Tel: 0113 2170419
www.littlefishwebdesign.com
What's happened to LittleFish Web Design
Monday, February 25, 2008
Although I'm still a computer coding geek at heart, other commitments have taken over and I'm reducing the amount of time I am spending on web design projects.
I'm going to spend more time updating the blog than I have done in the past few months but am not taking on any new design projects.
Apologies if you've heard of the fantastic reputation and pricing of LittleFish Web Design, but you're going to have to find someone else.
There are plenty of tips in this blog about what to look for in a web designer, or for websites in general, so you shouldn't be caught unawares.
Free Wordpress theme generator
Thursday, October 25, 2007
As a web designer, I know how to code in XHTML, CSS and dabble from time to time in PHP and MySQL. That's great for standalone sites, but when it comes to blog and CMS platforms, I haven't got a clue.
Wordpress is currently my platform of choice for a personal project (more on that to come later) but I was struggling with how to learn 'the loop' and coding bits in the timeframe I've got. Roll on the Wordpress Theme Generator...
You can choose the number of columns, menu layout, colour schemes, choose from a wide range of backgrounds or go for a plain colour, insert a tag cloud, choose how to display archives etc...you're spoilt for choice really.
If you're looking at Wordpress and don't have the time/energy/budget, this is certainly worth a look.
Comprehensive list of CSS techniques
Sunday, October 14, 2007
To complement my post the other day about Web 2.0 techniques, I thought I'd throw in this post from Smashing Magazine - "53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn?t Live Without".
Throw in MakeUseOf with their really useful resource lists (tip: subscribe to their feed by e-mail so you never miss a post!) and you've got your standards-compliant fantastic-looking web design stitched up.
Labels: webdesign
Web 2.0 online generators
Saturday, October 13, 2007
'Web 2.0' is a bit of a cliched term now. The general idea is that the new generation of community orientated sites are called web 2.0 sites. You know, the ones where you can vote, comment, interact, customise etc...New websites coming out that are 'web 2.0' tend to have rounded corners, glassy buttons, vivid colours and tend to be recognisable from a long way away!
However, as with all web design trends, it has pushed design further along, and I found a great list of web 2.0 generators on ifxplus.com. What's the use I hear some people ask? Well, if you want rounded corners or stripy background images - make then in a jiffy! Need colourschemes - grab them! Want to see how things are coded to practise your own design skill - there you go!
See 'More than 100 Web 2.0 Online Generators' for the list.
Labels: webdesign
How to change your web design
Monday, October 01, 2007
If you have an existing website and want to change the design, or perhaps hire a different web designer, it's not quite as straightforward a process as you might think.
If you are just changing the content of each page, then it is a simple job and you don't need to take this post as seriously as someone who is having a complete site overhaul.
This isn't an exhaustive list, but just a few ideas that spring to mind:
1) Your new site should comply with both W3C and Disability guidelines (Disability Discrimination Act in the UK).
2) If the domain and hosting are moving, ensure that they are registered in your name (see
Importance of renewing your domain name) and their costs are still reasonable...you can get domain names for less than £5/$10 and hosting for less than £25/$50 per year. Don't be fooled into thinking that paying more will get you 100% uptime on your website - this doesn't exist unless you've got a massive IT infrastructure in your large company.
3) If you are moving from one designer to another, have you got a copy of all passwords and access details?
4) If your page is going to use Flash animation, will it still be indexable by the search engines? You don't want to lose your hard-earned rankings because the search engines can no longer see what your site is about?
5) If you create new pages, will you map the old pages to the new ones if they have different names? If you use Linux hosting, you will need to do a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file - scary sounding but not that difficult if you search for .htaccess tutorials.
Labels: searchengines, webdesign
PayPal button to hide your e-mail address
Thursday, August 16, 2007
If you want to use PayPal 'buy now', subscription or shopping cart buttons on your website, PayPal very kindly generates the code for you to use when you fill in your details.
Most of the time, you can probably use their inbuilt encryption, but if you want to use certain options, you'll find the encryption can't be used.
This means that your e-mail address is lying unencrypted in the code of your website for any spammer or spambot to come along and find. This is a BAD thing and vastly increases the chances of you receiving offers for all kinds of products you never even knew existed.
So how do you overcome this? Very simply actually. In a post on e-junkie, I found a very quick and easy solution:
- Log in to PayPal and generate your button code, pasting it into your webpage where you want the button to appear. Don't save just yet.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the PayPal page and you'll see a link called "Referrals".
- On this page, you'll see a link like https://www.paypal.com/row/mrb/pal=xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
- Copy the xxxxxxxxxxxxx part of the code and paste it over your e-mail address in step 1.
Labels: programming, spam, webdesign
Nifty widgets for your website
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
JS-Kit is a site that I found today that easily allows you to add polls, ratings and commenting to any page on your website - no coding required.
All you need to do is select the feature you want, copy the two lines of code and paste it into your website.
Further customisation is available and all instructions are clearly explained. For example, you can change the colour of the stars in ratings, or allow multiple ratings on one page.
Labels: programming, webdesign
15 minute SEO checklist
Monday, July 16, 2007
Whether you're just developing a new website or have been running one for a while, the free 15 minute SEO checklist will certainly help you.
It is a weighted checklist of all the different factors that can make the difference to your search engine rankings.
Positive, negative and neutral factors are all considered and the list is split into various sections - keywords, links, metatags, content, visual factors and domains.
The list is skewed towards Google, but can affect your rankings in MSN, Yahoo! and other search engines.
If you don't understand any of the terms used, there is a reference tutorial to explain everything in more detail.
Funky check boxes in your HTML forms
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Whilst looking for ways to style check boxes using CSS, I came across a nifty little piece of JavaScript at BrainError.net:
"With the use of CSS you can control how forms on your website look, however certain items like checkboxes, radio buttons and selects cannot be altered, they are rendered by the visitors operating system. There is no way to get around it.
The key to changing their appearance is by not by displaying checkboxes at all, use an image instead, and glue it together with a few lines of JavaScript."
To use the script, you will need four things:
1) The line of code to put in the head section of the webpage on which you want to change the check boxes.
2) The script itself (make sure that (1) points to where you saved this script)
3) An image called 'false.png' (or change the JavaScript)
4) An image called 'true.png' (or change the JavaScript)
This script can be literally installed in a few seconds and looks great. If JavaScript is switched off or isn't used in your visitor's browser, they will see the normal textboxes, so there are no compatibility issues.
See "Changing the appearance of checkboxes".
A little more about me...
Friday, May 18, 2007
Recently, I was contacted by Arthur Browning of Design Interviews - a website that interviews web designers - to see if I would mind answering a few questions.
I didn't and you can view the whole transcript at 'Emma Kalson of LittleFish Web Design'.
It was an interesting process - making me think about the motivations behind my web design - if that sounds a little pretentious, don't worry, it's not!
It's also interested reading answers to the same questions from other designers and seeing the
Labels: webdesign
Guest article: The Best and Easiest Google-Friendly Change to Your Web Site
Sunday, April 15, 2007
No matter who you are or how much you pay for web site advertising, free search engine traffic is probably responsible for a big part of your business. So why make your web site so hard for search engines to figure out?
Luckily, it seems like in the recent years people have paid attention to SEO, moved their sites over to CSS, abolished "table" and "font" HTML tags, started using the H1 tag around their titles... and in general, moved the main content of their site as close to the top of the HTML document as it can go.
"But Robert," you tell me, "I have a bunch of fancy JavaScript and CSS at the top of my site that I don't want to get rid of."
That's ok, you can keep it. Just stash it away in another file. By that I mean... if you were lazy and included your CSS right in the HTML document like this:
<style type="text/css">
<!-- CSS code in here -->
</style>
Copy all that text out and delete it from the HTML page.
Remove the "style" tags and the "<!--" and "-->" stuff. Open a new text file, paste the text from the clipboard in, save the file as "layout.css" then save and upload to your web server.
Now, back on your HTML page, place HTML code like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.example.com/layout.css">
When someone loads your page in a browser that tells them to look to the URL http://www.example.com/layout.css for the CSS info. But when the search engines crawl your site they will see a nice, clean, simple layout.
You can do the same thing with JavaScript. Say these are your "script" tags:
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
JavaScript code in here
-->
</script>
Do the same thing, copy the JavaScript code but NOT the "script" tags themselves or the "<!--" or "--)". Erase the original from the HTML page. Paste the stuff you copied into a new text file and call it something like: "functions.js"
Upload functions.js and in the spot you had your JavaScript code use this:
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.example.com/functions.js"></script>
One important thing to remember is that NO JavaScript code can be placed between the "script" tags if you use the "src" parameter like that.
So remember: use H1 tags, use meta description tags, and use CSS, but make sure you include your JavaScript and CSS stylesheets in separate files otherwise there's no point.
Article by Robert Plank
http://www.AffiliateBattlePlan.com
The perils of a free website
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
I've recently had a client come to me for a site redesign. A few questions later and I ascertained that he was unhappy with the current design - it looked clumsy, was not user friendly and the company were only interested in helping him until they took his money.
When asked how much he'd paid for the site, his reply was surprising... "Oh nothing, but I do have to pay £35 per month in hosting fees!"
So what's wrong here? Firstly, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Secondly, I charge my clients £25 per year for hosting (if you're interested let me know and I'll give you the name of the company).
For the five-page site which left him open to large amounts of spam (through exposing his e-mail address) and very few visitors (due to the poor design etc...), he effectively paid £420 per year. The same site with LittleFish Web Design but created to far higher standards? £325.
Excuse me whilst I blow my own trumpet..!
Guest Article: Think Global Act Global
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Think Global Act Global: Writing for Your Online Market
When you write web site content and design your pages, do you truly act with your target audience in mind? Or do you think global and act local?
I am amazed at the number of web sites I see that claim to target a global market, yet design and write their content for a regionally-specific audience. Not sure what I mean? Take the site I saw yesterday, for example. I won't embarrass the site owners by pointing to the specific domain, but let's just say the site is based in the U.S. and sells high quality gold chains throughout North America, Europe and Australia.
Now the owner of this site was complaining loudly in a webmaster forum that his pay-per-click campaign was having no luck converting sales from overseas visitors, particularly in the UK and Australia. He had spent a long time developing and tweaking a landing page for the campaign and he couldn't work out why hardly anyone outside the U.S. was buying. I took a look at his landing page and could see the problems straight away:
1) He used the American English spelling "jewelry" throughout the page without considering that persons who use British English spell it "jewellery".
2) He provided a toll-free phone number for persons in the U.S. to call, but did not provide any contact phone number for persons located outside the U.S.
3) He used the word "national" throughout the page, immediately isolating anyone outside the U.S.
4) He promoted "free shipping throughout the U.S." but did not specify shipping costs for persons outside the U.S.
The owner of this site had not even considered that persons outside the U.S. might search for keywords in anything other than American English. It didn't even occur to him that there may be an alternative spelling of his main keyword and he didn't think about the logistics for purchasers outside his country. No wonder the page wasn't converting outside the U.S.! He had made the classic mistake of isolating a large chunk of his audience by sending everyone to a one-size-fits-some page.
What he should have done was to create a separate landing page using British English spelling and shipping/contact information applicable to persons overseas. He could then have set up a unique PPC campaign targeting only UK/Australian searchers with regional keywords and ads leading to the British English landing page.
I see similar problems occur quite often in the online travel industry where you not only have to deal with regional spelling options, but also regional jargon. Think about the word "accommodation". Apart from the fact the word is commonly misspelled, it is used most often in the UK, Australia and New Zealand to describe places to stay while traveling. In the U.S., the words "accommodations" and "lodging" are more commonly used. Same goes for "holiday" and "vacation", with the latter being more common in the U.S. The word "traveling" itself is spelled "travelling" in British English! So you can imagine the minefield of problems webmasters must face promoting their travel sites online to a worldwide audience.
I don't mean to single out a particular country, but Americans seem to find it especially difficult to step outside their regional mindset. I am always receiving emails from the U.S. with helpful suggestions for fixing my "spelling mistakes".
The funniest email exchange I ever had in relation to this was from an American web designer. She had seen our Australian-based web site (with a .com.au domain) and emailed me to tell me it was "full of errors" and that if I wanted to present a professional business to site visitors, I should correct them. So condescending! I asked her to elaborate and she pointed me to these words she felt were spelled incorrectly:
optimisation
counselling
organised
enrolment
colour
catalogue
favourite
centre
Resisting the urge to use a few offensive words I'm sure she would recognize, I tactfully explained that our site was only targeting the Australian market and that we use British English spelling in Australia. Her response? Perhaps if we wanted to be taken seriously by an international audience, we should consider using the "more proper" American English. Flabbergasted, I pointed out the fact that American English was a derivative of British English and was not widely used outside her own country. Wikipedia has more about the differences between the two here. And let's not forget that although it is the most common language used on the web, English is used by less than 30 percent of the world's total Internet users.
The point of this story is that you absolutely have to think outside your market if you are going to advertise on the web. As ignorant as she was, my email friend did make me realize that many of her compatriots might also think our site was full of errors. American English is more common on the web and I've since learned to cater to that trend. I try to remember that in all writing I do for the web now, whether it's in my daily blog, the syndicated articles I write regularly or web page content.
Whenever you design or write for a web site that has an international audience, make sure you address each market. It pays to undertake detailed keyword research into your markets you are targeting so you can capture the correct regional jargon and spelling that people are searching for. Remember it's not enough to think global, you've got to act global too.
About the Author:
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
Emma's note: I read Kalena's Search Engine Advice column regularly. Despite being aimed at 'newbies' it's a good reminder of some of the basic search engine optimisation principles.
Consolidate your pagerank with .htaccess
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
If you look in the search engines, you may notice that some of the links to your site start with 'www' and others don't. The problem with this canonicalisation issue (despite the situation improving as the search engines become more sophisticated) is that some search engines will view this as two different domains and firstly, will split pagerank between the two and secondly, could push your pages into the supplemental results so your site won't be as easily found.
There is a simple solution to this if you use linux-based hosting and involves editing your .htaccess file. If you don't already have one of these files in the root directory of your hosting server, you'll have to create one. Note that whether you see this file may depend on your FTP program - set it to show all files including hidden ones. I use FileZilla which is an excellent open source FTP program and very simple to use.
The dot (period) in front of the htaccess means that it is a hidden system file. To create an htaccess file, open notepad and save a new file. Ignore the extension which is set to text file (*.txt) and in the filename box type ".htaccess", including the quote marks. You should now have a correctly named file.
Now type in:Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.co\.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]
At the end of the last line, press the enter key to add a newline to the file. This is really important or your htaccess won't work. Now save this and upload it to the root of your website. Some hosts take a short amount of time to update htaccess (GoDaddy for example) but it should work instantaneously on most hosts. This can be adapted for any domain:RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com$ [NC] etc...
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Just remember to change 'yourdomain' to your actual domain name!
Labels: hosting, searchengines, webdesign
Don't get your site thrown out the Search Engines
Altering your website to increase its rankings in the search engine results is known as SEO or search engine optimisation. By doing this, you will increase the number of visitors to your site, which in turn will hopefully increase your website's revenue. The major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) all publish do's and don'ts for websites - failing to acknowledge these on your site could easily result in it being banned.
Whether you pay someone to do your SEO, or do it youself, ensure that your site adheres to the webmaster guidelines and doesn't engage in any black hat practices. These will get your site banned from the search engines, and once thrown out, it's difficult to get back in. Adhering to white hat practices and providing quality content is the best advice for getting high rankings.
Quick ways to get banned include keyword stuffing (using the same phrases or words repeatedly) or hiding text by having lots of keywords in the same colour as the background. The former renders your page unreadable, which defeats the purpose of having visitors to your site whilst the latter has been used by webmasters to get visitors there on false pretences - they think they're viewing a page on one topic and arrive to see something completely different.
Links from high quality or high ranking sites are much more important in helping your site rankings than just trying to get hundreds of links. Although this may take time, acquiring higher quality links really will help your site in the long run. To find higher authority sites, use Google's pagerank as a guide. The higher the pagerank out of 10, the harder it will be to get a link, but the more value it will pass to your site.
Don't be tempted into buying hundreds of links at a time - it's better to get a few links a week at a constant pace than getting a lot sporadically. And when you do link, ensure that you get links to both your homepage and other pages on your site. Link exchanges can be a good thing, but ensure that you are listed with similar sites rather than just a random selection.
Don't be tempted to fool Google or the other search engines - they will find you out. Practices they may not like and not mentioned above include meta tag stuffing, cloaking, duplicate content and multiple submissions. Meta tags can be useful to your site despite not all search engines using them, but don't be tempted to stuff them full of more keywords and phrases.
Cloaking is where you show one page to the search engines and another to your site's visitors - again it gets them there through false pretences. Having the same website on several different domains sounds like a good idea, but the search engines do penalise duplicate content, whether by dropping you from the results or putting you on the 350th page of results which amounts to the same thing. Finally, if your site is linked to properly, the search engines will find your site without you having to submit your site to them. Submit only once then exercise patience until your site appears.
Google Webmaster Guidelines - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines - http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html
MSN Guidelines for successful indexing - http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSite.htm
Also see Google webmaster guidelines in plain English
Labels: searchengines, seo, webdesign
Google webmaster guidelines in plain English
Monday, February 05, 2007
If you are confused as to what the Google Webmaster Guidelines mean, you could do a lot worse than going to feedthebot.com. This is a very clearly laid out website, which uses CSS and keeps images to a minimum which results in fast-loading effective site.
Each of the guidelines has its own page - first the guideline is laid out, followed by definitions of any terms used and followed by further explanation and examples. Diagrams are used where necessary.
Definitely one to add to your bookmarks!
Labels: searchengines, seo, webdesign
Web Safe Fonts
Saturday, December 30, 2006
When designing web pages, it can be difficult to know which fonts are safe to use - fonts are not attached to a webpage - they have to reside on your visitor's computer and this is where the problem lies.
You might have a fantastic collection of different typefaces you want to use, but if your website visitor doesn't have that particular one, your website will look completely different as their web browser will resort to a default.
There are a few ways to overcome this - firstly specify a font-family in the stylesheet and check your design using these variants e.g.
font-family:arial,verdana,sans-serif
Or you can use a site such as font tester which lists web-safe and other fonts. Their list of web-safe fonts are:
- Arial
- Arial Black
- Bookman Old Style
- Comic Sans MS
- Courier
- Courier New
- Garamond
- Georgia
- Impact
- Lucida Console
- Lucida Sans Unicode
- MS Serif
- MS Sans Serif
- Palatino Linotype
- Symbol
- Tahoma
- Times New Roman
- Trebuchet MS
- Verdana
- Webdings
- Wingdings
Labels: webdesign
PHP and MySQL tutorials for beginners
Monday, December 11, 2006
If you are wanting to start using databases to drive aspects of your websites, I thoroughly recommend two tutorials.
The first - http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql assumes absolutely no knowledge and walks you through setting up the database, inserting information, displaying data, selecting specific records, error trapping, updating and deleting records. It's very straightforward and surprisingly simple.
The second is at http://www.tizag.com/mysqlTutorial/ and again assumes no knowledge but covers everything in more detail and continues to a more advanced level. I probably refer to this more often than the first tutorial now.
Tizag also has a great PHP tutorial if you need a starting point there.
And of course, you could always refer to the PHP and MySQL manuals.
Labels: programming, webdesign
Scheduled tasks without cron
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
If your web host doesn't allow for cron jobs ("scheduled tasks") this can cause problems for some scripts you might want to run.
Help is at hand however - SmartScripts.com have a free fakecron script that you can install on your server.
It is cgi-based and very simple to setup - just follow the installation instructions. The only bit which you may need help on is the time syntax. The fakecron script uses traditional crontab settings which can be difficult to get your head around e.g. a task scheduled to run at midnight every day will look like:
* 0 * * * http://yourdomain.com/scheduledtaskname
However, again, help is at hand - HTMLBasix have a fantastic free crontab generator that is simply to use. Just remember to remove /dev/null from the 'send results to:' box as this will not work in fakecron.
Labels: programming, resources, webdesign
Why separate style from content
Thursday, October 19, 2006
...And what does this even mean?
Imagine this scenario - you have just started working for a company, and have basic HTML knowledge. In their infinite wisdom, management have decided this qualifies you to make sitewide changes on the corporate site. A quick look at the first page of code shows 'tag soup' - hundreds of nested tags that have no resemblance to anything that you can make heads or tails of. [font] and [b] tags are littered around, and each separate element of the site seems to have its own personalised bit of styling. Tags should be in angular brackets, but are not in this example so they print properly in Blogger.
Now imagine the same scenario, but the code is well laid out and everthing has a class or ID that is controlled by a master stylesheet. Now to make changes, all you do is change the one sheet and the site changes. In the previous example, to make sitewide changes, you would need to edit every single line of code.
Which scenario would you prefer?
The second example shows one very good reason to try and separate the style from the content. In practice, this means laying out your basic HTML document (the framework) and then putting all tags which control the appearance e.g. width and font, into a separate stylesheet.
A more detailed explanation can be found here - http://www.tutorialtastic.co.uk/page/separating_style_from_content and here - http://phrogz.net/CSS/HowToDevelopWithCSS.html
If you have no idea where to begin with CSS, have a look at W3Schools, Tizag and the excellent free courses at WestCiv.
Labels: webdesign
Optimising your images for the web
Monday, October 09, 2006
Whenever you put graphics on a website, you should try and make them as small as possible. This makes your pages load faster, which keeps the attention of your visitor longer. However, you don't want to sacrifice too much quality, else you'll lose the attention of your visitor!
Dynamic Drive have a range of tools available and the one I use most is their image optimiser:
Useful for gifs, animated gifs, jpgs and png files, you can upload the image either from your hard drive or an existing webpage. There is an upload limit of 300kB, but if your image is bigger than that - it shouldn't be on your website!
Once you click 'optimize', you will be presented with a list of your images with decreasing quality e.g. higher compression levels in jpgs, and fewer colours in gifs. From this list, you can quickly make a file size vs. quality judgement. To save the image, just right-click and 'save as' (or 'save image as' depending on your browser). The filename given as a default will be the same as the uploaded file with a number appended, relating to the quality you chose. From there it's a simple job to rename the image.
I recommend saving the new file with the name given (e.g. myfile_2.jpg), then renaming the original file to myfile.bak.jpg or similar, and then renaming the new file to myfile.jpg. Although this is slightly more time consuming, it means that your original image file is preserved, with a useful name - the golden rule being "Always backup or you may regret it later."
Labels: internet, resources, webdesign
Phishing - what web designers can learn
Monday, October 02, 2006
According to Wikipedia "phishing is a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out using email or an instant message, although phone contact has been used as well. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, and technical measures."
A useful summary of a Harvard and Berkeley report into phishing attacks can be found on SEO Chat and it makes for interesting reading. Despite being academic research, the report has real-world implications as people will only buy from, or give their details to, websites they trust.
Phishing attacks are so common place and successful because the criminals behind such sites are one step ahead of many of us psychologically. Read the article and see how vulnerable you are.
Free search engine optimisation tools
Sunday, August 13, 2006
SEO Chat has an amazing range of tools to help you optimise and analyse your website. What's more - they're free to use and tools are constantly being added. Explanations of each tool can be found on its page:
- Adsense Calculator
- Google AdSense Preview
- Advanced Meta Tag Generator
- Alexa Rank Comparison Tool
- Class C Checker
- Code to Text Ratio
- CPM Calculator
- Domain Age Check
- Domain Typo Generator
- Future PageRank
- Google Dance
- Keyword Suggestions For Google
- Multiple Datacenter Google Search
- Google vs Yahoo
- Indexed Pages
- Keyword Cloud
- Keyword Density
- Keyword Difficulty Check
- Keyword Optimizer
- Multiple Datacenter Keyword Position Check
- Keyword Typo Generator
- Link Popularity
- Link Price Calculator
- Meta Analyzer
- Meta Tag Generator
- Multiple Datacenter Link Popularity Check
- Keyword Suggestions For Overture
- Page Size
- PageRank Lookup
- PageRank Search
- Robots.txt Generator
- ROI Calculator
- Search Engine Keyword Position
- Graphical Search Engine Comparison
- Site Link Analyzer
- Spider Simulator
- URL Redirect Check
- URL Rewriting
...is there any other tool you could possibly want?
Labels: resources, searchengines, seo, webdesign
Your Actual Number of Google Backlinks
Thursday, May 18, 2006
I've just discovered how to find out a more accurate number of backlinks* to your site that Google holds. If you just type your domain name into the Google search box, you'll only be shown a few backlinks but if you type the following code, you'll see a much higher, and more likely, number.
@:http //"yourdomain com"
or
@:http //"www yourdomain com"
* backlink = inbound link to your site. The more backlinks, the more popular your site is.
Labels: linking, searchengines, webdesign
Will Duplicate Content Filters Destroy Article Marketing?
Monday, March 06, 2006
Rumors are circulating that recent search engine updates are threatening to penalize web sites carrying articles by niche industry experts due to wide distribution and use of those articles on multiple sites. Not so.
Duplicate content filtering confuses everyone. It is absolutely not new and has been in effect for years, but is constantly refined in search engine algorithms to filter out abuses. Any suggestion that article marketing is targeted by the search engines as duplicate content is an understandable misunderstanding. Duplicate content filters look for abuses, not legitimate multiple uses in appropriate forums.
What Are "Duplicate Content Filters"?
Duplicate content filters were first employed when people began setting up precisely mirrored domains without variation on multiple domain names to increase visibility. That ridiculous method worked to increase ranking until the search engines began de-listing one of the duplicate sites of those employing this technique. Usually it was the older domain that stayed in the index and the newer mirrored site was de-listed.
About the same time, unethical thieves began outright stealing entire sites and placing them on new domains to rank equally as well as the original owner for competitive phrases. Once the traffic was there, they sent them to their own product or affiliate pages. That worked for awhile, but the duplicate content filters nixed that as well and protected the orginal site in rankings.
Then sites began putting up "landing pages" and "doorway pages" for SEO purposes with minor keyword variations in headlines and body text on multiple pages on one site with very closely related text with minor keyword swaps to rank well for blue widgets, red widgets, purple widgets. No text varied but the color or brand or, in the case of travel sites, city and resort names. So search engines extended the duplicate content filter to include that ruse and filter it out.
Continually refining these duplicate content filters is an ongoing effort meant only to beat search engine spammers. Search engines don't set about penalizing legitimate uses of duplicate content - such as press releases distribution and reproduced articles by experts on specialized topics used widely on niche sites and blogs.
Legitimate Duplicate Content
There are dozens of legitimate reasons to have the same article on multiple specialty sites and even some good reasons within a single domain. Blogging software actually creates a duplicate page for every post which is deposited in an archive. That blog contains duplicate content until each post rolls off the bottom of the main page. AP and Reuters news stories run on hundreds of news sites. Experts, pundits and commentators within niche industries legitimately syndicate their content to appear widely across dozens of niche sites within their industry.
Many sites now put up duplicate "printer friendly" versions of pages without penalty, but it's always a good idea on the same domain name to post robots metatags telling them not to index duplicate pages. Printing pages or variations on landing pages used for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising should each be tagged by < name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> so you needn't worry about being penalized.
Will Article Marketing Still Work?
Articles distributed for use by other sites appear on many sites with surrounding themed content, varied site navigation and differing internal links. Articles rank well if they match the theme of the site they are used on. The best ranked sites usually rank better for that article. There is currently no penalty for using articles which appear on several sites. If this were the case, hundreds of major industry portals would be severely penalized.
If you search for article titles in quotes, you'll see them repeated everywhere across the web. Try a search for "Blogging Chocolate Purses" and see the extensive use of that article. I first posted it on my blog and my blog post ranks just below a major search engine portal for that article title. No penalty there, Pandia.com is just better ranked overall than my blog and they are legitimately using that article with my permission.
Why Article Marketing Is So Powerful
Article marketing is something I recommend to ALL SEO clients to gain valuable one-way inbound links. How much better is an article - with 700 to 1200 words displaying your expertise than a so-called "reciprocal link" gained by begging for it by spamming, er I mean, sending mass unsolicited emails to unrelated sites? (I'm stunned that anyone still uses that technique as it seems to me to be the equivalent of begging for links on street corners.)
It is inconceivable that experts writing on specialized topics will ever be penalized by search engines because many niche sites reproduce their expert advice & commentary in newsletters, web sites and blogs. Search engines would face an insurmountable problem in flitering legitimate expertise and commentary simply because it is popular and made available for use on multiple industry blogs and niche sites.
Your articles are no less valuable to the web community because they are syndicated and that appreciation is displayed clearly when they are used extensively across multiple web sites. "Write on", article marketers!
About the Author:Mike Banks Valentine blogs on Search Engine developments from http://RealitySEO.com and can be contacted for ethical SEO work at http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm He runs web content distribution site at: http://Publish101.com.
Labels: searchengines, webdesign
How to get your site indexed in Google and Yahoo
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
When you've got a wonderful website, you want the world to see it! Submitting to Google, Yahoo and MSN means that your site will show up in the listings at some point, but how do you tell the search engines which pages to list?
Firstly, use robots.txt - this states which parts of your website you DO NOT want to share. You can also use the robots meta tag in your web pages, but not all engines use this yet. For more information, see www.robotstxt.org/ and www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm.
Secondly, create a sitemap, which links to all of your pages and link to this from your index page. You don't have to just list all the links - it is for your visitors benefit too. For an example, see our sitemap at www.littlefishwebdesign.com/sitemap.htm.
Finally, create a Google and Yahoo sitemap, for the search engines benefit. You will need to create a Google Sitemap account (http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/) and Yahoo account (http://edit.europe.yahoo.com/config/eval_register?.intl=uk&new=1) to be able to submit your sitemaps. To create a Google Sitemap, I thoroughly recommend SOFTplus GSiteCrawler found at http://johannesmueller.com/gs/. There is a settings wizard, which walks you through the whole process and you can even choose for your completed sitemap to be uploaded to your website, and Google to be alerted.
The "URL list for export" function of GSiteCrawler means that you can then generate a text-only list of all your site's pages, ready to upload to Yahoo. This is a slightly more manual task than the Google Sitemap, but still a fantastic time-saving tool, as you don't have to type out each of your pages into a list. To submit your sitemap to Yahoo, upload the file to your website and then go to http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request and fill in the location of your sitemap file.
Of course, there are no guarantees that Google and Yahoo will index all your pages, or rank your site as highly as you would like, but at least using the sitemap method, you are giving your hard work a fighting chance to get noticed.
Labels: linking, resources, searchengines, webdesign
The Good Net Guide
Monday, February 13, 2006
"The Good Net Guide is an independent initiative that helps to promote quality websites. By displaying our approved graphic and us displaying approved web sites, higher search engine rankings will be achieved, thus promoting quality in the search engines. If you feel your web site is good quality, help us to help you by submitting your site and displaying the GNG Approved graphic."
To obtain GNG Approved status, your website must be W3C validated, have a clean and clear design and intuitive navigation, and contain original content. It must not contain adult material or popups.
If your site fits these criteria, get it approved by the Good Net Guide!
Does your site have a privacy policy?
Monday, January 09, 2006
If you have a non-personal website, but haven't yet put a privacy policy in place, make it a priority! As well as being a legal requirement, it invites trust from your site visitors, as they know exactly where they'll stand with regards to their information. It's not a long job as there are plenty of resources to help you.
Places to find sample policies include Business Link (UK site) and the Direct Marketing Association Privacy Policy Generator (US site).
10 Ways To Keep Visitors At Your Site Longer
Saturday, December 10, 2005
The more time people spend at your web site, the more time you'll have to persuade them to buy your product or service. Below are ten powerful ways to keep visitors at your web site longer.
1. Provide your web site visitors with content they can't read anywhere else. People will stay longer at your web site to read the original content.
2. Remind your web site visitors they can print out your content. They may browse around your online store while it's printing.
3. Offer your web site visitors a freebie if they take the time to fill out your online survey. They'll be at the site longer and might buy something afterwards.
4. Offer your visitors free software that they can download right from your web site. While they are waiting they might read your ad.
5. Provide a huge online directory of information that your visitors could search. The directory must contain information your visitors would want.
6. Make sure all your web pages load fast or your visitors will leave fast. Time is precious; they won't waste it waiting for your site to load.
7. Tell your visitors what's offered at your web site at the very beginning. If people are confused about what's being offered they may leave too early.
8. Publish your web site professionally. People will get turned off and leave if they see a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes.
9. Make your site text easy to read. Most people won't strain their eyes trying to read text that is too small, light or bright.
10. Use headlines and sub headlines all over your your web site that will grab visitors attention. It will attract them to explore your web site longer.
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FREEE eBook! 5000 Words & Phrases That Sell Like CRAZY! http://www.ldpublishing.com
Labels: webdesign
Guest article - Why Content is King of the Internet
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
The Internet is not merely a community or merely a new medium through which the people around this world connect and communicate with each other, crossing geographical and political barriers to communicate, trade, interact, entertain and inform, rather it has reached mammoth proportions and become an empire on its own. The Internet Empire does not belong to any one person but it belongs to and is completely ruled over by an abstract yet concrete idea â?? content. Content is the king of the Internet, content is what people are after and content is what attracts millions of users everyday and night to their computers to seek information, seek entertainment and friends.
However, there is a major difference between the content we find in a print medium such as a newspaper or magazine and the content we expect to find in a dynamic, interactive medium such as the Internet. To be successful, print magazines cannot simply transfer what is already written in the pages of their print magazines and turn them into e-magazines by placing the articles in an electronic form. For the magazine to be successful on the Internet, it is necessary to find a different layout for a medium that is capable of supporting audio and video players. Content writer should play upon the strengths of the medium, which are that the Internet can support text-based content, it supports audio and video players therefore to interest the viewer to the content available, it is necessary that all three of these strengths be used to the hilt. The advantages that Internet holds over the rest of the other communication mediums should not wasted because of the inability to find a comprehensive plan that will bind all these faculties together.
For the time being, the Internet is still in its infant stage, content is still free for the most part and users are experiencing unlimited opportunities to speak their minds and express their opinions through blogs where they not only voice their opinions about world affairs and such but they also have the chance to showcase their talent. Amateur writers, poets and musicians are already a sizeable population on the Internet. There are thousands of sites that are entirely devoted to the poetry and the talent of innumerable people. In an almost anarchic way, the Internet allows people to be whatever they choose, they can play out their dreams of writing and singing and gaining the appreciation, in some cases, of the users who are adventurous enough to try out some of this pieces. However, as corporate and big players are contemplating moving into cyber territory, they should be forewarned that at this stage, the content available is still to develop a style of its own, in such circumstances very few of the users of the Internet would be willing to pay for content that is provided free of cost until there is some drastic and radical change in the way it is presented to them.
About the author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of Sitetube.com. Please visit http://www.sitetube.com/search-engine-optimization.shtml and learn how to optimize your website for the major search engines.
Labels: webdesign
Why you should validate your website and how to do it!
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Sooo, you've got the best looking website in the world, but how can you tell whether it's valid or not? And what does 'valid' even mean? Does it even matter?
What is validation?
Validating your website is the process of ensuring your code complies with the programming standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Why Validate?
Validating your website provides lots of benefits - it's more likely to display in the same way in different browsers and technologies (think PDA and WAP - not just PC and mac!), it means that your content:code ratio is probably higher which is important in search engines, it future-proofs your design to an extent, it's clearer code to make changes to, it makes the content more accessible and the list goes on...
How to Validate
- To validate your (X)HTML - go to http://validator.w3.org/
- To validate your CSS - go to http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
- To validate your website links - go to http://validator.w3.org/checklink/
Labels: webdesign
Guest article: Search engine optimisation (SEO): The basics
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
What is SEO & why is it important?
SEO is about making your website in such a way that it will appear higher in the search rankings. A website that's optimised for search engines can reap huge benefits on to your website and your business.
- 42% to 86% of websites are found through search engines (source: Shari Thurow - Search Engine Visibility).
- There are 300 million searches carried out per day, every day (source: Shari Thurow - Search Engine Visibility)
Choose effective keyword phrases
Effective keyword phrases are frequently searched for (high demand) but not being targeted by many other websites (low competition). Please read the article, How to find good keywords for more information.
Use these keyword phrases effectively
Now that you've found some great keyword phrases, you need to put them in the important places within each web page. Search engines give higher relevance to certain words and phrases within HTML documents so it's essential that you put your keyword phrases in the correct places.
The more confident a search engine is about the subject of your website, the higher your web pages will be in the search rankings. If you only place your keyword phrases in the META tags your website will not get a high ranking.
Some of the best places to put keyword phrases are:
- Page title tag
- In headings
- As links
- In bold text
- In the first 25 words on the page (this refers to the first 25 words of text placed in the HTML document, which is often navigation)
- In the file name (i.e. the URL)
- META tags
HTML pages must be easy for search engines to follow
Search engines scour the Internet looking for web pages to index, following links from one web page to the next. To ensure a search engine ranking, all pages on your website must be accessible to search engines. Some search engines have problems with:
- Links accessible solely through frames, image maps, or JavaScript
- Very long pages
- Very short pages
- Flash pages
- Long JavaScript (JavaScript should be placed in an external document)
- Dynamic URLs
If any of these describe pages on your website then your web pages will probably not achieve a high search engine ranking.
Have a high number of quality links into the website
Inbound links to a website play a significant part in determining its position in the search engines. Be aware though, it's not just the quantity, but also the quality and click-through-rate of links to your website which is of importance. To find out more about building up links to your website please read the article, Build up links to your website.
About the author
This article was written by Trenton Moss. Trenton's crazy about web accessibility and usability - so crazy that he went and started his own web accessibility and usability consultancy to help make the Internet a better place for everyone. He also knows an awful lot about the Disability Discrimination Act.
I hope you found this article useful - I always enjoy Trenton's articles for their simple and effective advice. Let me know what you think!
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