Weekend Projects - Google Maps

Last week we focused on securing folders and using various methods to do that. This week we will focus on adding our business and website to Google Maps. Google Maps has a way to search for local businesses in your area. The idea is similar to a yellow pages online making it easier to find businesses in and around where you live. The more businesses that are added to Google Maps the more useful Google Maps will become.

To get started you need to sign-up for a Google Account.  Once your Google account is setup you can add your business and site to Google Maps. The process takes about 10 minutes to complete. Be sure to fill in as much detail as possible.

Once you are done a postcard from Google will be sent by mail. This can take anywhere from 6 or more weeks. In the postcard you will be provided a link to visit and validate your listing. It is important to do this so your business is added to Google Maps.

If you get stuck let me know in the comments.

Weekend Projects - Securing Folders

Last week we worked on Geotagging our site so that local people will be able to find our site easier. This week we will look at a quick method to secure your folders from hackers trying to gain access or deface your sites. Anyone that is using open source software should know they are at greater risk of being exploited by hackers and should be security conscious when using that software.

Basic Security
If you have a folder, like your images folder, where you do not want someone to browse it you can add a blank index.html page into that folder. This will prevent anyone from viewing the contents of that folder. The problem with this method is that in open source software it is very easy to find the files because they are all stored in the same location. Adding a index.html file to your folder will prevent basic nosey people from browsing folders they should not be browsing. For example with WordPress I can go in an see what plugins you have installed by going to www.yourblogurl.com/wp-content/plugins/.

General Security
A lot of open based software requires you to set folders to a permission of 777. This means that those file and folders are read and writable to anyone. The result is that someone could maliciously use your site for phishing or spamming by uploading their own files in to the insecure folder.

For some software’s they only require the folder or file to be set to 777 for the initial setup to write configuration information. For example WordPress wants you to set your theme files to writable so you can directly modify them from your admin area. This is a great feature but I would suggest once you are done editing them that you set the folder and file permission back to what they were originally.

From time to time you will need to have folders set to 777 so you can upload images. You can secure these folders from certain files being browsed in those folders by creating a .htaccess file and adding the following to it…

<FilesMatch “\.(php|php5|php4|php3|htm|html|shtml)$”>
 Order Allow,Deny
 Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

You can add other file types to the end if your server supports them like ASP would be |asp.

Advanced Security
There are certain folders in most open source software that hackers will look for exploits. Folders like an include folder are usually hit hard on sites. We do have mod_security installed on our own servers to block a majority of the well known exploits. To be more secure you can add your own layer of security by adding a .htaccess to your own include folders to prevent browsing of those folders completely. Add the following to the .htaccess…

<limit GET POST PUT>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</limit>

This will prevent anyone from viewing that folder at all. Some times the include is in an admin area where you or several others only need to see it. You can secure it the same way but add an allow based on your IP. Again create a .htaccess file, find your IP address and add the following…

<limit GET POST PUT>
order deny,allow
allow from 212.54.122.33
deny from all
</limit>

You may need to tweak or combine these various methods to ensure the best security for your folders.

If you get stuck let me know in the comments.

Weekend Projects - Geotagging Your Site

Last week we worked on adding keywords to our sites so we can improve search engine ranking for those keywords. As the Internet evolves you will see more people wanting to do local searches and one way they will be doing that is through Geotagging. This week we will add Geotags to our site making it so search engines that use Geotagging will be able to direct the proper traffic to our site.

All of the Geotags go into the head section of your home page (between <HEAD> and </HEAD>). To begin open your home page in your favorite editor. The first one to add is your Longitude and Latitude using geo.position…

<meta name=”geo.position” content=”49.11;-122.68″ />
<meta name=”ICBM” content=”49.11,-122.68″ />

If you have a GPS finding your Longitude and Latitude is pretty easy. If you do not have that surf over to maporama.com and enter your address. The site will provide you the details to enter in the above tag. Next add the following tags which are pretty self explanatory…

<meta name=”DC.title” content=”Your Site Name” />
<meta name=”geo.country” content=”CA” />
<meta name=”geo.region” content=”CA-BC” />
<meta name=”geo.placename” content=”Surrey, BC V3S 8Z6, Canada” />

For the geo.country and geo.region be sure to use ISO 3166 standard codes. The next part uses the Getty Thesaurus of Geographical Names. Go to their site and enter in your City into the Find Name box and enter City into the Place Type. If they do not list your town try entering the largest local city. Once you find your city you will see an ID which you can copy and paste into the the following tag…

<meta name=”tgn.id” content=”7013135″ />

Like above the bellow should be added and are self explanatory…

<meta name=”tgn.name” content=”Surrey” />
<meta name=”tgn.nation” content=”Canada” />

Save your page and upload. Now that you have these details you can submit your page to GeoURL and GeoTags. If your adding these details to your blog you can add your blog to feedmap. I also found a Geotagging WordPress plugin which you can install as well.

If you get stuck let me know in the comments.

Weekend Projects: Adding Keywords

Last week we did some spying on our competitors keywords so we can better target our own keywords. This week we will cover some basic concepts on how to add those keywords to your site so that search engines will find it.

Header
Adding your keywords to your header is a must. If you do not have a keyword tag in your header you should add the following below your <head> and above your </head> tags…

<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”your keywords,go here,separated by a comma,but not a space”>

Body
You can add keywords into your main page content. Some are visible and others not so visible. You should be careful adding to many keywords or overloading the same keyword over and over. I suggest not adding the keyword more then 3 to 4 times per page in the content.

The first method is using the H1, H2, H3 tags. This tag is for a title on your page. Putting your keyword into an H1 tag will flag a search engine that the words in that H1 are important and may be considered the topic of the page. i suggest you use an H1 in your page if you are not already. The code would look like this…

<H1>your keywords go here</H1>

The next method is the alt tag in images. You can add an alt tag to your image like this…

 <img src=”sampleimage.jpg” alt=”Your keywords go here” />

Warning
There are other places you can hide and put your keywords into your code but I would not advise it. It is good to ensure the keywords you want in your page are done above but doing anything else can be cause for search engines to possibly ban your site for spam.

If you get stuck let me know in the comments.

Weekend Projects: Know your Enemy

Last week we went through and made sure there were no broken links in our site. This week we will focus on choosing better keywords for our site by finding out what keywords competitor sites are using. General Sun Tzu in his book The Art of War was quoted for saying “Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”. The same wisdom from 500 BC applies for website owners even today.

Upon my travels on the Internet I find a lot of interesting services. Some free, some paid. This week I tested out a service called KeywordSpy. As the quote from Sun Tzu implies knowing your enemy and what keywords they are using can help you better improve your own sites keywords.

This week you should go out and find 3 comparable sites to your own. Once you have the domains of your competitors go to the KeywordSpy site and where it says ‘Begin your free keyword search here’ enter the domain (make sure you have no http:// or www. at the beginning of the domain). Click on the Go button and it will show you 10 of the results. Copy down the results and do the same for the other 2 domains. If you want a more comprehensive list of the keywords you will need to upgrade to the full version.

Once you have your list determine which ones you want to add to your own site. Next week we will cover how to use these keywords more effectively then just adding them to the header section of your site.

Do you think it would be immoral to use this type of tool on your competitor?

As always if you get stuck let me know in the comments.

Weekend Projects: Link Check

Last week we worked on improving our About Us page and how important it is for a website to have one. This week we will focus on checking links on your site to ensure that there are no broken links. Any broken link an be a reason for Google to penalize your site and may cause confusion for visitors who click on links and end up at a 404 page.

I found a great free tool for checking links on your site and it is really easy to use. To get started…

1. Download the Free Link Checker software*. Save it to your desktop and then double click on the Setup file. Follow the on screen setup by clicking next several times.
2. Open the Free Link Checker software and choose File > New Project.
3. Enter your domain name http://www.yourdomain.ca/ and click start.

It will run and then ask you if you want to output a report. Choose yes and then Cancel. This will open the report in your local browser.

If you have any errors go through and fix them this weekend.

If you get stuck let me know in the comments.

* Note: Due to the sensative nature of the previous linked software we have replaced it with another free checker. Our appologies if the software offended anyone it was not our intention.