Super Search Engine Marketing

HTML is a computer language that allows you to put information into a document on the internet that when it is called upon by a web browser (or other software) is viewed by the viewer.

HTML code is comprised from standards set by the W3C or World Wide Web Consortium.  The W3C meet from time to time and make changes to the standards, add new standards so that websites and browsers are able all view the site the same way.  BUT DON’T LET THAT FOOL YOU.  Just because your site is W3C Compliant doesn’t mean it is going to show up how you want it to look across all browsers and all computers.

An example is if you look at most any Static Page website like Coffee -n- Caffeine you will see it looks one way with Internet Explorer and slightly different with Netscape or Firefox or Google Chrome.  This is expected.  Each browser handles the code that it is given by the web page a little differently.  Mostly cause they are not following the W3C.  The biggest thing to remember is that your site should be built so that it is viewable the way you want by the most popular browsers.

Currently the most popular browser is Internet Explorer though traffic from Apple’s Safari and also Firefox are gaining ground.  So if your gonna write website code then you need to have a few browsers ready to look at the pages you create so you can see what it looks like before you post it to the internet.

The way in which you present your content is also important. Who ever said a picture is worth a thousand words never built a website.  While for a viewer a picture is great, to a SE it means nothing (other than the alt text attached to it).

Do not get me wrong the use of good graphics is important to a website, in the case of hard goods it is imparitive that you show a picture of the product if available.  Customers want to see what they are buying. Unfortunately to a SE a picture only means what the alt text or the name of the file is.  So where you gain with customers you do not with the SE’s.

Words are what count as content, at least now.  In the future content of Video, Audio, and Pictures will be readable in one form or another by the SE’s.  Right now we have not yet achieved that state.  Where it nice if we were it would make building a site with pictures and some text, like a catalog, so much easier.  If the SE could see that it is a Red Dress with shoulder straps sites would be more equally ranked.  Unfortunately they can’t, yet.

One thing the SE’s do understand is that BOLD text is more important. You will notice that I use Bold and Italics on text on various pages.  It accomplishes two things.  First it drags your eye to the content. Second it does the same to the SE.  The SE sees the difference in the code of the site and realizes your trying to point something out.  Using Bold and other format of text tells the reader and the SE things you think they want to know.

So you need to use a combination of text and pictures to make your site look attractive to your customer and also to the SE. Look around the net at various websites.  Find what attracts you about their site and what doesn’t.  Make notes about how things are laid out and you will be able to design your site to the optimum.

Sparky

Of course with website design you need to keep your customer in mind.  Attractive sites bring people back.  Eye candy is important. If you look at my coffee site you will see that it is attractive to the eye.  It is also attractive to the search engines.

Offering lots of content is important.  Did I mention CONTENT IS KING?  Yea I think I did but you will hear me harp on it again and again as it is one of the MOST important things to search engine marketing. The more content in the form of text, alt tags and other html coding, the more important your page will rank (PR).  For information about PR I like to use other software that is available to track PR, not only across Google, but other SE’s as well.  We will get into this later.

So your design elements must incorporate not only Eye Candy for your customers but also a means for the SE’s to read your site.  Many sites use a data base program to make the pages from information they put into the data base.  A sample of this would be Harmony Cedar , their site runs on software on a computer server that offers up ever changing information.  This site also runs on a Data base where my text and what I have highlighted or made a link to is stored and when your looking at a page it is what the data base is offering.  Data base run sites can be cheap like this one, or very expensive like Harmony Cedar.

Most sites that I manage or create are made up of what we call static pages.  These are pages of HTML code that once placed on the internet shows what you see when you click to a site and view it in your web browser.  They are inexpensive to create, and maintain or make changes too.

Most people do not need to learn HTML code in order to open up a site.  Depending on your site, your host etc.. you may get software that will help you create your site.  You can use some Word Processing software to creat HTML pages from what you create in a word document.  However the best form is to create the pages from scratch or using some sort of template which content the very basic elements needed.

The Basic elements of a webpage needed in a site is: CONTENT, A Menu, A Header, and a Footer.  Almost every website page you look at contain thise 4 elements.  Obviously the Header is at the top, the Footer is at the bottom, where the content is viewable and the menu’s are located is entirely up to you and your particular tastes, or better yet the tastes of your customers.  Essentially you have 3 places where you can put your Menu, at the top of the page, along the left or along the right.  No one puts their menu at the bottom, though in the footer we do put links to other pages that are important to have on every page.

There are other types of files which we will get into later that are also very helpful to a website, like a sitemap, robots file, and other things.

So now you know the basic design elements that are needed.

Within every website there are elements that create the page. These elements are what we call HTML code.  HTML code can be made up of many things from Java Script, to cookies, to the tags that are used to make the words appear the way they do, links to pages, pictures or graphics, and other elements some of which are great to use others are better used in certain ways or not at all.

The barest and most basic of all websites is a file that ends in .html (there are other types of file endings but for simplicity we will consider them all the be html files) .  What is contained within these files  is what a serving website sends to your browser when you click a link to a page.  All the information that is presented, links to other pages, graphics that show up and where are all controlled by the Code that is put into these pages. How the code is put into the page determines how the information is shown to the viewer and also crawled by the SE’s.

All web pages contain a variety of things, For details on HTML code you can check with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortiom) for the current standards they set forth. For me to go into all the various tags here would take a whole section.  I will focus on the most necessary elements, and the ones to avoid or use in other ways.

Meta Description is a tag that describes your page to the search engine.  It needs to be unique among the many pages of the site. This can be in a minor form for example my Flavored Coffee pages on my Coffee-n-Caffeine site each have the name of the flavored coffee contained within the description of the Meta Description tag.  This tells the SE’s that this page contains….  Fuzzy Navel Flavored Coffee as an example.   Description tags should contain at least 100 characters in the form of words that make sense.  Example “Coffee-n-Caffeine offering Fuzzy Navel Flavored Coffee, 100% Gourmet Flavored Coffee, Fuzzy Navel, Blends, Fair Trade Organic, Caffeine, Retail, wholesale“

Meta Keywords – This is where you put in key words not only for your site but also for the page as well.  Most of the SE’s like to see differences in these tags as well. So using the same tag line throughout the site is not a good thing.  It will not hurt you but it is better to have each of them being slightly different.  Key words or phrases are important as combined with the other meta tags it helps the SE’s properly index your site for what you think is important on the site.  Example “Fuzzy Navel Flavored Coffee, Coffee-n-Caffeine, Coffeecaffeine.com, Gourmet Food, Gourmet Coffee, Coffee, Coffee Beans, Coffee Gift, Caffeine, Coffee Information, Organic coffee, Fair Trade coffee, Earth Friendly, Free Coffee, Online Ordering, Kosher Coffee“.  Again long enough and with the changing of the name of the coffee and some other changes throughout the various pages, you can gain an advantage.

The other tags that are good but not as important are the following

doc-class content=“Living Document” this tells the SE’s that this page changes.

meta name=“author” content=“author name” Tells the SE’s who wrote the page… not very important.

meta name=“robots” content=“index, follow” this tells the SE’s that they should follow the links on the page and read the page. Not important if it’s missing, but better to have it there.

meta name=“revisit-after” content=“1 Week” this tells the SE’s how often they should return. Rest assured that even with a 1 week return if you follow the other things I point out in this section you will be indexed more than several times per day.

meta name=“language” content=“EN” This tells the SE’s what your language is so that it knows how to read your site. Believe it or not the SE’s can read most all languages.

meta name=“copyright” content=“Copyright holder” this is basically a tag that says the content is yours and you have the copyright.  Not important but you should use it.

meta name=“rating” content=“kids” -  this one shoud be adjusted depending on what rating the site is.  If it is an adult site then it should be changed it helps the SE’s and also the Parental Filters that are being used.

These tags will help your site get better results from the SE’s.

Sparky

There are a number of things that will limit your sites presence in the search engines. First and foremost is conent that the SE’s can read.  Many can now read PDF Files and some multi media files, others can’t.  Here are a few of the things that they can not read, yet.

Graphics – Graphcs are meaningless except for the file name, and any alt tags that are added to the html code that puts the graphic on the page.  File names are important. A graphic labeled icon1.jpg is not going to be indexed by the SE’s very well.  Now a graphic with a name of Band-Schedule.jpg is going to be read by the SE’s.  Add to that an alt tag in the code that says Click here to see the Bands Current Schedule of upcoming shows, and you have added readable content by the SE’s that help your site.

Java Script – Java script is meaningless and in many cases can halt SE’s dead in their tracks.  If you need to use Java it is best to have it in a separate file and use an include or some other means of bringing the script into the code of the page.

Style Information – many people, and software, put style information in the page.  This is code that tells the browser how to show various things on a page.  This information again is better used in an external file that is called upon by the page in it’s code so that it doesn’t confuse the SE’s

Outdated Code – there are updates made to the code that is used to create websites.  It is important to try to remain as close to W3C Complaint in your code as you can.  No site is perfect, but the better you are the better you show up.  This is dual effective.  First is that the customers will all generally see the page the same way regardless of the kind of browser or computer they are using.  Second is that it shows the SE’s that your using proper code in your site.

Frames - frames are an old way of trying to control where things show up on a page.  While the code is still valid, it isn’t easy for SE’s to see your site properly. It is far superior to use tables and nest them together to get control over the content, and the look will be the same, but the SE’s will read it better.

Those are just a few of the Don’ts that you should avoid in your website design.

Sparky