Web Design Posts
Do you really know who owns your website?
July 6th, 2008
Do you own your website? Are you sure? Have you checked your registration details? Have you got a back up of the website on CD? Do you have access to the server? Do you know who your registrar and host are? Do you know what to do when your host goes out of business and your designer won’t answer your calls?
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Build your website for free!
June 17th, 2008
I don’t really like paying for things. Actually, that’s not quite true, I’ll pay for things if I need to but I’d rather get it for free (or at least at a discount price).
Some of the best free stuff comes off the internet so rather than pay for some expensive software, why not do it the EWD way: for nothing. Here’s my handy-dandy guide to all the free stuff you can use to build and maintain your website.
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Get mobile before someone steals your niche
June 10th, 2008
I like being outside in the fresh air. In fact most of my holidays are spend wandering various countries around the world. But there are occasions when I need to communicate with the rest of the world. And a mobile phone or a PDA helps. The problem is, many websites don’t work too well on a mobile device. And with an increase in the number of mobile internet users, that’s a big potential market you can’t really ignore. So here’s a checklist for getting mobile. (more…)
Why don’t people click on your links?
May 19th, 2008
There are certain topics and concepts that keep cropping up during discussions about search engine optimisation (SEO). One of these is the use of metatags. Let’s get one thing clear, there is no SEO advantage in the use of metatags – the search engines may index their contents but they won’t help to improve your ranking. So why bother? The answer is simple, to increase the number of visitor to your website. Let me explain. (more…)
Do you really understand the terminology?
April 22nd, 2008
An question was asked recently on the Cre8asite forum about some of the Acronyms used relation to search engines. It made me think again about the terminology I use daily and realize that not everybody speaks the same language when it comes to the subject of SEO.
Anyway, have a look at the thread to see what others consider to be the essential terms. One of the links posted was to the excellent glossary written by Aaron Wall at SEO Book. I’ve bookmarked the link and shall refer to it more often I’m sure.
PS, if you don’t already subscribe to Cre8asite I suggest you join sharpish, it is a goldmine of information.
Releasing your Invisible Conent
April 18th, 2008
Do you use forms on your website? Are they the only way to get to the content? Even a simple dropdown list of categories will stop the indexing robots in their tracks. Matt Cutts offers some advice on how to unlock your content and allow the spiders to do their business:
Solved: another common site review problem
The actual discussion continues in the Google Webmasters Blog
So, the solution (as always) is to make sure you include text links on your page. Don’t rely on the search engines to interpret your JavaScript dropdowns, forms or even worse, image links.
More advice on Link Building and Navigation in my guide to building an effective website.
How to make your website effective
April 9th, 2008
The whole aim of this site is to help people build effective websites. But do you really know what an effective website is? Is is the design, the coding, the technology, the images, the copy? The answer is much simpler, an effective website is one that meets the customers needs. A visitor to a website is looking for information about products or services, to be entertained or to socialize. The layout, the colours, graphics and even the speed of loading are secondary to these needs.
To how can you make your website effective? (more…)
Who’s your host?
March 31st, 2008
Somebody asked for a review of their website the other day. The site itself was fine but all sorts of alarm bells started to ring when I investigated their domain. What we had was a UK based site with a .tv TLD, hosted in the USA. The result was that the site didn’t appear in UK only searches.
Before I offer some thoughts about domain names and hosts here’s a reminder of what’s what. (more…)
Use your page titles to increase traffic
March 28th, 2008
Hopefully one of the aims of any website is to get a decent ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). To achieve this to need to provide the search engines with something to index. And the very first thing a search engine look for is the page title. The page title should describe the content of the page: if you are selling widgets then the title needs to word widget in it. Sounds obvious but many sites fail this simple test.
But there’s more, if the widget is blue then you need ‘blue widgets’. If you offer free delivery then you need ‘free delivery for all blue widgets’. Some people advocate the inclusion of the company name, I don’t for the simple reason that people don’t care who you are, all they want is a widget.
Targeting the search engines
The page title will always appear in the results of a search. It follows that it’s the first thing visitors will see when they use a search engine to look for something. So you need to make sure that the page title attracts their attention, instead of a having just a couple of words, make a sales pitch. For example:
Go from this: cushion covers.
To this: handmade silk-screen printed cushion covers.
You are now fully describing the product which will hopefully pick up people searching for:
- cushion covers
- handmade cushions
- silk-screen printing
- printed cushion covers
and so on.
Remember as well that the search engines only display about 60 characters in the snippet so if you make is too long then the last bit will will get chopped off.
I could go on but this excellent article on page titles from SEO logic does the job far better than me.
But don’t think that writing stunning page titles is the end of the story, keyword placement is at the heart of a successful SEO campaign.
