The usability of website and Search Engine Optimization

My focus is on how website usability goes hand in hand with good SEO. Usability science, or human factors, pursues the quest for human-computer interface designs that are easy to use. While Usability Day is about technology as a whole, and how that technology makes our lives easier, this article will turn its attention to website usability, and how it can be important in search engine optimization.

• Website usability deals with ease of navigation, how colors work together to enhance a user experience without hurting the eyes, the size of fonts, and design. But some of the concepts of website usability have a direct effect on how search engines crawl your website, and index it accordingly.

"Memory is part of usability. That's why navigation is such a pain in the neck to work out and make usable for everybody who will use your web site. There are ads, images, blinking thingy’s distracting your eyes, and your mind is going everywhere at once".

Usability Testing
Web site usability focuses on what happens after users arrive on a Web site. When usability professionals perform formative tests on Web page prototypes, the initial assumption is users have already landed on a specific page. Usability professionals observe what people do once they arrive on that page. Do they take the desired call to action? Do they understand what page they're viewing? The focus of formative usability testing is to create a user-friendly interface. It isn't how to encourage people to visit your Web site. That responsibility is usually relegated to the marketing department.

Search Engine optimization:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing. The term SEO also refers to "search engine optimizers," an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients' sites.

• It is the process of analyzing and optimizing your web site's design in order to ensure its indexing and increase its positioning in search engines.
  
• The goal of this analysis and optimization is to make your web site and its content more attractive, relevant and visible to search engines and web searchers.
  
• It would be terrible to have a beautifully designed web site with excellent written content, yet receive little traffic simply because your site cannot be easily found, if at all, by using a major search engine.
  
• We will provide you with our expert advice on your site's architecture in order to make it search engine friendly.
  
• A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don't realise is that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors.
  
• Ultimately this means more people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. But are search engine optimization and usability compatible? Aren’t there trades-offs that need to be made between giving search engines what they want and giving people what they want? Read on and find out.

This Earth-Day-style event, focused on easy-to-use technology, currently involves plans in more than 70 cities in 30 countries. Online headquarters of the international day, says, “World Usability Day promotes the value of usability engineering, user-centered design, and every user's responsibility to ask for things that work better. The Usability Professionals' Association is doing that by encouraging, organizing, and sponsoring 36 hours of activities at the local level around the globe.

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What is the Difference Between http and https?

http is hyper text transfer protocol which is responsible for transmitting and receiving information across the Internet where as https is secure http, which is used exchanging confidential information with a server, which needs to be secured in order to prevent unauthorized access.

HTTP is Hyper Text Transport Protocol and is transmitted over the wire via PORT 80(TCP). You normally use HTTP when you are browsing the web, it’s not secure, and so someone can eavesdrop on the conversation between your computer and the web server. HTTP can support the client asking for a particular file to be sent only if it has been updated after a certain date and time. This would be used if the client has already retrieved a copy of a file by that name from that server, but wants to check to see if it has been updated since then. The server responds either with the updated file, with a message to say the file has not been changed, or with a message that the file no longer exists.

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer or HTTP over SSL) is a Web protocol developed by Netscape and built into its browser that encrypts and decrypts user page requests as well as the pages that are returned by the Web server. HTTPS is really just the use of Netscape's Secure Socket Layer (SSL) as a sub layer under its regular HTTP application layering. (HTTPS uses port 443 instead of HTTP port 80 in its interactions with the lower layer, TCP/IP.) SSL uses a 40-bit key size for the RC4 stream encryption algorithm, new-age browsers use 128-bit key size which is more secure than the former, it is considered an adequate degree of encryption for commercial exchange. HTTPS is normally used in login pages, shopping/commercial sites.

How it Work
Https is not a separate protocol, but refers to the combination of a normal HTTP interaction over an encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) transport mechanism. This ensures reasonable protection from eavesdroppers and (provided it is implemented properly and the top level certification authorities do their job properly) man-in-the-middle attacks.
The default TCP port of an https: URL is 443 (for unsecured HTTP, the default is 80).To prepare a web-server for accepting https connections the administrator must create a public key certificate for the web-server. These certificates can be created for Linux based servers with tools such as Open SSL's ssl or SuSE's gensslcert. This certificate must be signed by a certificate authority of one form or another, who certifies that the certificate holder is who they say they are. Web browsers are generally distributed with the signing certificates of major certificate authorities, so that they can verify certificates signed by them.

Main Features

• Dedicated to HTTP protocol, show a wide range of HTTP related information, request and response header, content, sent and received cookies, stream, query strings, post form values...
  
• Request builder, Users can handcraft an HTTP request by using the HTTP Request Builder, or they can use a drag-and-drop operation to move an existing request from the session grid to the Request Builder to execute it again.
  
• Hex Viewer allows users to view and edit binary files in hexadecimal and textual format.
  
• Displays Winsock traffic originating from Java applets and JavaScript embedded in a Web page, displays Winsock traffic originating from ActiveX controls and COM objects instanced by an application (Stand-alone Edition Only)
  
• "Before request and after response" browser cache comparisons
  
• Support HTTPS, show you unencrypted data sent over HTTPS / SSL connections, HTTPS is available if the application uses the Microsoft WININET API (ex. ie, outlook) or Mozilla NSS API. (ex. firefox, thunderbird)
  
• Selectively clear caches and cookies which are related with HTTP/HTTPS session.

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Best way to Search the Internet

The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc.; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is accessible via the Internet, as are many other services including e-mail and file sharing.

Uses:

The internet is an amazing resource that provides quick access to all sorts of information. The amount of information, however, is so vast that being able to find what you are looking for is a daunting task. Search engines are the answer. Our favorite search engine is Google because it does an remarkable job of listing relevant search results.

Tips & Suggestions:

Although Google is powerful and easy to use, here are some tips you can use to get the best results:

• Don't get stuck on one search term or phrase; if your first search does not give you the type of results you are looking for, try different words or different phrases.

• Putting quotation marks around a phrase in the search box requires all resulting pages to include that exact phrase to be located somewhere on the page.

• Keep in mind that most search engines work with AND as the default operator; this means that any words you enter in the search box must exist on the resulting pages (unless you put a hyphen before a word).

• Including a hyphen before a word means that pages that include that word will be omitted from the search results.

• The order of the words you enter into the search box affects results, so try to enter the most important word first.

• If you enter dictionary words, your search terms are listed in the bar below the search box on the results page, and clicking on the word sends you to the definition of the word itself.

• You can enter math equations such as 27/3 and Google will provide the answer.

• You can enter a unit conversion such as 33 Celsius in Fahrenheit and Google will provide the answer

Perhaps the best tip to getting the most out of the internet, is to realize that it is there and to realize the breadth of information that is available. Before the rise of the internet, people were used to going on with their lives without plenty of relevant information.

You would go to the movies without knowing where you could find parking, or you would have a discussion about India without knowing the population. Once you realize that there are answers to virtually any question you could possibly have, you can start thinking about the gaps in your knowledge and using the internet to fill them. You can start to focus on the things you don't know about a particular subject, and instead of proceeding with ignorance, you can learn and explore.

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