Do you want to get your site from page five to page one in Google? Here are a few tips to boost you on your way.

1. Clean Up Your HTML.
Keep a beady eye on Dreamweaver and avoid CMS software.

What, Dreamweaver, beloved program of pro webmasters everywhere?

Yes!

Dreamweaver adds lots of extra blank space to HTML code, and breaks lines. This is especially irritating in meta tags. Use EditPad’s ‘Find and Replace’ function to get rid of newlines and double blank spaces in your pages.

Content Management Systems are a great time saver. An amateur can set up a professional-looking site in a few hours. The problem is they contain lots of code that’s irrelevant to search engines. The top of a CMS page may contain only a few words relevant to its subject matter.

Then there’s the duplicate content problem.

• Blogs have duplicate copies of their own content; sometimes exact, sometimes excerpts.
• Thousands of people are using the same CMS as you.
• A search engine spider sees the same header, sidebar and footer content in every page in your site.

Result? Your page is down the SERPs for any competitive keyword. Assuming it’s indexed at all.

These programs are written by geeks. Their primary aim is to eliminate code errors and add features. Your marketing comes a very poor second. They’re also posting security updates every few months. More hassle. For you.

Drastic solution:

1. Type your documents in a text editor like Editpad, then
2. Use a Text to HTML converter, then
3. (Use Dreamweaver to add formatting, then)
4. Use a index generator to make a HTML list of those pages, then
5. FTP them to your web site.

Benefits:

• Search engine spiders get to the ‘meat’ of your page immediately;
• You have more control over how the page looks;
• You have more control over what an SE ‘bot ’sees’;
• You’re not relying on a MySQL database to maintain your site;
• Hackers won’t be able to deface your site easily.

A clever webmaster would look into Conditional Server Side Includes. You can use them to ‘program’ your web pages, while still presenting clean HTML to search engine ‘bots.

And as for Microsoft FrontPage, I wish all my competitors were using it.

 

2. Get Lots of Links to Your Site.

• Submit articles to article websites;
• Pay freelancers to make software for you, and give it away free;
• Submit to the top directories, like Yahoo and DMOZ, but don’t spend much time or money. Only half a dozen are worth a damn for SEO;
• Post in popular forums and blogs, if they will let you use straight hyperlinks in your signature;
• Be controversial - assault a few sacred cows;
• Do a press release, and think beforehand about how you can make it interesting to journalists;
• Make a better, faster, cheaper version of a popular product.

That should get you a few decent links. With millions of cheapo, ‘me too’, linkless sites out there, yours will stand out like a snowdrop on a dungheap.

 

3. Offer Something People Really Want.
You like fuschia leg warmers. You think other people do too. You make a website selling them.

Cue sad disillusion.

People want money, sex, friendship, human contact, cars, drugs, health and happiness. They know what they want (not need, want). You’ve got to figure out a better way to satisfy that want, for a fat net profit.

Simple, ain’t it?

Actually, yes it is.

Save time. Pick a very profitable, popular industry. Think up a way to give people a better product. Or faster. Or cheaper. Or all three! Research costs little. Thinking costs nothing.

Or just go off half-cocked. Employ a cheap, angry webmaster. Half-finish the site for a product you’re not 100% sure there’s a demand for. Then sit back and wait for traffic.

Then give up, go down to the pub and gripe to your pals: “The internet’s sh*t, innit?”.

Funny thing about offering a popular good with a new twist; you get links without cadging them.

 

4. Be First With a New, Popular Good (or a smarter second).

MySpace wasn’t the first social networking site, but they did it better. They designed it to be viral. Members could compete to get ‘friends’, and everyone wants new friends, right? Users could put anything they wanted online, even if it looked cr*ppy. Censorship was minimal. Result: Huge popularity, without needing the search engines.

Not easily done, but again, research costs little. Thinking costs nothing.

Stop the daily slog. Go for a walk. Have a long bath. Play a game of street-hockey. And see what pops into your head.

If you feel good about it the next day, it may be a good idea. Test it before committing to it. If it still makes you excited a month later, you may be onto a winner.

If complete strangers start feeling the same, you definitely are!

By T. O’ Donnell

Taking web standards into account when designing a website may not be a primary concern for many site owners, but when it comes to finding an extra edge to improve their business, they are more than willing to do anything required to increase revenues. Let’s see how complying with Web standards can help a business website.

 

What are the Standards?
On the Web, the main standards are the languages used when creating websites. The most wide-spread ones are HTML, XHTML and CSS. HTML or XHTML are used to create the backbone of websites - the structure. (The difference between HTML and XHTML is that XHTML was formed from XML and is forward compatible.) CSS, in turn, is used to style, format and position the structure and content.

 

What is Web Standards Compliance?
Put simply, web standards compliance is using web languages correctly. This involves using HTML tags properly and the way they were and are intended to be used. For instance, one of the most common felonies against the web standards is using table tags for layout, while the correct usage is to use them only for tabular data (information to be put in tables).

 

Benefits of Standards Compliance
Creating quality, standards compliant code has a number of benefits:

• website forward compatibility
• increased site download speed
• browser compatibility
• easier site maintenance
• broader target audience
• How Can This Help Business?

Perhaps every entrepreneur is asking himself right now, “And where is the money here?” Probably every benefit can either increase revenues or save expenses. Let’s look at them in detail.

 

Site Forward Compatibility
Web standards, such as XHTML and CSS, are designed to work forever. They will also be supported for an almost unlimited period of time. Designing a site according to web standards will ensure the website backbone will not need to be redone any time soon, which reduces the amount of work on the site and the expenses of the site owner.

 

Increased Download Speed
When using XHTML for content and structure and CSS for styling and formating, page size is reduced when compared to a page, designed with tables for layout. For instance, a site with a relatively small number of images is 50% smaller than a table-based website. Because users enjoy fast-loading websites (they start leaving after eight (8) seconds beyond clicking on a link), they will be more likely to become a clients of a web standards compliant website.

 

Browser Compatibility
A web standards compliant site is displayed correctly (and looks the same) in all standards compliant browsers. Adjusting the site to suit a less helpful browser (Internet Explorer, for instance) is much easier with CSS than with tables. This saves enormous amounts of time for a web designer.

 

Easier Site Maintenance
When separating content and styling with XHTML and CSS, it is much easier to edit any of those, because they are located in different files. Should one need to adjust the look of the main page heading (

), he/she will just need to change a line or two in a style sheet to change the appearance of all headings on the website. Editing content is easier as well, because no styling and formatting is in the way and it is easy to spot the content in clean and semantically correct code markup.

 

Broader Target Audience
Furthermore, web standards are used not only on computers, but also by PDAs (hand held devices, palm computers), phones and other devices. A site, adhering to web standards, will be displayed correctly either without editing or will require very little work to be displayed correctly on a platform other than a computer. Such easy availability will make the company site easily accessible for a wider range of potential customers, increasing the chances of business success as well.

 

So What To Do?
Naturally, there may be several choices for a business site owner:

• do nothing and wait till something more noticeable becomes obvious about the web standards.
• wait, research the topic, get more proof and then redesign with web standards and visitors in mind.
• redesign the site right now, either with the help of an in-house web designer or a professional, specialized company.

Any of the choices above solely depend on the situation of the business site. Most probably, making a site web standards compliant will be most beneficial to starting or young websites, which will reduce the amount of work needed in the future. Mature websites can consider adjusting their websites to improve the quality of their visitor experience. Those, whose sites are barely important can live as they are, provided the site works. Thus, it all depends on the site owner and the situation the business is in.

By Yuri Filimonov