After securing your server next thing to look at has to be ways of protecting data. Most theft occurs directly from web site itself and if you’re trying to protect images, there are plenty of watermarking programs that can apply a watermark to your images. Take a look at www.hotscripts.com for example and search for watermarking. You can also find hints and tips on preventing people from saving your files to their local pc on many sites, http://javascript.internet.com is a good source for free scripts and searching on Google for javascripts will reveal more sources.

The company in example I used earlier had watermarking protection for all their images but, unfortunately for them, watermarking was dynamic meaning that images themselves were unwatermarked and watermarking was applied when browser displayed images. What this meant was that by stealing images from server, thieves were able to take unwatermarked images.

There is a way around this and something like Strong Arm from www.liquidfrog.com can help by taking invisible watermarks or copyright information and embedding it directly into image. Being able to positively identify a file on someone else’s website as belonging to you can be a strong persuader in making them remove your content from their site even if they feel they’ve bought it legitimately. By proving ownership of a file you can bring a large amount of pressure to bear and save yourself legal costs of issuing a cease and desist notice.

So far we’ve looked mainly at ways of preventing image theft. What if your site contains document files or exe files that you make available for download perhaps? How do you prevent them from being stolen? Including a copyright in a text document is something that everyone should be doing but it’s very easy to remove that and claim work as your own. Given fact that you are allowing people to take these files from your site, you should be including a way of identifying them so that, if you see them on another site, you can prove ownership. Again something like Strong Arm can help.

Finally, having done what you can to prevent theft of your data, you need to check regularly that your web site is still secure and that your file protection systems are working. You also need to check what current trends are for data security by making sure you understand where latest threats are coming from. At moment China and Russia are two major culprits but this will probably change over time as less advanced countries come up to speed. New ways of stealing data are always just around corner and you need to be one step ahead whole time. It’s only by keeping on top of it that you can effectively prevent data you’ve bought and paid for being stolen!

It really doesn't matter what business you are in. An investment banking firm can benefit from same strategy.

Here's reason. The major search engines want to index high quality information. A site about what a person can buy from you doesn't make that cut but a site with an article about how to cast in windy conditions does.

In addition, search engines take a look at sites that link to you and give your some points for that. A high quality how to site about fishing will draw plenty of related links. This will only help drive that traffic to JoesBaitShop.com even faster.

The cost of putting up a website is so low these days it's really a crime if you don't come up with about 10 reasons to have multiple sites.

Think of it this way. You need one site that presells and one site that sells. If this strategy even remotely makes sense to you then there is a book you should read today! It's called Make Your Site Sell. Go see for yourself