The .COM and .NET Registry recently announced that they will be changing their Domain Secret implementation on the 15th of November, 2009. As per the new rules a Domain Secret must be 8-32 characters long and contain at least one number, one letter and one special character.

There will be no impact on existing Domain Names; they can be Transferred with the current Domain Secret itself.

Security is of prime importance in running a Domain Business. We at aalpha NET acknowledge this fact and in our efforts to ensure a secure environment for your Business, we will be introducing a Security ID – Personal Identification Number (PIN) on the 19th of November 2009. PIN is a four digit secret number that would be used to verify your identity during your communication with the aalpha NET Support Team.

Most TLD Registries, banks and other critical service providers always include an additional security check when assisting Customers on the phone. The idea is simple – ensure that the person contacting us has genuine access and rights to the Account so he can be assisted appropriately.

Details:
• Existing Resellers/Customers can locate their PINs in their Primary Profile in the Control Panel
• The PIN can be edited from Settings >> Change Personal Identification Number (PIN)
.
A default PIN will be emailed to all new Resellers/Customers on sign-up

SOURCE : GIST

Internationalized Domain Names

In this age of Information Technology (IT) with the entire Globe being integrated into a web-linked village with the knowledge as the sole differentiator, development of convivial Access Technology has gained prime importance. Especially for India, with its diverse and multi-lingual heritage and culture, the Internet is expected to play dominant integrating role for integrating almost all aspects of social and economic endeavor.

To ensure that India and Indian languages have their rightful place in the fast-evolving scenario, CDAC GIST undertook research and study of various IDN related RFCs and their applicability vis-à-vis Indian Languages. The pilot study was under the aegis of the DIT.

The main aim was dual :

Primarily to ensure that a user can create and access URL’s in his own language and
Closely associated with the above, to ensure that the average user who is little aware of spoofing or phishing or pharming does not suffer financial loss or identity loss. Thus an average user doesn’t care about a seemingly trivial URL string unless he comes across it inadvertently and gets robbed. For him,
वीत्त.भारत and.वीत.भारत look the same. By clicking on the worng URL, (s)he could be phished or pharmed.

To prevent such spoofing and phishing attacks in IL scenario, a careful study of some scripts is done by CDAC GIST, especially in the area of homographs: characters and their combinations which look alike but are different in reality, as in the example given above.

Over the past three years CDAC Pune in close association with DIT and with contributions from CDAC Kolkata and Thiruvanathapuram has evolved a policy document for Internationalized Domain Names in Indian Languages. A certain number of Scripts and Languages have also been identified and the requirements for each have been detailed out in the course of meetings: Devanagari (Marathi, Hindi, Konkani, Sanskrit and Nepali), Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Assamese, and Bangla to name the major languages have been handled. With the maturity of the policy it is time to involve the implementers of the project: the Registrars, Sub-Registrars and Industry at large and make them aware of the major issues underlying the allocation of Internationalized Domain Names in Indian Languages and obtain useful feedback from them.

Traffic is exposure. If no one knows how to find your website or blog, then you will only be showing off your great site to friends and family. Page optimization refers to search engine optimization techniques used directly in the construction of web pages. And SEO is more than just engine optimization, it’s about optimizing the page for human readers. If you really do that, serch engines will be glad with that.
Monitoring your use of keywords is important, as well as making sure your website’s content is indispensable. Stay away from keyword stuffing for it not only makes your website appear to be unintelligent and unprofessional but because search engines have caught on they penalize for the overuse of keywords. The goal is using keywords realistically and prudently. Keywords are often solely used to attract web search traffic.

Even as traditional SEO identifies a keyword density of 2-7% as being optimal for on page optimization, changes in Google’s search engine operations indicate that a density of only 1-2% may be preferable (and readable). Create a list of words that can be used as search terms relating to your topic and use them in different places throughout your site. Latent Semantic Index powered by Google (LSI)algorithm will also reward you for the use of similar phrases.

Keywords do not necessarily have to be restricted to the content of your page. Keywords need to be emphasized in page titles. A search engine recognizes your page content based heavily on the words you choose to utilize in your page titles. Without using keywords in the title pages, one must have many outside links that point to the specific page to increase web traffic. Keywords, when being integrated into your titles, should be placed as near the beginning of the title as is possible, but ensure that it is easily comprehended. It is important to have a page title for optimal results, as this becomes the link associated with the page in the search engine results.

Be sure that every page of your website has a short page title using the most important keywords for the page. Keep in mind that search engines will only display set numbers of characters in each search result. Generally speaking, it is enough to only use a keyword once in a title – to use the keyword two or three times is repetitive.

Meta tags is a term you may read about when reading about “on page optimization” but because it was widely abused by spam, search engines don’t acknowledge them. There are very few SEO professionals who continue to depend on meta tags for web page optimization. If you decide to go ahead, make sure you only use meta keywords and descriptions so that these words and phrases show up on the page and are not going to be considered spam.

Links from your site to other related pages will also enhance the popularity of your search engine. Consequently, it is imperative that the links provided are real and sent to sites with similar content that adds value to the visitors. Page optimization is not hard to institute and given that you offer the visitors to your site excellent and relevant content, it will largely benefit the success you will have with the search engines.