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 Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Now that Google has redone their ranking algorithms there are some things to keep in mind relative to the old reciprocal links game. Namely it is important that you not add too many of these kinds of links too quickly, build them up gradually otherwise you will be identified by the search engines, as it will be seen as unnatural. If this happens than you might see your rankings in the search engines disappear instead of rising. A good way to start is keep the number of new links to less than 10 in one month. Friday, November 25, 2005
Alot of energy goes into making a website score well with search engines, but unless your goals are met upon the page loading you have to get the user to do more than just show up. There are many sites that have number one position that I visit in my Internet travels that I leave immediately. I didn't buy anything, I barely read anything because the page isn't usable or is just repulsive.
This isn't easy, but it is part of the task. Figure out what you want users to do and get them to do it with your design. The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just the part that gets the chance to sell them.
Monday, September 26, 2005
When you design a web page for your web site you should think about the time and energy that the average user will put into viewing your page. Remind yourself that while you are spending a great deal of time on the page and appreciate the whole, this is not the experience of most users. In fact it is amazing when you learn how little of the average page the average web browsing user actually sees. A really great explaination and treatment of this factor was posted as a commentary on internetnews.com a while back. Luckily the article seems to be living on for quite a while. Check it out and definitely check out the graphic that shows the heat diagram that illustrates where users look on a page. Thursday, September 22, 2005
A key part to the success of any website is content. If you are basing the business on traffic then the more content the better. You can write that content yourself, buy it or you can design a site that causes your users to provide the content for you.
You have likely visited many sites yourself where you are welcome to share and contribute. Each time someone does, whether it is to vent, rant or console, the site benefits by the addition of more content. A big factor in all search engine ranking is the number of pages in the site. If you can leverage the work of others, it can make the difference between having dozens of pages (or hundreds if you are prolific) and having thousands of pages.
Ultimately unless it is completely out of place, think about putting forums on your site. It is the best way to get contributions without having to invent a new paradigm. If you are hosting on a dedicated server then you likely have to find the software yourself, but on most shared hosting providers there is already software in place for you to leverage. Wednesday, September 07, 2005
When you decide to host a website at a hosting provider then one consideration is what tools are available for you to build the site. If you don't have strong design or programming skills then you need to plan ahead. Many packages include site wizards that will whip up a site for you so long as you don't have special requirements.
Look before you leap.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Almost any web server software you use will have an option for you to specify where users go when they request a page that does not exist. This is the familiar 404 error. You want to handle this error gracefully for several reasons. First it is more user friendly and keeps people from having the impression that your site is broken. Most people won't blame themselves for not typing in a URL correctly, they will just assume you are not very professional. Another great reason is that it prevents hackers from being able to get information from an error page that you didn't design. The information that a typical "Page Not Found" page contains is not earth shattering, but we should always try to deny the bad guys whatever they are looking to get. Information is their first priority.
Depending on your web server software you will have to go and do different things to setup what your website should do when a non-existent page is requested, but in most cases it is just a setting. Some people will create a page that lets the user know that they asked for a page that either has never or no longer exists and this gives the added benefit if done well of giving the user all the navigation needed to get back to your site and buy or see or do something that is the reason you built the site in the first place. The other viable alternative is to just set the home page of the site as the destination when a 404 error occurs. This might annoy some users, but it should get them back on track to do what you want them to do fast. Of course if you are bold enough to try this technique, you better be very sure you don't have any broken links on your site as going in a circle will cause people to frustrate out very quickly and gives you no easy way to get real data of how many people are requesting pages that don't exist.
Monday, August 22, 2005
When you setup a website you will undoubtedly get a web hosting plan that includes not only a set amount of hard drive space for your pages, but also a budget of bandwidth that your site can utilize. This number can be anything from 100 Megabytes (MB) per month to thousands of Gigabytes (GB) per month. Often this vital statistic is ignored as people are looking forward to the problem of having too much traffic. While most web sites that are created don't consume massive bandwidth, don't plan for your own failure by completely ignoring this factor when you sign up with a web hosting company. At least ensure you get a reasonable amount of bandwidth based on what your site will be doing. For instance if you are hosting home videos for a large group you may find that even 10 GB per month is not enough. If on the other hand you have a modestly designed site that leverages background colors more than graphics you may find that 100 MB is more than enough even once you get the site to your desired user community.
The bottom line is to factor in all the relevant areas so you don't find yourself regretting your choices. Wednesday, June 01, 2005
When you embark on starting your web design there are two competing temptations. To automate and make dynamic as much of the content as possible holds the allure of having the site take on a life of its own. Allow users to contribute and you might get out of writing a web page ever again (dream on). The other hand holds the getting to market faster and cheaper because dynamic content costs more in time and often money (programmers are not typically cheap).
When you have static content there are those that argue that it makes it easier for you to get good search engine positioning and while the jury is out on that assertion, most people can whip out html with tools like your standard word processer whereas dynamic content typcially involves databases and very talented programmers to make even the first page display.
A solid and proven compromise is to start your web design and architecture by putting up a HTML page or two and then pin dynamic and static content onto that base as time goes on. This gives you cheap and fast when you need it and still leaves you open to leveraging the power of dynamic technologies like ASP, ASP.Net, JSP and PHP to allow you to scale to thousands of pages tailored to the actions of your users.
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