Road Kill: Good vs. Bad Web Pages. by Fred Black


Never mind the experts, never mind what they taught you in school, and never mind your competitors, put a stake in the ground and define the purpose of your web site. Then make it deliver that functionality. Don't get lost in layers of pretty design or unnecessary technology.

What defines a good web site? Have you ever been on a web site trying to do something that you were supposed to be able to do on that site and couldn't? That's not a good web site then. It doesn't matter how pretty it is, how much time went into the color scheme, or how efficient the JavaScript code is that makes the pretty little rollover buttons, if I can't find what I need, then it's not a good web site, it's a bad web site.

Ok then, what's a bad web site? Have you ever been on a site that looked like a 4th grader made it? Ugly font choices, strange colors, plain links instead of pretty buttons and Flash animation? But, did you find what you were looking for? Did you get the information you were after? If so, it's a good web site.

I can't say it enough: functionality is more important than looks. Let me say it one more time: functionality is more important than looks. People will not stay on a web site that is hard to use, or come back to a web site that does not work. However, your web site can be both functional and good looking; all it takes is proper planning and quite possibly less work than a more complex, over done layout.

Have you ever been driving down a back country road and have a deer run out in front of you? The deer just stands there staring at your headlights and he or she doesn't know which way go. Don't do this to your web site visitors.

Don't present them with 103 choices and flashing lights, buzzers, and whistles when they land on your home page.

Your visitors may never make the choices that you want or that you assume they will. Keep each page focused and simple. Don't make someone work to purchase something from you, it should be easy for them.

One way to create better pages is to minimize the use of packages like Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe GoLive, or DreamWeaver and do more of your coding by hand. Learn enough HTML so that you can start a page in one of these layout packages (if necessary) and then finish and maintain the page in a text or HTML editor. You'll understand your pages better and you'll know how they work. Plus, you can modify them faster.

I've built a lot of sites and it's easier to modify and change the ones that I've coded by hand as opposed to the few that were built entirely in a layout package. Why?

Because layout packages like FrontPage change over time.

When you open a site you created in layout package "x"

version "n" two years later in version "n+1" and it no longer looks like it should, you'll understand why I like to edit my own HTML! Or, when you spend hours trying to get something to line up correctly in a layout package and finally start looking at the HTML code and realize that it's a mess and redo it by hand in half the time without the problems, then you'll understand why I like to edit my own HTML! But the main reason is that once you understand and can edit HTML, it's easy to just do it by hand!

If your site is supposed to sell something then make sure it's focus on is on selling, if it's an information site, then make sure it's focus is on providing information. If you want both, then maybe you should create two sites. Your goal should be clean, simple, and functional web pages that deliver the content or service the web site was intended to provide.


About the Author
Learn How To Make Web Page Scripts and Create Interactive Web Pages. www.WebScriptingOnline.com. Created by Fred Black.

Use and distribution of this article is subject to our Publisher Guidelines
whereby the original author's information and copyright must be included.

10 Things No One Ever Told Me About Getting My Web Site Listed - I Had to Learn On My Own

By Howard Kaplan

Article Word Count: 1008

1) PAGE NAME (METANAME) and PAGE URL (TITLETAG) MUST BE THE SAME!

Search engines all work a bit differently. Some search engines are satisfied listing your site by it's page name, others by its URL address. If the URL address is difficult to understand, the search engine crawler will stop reading the page and ignore it and not list the page. For example, let's say your site is called "JOE'S SUNGLASSES" and your first page is "MEN'S POLARIZED SUNGLASSES." If you create the page URL as "http://www.joessunglasses.com/menpolsun" the search engines may well ignore your page and not list it. This is particularly true of GOOGLE, who very much like the metaname and titletage to agree. Ideally, you'd like to your URL to read "http://www.joessunglasses/menspolarizedsunglassses"

2) PAGE NAME MUST INCLUDE SOME KEYWORDS/METATAGS

Search engines may not list your pages if the titles are not unique in some way. If your page is not listed the key words regarding that page will not be active even if other pages of your site are listed. In order to make your page unique keywords or metatags need to appear in the title of the page. The more keywords/metatags you put into the title, the higher in the rankings your page is likely to appear. Although you want to put in as many keywords or metatags as you can, there is also the need to be concise to avoid being ignored by the search engines. Using our previous example, a page name of "SUNGLASSESS" might return in excess of 1 million responses and would probably not get the page listed. A title of "MEN'S POLARIZED SUNGLASSES" would be far more attractive to a search engine but perhaps not as interesting as "MEN'S LUXURY POLARIZED SUNGLASSES," which has 4 key words rather than 3 or just 1 and both would appear sooner than the page titled "SUNGLASSES" alone.

3) KEYWORDS / METATAGS MUST APPEAR IN THE BODY OF THE PAGE

Of course, it is impossible to list all the keywords or metatags in the page title. Although it is possible for any keyword or metatag to be recognized by the search engines, I have found that very often this is not the case. In fact, I have found it absolutely critical to use the keyword or metatag in the body of the page - the more prominentely the better. A keyword or keyphrase used as a section header has a much greater chance of being recognized than a metatag buried in descriptive text.

4) KEYWORDS / METATAGS MUST MOVE FROM GENERIC TO SPECIFIC

Although the keywords necessary to get a page listed must be unique, search keywords must run the gamut from narrow to broad if the page is actually to be found during a search. I have found that splitting the metatags between branded and generic gives the best opportunity of achieving the broadest results. Using our prior example, the list of keywords might include: sunglasses, polarized sunglasses, luxury polarized sunglasses, men's luxury polarized sungasses, Foster Grant polarized sunglasses.

5) WEBPAGE MUST BE LISTED OR KEYWORDS / METATAGS WON'T WORK

Unfortunately, if a particular webpage is not picked up by the search engines none of the keywords/ metatags associated with that page will be effective and no results will be returned for your page even if other pages in the website are listed that do share those same keywords/metatags.

6) YOU MUST SUBMIT EACH PAGE OF YOUR TO EACH OF THE MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES IN ORDER TO BE LISTED - AND IT DOES NOT COST ANYTHING!

It is not enough to submit your home page to the search engines. If you hope to get exposure of all your products and activate all metatags each webpage of a site must be listed. This requires persistance but is not complicated. Google, Yahoo and MSNSearch each have free mechanisms to load pages to the web. Google page add: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl Yahoo page add: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request MSNSearc&h page add:http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2

7) IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO GET ALL THE PAGES OF A WEBSITE LISTED

Even if you've done everything right, the search engines are likely not likely to list all the pages of the site. In addition, each search engine updates its listing on different schedules. Google is the most difficult search engine in which to get pages listed and to keep pages listed. Don't be discouraged but rather expect you will have to repeat the process.

8) CONTINUE SUBMITTING PAGES ON A WEEKLY BASIS UNTIL ALL PAGES ARE LISTED & KEEP LISTING AS PAGES FALL OFF

With persistance, all of the pages of a website can be listed simply be resubmitting the missing pages in the same manner in which they were listed originally. It should be noted, however, that pages do tend to fall off search engine listings and it will be necessary to relist those sites. There are services available who can perform these services for a fee but I have found it just as effective to use the free submission process.

9) TEST YOUR PAGE RANKINGS AND METATAGS

Testing your page rankings and keywords / metatags will insure that your pages stay fresh and keep high in the listings. Google has an excellent tool that also indicates rankings for Yahoo and MSNSearch. You can find this tool at: www.googlerankings.com.

10) LINKING IS VITALLY IMPORTANT

Much of the secret of getting and keeping webpages listed is linking and despite what you read, it's more important to get websites linked to you than the other way around. If you find there is a limit to the number of links you can find to link to you, avoid link farms as they will be ignored by the search engines and cause pages to be delisted. A more effective strategy is to list your website with any of the many of the free directories that may be found on the web.

I hope this list proves helpful to you. It is the kind of list for which I was looking when I first started.

ABOUTH THE AUTHOR Howard Kaplan is the operator of schweizeroptics.com and the creator of the website http://www.schweizeroptics.com who specialize in offering low vision, special vision, consumer, commercial, professional and industrial magnifiers. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Howard_Kaplan

Inbound Links All Important

I subscribe to a weekly newsletter from Axandra, a company that offers several products to increase your web profits. This week's newsletter confirma what I already knew ...

Last week, we published the results of a new search engine ranking study. The researchers wanted to find out which factors influence web site rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN. The results of the study are so important that we take another look at the main results of the study in this issue.

The researchers found out that the contents of a web page are important for the search engine rankings of a web page. However, the inbound links to a web site are the most important factor on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Inbound links are the most important factor, optimized content follows.

Hidden Content Sources for Your Website

One of my favorite sites for web marketing instruction is SiteProNews.

Hidden Content
Sources for Your Website
By Kim Roach (c) 2006

As I travel through the Google search engine, there is one element that defines almost all of the top-ranking websites. It's great content. People come online for information and those that offer the best content reap the greatest rewards.
Unfortunately, this type of content is hard to come by. In most cases, you either have to spend hours in front of the keyboard or outsource the job to others. Both of these options are very costly. One requires your valuable time and the other requires an investment of around $10 - $20 per article.

That's why I have scoured the net in search of valuable free content sources. I'm still not quite sure why I'm revealing my treasured piles of free content, but I certainly hope you enjoy them.

One of my favorite sources of content is public domain. This comprises the body of knowledge without a copyright. Anyone can use this material for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Below are some excellent sources for public domain material.

Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a library of 18,000 free ebooks whose copyright has expired. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "Pride and Prejudice", "The Time Machine", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and "The Canterbury Tales" have all passed into the public domain.

This means that you can put these on your website or even sell them in electronic or book format.

Explore a wealth of free content at Gutenberg.org.

Archive.org
At Archive.org you can find thousands of works that are currently in the public domain. Want to put some cartoons on your web site? Check out the "Film Chest Vintage Cartoons", which is full of classic animated cartoons from the 1930's and 1940's. The collection includes Popeye, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, The Three Stooges and Betty Boop. They also provide tons of other reproducable content including:

Brick Films: Commonly called "LEGO Movies". Brick films are dedicated to the art of stop motion animation.

SabuCat Movie Trailers: The world's largest collection of theatrical trailers.

Feature Films: A large number of classic feature films and shorts.

Universal Newsreels: Newsreels were shown before every feature film in the pre-tv era.

Computer Chronicles: Was the world's most popular television program on personal technology during the height of the computer revolution.

Net Cafe: Television series covering the revolution during the height of the dot com boom.

All of these content sources are available for you to put on your website. check them out at Archive.org.

Another popular public domain destination is Wikipedia.org. Here you will find over 1 million articles ranging from Greek mythology and Egyptian history to business, health, and technology.

Go to Wikipedia.org for a huge collection of articles you can reprint on your own website.

Creative Commons
Every creative work receives copyright protetion as soon as you put pen to paper, hit save, or press record. Because of this, no one can use that work without express permission from the author.

Creative Commons provides a new content license that allows you to share your work with others. If you want, you can even allow other people to expand upon your existing work. This allows for creative co-authorship.

The Creative Commons license has made piles of content available for use on your web site. Whether you are looking for audio, images, video, or text, you can find an abundance of reusable information within the creative commons.

To search for content to put on your own web site, go to CreativeCommons.org.

Government Web Sites
Works produced by the U.S. Federal government are not copyrighted. If you obtain a government document from the net, you are free to copy and distribute the document. I have found plenty of great content about finance, retirement, health, business, and traveling on government websites.

To search for content offered by the United States government, go to http://www.google.com/unclesam.

Article Directories
There are thousands of writers on the internet and many of them would love for you to reprint their articles on your website. You can find thousands of free web articles at the following article directories.

GoArticles.com
EzineArticles.com
ArticleCity.com


Interviews
I consider interviews to be one of the best sources of quality content for your site. Simply interview industry professionals and post the recording and transcript on your website. This allows you to create original content very quickly.

Don't be afraid to ask for an interview, most experts would be delighted to speak with you. Remember, this is probably one of their greatest passions. If you ask them politely, your chances for landing an interview are good.

You can conduct an interview in person, over the phone, or even through an e-mailed questionaire.

RSS Feeds
RSS is changing the way we consume information online. In addition, it has also provided thousands of new content sources for the online publisher. RSS is simply a file format similar to XML that is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be easily understood by web publishing software and content aggregators.

By using RSS feeds, you can enhance the content on your site without ever writing a single word. And remember, on the Internet, content is King.

Want to put Amazon products on your site, updated news from the New York Times, financial advice from Motley Fool, or press releases from PRWeb?

This is all possible with RSS. No matter what type of information you are looking for, RSS can provide you with a constant stream of updated content for your web site.

To search for an RSS feed to enhance your own website, go to Syndic8.com. You can even mix and match a variety of rss feeds at RSSMix.com.

Facts & Statistics
Looking for facts or figures to put on your website? Take a look at some of the sources below. You'll likely be surprised how many facts, figures, and definitions are available in the public domain.

The CIA World Factbook provides a number of statistics on countries, territories, and dependencies. Each profile tracks such demographics as population, ethnicity, and literacy rates, as well as political, geographical and economic data.

http://www.census.gov/: One of the largest repositories for data and statistics related to the U.S.

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page: One of the best encyclopedia's ever written was published over 90 years ago. Search over 40,000 articles, all of which are available for publication on your own site.

http://www.bibliomania.com/2/3/257/frameset.html: A searchable interface of the 1913 public domain Webster's dictionary.

Private Label Articles
Private label articles can be bought for pennies per article. This is possible because they are sold in bulk.

Many people criticize these articles and have declared them as worthless. However, I am here to tell you that private label articles can be very powerful when used appropriately.

Unless you have hours of free time every day, it is unlikely that you are going to be able to create the amount of quality content that your web site deserves. This is where private label content enters the picture.

You can use private label articles to:


Add content to your web site.
Acquire hundreds of inbound links by syndicating the articles to article directories.
Create a free report for your visitors and other website publishers.
Create an information-packed RSS feed.
However, the key to using private label articles effectively is to optimize them. Straight out of the box, these articles are near worthless. To give them value, you must add your own touch.

Inject your personality into the article. Combine multiple articles and do some additional touch-ups to ensure that the article is in top shape for your readers.

Once you are finished you can add your resource box and send it off to article directories and website publishers.

If you are looking for one of the top private label article providers, go to InfoGoRound.com.

Images
Quality images can make your content much more inviting and keep people at your site for longer periods of time. Fortunately, there is a site that offers thousands of pictures completely free of charge. Find it at Stock.XCHNG.

Quotes
Quotes can give your website a special touch. Quotes provide interesting content in addition to an element of credibility. I often like to add related quotes to my web site simply to engage the reader's attention.

To find some quotes for your website, go to QuoteLand.com.

In the end, you always want your content to be unique. Not for the search engines, but for your visitors. With quality content comes quality links. Once you have built up a reputation for delivering unique content, you will never have to worry about having an audience eager to visit your website.


About The Author
Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews and SEO-News newsletters. You can contact Kim at: kim @ seo-news.com

This article may be freely distributed without modification and provided that the copyright notice and author information remain intact.

Marketing your Online Business - Effective Search Engine Optimization by Jon Peckham

It is a fact that few web search surfers will click beyond the first two to three pages of search results looking for what they need. If they do not find it within the first few pages of search results they will either search again using a different search engine or they will search on slightly different search terms.



The goal of search engine optimization is about creating a web site that reaches the first page of the search results for the particular keywords or keyword phrases you are targeting. Search engine optimization or SEO is becoming more and more important as the competition increases for top placement among on the search engines. Hundreds, if not thousands, of new web sites are being added to the World Wide Web on a daily basis and they are all competing for top placement.



Search engine optimization does not have to be complicated or elusive. In fact, you are probably better off staying away from some of the more questionable search engine optimization strategies and sticking to the basics. The foundation of basic search engine optimization is to weave relevant keywords into your web site throughout your internal and external links, the URL addresses of each individual page, and most importantly, content.



You can significantly increase the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts by carefully choosing the right keywords.



The most important part of search engine optimization is choosing the right keywords and keyword phrases to use in optimizing your web site. You need to know what keywords web search surfers are searching for when searching for your products or services. Once you have a list of popular search terms you then need to determine how much competition there is for each particular term and possible choose keywords where you have a realistic chance of being competitive.



For example, let us assume your keyword is “search engine optimization” You may find that this term is very competitive. In fact, at the time of this article, there were 83,600,000 search results returned on a search using “search engine optimization.” While you certainly want to optimize your site for this keyword you should also seek less competitive keywords. For example, at the time of this article, if you were you to search Google on the phrase “search engine optimization strategies” you would return approximately 29,600,000 results. This is certainly going to be less competitive. There are likely going to be hundreds more keyword alternatives using the phrase search engine optimization. The question you may have is how do you do research on what keyword phrases are best to use.



There are some good tools available on the Internet for doing keyword research for your search engine optimization purposes.



Yahoo Search Marketing is an excellent tool that is available for free. This particular search engine optimization tool s located at the following URL address.



http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php



To get started simply go to the box near the middle of the page and Enter a keyword to see how many searches were done on that keyword within the last month. Not only will you receive the number of searches for that particular search term but also all of the possible alternatives. Simply by paying attention to the number of searches done on a particular term you can have a pretty good idea of what kind of competition exists for each term. It is generally a good idea to target keywords or keyword phrases that have less than 50,000 searches.



Another excellent tool for doing keyword research is available at Wordtracker.com Wordtracker is not free but is probably one of the best keyword analysis tools available on the Internet. If you are serious about search engine optimization you will want to check out Wordtracker.



Choosing the right keywords is the foundation of effective search engine optimization and will be the key to getting your site to the top.

Other Articles That May Interest You...

Finding Keywords Worth Gold That Are Easy To Optimize For…
Trying to get into the search engine optimization game? Well, here is a way to quickly find the most profitable keywords that are easy to optimize for. This is the hidden strategy that all successful businesses use to start.


How To Select Keywords For Search Engine Optimization

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About This Author:

Jonathan Peckham can help YOU start your own profitable business on the Internet within the next 24 hours... To learn more, visit:

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