Build 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!
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
- A text editor such as Notepad.
- A browser such as Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari.
- An FTP client such as Filezilla:
http://filezilla-project.org/download.php
FTP Client: File Transfer Protocol Client
This is a programme used to transfer files to and from a web server.
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 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.
How do I Optimise My Website?
HTML
The trick to good Search Engine Optimisation is to forget about search engines and focus on visitors.
Make your site clean, clear and to the point. Use proper HTML coding practices. Ensure that each page has a relevant title, relevant description, relevant keywords and original content.
Give each image an alternative text and a title. Highlight important texts in bold or italics.
Have an easy to understand navigation system as well as a sitemap.
In general, keep it simple for the visitor to use and understand. Make it the kind of site people will want to visit to get answers and the search engines will want to rank your site more highly.
There is a lot of talk about back links. These are links to your site from others. These are important to search engines and they will come if you create the type of site talked about here.
Google has written more on the subject of SEO and produced a starter guide.
You should also find out how to create a popular optimised website.
What is Dynamic HTML?
HTML
A dynamic HTML file is a script that is processed by the server before serving a browser the HTML.
A dynamic HTML file often uses another suffix such as .php or .aspx. This tells the web server that the document is not a straight text document but needs to be processed before serving it to the browser.
Such dynamic documents will generate HTML on the fly and often uses data you may have input. For example, if you fill out a feedback form with your name on it then send it off, you might be taken to a page that thanks you and refers to you by name. It got your name from the feedback form, and generated the HTML, using your name.
What is HTML?
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> <h1>This is the page header</h1> <p>This is the first paragraph.</p> <p>This is the second paragraph.</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, h1 is used which tells the browser that the text is a header, h1 being the first and mostly largest header on a page.
There are also paragraph tags for each paragraph. These tags tell the browser how to handle the content. The look (not content) of an HTML page is created using “styles” which are kept in a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) file.
HTML documents mostly end in .htm or .html. This tells the web server how to feed your browser the document data. In this case it needs to provide the data as it is written in the file without any changes. Dynamic HTML files might have other suffixes and need processing before serving them.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee specified HTML and wrote the first browser and server software in 1990.
What is a hyperlink?
HTML
A hyperlink is a bit of text you can click on that will take you to another web document. It can also be an image or button. It is the glue that holds the web together and creates the “web” of online documents such as web pages, images, videos etc.
On the web a hyperlink has two parts.
- The starting point is the source anchor. You click on this.
- The destination URL (web address) is the target anchor. This is where the hyperlink takes you.
A hyperlink can also take you to a specific section on the same page or another page.
This is a hyperlink! It starts here and takes you to the homepage.