Improving the Usability of Your Site

Your website is your corporate headquarters online. Whether you give the impression of the internet of a home-office or state of the art city business is up to you. By practicing good design you will maximize the users impression of your organization and products. By adhering to principles you can ensure your website is as accessible to as many people as possible. This is simply good business sense.

A fantastic, flash based website, with cutting edge graphics and utilizing a heap of bleeding edge technology,  is useless as a sales or marketing vehicle if users cannot easily access the content. As always, I have said it before but I will repeat it because its the golden rule: design your website with the user in mind.

So how to optimize your sites usability? Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally.
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2 Comments | Posted in » Internet

Simple Mistakes to Avoid for Stylish Design

There are lots of tips about how to make your site look great and stylish. This article take a simple approach on improving your sites design by showing you things to avoid.

As a web designer you should be designing your websites with its visitors in mind at all times. It is your job to create the best visual impression for sure, but more important is ensuring usability and ease of use. These elements combined create a welcoming user experience.

Do not underestimate how important your role is as a web designer, the greatest product in the world with the best marketing material and copy on a website that has thousands of visitors will suffer badly and not convert if poorly designed.

When I discuss good design, its not just about the graphics, there are many design elemnts to take into consideration. Any professional web designer will agree there are many components to good design.

The key areas are:
Accessibility, User Interface and Graphic design.

In the interests of the above, here are my top 5 things to avoid:
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2 Comments | Posted in » Web Design

Web Hosting Choices – Which is Right For You?

When it comes to hosting your site on the Internet, there are a variety of choices and a variety of costs, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Which should you go for? It all depends on your budget and the amount of control you wish to retain. Here is a breakdown of the different kinds of hosting options:

Colocation - A Location For Your Server

With colocation, you own and are responsible for your server or servers. However, you rent space at a hosting facility or datacenter that provides an environment that is conducive to the optimal working of your machines. Among the pros of this hosting option are:

• the temperature and humidity are controlled with HVAC systems
• your server is protected from fires and other natural disasters
• depending on the company, your data may be backed up with recovery measures in place to tide over an emergency situation
• your server is protected from unauthorized access
• you have redundant connections to a reliable Internet backbone so that your site has the maximum uptime
• if your office moves, you do not have to move your server location
• your server is kept running with adequate power backup sources.

What hosting should I get?

Colocation is the best option if your business is not large enough to have it’s own hosting area with all the costs of security, climate-control, backup sources and I.T. personnel you would need if you housed your own server infrastructure.

Colocation is a great option for medium-sized companies - your servers are protected by another company, while you still own and are responsible for all the software and the hardware. If you have sensitive data, need the best in security options, and want the best and most reliable Internet connections around, but without the cost of the security and the housing, then colocation is your best bet.

Dedicated Hosting - Lower Up-Front Costs

With colocation, you own the server and lease the physical location. With dedicated, you lease both the server and the space. Dedicated and colocation offer all the same benefits as those listed above. With a dedicated server (colocated servers are also dedicated), you don’t share a server or bandwidth with anyone else.

When it comes to cost, dedicated servers are less expensive than their colocated counterparts in the short run because you don’t have to spend a large amount initially to buy the hardware. The drawback is that if you wish to upgrade or change servers, you have to wait for the host to do this for you. With colocated, you simply buy the new hardware, enter the site and install it yourself.

Managed Hosting - Best of Both Worlds

Managed hosting is the most expensive hosting option - the flip-side is that you do not need the expense of having an I.T. member configuring and maintaining your server. Colocation and dedicated services typically have a managed option, which is what this type is. The hosting company is entirely responsible for the management and configuration of your server. Managed hosting offers all the benefits of dedicated hosting and colocation, along with the following (these may vary depending on the service plan):

• the provider takes care of all software updates, security patches
• technical support is included
• software installation, configuration and ongoing maintenance

You will have to look at the costs versus benefits to see which is better for you. If you have a strong IT team and you are geographically close to your facility, you may be better off managing your server yourself.

Shared Hosting - The Most Popular Option

By far the most popular option is shared hosting. You are one among many others who rent space on a single server and pay for the bandwidth you use. The greatest (and perhaps only) advantage of shared hosting is that it costs a fraction of what dedicated hosting or colocation would. Among the disadvantages:

• you have limited storage space and bandwidth
• some companies “oversell” their bandwidth and server space as a marketing tactic, promising huge or even “unlimited” amounts of resources with the knowledge that most of their customers will only use a fraction of what they are allowed. This often leads to overcrowding and very slow response times.
• you don’t know who you share space with - the server your website resides on may get blacklisted if your co-sharers turn out to be involved in illegal activities
• you may face site outages if your co-sharers are bandwidth hogs.

To avoid many of these negatives, research the best shared hosting options from reliable companies, and look at their feedback from unbiased sites, like webhostingtalk.com.

Blue Host and Hostgator are very popular choices for shared hosting, though they do play the oversell and “unlimited everything” game to entice new customers and grab market share. If you have a small website with little bandwidth, you shouldn’t have any problems.

Business Application Hosting

A fancy marketing term for shared hosting. The big difference is that these hosting companies do not play the “oversell” game, instead offering more reasonable bandwidth and hard drive space amounts. You get less space for a higher price, but with the knowledge that your server will not be crammed with many other websites. This is a great option if you are concerned more about reliability and strong servers than price - and of course, if you run a business, reliability should always be of greater importance than price!

Clustered Hosting

A method whereby multiple hosting servers are connected together and sharing all content. This allows greater flexibility and balance in space and bandwidth usage, and is designed for larger, more popular websites.  Cartika Hosting is a great example of a hosting company offering clustered technology. (Stylishdesign.com happily resides with this host.)

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

The answer to those looking for middle ground between shared and dedicated hosting. While the server is actually shared between many sites, special software actually partitions the machine into completely separate systems. For all practical purposes, you are getting a dedicated machine.

You get a fixed amount of bandwidth and storage space, your own IP address, and your own database space. The only downside here is that the space is limited. So if your needs grow beyond this limit, it’s probably time to upgrade to a dedicated server.

Reseller hosting

This is shared hosting in a new bottle – a hosting company leases out server space to a reseller, and the reseller in turn repackages and offers shared hosting under his or her own name. The advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting hold good here, with one additional disadvantage – even if you can trust your immediate reseller, you don’t know who they depend on for your connection to the Internet backbone. And if the original seller is not reliable, you’re in for a rough ride.

Free hosting

Sites like Wordpress, Geocities and Blogger allow you a minimum amount of space where you can host your own sites. This is enough for your needs if you’re a blogger or just looking to put up a site for your own personal use. On the plus side, it’s free, and on the minus, you have absolutely no control over your hosting or any server configurations, and your site may have ads, banners and pop-ups from the sponsors to help keep your site free.

Hosting Features

Now that you know the different types of hosting, it is time to learn the features and differences between the various options:

Hosting Costs

Managed hosting is the costliest among all hosting options while free hosting, as the name implies, is free. When you opt for managed hosting, your cost includes that of the lease (either the data center, server, or both), infrastructure, bandwidth, management and administration, security and backup, and other miscellaneous expenses. This leaves you free from hiring a network administrator, so managed hosting is definitely an option for many smaller companies.

With colocation, you incur the cost of the server, of maintaining your hardware and software, and other running costs. With shared, virtual private and reseller hosting, you only pay your service provider for the use of their server, tech support and for other services included in your package.

Bandwidth

Colocation and dedicated servers allow you the maximum bandwidth while free hosting services allow you the least. Virtual private servers and business hosting provide limited but guaranteed bandwidth, something you cannot expect with a shared server where you share space and bandwidth with many other customers. Clustered hosting avoids bandwidth bottlenecks, allowing greater reliability and speed.

Control

Though managed colocated services and dedicated servers are some of the costliest options, you have the advantage of retaining the most control over the hardware and software on your server. Rather than having to choose one of the options provided by your service provider in shared hosting, you get to choose the operating system, any software and hardware for your server.

Maintenance Plans

Unmanaged servers are the most difficult to maintain and update, because you are responsible for the hardware and software. You must keep up to date with patches and system updates to ensure that you’re not beset by viruses and other malware. Because of this, you will likely have an I.T. team within your company that supports this. If you are a small company with a limited I.T. budget, or you just have a personal site, quality shared hosting is your best option.

About the author:

This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford. Sarah regularly writes on the topic of web design colleges. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.

1 Comment | Posted in » How To, Internet

Code bloat and its effect on your SE rankings

If you are not a seasoned web developer it is more than likely that you use one or another Visual Web editing tools. Maybe you are using one and you do not even realise it, products like Word allow you to save your pages as HTML but it creates extremely bloated code.

So what is ‘bloated’ code?

To put it simply it is code that does not need to be there. This can be varying degree’s of ‘dos not need to exist’. On the base level, it is simply extraneous code. Code that does absolutely nothing, no formatting changes or anything else. We will call this ‘extraneous bloat’

Code like the following often occurs when changing formatting in a Visual Editor:

<strong> </strong>
<em> </em>
<font> </font>
<div> </div>
<span> </span>

Elements opening and closing with no content in between, they serve absolutely no purpose other than to clutter up the code. These left over chunks of code are as a result of trying different formatting, when you undo a font change, sometimes instead of deleting the element created it just moves the tag, so that the element is left behind with no effect on formatting.

You might ask yourself, why do I care? Aside from the fact it shows a lack of professionalism, it does not adhere to standards, and it simply is not stylish? The fact that people with disabilities using special browsers may find your page illegible? Well for a start it increases the download time of your page. Too much clutter and your site me be relegated to the “too slow to index” file, getting a visit every 6 months or so and 1 or 2 pages indexed only.

That is not where the problem ends. Sometimes you get code like this
# Missing tags

<h1>heading
<h2>subheading</h3>

when they should be:

<h1>heading</h1>
<h2>subheading</h2>

Or worse still:
# Missing or mismatched end tags are detected and corrected

<a href=”http://somesite.com”>italic heading</a
when it should be:
<a href=”http://somesite.com”>italic heading</a>

Is that a good enough set of reasons for you? Great, in which case can move on and discuss other reasons code gets bloated. When using a Visual Editor its very easy to create nested tables and the like to achieve the formatting you require. However a simple ‘3 column’ web page layout can end up resulting in 15 or more tables with 50 or more table cells. Using CSS it is possible to achieve the same results without using tables at all.

SO we will call this ‘amateur bloat’ it is extraneous code that is caused as a result of limited web design experience. So you may say to yourself you have no desire to learn about the code behind the web page, your site looks great and you saved yourself a packet by doing it yourself in Microsoft FrontPage, or you got it done on the cheap. All that money you saved on web design you spent on content, pretty smart huh! Content is King after all.

You optimised your content for the search engines, it is keyword rich and as you already pointed out, by using one of those $60 templates from some template site looks real good. Well guess what, those fancy tables do a little more than look pretty, sometimes they can tell the search engines that your page content is the least important thing on the page, and that the banner advert at the top of the page is really important.

This is best explained with a graphic

So you see that the search engine reads the content one table at a time, in the order it appears in the code. Table 1, 2 then 3 where your content resides. This is not great for your well written content, if its relegated to the end of a page with bloated HTML the search engine may give up on your page before it even gets there if the page load is too long. There is no point in optimised articles no one reads and the search engines do not see.

Suddenly that initial saving on a web development company becomes a costly mistake. If your web design firm does not understand the importance of SEO then maybe it is time to consider another.
If you used CSS to create the same visual effect an additional (important) bonus is the SEO benefits, which means you can have column 3 read first.

This is an article in itself, but start by getting rid of that lazy code, you can do this easily using a tool called HTMLtidy. There are other products out there, but this imho is the best.

It is not simply a great tool for cleaning up code generated by your Visual or WYSWIYG html editors, it can do a lot more, so it is well worth checking out. HTMLtidy was originally developed by Dave Raggett. It is a free tool, an excerpt from his web page (http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/):

“When editing HTML it’s easy to make mistakes. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a simple way to fix these mistakes automatically and tidy up sloppy editing into nicely layed out markup? Well now there is! Dave Raggett’s HTML TIDY is a free utility for doing just that. It also works great on the atrociously hard to read markup generated by specialized HTML editors and conversion tools, and can help you identify where you need to pay further attention on making your pages more accessible to people with disabilities.”

Check out their online interface tool here:

http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

If we had a tool of the month here at Stylishdesign.com, then it would be HTMLtidy this month. It certainly adds performance to your code by taking out the junk. Now an example of what it can do….

This is the code after HTML Tidy:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN”>

<html>
<head>
<meta name=”generator” content=
“HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 (vers 11 February 2007), see www.w3.org”>

<title></title>
</head>

<body>
WORKING MOM NOW YOUR HOUSE CAN SHINE LIKE A
PALACE published By The queen of
shiny clean Dutch heritage! Proven effective Program! Thank you very much
for choosing my e-book Copyright 2008 Your browser may not support display of this image.
</body>
</html>

And this is the code before:

<html>

<head>
<meta name=”GENERATOR” content=”Microsoft FrontPage 5.0″>
<meta name=”ProgId” content=”FrontPage.Editor.Document”>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=windows-1252″>
<title>New Page 4</title>
</head>

<body>

<p align=”center”><font size=”6″ face=”Signboard”>WORKING MOM </font></p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”6″ face=”Signboard”>NOW </font></p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”6″ face=”Signboard”>“YOUR” HOUSE</font></p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”6″ face=”Signboard”>CAN </font></p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”6″ face=”Signboard”>SHINE LIKE A “PALACE”</font>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”4″ face=”Signboard”>published</font></p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”4″ face=”Signboard”>By </font></p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”4″ face=”Signboard”>“The queen of shiny clean”</font>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”4″ face=”Signboard”>Dutch heritage!</font>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”4″ face=”Signboard”>Proven effective</font></p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”4″ face=”Signboard”>Program!</font>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”4″ face=”Signboard”>Thank you very much for
choosing my e-book</font>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”4″ face=”Signboard”>Copyright 2008</font>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p align=”center”>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p align=”center”>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p align=”center”><font size=”3″ face=”Eras Demi ITC”></p>
<center>
<p>
<img src=”http://mail.google.com/mail/?name=43d6b4299e7e408b.jpg&attid=0.5&disp=vahi&view=att&th=11ce1c10c70d27b0″ alt=”Your browser may not support display of this image.” width=”267″ height=”200″></p>
</center></font>
<p>&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;<br>
&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

</body> ::

No Comments | Posted in » Internet

The Definitive Guide To the Favicon .ico File

A favicon is an icon that is displayed next to your address in the toolbar of most modern browsers. It also displays in the ‘multiple tabs’, ‘history pane’, drop down list of previously visited sites as well as in the ‘favorites list’ of your browser.

Basically once a website visitor has a copy of your favicon.ico it will be displayed anywhere a link to the website appears.

Now that the favicon is supported in various ways by most browsers (Internet Explorer 4+, Netscape 7+, Mozilla 1+, Firefox 1+, Safari 0.5b+, Camino 1+, Opera 7+, AOL Desktop) it makes sense to spend the time to include one on your site.

There are several good reasons to include a favicon.ico file

• It shows attention to detail as a web designer
• Allows your site to stand out in the favorites list of user
• Allows your site to stand out when a visitor has multiple tabs open
• It simply looks better! Check the examples:

So now you understand I hope, both what an ICO file is and why it is so stylish.

I am sure you are simply itching to implement one on your site. If that is the case you have a couple of options. To fully appreciate why you have these options, and to make an informed choice as to whether you want to take the fast track or to take th time to go the other rout you need to know more about the ICO file format

Why an .ICO file?

There is one distinct advantage to an ICO file over other formats. This file format will allow you to store several versions of an icon within one file, so you can embed a 16×16, 32×32 and 64×64. Whilst the single 16×16 format will suffice for most people, if a user was to create a shortcut to your website on their desktop a much bigger version of your icon appears, a 32×32 pixel version, therefore web developers are increasingly taking full advantage of the .ico format. The limitation of this format is inherit in the fact it needs to work at such as small canvas size 16×16pixels.

Quick start guide

The quick route to creating a favicon is to simply have a 16×16 ico image file located in your server’s root directory. This path means using a pre-existing image (your logo, for example) in GIF or JPEG format and using a graphics editor or online application to convert the image into an ICO file.

1. Create/Choose your GIF/JPEG image file
2. Visit an online converter. There are many free ones available. The one from Maxiscript.com worked just fine for me.
3. Convert your file using the online tool, save the image that is generated as favicon.ico and upload to your root directory on your web-server via ftp. Upload in binary format.

Note for advanced ICO files:

If you want to create multiple sizes of your image and have it embedded in your ICO files then there is a windows application you can use to do this. It is freeware and released by Furred.net:

png2ico GUI++ (binary)

Icon Editors

There are a variety of ICON editors that allow you to draw your icons individually by hand. Go to your favourite software downloads site and search for ICON editors.

Photoshop Users

There is a free (donation-ware) plugin for Photoshop that will help you create your ICO files. Downloading and installing it will allow you to save your files in the ICO format. There is a second plugin which allows you to combine multiple images saved in in the ICO format(16×16 & 32×32) into one single ICO file.

1. Go to the plugin authors site and download and install the plugins in Photoshop or CS2 -
   http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/
2. Create a new File in Photoshop and make its size 128×128. This give you a reasonable size canvas to work with. Once complete you can resize your image to 16×16.
3. Save file in .ico format

If there is enough interest we will follow this article up with an in-depth looking at creating icons in Photoshop. Leave feedback if you are interested in such an article.

Advanced Usage

Different favicon according to directory:
Want to use a different favicon according to which directory your web pages are located?
This is relatively simple; just drop a favicon.ico file in the relevant directory and browsers *should* use that instead of the default image in your root directory.

Different favicon according to page:
If there are specific pages that you want to display a favicon for (especially useful if you do not have your own domain name) you can use the LINK tag within your html head on those pages.

Troubleshooting

If your web-host does not support the upload of .ICO files, ask them to include support by dropping them a nice note via email. Failing that, try changing the extension to .BMP, upload the file in binary format and then use an FTP client to rename the file to the correct .ICO format once it is on your webhost. This works in many instances.

Transparent backgrounds, in my experience very hit and miss, sometimes working, sometimes filling the background with a random colour, thereby ruining the whole effect.

Testing favicons can be laborious, so make sure you are happy with your finished design before uploading and testing it in your browser. Once you have tested a favicon it can be difficult to remove from your system (even with delete of your history and cache). So if you are still seeing the old favicon after uploading a new image file, then try testing the site from a different computer.

Bear in mind the implementation is still not robust. So there will be occasions where you simply do not see your favicon. Strange I know, and I cannot say I have the answers as to why this happens, suffice to say it occasionally happens and you should not lose any sleep over it. If you want to be sure your browser/platform supports the favicon then check out this page: http://informationgift.com/ud/faviconic/

No Comments | Posted in » How To

Buying links can be done through link broker networks

You can also try to buy Links

Buying links can be done through link broker networks. Link broker networks allow you to search through a large database of Web site owners who have agreed to sell Web site links. You should try to buy links primarily from Web site owners that have Web content that is related to your product or service.

Often these Web sites have already been prescreened for quality factors, thus saving you a good amount of time and energy. You can also choose your specific link anchor text.

DO NOT buy links

Pay-per-post networks allow you to hire bloggers to write a post about your product or service and place your link within the body text. Often you can choose more than one variety of link anchor text. These links are generally purchased for a one-time fee as opposed to a recurring monthly subscription, and for that reason they can be an inexpensive way to build high-quality, relevant links.

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7 Comments | Posted in » SEO

Web Directory and Article Directory Submissions

Link and Article Directory Submissions

Submitting links to free and paid online directories represents an easy and proven method of building links, but submitting articles to Web sites and content distribution services works especially well. Among other things, article submission strategies allow you to tailor content so that it maintains the specific theme you are looking to be associated with. Getting an article published on a popular, authoritative Web site with links back to your Web site is a surefire way to rank well in the search engines.

There are hundreds if not thousands of Web page directories on the Internet. A link directory is simply a large Web page link database broken down into categories. Most of these directories allow you to choose a specific category and offer either free or paid link placement within that category. Although directory links are not quite as useful now as they were in the past for search-engine-optimization purposes, there are still a few directories that can provide your Web page with a high-quality, authoritative link that makes a difference.

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4 Comments | Posted in » SEO

Link building, anchor text and quality of backlinks

In a fraction of a second, Google’s search algorithm computes how many Web sites link to your Web site and the value of each individual link. Google automatically performs this process millions of times every day:

Google believes that calculating links and taking into consideration such things as what those links say, along with the quality of the Web sites they come from, is an effective method of determining a Web site’s authority. Google ranks sites based on how authoritative they are in their respective markets. Delivering relevant results and determining authority is the foundation of the Google search engine.

In short, if you have a lot of quality Web sites that link to your Web site, you are probably doing well in Google’s organic, or nonpaid, results. However, if you have just a few links, you are probably scouring resources to figure out what you can do to improve your search-engine ranking.

Evaluate Competition

The first step to effectively building links is to evaluate your competition. What works for your strongest competitors can also work for you. At this early stage of the link building process, your goal should be to build the foundation for an effective search-engine-optimization business plan. You should take the process of evaluating competition seriously and spend the requisite time necessary to rank your competition and take advantage of their success.

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2 Comments | Posted in » SEO

How to create a Wordpress or a Blogger blog?

Creating a community on your Web site is one of the most effective ways to keep your content fresh, and also helps establish your site as an authority for your area of business. Moreover, communities help build trust and provide a venue for your visitors to get interested and educated about your products or services. Two of the primary approaches to building online communities are blogs and forums.

Blogs provide an opportunity for you to position yourself as an authority, and also attract participation from your visitors by allowing them to comment and provide feedback on your blog posts. Forums provide an opportunity for multiple discussions to occur simultaneously around your area of business and stand as a meeting place for people who are interested in your products or services. Another very successful approach to building community on your Web site is to allow visitors to add reviews about your products.

sponsored reviews, blogs, and forums are exceptional ways to build user-generated contact on your Web site. Building large amounts of fresh content around your area of business is a prime strategy to build links and rank well in the search-engine results.

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1 Comment | Posted in » How To

An .htaccess file is the Apache Web servers configuration file

Modifying your (new) Web server’s functionality is possible through the use of an .htaccess file. An .htaccess file is the Apache Web server’s configuration file. It is a straightforward yet powerful text file that can accomplish a wide variety of functions. It enables you to protect your Web site from content-stealing robots and allows you to dynamically rewrite poorly formed URLs generated by shopping cart or blog software. Most Web site owners have never seen an .htaccess file or know of its existence. Although normally left to expert server administrators, an .htaccess file can help you avoid several potential problems.

An .htaccess file is the configuration file for the Apache Web server. It allows you to control the functionality of your server and has many other uses, including rewriting URLs and redirecting Web traffic. It enables you to use numerous forms of protection ranging from password protecting directories, banning visitors from certain sources, and preventing bandwidth theft from image linkers.

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No Comments | Posted in » SEO

Original content is essential to archive high rankings

Content is the lifeblood of your Web site it is what visitors use to determine value and what search engines evaluate to rank your Web site. Well-written, original content is essential to the success of your Web site efforts. The quality of your content is directly proportional to how well you are likely to rank in search engines and whether a customer will purchase something from your Web site.

Content written for the purposes of search-engine-optimization, or SEO, is designed to achieve organic rankings by appealing to the reader and to the search engine. Web sites with keyword-rich, naturally flowing, original content are judged better than Web sites that simply stuff keywords into otherwise poorly written text.

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301 Redirects and Redirect Non-WWW Traffic to WWW

You may be amazed to learn that some search engines see the example.com and www.example.com variations of your domain name as two totally separate Web sites. This is called a www/non-www canonical issue because there is confusion as to which version is standard. This technical weakness can lead to less-than-optimal rankings one version of your domain name may rank alongside another version of your domain name even though they share the same content.

The search engines may believe you are proliferating duplicate content and penalize your Web site’s rankings. It is important to set up your server to redirect all traffic to one variation to prevent any confusion by the search engines.

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1 Comment | Posted in » SEO