Building a Popular Optimised Website

HTML

A popular website with a lot of traffic (visitors) is the goal of any serious website. There is no silver bullet or one simple solution unless you wish to fork out a lot of money for advertising. The way to a popular website is quality content, time and most importantly writing for the visitors and not for the search engines. It has to be an optimised website.

There are two ways to gain a lot of visitors. The first is by search engine referrals where Google, Bing, Yahoo and the others send traffic your way. The second is the return visitor who is a person who probably found your site via a search engine, liked what he saw, bookmarked it and is now returning to see what is new.

Search Engines like Google are interested in providing quality content to those using them. For this reason they are on the look out for websites that provide just this. They are not interested in sites that cater to computers. They love sites that cater to humans with good content, clean navigation and clear design. An optimised website is optimised for humans, not computers.

Do yourself a favour and forget search engines and think all about the visitor!

Domain Name

If you do not already have a domain name, you should get one. The domain name should be short, descriptive and to the point. If possible it should be a .com but it is better to get a descriptive domain name with another TLD than a random or very long name with a .com TLD.

Visitors use the domain name as a clue as to the site’s content. For this reason, search engines also like descriptive domain names. The best domain name for a big web FAQ site would be www.bigwebfaq.com. It tells the visitor (and search engine) that it is big, it is about the web and it is an FAQ. An optimised website starts with the domain name.

Content

Content is King. That is the saying on the web and it is true, but not just any old content. It has to be quality content. It has to be relevant to your site. It also has to be original and by that is meant that you must not copy other’s content. Not only is content copyright protected, but search engines such as Google frown upon duplicate content. You want to keep Google happy! An optimised website has good content.

Keep it Simple

The design of a website needs to be clean and simple. You need to keep your visitors in mind more than search engines. Your visitors need to see a layout that tells them where they are and where to go next.

Try to structure the site with a homepage and then category pages with each page assigned to a category. Using Bread Crumbs is a good idea and Google even recommend them. Make it easy to navigate through the categories.

Simple also means a website where the backend code does not dwarf the content. Some say that this can harm a page’s ranking with search engines, but I have not found this. However it does not hurt to make the code as simple as possible for the search engine to read. An optimised website has simple navigation.

Do Not Try to Trick the Search Engines

There are many tricks that have been tried on search engines to distort the value of a page’s content. I will not list them but you can rest assured, they have all been tried, and the search engines will penalise you for it. Just write content for your visitors and you will be fine. Never write content for search engines.

Content Length

There is no hard rule for the number of words on a page. Some say at least a couple of hundred and no more than 1000, but we just get back to the rule of writing for visitors and not search engines. Write as much as is needed to create a bit of quality content.

Having said that, it is a good idea to split up very long pages into shorter pages, with titles that reflect that pages content. Again, this is good for the visitor rather than the search engine.

Keep Keywords in Mind

Each page has to have some kind of subject. You are writing about something, and that something is your Keyword or Keywords. For example, a page all about Fruit Salad would have the keys words Fruit and Salad, and perhaps even food, kitchen, health, diet etc.

Use these keywords in the title tag, description tag, keywords tag, heading and URL. See them in a way that helps the visitor decide whether or not this is the page he is looking for.

If there is an image that goes along with the content, use them in the file name and also in the alt and title tags.

Keywords help the visitor get a quick understanding of what the page is about. The more you help the visitors, the more the search engines will appreciate your efforts.

Keeping the visitor in mind, it is a good idea to highlight in bold some keyword text so that the visitor can quickly scan a page for clues as to its general content. Also use italics in the same way. Search engines like this use of highlighting text in order to help visitors scan a page. An optimised website knows what it is about and uses key words to quickly tell the reader.

Deep Linking

Not only do you need to have a structured navigation system for your site, you need to have deep links.

Deep links are links from one of your pages, to another page. These links need to be relevant and of interest to the visitor. It might be a link to a previous article you have written on a subject you are expanding on in your current article.

Deep links help both the visitor to find what he is looking for, and also help the search engine discover more of your site and work out the relevance of pages.

Use keywords in your links, avoiding words like Click Here or More.

Incoming Links

If you have good quality content, people will start to link to your site in the same way that you should link to other good quality content. Incoming links are very important to search engines as they give a strong indication of how popular your site is with other users on the web.

Many have tried to cheat the system by creating lots of fake incoming links, and end up getting banned by search engines. Don’t try this.

The way to attract incoming links is to have good, original content that people will want to refer to.

External Links

Linking to other sites can be great if it helps the visitor find out more. Don’t worry about losing them. The service you have provided will pay dividends in the long run.

External links also attract incoming links. Search engines love this!

Submit your Site

Don’t forget to tell the search engines about your site. You should tell as many as you can but start with Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Also submit your site to web directories such as www.dmoz.org . Directories are often run by humans so they can take a while to update but it is worth the wait.

Give it time

Now that you have done all this, keep doing it. Add more content. Improve your current content. It takes time for search engines to get to work, and then it takes time for people to start bookmarking your site.

It can take up to a year before all your hard work really starts paying off. An optimised website keeps fresh and up to date.

 

HTML Tag Reference

HTML

Basic Tags

<html></html>
Creates an HTML document. All Web pages are enclosed in this tag.

<head></head>
Contains  the title and other meta information that isn’t displayed on the Web page itself.

<body></body>
Contains the visible content of the Web document.

<!- COMMENT –>
Creates a comment. Comments are not show in the browser.

Text Tags

<hl></hl> to <h6></h6>
Creates a headline. The first headline would be h1 followed by the sub headline, h2 etc all the way down to h6.

<b></b>
Creates bold text.

<i></i>
Creates italic text.

<cite></cite>
Creates a citation, usually italic.

<tt></tt>
Creates teletype text. This text often looks like Typewriter Text.

<em></em>
Emphasizes a word, normally in italic. Better than using <i> for emphasis.

<strong></strong>
Emphasizes a word, normally in bold. Better than using <b> for emphasis.

<blockquote></blockquote>
Long quotation. Indents text.

<q></q>
Short quotation.

<abbr></abbr>
Abbreviation.

<pre></pre>
Creates preformatted text. Text in a pre tag is displayed in a fixed-width font, preserving both spaces and line breaks.

<acronym></acronym>
Acronym.

<dfn></dfn>
Definition.

<code></code>
Code. Often used to show programming code examples.

<cite></cite>
Citation.

<del></del>
Deleted text.

<ins></ins>
Inserted text.

<sub></sub>
Subscript.

<sup></sup>
Superscript.

Links

<a href=“URL”></a>
Creates a hyperlink.

<a href=“URL” target=“_blank”></a>
Creates a hyperlink that opens in a new windown.

<a href=“mailto:EMAIL”></a>
Creates a mailto link.

<a name=“NAME”></a>
Creates a target location within a document.

<a href=“#NAME”></a>
Links to that target location from elsewhere in the document

Formatting

<p></p>
Creates a paragraph.

<p align=“right”>
Aligns a paragraph to the left, right, or center.

<br />
Inserts a line break. Only use this when a <p> will not suffice.

<ul></ul>
Unordered list. Creates a bulleted list. Use <li> to list items.

<ol></ol>
Ordered list. Creates a numbered list. Use <li> to list items.

<li></li>
Encloses each list item.

<div></div>
A generic tag used to format blocks of HTML, also used with stylesheets.

<span></span>
A generic tag used for snippets of HTML. Used together with stylesheets.

<img src=“URL”>
Creates an image.

<img src =“URL” align=“left”>
Aligns an image: left, right, center; bottom, top, middle.

<img src=“URL” border=“1”>
Sets size of border around an image. Often set to “0” if used as a hyperlink.

<img src=“URL” alt=“ALTERNATIVE TEXT”>
Sets the alternative text of the image if it can’t be shown or viewed.

<hr />
Inserts a horizontal rule.

<hr size=“4” />
Sets height of rule.

<hr width=“75%” />
Sets width of rule, in percentage or absolute value.

<hr noshade />
Creates a rule without a shadow.

Tables

<table></table>
Creates a table.

<table border=“1”>
Sets width of border around table cells

<table cellspacing=“1”>
Sets amount of space between table cells

<table cellpadding=“1”>
Sets amount of space between a cell’s border and its contents

<table width=“500” or “75%”>
Sets width of table, in pixels or as a percentage of document width

<tr></tr>
Creates a row in a table.

<tr align=“left”> or <td align=“left”>
Sets alignment for cell(s) (left, center, or right)

<tr valign=“top”> or <td valign=“top”>
Sets vertical alignment for cell(s) (top, middle, or bottom).

<td></td>
Creates a cell in a row in a table.

<td colspan=“3”>
Sets number of columns a cell spans. Default=1.

<td rowspan=“3”>
Sets number of rows a cell spans. Default=1.

<td nowrap>
Prevents the lines within a cell from being broken to fit.

<th></th>
Same as <td> but used for headers. Often shown in bold and centred.

Forms

<form></form>
Creates the form.

<form action=“ADDRESS“>
Sets the target address for the form’s data.

<form method=“get“>
Sets the method for data transfer (get or post).

<select name=“NAME”></select>
Creates a pulldown menu. Encloses <option> menu items.

<option></option>
Creates a menu item embedded in a <select> pair.

<option value=”VALUE”>
Sets the value of the menu item.

<textarea name=“NAME” cols=30 rows=5></textarea >
Creates a text box. Cols set the width. Rows set the height.

<input type=“checkbox” name=“NAME”>
Creates a checkbox. Text follows tag.

<input type=“radio” name=“NAME” value=“VALUE”>
Creates a radio button.

<input name=“NAME” size=30>
Creates a one line text area. Size sets length in characters.

<input type=“submit” value=“NAME”>
Creates a Submit button.

<input type=“image” border=0 name=“NAME” src=“imagename.gif”>
Creates a Submit button using an image.

<input type=“reset”>
Creates a Reset button.

 

First Homepage Tutorial

HTML

Introduction

In this tutorial we will build a simple homepage which is the very first page on your site.

 Materials

Basic Concept

The web is made up of simple text files called HTML documents.

What is HTML?

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is the language of the World Wide Web. It is not so much a programming language, but a tag based markup language. That means that it holds the text you see on a page and uses tags to describe the usage of the text.

A basic page would look something like the following:

<html>
<body>
<p>Hello World</p>
</body>
</html>

Note how it uses pairs of tags to start the HTML page and end it. It also has a pair of body tags in which the content of the page goes. The actual content is wrapped in special tags too. In this case, <p> is used which tells the browser that the text is a paragraph.

HTML documents mostly end in .htm or .html.

Practical

Open up your text editor. The first thing we need to do is establish that this is an HTML document by starting with the <html> tag at the very top. This tells the browser that it needs to render (draw) this page as a web page.

After that we tell the browser that we are starting the body of content that is to be shown on the page. We use the <body> tag for this.

Now we can add content. In this case we just want to write your name on the page so write your name. Content needs to be embedded with a tag that defines its role. In this case, your name would be a very short paragraph so it needs to be preceded by the <p> for paragraph tag.

Most tags have a start tag and an end tag. The <p> tag tells us when the paragraph starts. A </p> would define the end of the tag. Note how the forward slash has been added to the tag to tell us that we have reached the end of the tag. In conclusion, we end up with a paragraph that looks like this: <p>Your Name</p>.

As with the paragraph tag we now need to close the </body> tag and then the </html> tag. Note how tags are nested within one another and do not overlap. Closing the

Save the file as index.htm and open it in your browser. Index.htm is a standard name for a homepage. You will see your name in the browser window.

For fun try adding new paragraphs. Also try what is called a header tag above your paragraphs which looks like this: <h1>Headline</h1>. This is used for headlines.

 

What is Cloud Computing?

Internet

Cloud Computing is computing on the Internet. Data and applications are stored and run on a server that a user’s computer accesses often via a web browser.

The “old” way of computing was to install a program on a workstation such as a home computer, then access and save any files on that same computer or a server within a closed network.

Cloud computing takes away the need for installation and storage on a workstation as all the data is processed and stored remotely in the “cloud” somewhere on the Internet. It means that workstations can be simpler devices which are still able to perform complex computing as the hard work is done by another computer and all the workstation has to do is send requests and show the results.

 

What are Deep Links?

HTML

Deep links are hyperlinks to specific page or files on a website other than the home page or main landing page.

 

What is HTTP and HTTPS?

Internet

HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is a common set of rules for how computers communicate with each other over a network. It is used for retrieving resources such as HTML files and images on The Web.

Using HTTP your browser sends a request to the web server. The web server then responds also using HTTP.

HTTPS is an acronym for Secure HTTP which is a secure way of transferring data. The data is encrypted before being sent over the network.

 

What is an SWF file?

Internet

.swf files are complied Flash files ready for deployment on the web.

When creating Flash files they are saved as .fla files. In order to view the file on the web in the Flash Player, they need to be compiled into a .swf file.

 

What is Flash?

Internet

Flash or Adobe Flash is a platform for adding multimedia to websites such as images, animation, sound and video. It is owned by Adobe and can be found on just about any web browser as an add-on. The format was born out of a need for rich media on the web at a time when web browsers where limited to static images or simple animated GIF files.

Flash started as a simple way to create vector graphic animations for the web and is still used for this purpose but today Flash is a highly sophisticated package with its own programming language (Actions Script), video formats and various versions for all popular operating systems and browsers.

Although it is strongly associated with vector graphics, the format can be used for displaying bitmaps too as well as video and playing music for that matter. Many websites use the format for rich media such as YouTube and BBC iPlayer for delivering video.

 

What is The Deep Web?

Internet

Search engines have crawled and indexed hundreds of billions of pages on the web, but this is just a fraction of the true size of the content available.

Search engines browse the web looking for pages. They look for links and follow these links, always on the hunt for pages to index and they are very good at this. They are not very good at finding pages with no links to them though. They can not perform searches on websites they way we would, and so have no access to content that is generated on the fly by a search or form that a human would use.

The deep web is the content that search engines do not have access too.

 

How do you Pronounce WWW?

Internet

In English the most common way to pronounce WWW is double-u double-u double-u.

Dub dub dub is also used but not often heard outside technical circles.

 

« Previous

SEARCH


CATEGORIES

LINKS


© 2010 bigwebfaq.com