Base64 code derives its name from the fact that it uses only 64 characters. MIME-based (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions), Base64 uses only A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and the “+” and “/” symbols. That’s 64 characters, hence the name.

In and of itself, Base64 is not bad. It has its practical uses. One of its widest applications is in embedding binary files such as images within scripts. This allows a coder to include the photo on the page rather than in an external file. It is also used to store passwords for encryption.

The problem with Base64 encoding is its strengths are also its weaknesses. Because it is useful in obfuscating passwords and embedding binary files within scripts, it is easy for spammers and malware distributors to use as well. In fact, this is often precisely what they do. And they do from within your WordPress themes. Some WordPress developers have figured out that they can use Base64 to embed a delayed script within the footer of your WordPress theme that is activated once so many downloads of that theme have been distributed. Then, you have a malware problem.

Other theme developers sell links that are placed within WordPress theme footers. You can’t see them because they stored inside a Base64 encoding string. It looks like one link to the naked eye, but in reality it could be linking to half a dozen or more websites. Even if those sites are all good and pose no threats, it’s still not something you want to do, right?

Well, there is a solution to this problem. You can download the Theme Authenticity Checker for WordPress and detect these Base64 strings that link to sites you do not want to endorse. You can then either delete those links from your blog’s footer or find a new theme. Either way, you rid yourself of unwanted Base64 code.

When it comes to getting hacked, you might think that the guys who did that to you are real bad people. Not necessarily. It could be your pharmacist or the good looking guy next door. You know, the one who took you to dinner last weekend at the five star restaurant? You didn’t know he was a computer genius, did you?

Well, he may not be. He could just have enough money to pay the real genius to hack your website and divert your traffic to his online vialis candy machine.

Let’s face it. You don’t know who the people are that are hacking your website. They could be some terrorist cell in Albania, some family in Russia trying to keep food on the table, or the taxi driver who makes his second income from selling malware and spam fighting software by hacking websites. He could be the friendliest guy in your neighborhood.

Whoever it is, though, needs to be stopped and the best way to stop them from hacking your site is to increase your level of security. Make sure your blog passwords, CMS passwords, and web host logins are super difficult to guess. Make sure your passwords are at least 8 characters with two of those characters being capital letters, at least two being numerals, and two being special characters. Those kinds of passwords are difficult to guess. Single word passwords are easy.

Learn something about web security and make sure that you password protect sensitive folders on your website. Also, don’t allow anyone the ability to write to your files on your server. Set your server settings to “read” and don’t allow your software to change them except in rare cases. Ask your network administrator before changing those. Keep your security tight and hackers will have a harder time getting in, even if their friendly and buy you a cup of coffee.

If you’ve noticed a recent drop in your search engine rankings you may or may not have a cause for alarm. It’s important to understand that frequent fluctuations in the search engine results occurs. You’ll rise and fall like the tide. However, large drops that are sudden could be caused by a number of things – not all of them within your control.

One reason you could have dropped in the search engine rankings is your site was hacked and you are beginning to see keywords that are not related to your niche appear in your site content. That’s not good. You want to remove those as soon as possible.

Many times, when this happens to a website the hacker is inserting links back to his or her site. If that site contains malware then that might cause your site to lose rankings. You could also get flagged as a malware site yourself, in which case Google will block your page from being accessed by searchers. But you want to catch it before that happens.

If you suspect that your site was hacked then log in to your Webmaster Tools account and click on the link for the website that has your concern. Click on the Diagnostics link on the left side of the page. You are looking for any kind of notification that your site has been flagged for malware. Also check your links and crawl errors. If Google is having problem crawling your website for any reason that could be why you’ve seen a fall in rankings. Next, check your sitemap and robots.txt files. If anything isn’t right then fix it immediately.

Some people spend most of their time fretting over scrapers and scheming up new ways to make their world hurt. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that it’s a waste of time to even worry about them. Matt Cutts agrees. But he also goes one step further and tells you how to benefit from scrapers.

I’ll save you the trouble of having to watch the video and just let the cat out of the bag. Put links in your content back to your site and if the scraper fails to deactivate them then you’ve got back links. They could boost your search engine optimization efforts.

That’s actually a pretty good idea. If you do article marketing then you’re likely using a resource box. Why not add a resource box at the end of your blog posts? You can do that with a plugin called DDAddSig. This plugin may not have been updated for the latest version of WordPress so test it first. There are other WordPress signature plugins so shop around.

Back to the scrapers …. I wouldn’t lose sleep over scraped content. Most of the time, the scrapers don’t rank for the content they are swiping. But if you do find one that outranks you for your own content, report them for a DMCA violation or fill out a spam report. Keep trucking. You’ve got better things to do.

According to the Google Analytics Blog, the most requested feature of Google Analytics is event tracking. If this is something that you’ve been looking forward to then throw a celebration party. It’s here.

Among the things you can track with event tracking are:

• How many times a white paper is downloaded
• How long it takes to load a video
• How many validation errors users get when filling out a form

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Google Analytics API is the culprit, allowing third-party sources to use GA for tracking, which means that if you have an open source application that is tracking specific data on your website then you can plug in the Google Analytics API and expand your tracking for that application. I like this. It’s a good thing for webmasters. It’s a good thing for all of us.

Testing your landing pages is one of the most important parts about being an effective online marketer. You should be testing constantly. But there are different types of tests. You can run A/B tests or multivariate tests and which one you use on your site depends on a number of factors.

A/B testing is when you have two pages, or two elements on the same page, that you want to test side by side. For instance, let’s say you have a landing page that currently converts at 5.5%, but you think you can increase that by changing your headline. So you rewrite the headline and test the new headline against the old headline. This is an A/B test. After a predefined number of page views for your new web page, you’ll have a clear picture on which headline is better for conversions. If your old headline wins then you do nothing. If your new headline wins then you make that page live – nothing on the page changes other than your headline.

A multivariate test is a bit more involved. In this case you are testing multiple elements at the same time, hence the name. By testing multiple variables simultaneously, you can arrive at a conclusion much sooner. Maybe you want to know which headline of three and which call to action of two are most effective. You can determine that through multivariate testing.

Another way to conduct multivariate testing is by running a test on a combination of variables. Suppose, for instance, you want to know which mix of headlines and calls to action will be most effective. You can test that with multivariate testing as well.

Which type of test you run for your landing pages depends on your goals and the individual web pages you are testing. There are times when you’ll use the A/B test and then other times when the multivariate test is more appropriate. But one thing is clear: You’ll want to develop your testing of landing pages strategy early on and always work toward improvement.

Before you start to think about search engine optimziation, I always recommend that the content and structure of a website is built with conversion elements. When it comes to conversion rates, they’re not all created equal. I have seen conversion rates for clients over the years as high as 15% and as low as 0%. It’s one thing to say that 2% is good, but it’s quite another to say that 2% is good for landing pages within such-and-such industry. In truth, 2% is not bad for conversion rates. If you can snag a 2% on any of your landing pages then you are doing pretty well. But what did you have to do to get to that?

If 2% is your starting point then you can probably do better. You should consider testing your landing page and using Website Optimizer to help you achieve the best mix of variables for your landing page. Obviously, 4% is a better conversion rate than 2% so if you can improve your conversion rate then that’s even better.

But another startling fact – startling if you’re new to online marketing, or marketing in general – is that conversion rates differ from industry to industry. What is considered good for one industry may only be mediocre for another. And there are several factors that influence conversion rate averages. It is important to have some idea of what is considered normal for your industry so that you can benchmark your own success against that of others in the same niche. One way you can do that is to ascribe goals for your landing pages within Google Analytics.

Conversion rate measurement is one important metric. You can’t change or influence what you don’t measure so keep an eye on your conversion rate and whatever it is when you start your measurements can probably be improved upon.