Search Engine Friendly Pages

September 15, 2006 | 2 Comments

Why do we build a web site? Sometimes, we’re selling products on the web. Other times, selling products in brick-and-mortar stores. We may be providing a membership-based information source or a free information source. We might have advertising income or not. The web site may even be a hobby.But, there is one crucial factor to all of these scenarios…

There is no point in building a web site unless there are visitors coming in.

Search engines are a major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet. Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on spider your site, cache their results, analyze the site from their cache, and then use those results to assist their searchers.

Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers, spiders or robots (all different terms for the same function) to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed more easily, your first step (or non-step) is to avoid using frames on your website. In a framed web site, the content your visitor sees is not the content that the search engine sees for that URL. The search engine pulls the page — and only gets a definition page for the page’s layout and which additional pages should be loaded into which section of the main page.

So, frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

The other big problem with frames is that, if you link to content off your site, it will be shown within your frame as if it is your own content. Sometimes, this could be embarassing for you. Other times, it could be viewed as copyright infringement.

If you use pay-per-click advertising to monetize your site, their terms and conditions often prohibit using frames — and re-emphasize that with a prohibition against showing anyone else’s content within your site in violation of the owner’s copyright rights.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. I’ve seen nice web sites that have great banners and flash animations to show their products. But, the search engines can’t read them.

Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically. Using “alt” tags can help to give search engines a hint — but alt tags don’t have the impact of an H1 or H2 tag in communicating to the search engines.

Use meta tags on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot’s job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Be sure to use meaningful title tags and description tags, too. Your title tag is important to the search engine and helps the search engines understand what the page is about.

Most search engines will display your title tag and some will even display your description instead of creating their own description. Take advantage of these to help searchers find your site.

Stop using wrong HTML tags like to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under CSS, HTML, Monetizing Your Site, SEO, Traffic & Linking, Visitor Experience 

Improve Usability of Your Website

September 15, 2006 | Leave a Comment

No matter how brilliant your website design is, if your visitors have trouble reaching your content, then your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell.

Here are some usability tips to improve the design of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally:

First, check the typography of your content

If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be.

Second, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily

Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font. While that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text.

On the other hand, usability studies have shown that visitors actually read smaller fonts more carefully, while they will skim over large fonts to see if there is any “good” content.

Third, make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site

You may have dozens, hundreds or thousands of articles on your site. If a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle.

Whether you use an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease.

Fourth, ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors

Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn’t load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the crème de la crème of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.

Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online

There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about them.

Recommended Resource: Don’t Make Me Think

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under CSS, HTML, Usability, Visitor Experience, WYSIWYG Editors 

Drawing on the Web

September 15, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Welcome to my new web design blog. I’ve decided to post web design topics here, rather than interleaving them into my regular computer tips blog at Terry’s Computer Tips blog

The topics here will all be web design focused, and I expect them to include at least the following subjects:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Apache Web Server
  • Server Side Includes
  • PHP Scripting
  • JavaScript
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Getting Traffic
  • Inbound Links from other sites
  • Outbound Links to other sites
  • Text Editors
  • WYSIWYG Editors
  • Web Hosting
  • Monetizing Your Site
  • Google Adsense
  • Yahoo Publisher Network
  • Chitika eMiniMalls
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Internet Marketing

[eminimall]

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, Apache Web Server, CSS, HTML, Internet Marketing, JavaScript, Monetizing Your Site, PHP Scripting, SEO, Server Side Includes, Text Editors, Traffic & Linking, WYSIWYG Editors, Web Hosting 

« Previous Page