Newsletter03
EzSEO Newsletter # 3
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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Hello again.
This week seems to have come round very quickly for me. I have been busy working on web sites and programming projects in the humid heat here in Tenerife (for those of you who know Tenerife, I live near Puerto de la Cruz not far from the Monasterio restaurant with a wonderful view of Puerto, and the coast). The humidity has been almost unbearable these last few days. Luckily I work from home, so I could sit in just my shorts. Even so, there was sweat dripping from the end of my nose, and the back of my hair was permanently wet. We need a big storm to clear the air. OK, enough of my "problems". Let's review what we have done so far and get on and look at this weeks topics.
The last couple of weeks we have been laying the foundation for our web site. We have looked at how to find good, profitable keywords. We then went on to discuss how to use those keywords in the title and meta tags. We also dispelled some of the myths surrounding META tags. Today we are going to have a look at how you should design your site for the best visitor experience and at the same time, giving search engine robots the food they need to devour your site. I mentioned last time that we would also look at header tags. However, this issue is long enough as it is. I am leaving headers until next week.
If you are wondering what the overall site design has to do with optimizing your site for search engines, the answer is - quite a lot.
If you missed either of the first two parts of this SEO course, you can read them online at: http://ez-search-engine- optimization.com/newsletters/newsletters-archive.htm
Lot's to do, so let's go!
WEB PAGE DESIGN ISSUES
There are two different types of visitor to your site, and both are important enough to dictate the way you should be designing your sites. They are human visitors and of course the search engine robot.
Human Visitors are so important, because they are the ones that will make your site profitable if you sell something, or popular if you have an information site. Without them, your site will be useless. With this in mind, you need to think like a visitor and decide what you hate and what you like about web sites, and then design your site around the "likes list". Thankfully, this is fairly easy to do.
Just ask yourself what really annoys you about some of the sites you visit?
Let me tell you a few things I hate (in no particular order):
a) Pop-ups & pop-unders - these are OK sometimes when there is an offer of subscribing to a newsletter, but only once. You should not have to see the pop-up every time you go back. The majority of pop-ups are simply annoying.
TIP: I use a fabulous free web browser called Crazy Browser. This browser automatically blocks pop-ups and is much faster than Internet Explorer, opera, Netscape, or any other browser I have tried. Another great feature is that you can have multiple browsing windows open in a tabbed-interface. This free tool is highly recommended. Check it out at: http://www.crazybrowser.com/
b) Slow loading pages - If a page takes too long to load, I am more than likely to click the back button. It is amazing how many slow loading pages I come across - and I am on an ADSL connection. I hate to think what 56K modem users are having to put up with.
c) Colours that get you reaching for sunglasses - no comment necessary.
d) Lots of fonts used on a single page - looks like a page of spaghetti and makes it difficult to concentrate on the content.
e) Sites using Frames - If you don't know what frames are, GOOD. Don't learn how to use them. They make it impossible for visitors to bookmark pages on your site, and also cause a few optimization problems for the webmaster. There is a rumour that search engines cannot index the pages too. This is incorrect in the case of Google, but it should be noted that the page that will come up in Google, if found in search results, will not contain all of the frames. You will probably lose your navigation bar (often put into the left or top frame). Without a navigation bar, how is anyone going to find there way back to your homepage. Don't assumed visitors will look in the address bar and edit that to get back to your homepage - they won't. Don't use frames.
f) Pages with lots of banner adds - I don't mind the odd banner (like one at the top of a page, or one at the bottom), but I hate pages that seem to be just a list of banners. Many newbie affiliate marketers put monsters like that up onto the web. No wonder they fail and go back to their day job.
g) Effects that are there just to satisfy the ego of the webmaster - These include animations that follow my cursor (and often lock up my machine), gratuitous animations and applets that require me to download and install some software (like shockwave). With virus paranoia setting in, people are unlikely to download anything that your web site says you need to have, just to view the contents of your pages. They are more likely to hit the back button and find one of your competitors sites.
OK, the things I like about a site are:
a) Good, clear, easy to understand English. b) Great navigation system c) Fast loading pages
These things speak for themselves. I usually don't want to be entertained when I visit a web site. I am either visiting to get information, or going to buy something. The more distractions there are, the less likely I will find what I want. If that is your site, you will lose the sale. Make sure your visitors get a fast loading page, and keep distractions to a minimum. In fact don't put any. Your web page has a purpose - make sure it gives your visitor exactly what you intend.
A little needs to be said here of the navigation system. You see a myriad of different style nav bars on the pages you visit every day. Buttons, text links, menus, animated drop-down menus etc. I personally use text based nav bars (see the keeping the spiders happy section below). However, use which ever you think will fit into the design of your site. The only exception here is script based navigation bars/menus. Search engine spiders don't read javascript yet. If your links are wrapped up in a scripting language - you web site may not be spidered. Text based navigation systems play it safe, button based navigation systems can add a little extra optimization strategy - see below.
KEEPING THE SPIDERS HAPPY
OK, a quick recap on search engine spiders. Remember these are the critters that scour the web looking for web page to bring back to the search engine for inclusion in the index. These robots work in text mode. They read text and manipulate that text. They recognise HTML tags, but do not read javascript. When they take a page back and it gets ranked, the placement of keywords on the HTML page is important. The words that appear higher up the HTML document are given a high priority.
OK, so where does that leave us? How do we design our page.
My suggestions for creating a visitor and spider friendly web page is simple.
1. Don't Use Frames.
2. Don't use unnecessary scripts to make your page look more professional. In fact you will probably end up making your page look more amateurish. In addition, a lot of these scripts require you to place the code in the section of the web page (the very first section on the page and the one that the spider will assume will tell it what your page is about). This extra, unspiderable code, will just push your content further down the HTML document, watering down the effectiveness of the keywords you placed high up the visible page.
3. Use a navigation bar that can be spidered. While I use text based nav bars myself, a button based nav bar is a good idea if you use the ALT tag of the button. In the ALT tag of the button, put the main keyword phrase of the page the button points to. If you are unsure what an ALT tag is, this will be discussed in a later chapter of this course.
A quick note about navigation bars, and a super tip:
If you use navigation bar on the left hand side of your page, this will push your main content for the page further down the HTML document (spiders, like humans, read left to right). Again this waters-down the effectiveness of your strategically place keywords in the upper section of your web page. If you want to see what I mean, visit my own site at
http://ez- search-engine-optimization.com
and view the source code of the homepage. How far down has the left menu pushed my main opening headline on this page?
The headline of the homepage is almost half way down the HTML document. This is because when viewed as a text document, the navigation bar on the left is the first thing the spider sees. Do you see how this is a bad thing?
Super Tip: If you want to have your navigation bar on the left, you can. And still have your headline and opening paragraphs high up the HTML document. Have a look at this page:
http://ez-search- engine-optimization.com/articles/article1.htm
and view the source code. The menu is on the left hand side, yet now, the headline and text appear above the left menu bar in the HTML document. How did I do this? A simple trick using tables. Look at the code below which defines a simple table. I have entered some text to represent the left menu, and some text to represent my main web page content:
| Put main headline and body text here. This will appear higher up than the left menu because i have joined the two rows in this column, and now the main text is row 1, whereas as the nav bar is row 2. Row 1 appears higher up the HTML document than row 2. | |
| PUT LEFT NAV BAR HERE |
Do you see how the main text of the page now appears above the Nav Bar in this code. Yet if you look at this code in a web browser (just save the above code as test.html, and open it in your web browser), the left nav bar is, well on the left. Magic! Feel free to use this code as is or modify it.
OK, back to our list of to-dos:
4. Use one font only on a page. Too many fonts make a page too amateurish. If you are selling something, this will loose you sales. Use a single font only on a page. Try to use the same font throughout your site so that it has a consistent feel to it Sudden changes make visitors nervous.
5. Don't put too many graphics on the page. This slows down the loading time. If you need to use images, make sure they are small in size (10Kb maximum, smaller if possible). There is a free software tool at: http://chemware.co.nz/tgo.htm which reduces the size of GIFs. I don't use it myself so cannot recommend it fully, but it might be worth a try if you don't have your own favourite graphics software for reducing image sizes. If you know of a free / low cost graphic resizer that you recommend, please let me know.
6. Keep the colour scheme simple. I nearly always use a white background for my main web page text. I would recommend the same, though the choice is of course yours. Visitors seem to gain confidence in your site if it has that clean look.
OK, that is my check list for a well designed web site. Simple huh? Some of you may think that a web site like this is boring. Well, I disagree. Web sites are there to provide information. Anything that detracts from the information will reduce the quality of your site. If people want to be entertained, they'll go to the movies.
If I had to say what the most important of all these rules are for a well optimized web page, I would say:
GET YOUR HEADLINE AND FIRST PARAGRAPH OF YOUR WEB PAGE AS HIGH UP YOUR HTML TEXT DOCUMENT AS POSSIBLE.
Always examine your html code in a text editor and see where your web page really starts in the HTML document. Get rid of anything that is not 100% necessary that pushes your page content further down the HTML document.
DON'T CLUTTER YOUR HTML CODE WITH UNECESSARY RUBBISH!
Next week, we are going to look at what the top 1/3 of your web page needs for maximum impact on the search engines. I will take you step by step through designing a web page and provide code examples to help get you started.
Until than, have a great week.
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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. Also if you have any tips of your own, questions or comments, please send then to me at webmaster@ez-search-engine- optimization.com. Any tips or questions & answers I print in this newsletter will also be put up on the web version of the newsletter with a link to your site if you want it. That's extra free traffic for your site as well as an incoming link to your site.
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Dr. Andrew Williams
EZ SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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