugly because an output format wasn’t specified. With WMIC, output can be formatted in several different ways, but two of the most useful for analyzing a system for compromise are the “list full” option, which shows a huge amount of detail for each area of the machine a user is interested in, and the “list brief” output, which provides one line of output per report item in the list of entities, such as running processes, autostart programs and available shares.

For example, we can look at a summary of every running process on a machine by running:
C:\> wmic process list brief

That command will show the name, process ID and priority of each running process, as well as other less-interesting attributes. To get even more detail, run:
C:\> wmic process list full

This command shows all kinds of details, including the full path of the executable associated with the process and its command-line invocation. When investigating a machine for infection, an administrator should look at each process to determine whether it has a legitimate use on the machine, researching unexpected or unknown processes using a search engine.

Beyond the process alias, users could substitute startup to get a list of all auto-start programs on a machine, including programs that start when the system boots up or a user logs on, which could be defined by an auto-start registry key or folder:
C:\> wmic startup list full

A lot of malware automatically runs on a machine by adding an auto-start entry alongside the legitimate ones which may belong to antivirus tools and various system tray programs. Users can look at other settings on a machine with WMIC by replacing “startup” with “QFE” (an abbreviation which stands for Quick Fix Engineering) to see the patch level of a system, with “share” to see a list of Windows file shares made available on the machine and with “useraccount” to see detailed user account settings.

A handy option within WMIC is the ability to run an information-gathering command on a repeated basis by using the syntax “/every:[N]” after the rest of the WMIC command. The [N] here is an integer, indicating that WMIC should run the given command every [N] seconds. That way, users can look for changes in the settings of the system over time, allowing careful scrutiny of the output. Using this function to pull a process summary every 5 seconds, users could run:
C:\> wmic process list brief /every:1

Hitting CTRL+C will stop the cycle.

2) The net command: An oldie but a goodie
While WMIC is a relatively new command, let’s not lose site of some useful older commands. One of my favorites is the venerable “net” command. Administrators can use this to display all kinds of useful information.

For example, the “net user” command shows all user accounts defined locally on the machine. The “net localgroup” command shows groups, “net localgroup administrators” shows membership of the administrators group and the “net start” command shows running services.

Attackers frequently add users to a system or put their own accounts in the administrators groups, so it’s always a good idea to check the output of these commands to see if an attacker has manipulated the accounts on a machine. Also, some attackers create their own evil services on a machine, so users should be on the lookout for them.

3) Openfiles: Deep scrutiny
Many Windows administrators are unfamiliar with the powerful openfiles command built into Windows. As its name implies, this command shows all files that are opened on the box, indicating the process name interacting with each file. It’s built into modern versions of Windows, from XP Pro to Vista. Like the popular lsof command for Linux and Unix, it’ll show administrators all open files on the machine, giving the process name and full path for each file. Unlike lsof, however, it doesn’t provide many more details, such as process ID number, user number and other information.

Considering the volume of information it gathers, it’s no surprise that the openfiles command is a performance hog. Thus, the accounting associated with openfiles is off by default, meaning users can’t pull any data from this command until it is turned on. This function can be activated by running:
C:\> openfiles /local on

Users will need to reboot, and when the system comes back, they will be able to run the openfiles command as follows:
C:\> openfiles /query /v

This command will show verbose output, which includes the user account that each process with an open file is running under. To get an idea of what malware has been installed, or what an attacker may be doing on a machine, users should look for unusual or unexpected files, especially those associated with unexpected local users on the machine.

When finished with the openfiles command, its accounting functionality can be shut off and the system returned to normal performance by running the following command and rebooting:
C:\> openfiles /local off

4) Netstat: Show me the network
The Windows netstat command shows network activity, focusing on TCP and UDP by default. Because malware often communicates across the network, users can look for unusual and unexpected connections in the output of netstat, run as follows:
C:\> netstat -nao

The –n option tells netstat to display numbers in its output, not the names of machines and protocols, and instead shows IP addresses and TCP or UDP port numbers. The –a indicates to display all connections and listening ports. The –o option tells netstat to show the processID number of each program interacting with a TCP or UDP port. If, instead of TCP and UDP, you are interested in ICMP, netstat can be run as follows:
C:\> netstat –s –p icmp

This indicates that the command will return statistics (-s) of the ICMP protocol. Although not as detailed as the TCP and UDP output, users can see if a machine is sending frequent and unexpected ICMP traffic on the network. Some backdoors and other malware communicate using the payload of ICMP Echo messages, the familiar and innocuous-looking ping packets seen on most networks periodically.

Like WMIC, the netstat command also lets us run it every N seconds. But, instead of using the WMIC syntax of “/every:[N]“, users simply follow their netstat invocation with a space and an integer. Thus, to list the TCP and UDP ports in use on a machine every 2 seconds, users can run:
C:\> netstat –na 2

5) Find: Searching output for useful stuff
Most of the commands I have discussed so far spew a lot of output on the screen, which could be hard for a human to look through to find a specific item of interest. But, Windows comes to the rescue. Users can search through the output of a command using the built-in find and findstr commands in Windows. The find command looks for simple strings, while findstr supports regular expressions, a more complex way to specify search patterns. Because the regular expressions supported by findstr go beyond the scope of this tip article, let’s focus on the find command. By default, find is case sensitive – use the /i option to make it case insensitive.

The find command also has the ability to count. Invoked with the /c command, it’ll count the number of lines of its output that include a given string. Users often want to count the number of lines in the output of a command to determine how many processes are running, how many startup items are present, or a variety of other interesting tidbits on a machine. To count the lines of output, users could simply pipe their output through find /c /v “”. This command will count (/c) the number of lines that do not have (/v) a blank line (“”) in them. By counting the number of non-blank lines, the command is, in effect, counting the number of lines.

Now, with the find command, users can look through the output of each of the commands I’ve discussed so far to find interesting tidbits. For example, to look at information every second about cmd.exe processes running on a machine, type:
C:\> wmic process list brief /every:1 | find “cmd.exe”

Or, to see which autostart programs are associated with the registry hive HKLM, run:
C:\> wmic startup list brief | find /i “hklm”

To count the number of files open on a machine on which openfiles accounting is activated, type:
C:\> openfiles /query /v | find /c /v “”

Whenever counting items in this way, remember to subtract the number of lines associated with column headers. And, as a final example, to see with one-second accuracy when TCP port 2222 starts being used on a machine, along with the process ID using the port, run:
C:\> netstat –nao 1 | find “2222″

Researching output
With these five tools, users can get a great deal of information about the configuration and security state of a Windows machine. To use each command in identifying a compromise, however, a user needs to compare the current settings of the machine under analysis to a “normal,” uninfected machine.

There are three options for establishing a baseline comparison. First, if the user is an experienced malware hunter, he or she may have a sense of what is right and what is wrong with a given kind of machine, identifying evil or unusual stuff based on experience. Alternatively, this comparison can be performed against a clean, uninfected machine, if there is one handy. If there isn’t, a user may need to rely on a third option — researching specific files, process names, file names and port numbers identified by these commands and searching for them online to determine whether they are normal for a given machine and the software it has installed, or whether they are associated with a some type of malware.

In this tip, I have discussed five powerful built-in Windows commands. In a future installment, I’ll finish out our top 10 list by looking at some little-known but immensely useful features of the tasklist, reg and ipconfig commands, as well as iterating with FOR loops and launching administrative GUIs via the command-line.

About the author:
Ed Skoudis is a SANS instructor and a founder and senior security consultant with Intelguardians, a Washington, DC-based information security consulting firm. His expertise includes hacker attacks and defenses, the information security industry and computer privacy issues. In addition to Counter Hack Reloaded, Ed is also the author of Malware: Fighting Malicious Code. He was also awarded 2004, 2005 and 2006 Microsoft MVP awards for Windows Server Security, and is an alumnus of the Honeynet Project. As an expert on SearchSecurity.com, Ed answers your questions related to information security threats.

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With the huge number of things we can do today from our computers and laptops, a computer users worst fear is that someone has illegally accessed their computer and has access to their files and their information. With online banking, E-Bay, and other online shopping, our computers now store an immense amount of sensitive financial and personal information. The last thing any user would want is that information floating around the Internet to be used by others online. The number of identity theft crimes reported is growing exponentially and it can be stopped by users practicing safe computer and Internet usage.

One of the most key items any computer user should have installed on their computer is a software firewall. Most users will have at least some form of anti-virus, and maybe some anti-spyware software, but most users lack a software firewall. A firewall is one of the most important things you can have installed on your computer because it is your last line of defense against intruders on your computer.

Let’s face it, users are going to download music, and other things online so just advising users to not download items that they know they can trust is not feasible. People are going to download music, free programs and more. Files are going to come into the average computer users computer regardless of what security experts advice. It’s like saying that if you just cover up your mouth and never breath, then you won’t catch a cold. That’ s just not going to happen. You are going to go outside sometime and be around other people, and it is inevitable that you will catch a cold. Likewise, users will download files and a malicious file will at some point enter a users computer/

Once a malicious file is in, it’s up to that computer’s safety programs to protect the user. Many of the malicious programs out there are going to try and hang around the computer until important information is entered into a form on the Internet and once the user types in the information, the bad program takes a copy of it and tries to send it back to the owner of the bad program. All of this, obviously, without the user knowing. These programs will attempt to send the information back through non-standard ports on the computer, ports that can be blocked by a good firewall program.

Now, don’t just rush out there and buy some $60-$100 firewall security program at your local computer store. There are alternatives that will secure your computer for free. I recommend using Zone Alarm. It is 100% free and can be downloaded for free from download.com here: ZoneAlarm.

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The Budget Webmaster’s 6 Step Guide to Improving Existing Rankings in Google

You know the scenario. You get an occasional click from Google for a certain keyword. You go to find out why you aren’t getting more clicks, and you find out that you’re ranked in the 30′s, 50′s, or heaven forbid, the 300′s. “Great”, you think, “I finally get ranked for a good keyword and it’s a worthless ranking”.

Not necessarily.

If you got ranked for a keyword you wanted At All, the game’s not over yet. If your site’s content is geared towards that subject, you can get your ranking in search engines increased, at no cost. How?

The first thing you want to do is find out how well you are ranked for this keyword. For Google in particular, this used to be a difficult chore. In the old days of 2003, you’d spend your valuable time doing a search on your desired keyword, then a sub-search for your site, and crawling through pages of listings to find out exactly where you stood.

Now there is hope in the form of the following website. Direct your browser to:

http://www.googlerankings.com/index.php

You can use this site to find out what number you come up for in the Google listings, which can be very powerful information if used correctly. If you’re ranked in the top 1000, you have a shot at raising your listing for that page by tweaking the page to be a little more relevant.

So, secondly, you have to know how good a shot you have at getting a better listing. Go to:

http://www.searchguild.com/difficulty/

I posted a tip about this a month ago, and it’s also in the free optimization Guide I released the week of March 7th. It tells you how hard it is to rank well for certain keywords in Google. You’ll need a free Google API key to use it.

Now that you know your chances, the third piece of information you need to know is how much traffic you can expect. Digital Point has a free tool that gives an approximation of how many hits per day a good ranking gets. Access it here:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Okay, let’s say everything checks out so far. You rank in the top 1000. The term you want won’t be that hard to get, and will get you enough traffic per month to justify your efforts.

Our fifth step is to take the term you chose and optimize your page.

This site does periodic reports on the search engines, and their February report gives their analysis of what the best ranking pages in Google have in common. And as a free bonus, it will also tell you what Yahoo wants. Follow the following link for details-http://www.gorank.com

Now that you know what to shoot for, you need to know how the page you want will measure up- you need to calculate your keyword density. You can also do the sixth step at gorank.com – it has a free tool that will calculate it for you. Prepare your page with that in mind, re-upload, and you’re almost done.

Great, you’re all set. Now you should submit your site to Google, right?

Wrong. Absolutely not. If you can help it, you should never, ever submit any page of your site to Google. Let it find you. HOW it finds you can affect your page rank. I don’t mean that there is a standard penalty for submitting. There’s been speculation on that for a while but I have yet to prove it matters.

What I DO know from personal experience and testing on my member’s sites, is that getting the Googlebot search engine spider to happen upon your site shaves up to 6 weeks off the standard time it takes for indexing. You can show up in Google in as little as 4 days.

Which site links to you can also affect your Google Page Rank. While this is not as important as it once was, it still carries significant weight- my site didn’t start getting spidered on a daily basis until my Page Rank increased to 5.

So even if the spider comes to your site on a Monthly basis, you’re better off waiting for the spider to come back by. That’s the seventh step, let your page be re-discovered with it’s great new changes.

And yes, there’s an even faster, better way to get Google.com’s search engine spider to re-index that page, but that’s another article, isn’t it?

For more free traffic tips, subscribe to her newsletter at ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com or visit her feed enabled blog: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/blog

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Nothing could be simpler than the title you give to your web pages right? Unfortunately, the vast majority of the websites I visit these days have absolutely terrible titles that hurt their online business. The title of your website is a very important part of getting good rankings on most of the major search engines. A good title also goes a long way towards getting your prospects to click on your listings.

If you go to Google right now, and type any search phrase you want, you get back a listing of web sites that match the keywords you entered in. If you look closely, you’ll notice that each search listing’ hyperlink is also the title of that website. The title you choose needs to describe to your prospects what your website is all about. It needs to be able to entice your prospects to click on your listing over any other listing. If your title is simply your company name, you are most likely loosing lots of traffic. You will also find it difficult to rank highly on relevant keywords to your site.

Here are some things to consider:

1. Make sure you use relevant keywords

Keywords are simply search terms that your web site prospects will type into a search engine in order to find you. The keywords you are targeting need to be included in your title. Your keywords also need to be as close to the beginning of the title as it makes sense to do. For example, if you were selling shoes online and you were targeting the keyword “children shoes”, you could have a title like “Children’s shoes for hard to fit children.” Notice how the targeted keywords were at the beginning of the title. Putting your keywords at the front of your title speaks to keyword prominence. Prominence refers to the importance of your keyword in the title. If your main keywords are at the very beginning of the title, it is said to have a prominence of 100%. If they are at the very end of the title, they have a prominence of 0%. As much as possible, you want to have your main keywords appear towards the beginning of your title.

2. Consider using your main keyword twice in your title

If you are optimizing your site to rank well on Google, you should also consider finding a way to include your main keyword twice in the title. The trick is to do this without making the title sound stupid. One way I do this is to use the pipe character | between your main keywords. For example, if I was writing a title for a fishing website and the main keyword I was targeting was ‘fishing charter’ I could repeat the keywords this way, “Fishing Charter | Are you ready for a fishing charter you won’t soon forget?” This example gets my target keyword at the beginning and manages to repeat it again without making it look stupid.

3. Persuade your prospect to click on your link

The link that your prospects will see when they do a search of your website on a search engine will almost always be the title of your website. Even if you get to the first page on a search engine for the keywords you are targeting, you still need to persuade your prospect to click on your link over all the others around you. If you title is not persuasive, or even non-existent, you won’t get the traffic you expect even if you are number one in the listings. Your title must be persuasive.

4. Say what you want in 65 characters or less.

Almost all search engines limit the length of the title that will appear to the search engine surfer. Google for instance, only displays the first 60 to 66 characters. Sometimes, a webmaster will try to include every one of their keywords in the title in the hope that all of their keywords will be picked up by the search engines. Keep your main keyword prominent in the first 65 characters of your title. Do this while making sure that your title is properly targeted to your target market. You can include your secondary keywords in the body of your web page, but keep them out of the title unless it makes sense to keep them in. The rule of thumb for including secondary keywords in your title is to include them only if you can still keep the title persuasive to your website prospects.

Your website title is crucial to your success online.

Your title is vital to your efforts of getting traffic online. Make sure it is descriptive, and persuasive. It needs to include your main keywords as close to the start of your title as it makes sense to do. You need to avoid repeating the same keywords over and over again. This may work for keywords that have little or no competition on them, but it won’t work for any keyword that gets even a decent amount of traffic on them.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a budget web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely.

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So you need a domain name for your brand new internet business. You may even have some cool ideas for a new domain name combination that will really impress your friends. Question is, is your new domain name going to help your business or hurt it?

What could be simpler than choosing a domain name right? Wrong. There are a number of things you need to consider and research before you register your favorite domain name.

First off, what is a domain name and why would I want one?

A domain name makes our lives much easier when surfing the internet. You see, all computers on the internet are actually referenced with what is called IP addresses. On the internet, IP addresses are four sets of numbers that serve like street addresses allowing two computers to talk over a network. An example of an IP address is the one for Google.com. It is 216.239.39.99. If you enter this IP address into the address bar of your browser it will bring you to Google’s home page in that very same way that typing www.google.com would get you there. Unfortunately, we humans have difficulty remembering our phone numbers let alone so many digits for all kinds of sites. That’s one of the main reasons domain names were invented.

Domain names make it easy for us humans to remember how to find a site. Most people know Google.com and anyone familiar with the internet knows that to reach Google, you simply type www.google.com in your address bar and you are transported to their website. The same goes for Disney.com, Microsoft.com, CNN.com, etc?

Now you would think that choosing a domain name would simply be a matter of choosing something that is unique and that people would remember. The problem with that approach is that most of us don’t have the money needed to turn our name into a brand name on the mass market. Most of us need to rely on our prospects reaching our website through other means. The best of these are search engines.

Choosing a good domain name for your site starts with the main keywords you have chosen to focus on for your website. Before you launch your business, you should conduct some preliminary research online to determine which keywords have the most traffic and the least number of other websites competing for that particular keyword. Some tools that help in this are the Overture keyword suggestion tool and Wordtracker.com. Both of these tools will give you a rough idea of how much traffic each of your chosen keywords will likely get each month. This helps to determine which keywords to focus on.

Should you choose a domain name that includes your main keywords?

In most cases, the answer is yes. Google and to some degree Yahoo both give you a small boost for your domain name. If your domain name happens to contain your targeted keywords, your domain name will help you in your quest for higher search engine rankings. Now if you do everything else wrong, having your main keywords in your domain name will not magically catapult you to the top of the listings. Many other parts of your site must be working for you as well. Other things you can do to improve rankings are beyond the scope of this article.

Choosing a keyword rich domain is a smart business move.

For some sites, it could be the edge they need to move up a few spots in the search engines. When choosing a keyword rich domain name, you may want to consider hyphens between your keywords. An example is cheap-airline-tickets.com. Current research trends for Google and Yahoo suggest that hyphens are the only way to separate keywords within a URL that will give you a rankings boost.

Why not simply choose your company name? Simple. Is your company a household name? Are you so dominant in a category that people have stopped referring to the generic name of your category and use your brand name like Kleenex has for tissue paper? If so, register your company name. If not, register a keyword rich domain wherever possible.

You may be thinking, “But I already own a domain name that is my company name. Should I go and register a new domain and point it to the same site? The short answer is no. Years ago, you could improve your rankings on search engines simply by setting up lots of doorway pages and having them all link back to your home page with all kinds of domain names. That tactic nowadays can backfire. You are better off optimizing individual pages within your existing website than you are creating a whole bunch of “fluff” sites just to increase rankings.

The technique I suggest above is really best suited for brand new business ventures. If you still have not registered your domain name for that special online business you are about to start, then make it keyword rich wherever possible. If you have already launched your business, you’ll just have to take advantage of this information next time you start another online venture.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/ , a budget web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely.

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