I have recently been reading up on the top ways to build your domains trust with Google. Why? Because Google ranks websites based heavily on the ‘trust’ value that your web site has. There are a number of factors that Google is known to use to determine your web sites trust, some you can influence, and others that you can not influence as they are beyond anyone’s control.  A prime example of something that you can influence would be to register your domain name for longer than 1 year at a time. Google sees longer registrations as a commitment to your domain name/web site.  Spammers often register and drop domains, using them for only a year at a time, so Google knows that this is a trend. Another way you can influence Googles trust in your web site is to contact web site owners within your demographic, if you have a web site about boots, find other web sites that talk about boots (preferably well known sites or sites that appear high in Google) and politely ask them to link to you, offering them a link back in return.

What you can not influence

Google knows how old your domain name is, if its ‘young’ it will be more difficult to rank high in the search results. This can obviously only change naturally with time.

These days its never been more improtant to keep your web site secure from hackers, spammers and other tricksters. Im writing this article to offer some basic advice on best practice.

Always keep your software (PHP scripts etc) up to date
This is one of the most important pactices, most good scripts are updated very often (every week or so) and these updates are often security fixes & bug fixes. Often people think that scripts are updated to cater for new features, athough this is the case please dont forget that security fixes are more important to think about. If your website gets hacked you wont have any features at all to play with!

Keep your sites folders secure
Sometimes we see websites that have set the permissions on there folders to 777, this is a definate no no! Having your folders set to 777 means everyone has open access to it.  You should never use 777, even if a script installation document tells you to. Instead use 755, if this does not work, i would reccomend finding an alternative script.

Rotate your passwords
Keep your passwords safe, never write them down and change them

As a web host we always ensure that our systems are up to date,  security patches are applied and firewalls are working as effectivly as possible, so as long as you follow the above basics your site should be secure from hackers.

If you want to  create a web site but don’t know how, i would recommend trying a web based builder tool. These tools are available free with all of our web hosting packages.  A web builder basically takes away all of the technical side of web design so that anyone can create a web site.

Can i really design my own web site?

Yes, definitely! If you can use Microsoft word then you can use our web builder to create a web site.

How does it work?

Everything is done online using only your web browser (it doesn’t matter if your on Windows or Mac). You simply log in to your hosting control panel and click on the web builder icon. The web builder will launch and start asking you simple questions, every time you answer a question it updates your website. At the end you have a publish button which makes your web site visible on the internet!