Tag Archives: key

How High Quality Links Can Make a Real Difference to a Search Engine Rank

Once upon a time, it was thought that when a business launched its website, the orders would simply come flooding in. But, with literally billions of websites on the net, sites need more than a catchy domain name and some pretty solid content to be a success. The best way to succeed online is to build a site presence, and links makes all the difference, particular high quality links. When a web user wants to find a website, he or she will usually enter a relevant phrase or topic name into a search engine and search for specific information, not a particular site. Links play a key role in establishing the prominence that a particular site has within a topic, and therefore a higher rank within the search engine. Through search engine optimisation, which is more commonly referred to as SEO, the search engine will best be able to find what the user is looking for. This makes the dual areas of site linking and key word searching equally important. But, in terms of linking, there are aspects that affect the actual quality of the link, one of which is relevance. For many people, the whole world of website linking is a bit like backwards Greek. Completely confusing. However, it is perfectly clear when one breaks the matter down into its simplest form and keeps in mind the key theme word on which the whole matter is based. That theme word is sharing. A link is basically a percentage of a single value, lets say the number 1. And the value of 1 is divided equally between all of the websites on the internet, ensuring that all existing sites have an equal rank. Through links, websites can donate their value to others, thereby building the significance of the website they links to. To make it simpler, think of the internet as an apartment building, with 100 apartments. The building has a value of 100, with each apartment a value of 1. The popularity, and therefore rank of apartments, can be measured by the number of residents that like to visit, or link to, it. So, if three residents visit apartment 5B, they donate their respective values, meaning 5B is worth 3. And since every other apartment is worth just 1, that means that 5B is the most popular or the most prominent, and is duly ranked top of the list. It gets a little more complicated when the resident in apartment 3F likes to visit three apartments regularly, say 7D and 2H, as well as 5B. In that case, 3F simply divides its value into 3, thereby donating 0.33 to each of 7D, 2H and 5B. However, as an intricate visiting pattern develops, the values can become extremely varied and result in a table of preferences, clearly ranking the apartments according to their popularity. Quality is also important, and search engines have developed to such a level of sophistication that they can identify which links are most relevant, and which ones are less so. In the past, owners of websites and blogs simply built a multitude of links on other sites to into a position of significance. The problem was that not all links were on relevant sites, or even sites that could be considered genuine. So, an owner of a pet store might link sites relating to gardening, sport and archeology to his own business website, as well as those relating to pet matters. The result is a huge number of links, but only a small percentage of which are relevant. Now, search engines evaluate the quality of the particular links, that if a site is linked to a site within the same topic or industry, the relevance is high and the link is a high quality link . Once this status has been achieved, and a search engine places a site higher on the ranking system, it will take less time for a web user to find a relevant site. With the right key words, and a truly effective search engine optimisation strategy, more traffic can be directed to a site, bringing more potential customers, creating more business and increasing sales. With the right link building and SEO techniques, any business can thrive on the world wide web.

How to get a self signed certificate?

SSL makes use of what is known as asymmetric cryptography, commonly referred to as public key cryptography (PKI). With public key cryptography, two keys are created, one public, one private. Anything encrypted with either key can only be decrypted with its corresponding key. Thus if a message or data stream were encrypted with the server’s private key, it can be decrypted only using its corresponding public key, ensuring that the data only could have come from the server.

If SSL utilizes public key cryptography to encrypt the data stream traveling over the Internet, why is a certificate necessary? The technical answer to that question is that a certificate is not really necessary – the data is secure and cannot easily be decrypted by a third party. However, certificates do serve a crucial role in the communication process. The certificate, signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA), ensures that the certificate holder is really who he claims to be. Without a trusted signed certificate, your data may be encrypted; however, the party you are communicating with may not be whom you think. Without certificates, impersonation attacks would be much more common.

Step 1: Generate a Private Key

The openssl toolkit is used to generate an RSA Private Key and CSR (Certificate Signing Request). It can also be used to generate self-signed certificates which can be used for testing purposes or internal usage.

The first step is to create your RSA Private Key. This key is a 1024 bit RSA key which is encrypted using Triple-DES and stored in a PEM format so that it is readable as ASCII text.

Step 2: Generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request)

Once the private key is generated a Certificate Signing Request can be generated. The CSR is then used in one of two ways. Ideally, the CSR will be sent to a Certificate Authority, such as Thawte or Verisign who will verify the identity of the requestor and issue a signed certificate. The second option is to self-sign the CSR, which will be demonstrated in the next section.

During the generation of the CSR, you will be prompted for several pieces of information. These are the X.509 attributes of the certificate. One of the prompts will be for “Common Name (e.g., YOUR name)”. It is important that this field be filled in with the fully qualified domain name of the server to be protected by SSL. If the website to be protected will be https://public.akadia.com, then enter public.akadia.com at this prompt.

Step 3: Remove Passphrase from Key

One unfortunate side-effect of the pass-phrased private key is that Apache will ask for the pass-phrase each time the web server is started. Obviously this is not necessarily convenient as someone will not always be around to type in the pass-phrase, such as after a reboot or crash. mod_ssl includes the ability to use an external program in place of the built-in pass-phrase dialog, however, this is not necessarily the most secure option either. It is possible to remove the Triple-DES encryption from the key, thereby no longer needing to type in a pass-phrase. If the private key is no longer encrypted, it is critical that this file only be readable by the root user! If your system is ever compromised and a third party obtains your unencrypted private key, the corresponding certificate will need to be revoked.

Step 4: Generating a Self-Signed Certificate

At this point you will need to generate a self-signed certificate because you either don’t plan on having your certificate signed by a CA, or you wish to test your new SSL implementation while the CA is signing your certificate. This temporary certificate will generate an error in the client browser to the effect that the signing certificate authority is unknown and not trusted.

Step 5: Installing the Private Key and Certificate

When Apache with mod_ssl is installed, it creates several directories in the Apache config directory. The location of this directory will differ depending on how Apache was compiled.

Step 6: Configuring SSL Enabled Virtual Hosts

Step 7: Restart Apache and Test

How to get a self signed certificate?

SSL makes use of what is known as asymmetric cryptography, commonly referred to as public key cryptography (PKI). With public key cryptography, two keys are created, one public, one private. Anything encrypted with either key can only be decrypted with its corresponding key. Thus if a message or data stream were encrypted with the server’s private key, it can be decrypted only using its corresponding public key, ensuring that the data only could have come from the server.

If SSL utilizes public key cryptography to encrypt the data stream traveling over the Internet, why is a certificate necessary? The technical answer to that question is that a certificate is not really necessary – the data is secure and cannot easily be decrypted by a third party. However, certificates do serve a crucial role in the communication process. The certificate, signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA), ensures that the certificate holder is really who he claims to be. Without a trusted signed certificate, your data may be encrypted; however, the party you are communicating with may not be whom you think. Without certificates, impersonation attacks would be much more common.

Step 1: Generate a Private Key

The openssl toolkit is used to generate an RSA Private Key and CSR (Certificate Signing Request). It can also be used to generate self-signed certificates which can be used for testing purposes or internal usage.

The first step is to create your RSA Private Key. This key is a 1024 bit RSA key which is encrypted using Triple-DES and stored in a PEM format so that it is readable as ASCII text.

Step 2: Generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request)

Once the private key is generated a Certificate Signing Request can be generated. The CSR is then used in one of two ways. Ideally, the CSR will be sent to a Certificate Authority, such as Thawte or Verisign who will verify the identity of the requestor and issue a signed certificate. The second option is to self-sign the CSR, which will be demonstrated in the next section.

During the generation of the CSR, you will be prompted for several pieces of information. These are the X.509 attributes of the certificate. One of the prompts will be for “Common Name (e.g., YOUR name)”. It is important that this field be filled in with the fully qualified domain name of the server to be protected by SSL. If the website to be protected will be https://public.akadia.com, then enter public.akadia.com at this prompt.

Step 3: Remove Passphrase from Key

One unfortunate side-effect of the pass-phrased private key is that Apache will ask for the pass-phrase each time the web server is started. Obviously this is not necessarily convenient as someone will not always be around to type in the pass-phrase, such as after a reboot or crash. mod_ssl includes the ability to use an external program in place of the built-in pass-phrase dialog, however, this is not necessarily the most secure option either. It is possible to remove the Triple-DES encryption from the key, thereby no longer needing to type in a pass-phrase. If the private key is no longer encrypted, it is critical that this file only be readable by the root user! If your system is ever compromised and a third party obtains your unencrypted private key, the corresponding certificate will need to be revoked.

Step 4: Generating a Self-Signed Certificate

At this point you will need to generate a self-signed certificate because you either don’t plan on having your certificate signed by a CA, or you wish to test your new SSL implementation while the CA is signing your certificate. This temporary certificate will generate an error in the client browser to the effect that the signing certificate authority is unknown and not trusted.

Step 5: Installing the Private Key and Certificate

When Apache with mod_ssl is installed, it creates several directories in the Apache config directory. The location of this directory will differ depending on how Apache was compiled.

Step 6: Configuring SSL Enabled Virtual Hosts

Step 7: Restart Apache and Test