Nov 19 2009

DOCTYPE (DTD)

Tag: OptimizationSmitty @ 7:36 pm

It is important to add a Document Type Definition (DTD) otherwise known as a DOCTYPE for every web page. You would be amazed to see how many web sites do not even use them. Aside from making your website W3C compliant, it helps the browser to interpret the web page correctly. Add DOCTYPE at the top of every page.

These are some of the different types of DOCTYPE that can be used for your web page.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”> <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”> <html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en” lang=”en”>

Here are some links for further information on DOCTYPE: http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/4677.htm http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#a_dtd_XHTML-1.0-Transitional

-=Smitty=-

 

 


Jan 09 2009

Where does your Website Rank?

Tag: Web MarketingSmitty @ 11:40 am

When was the last time you checked to see where your website was ranked for a keyword or keyword phrase?

You need to be aware of your web ranking because it does change, even with Pay Per Click Campaigns, your website can move on and off the results pages.

To manually check your website against a keyword list, you need to go to each Major Search Engine and run your test.

The Top Three Search Engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN (Live)

First, I suggest creating an accurate list of keyword phrases you feel you need to be found by. Decide if you are searching on a National level versus a Local Level.  A Local Level is more designed for a company that is supplying a targeted market in a specific area with it’s goods or services. So you will use a city, county, township, etc with each keyword phrase.

Once the list is created, then go to a Search Engine and begin the process of searching for each keyword phrase. This can take a little time depending upon the size of your search list.

Type in your selected keyword phrase, like “South Florida Website Marketing”. Then look for your website or another site that might mention your website. I searched for my website and can find it in the top ten. Great!

Now record where you are ranked, if you are not conducting a Pay Per Click Campaign, then examine only the Natural Rankings (avoid counting the Sponsored Advertising) – count down from the top which number result your are and which page.

You can continue doing the same process for each keyword phrase. Yes, this can take time to do, but it is important to know where you are ranked for your products or services. Knowing which page you are ranked can help you determine how much more work needs to be done to achieve a higher ranking. These are some thing you may need to do to help your web page rankings:

  • You may need your web pages optimized
  • To add additional content or even another web page with the information needed to hopefully achieve a better ranking.
  • Spend time on Directory or Search Engine submissions
  • Writing articles and posting them
  • Creating press releases
  • Even setup a Pay Per Click Campaign

More than likely, even if you are ranked great today, you may slip due to competition. That is why it is so important to know where you are ranked every month.

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For those who do not have the time to conduct these important searches for ranking purposes, I offer a service to create ranking reports for your selected keyword phrases. You can select up to 30 Keyword phrases. We run the report against Google, Yahoo, MSN (Live), and AOL searching the top 50 positions for each keyword against your domain.

This is what a Sample Report looks like:

Sample Ranking Report

If interest in obtaining a ranking report, please visit our Keyword Ranking Report Request Form – we can also schedule your reports for a monthly or quarterly delivery, if you wish.

Good Luck with your Website Marketing

 

 


Oct 19 2008

Marketing your web site – part 2

Tag: Optimizationadmin @ 8:00 am

Now let’s talk about the parts you don’t see.

The following components are part of the validation process and are required for search engine optimization:

DOCTYPE
Refers to “document type declaration”. The top of every web page must have one to be W3C compliant. The DOCTYPE informs the validator which version of (X)HTML you’re using. DOCTYPEs are essential for compliant web pages, your markup and CSS won’t validate without them.

meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=
Indicates the type of data sent to the browser. It is used by browsers to know what to do with the data that they receive.

TITLE
To identify the contents of a document. Keep it short and sweet no more than 9 words

meta NAME=”description” content=
Each web page needs a unique Title and Description. Do not duplicate web pages. Use no more than 40 words or 3 sentences.

meta name=”keywords” content=
Unfortunately this meta tag does not have much emphasis anymore. Although I recommend to use it with no more that 10-20 keywords. I use it as a point of reference of what possible keywords are on that page.

Menu system
A menu system can make or break a web site. I prefer CSS based menus because they are text based and can be spidered easily. If you do you do use a graphic based hyperlink menu with rollovers, I suggest to use a text menu system at the bottom of the page so you can still get the same links spidered with text names. It is so important to think about your menu structure before you do anything. Avoid going more than 3 levels and dynamic links are spidered as well.

Tags – H1, H2, H3, Bold, Italic
Use your tags liberally. Enhanced text seems to get a little more emphasis, Especially the H1 tags.

Hyperlinks
Hyperlink your keywords on every page to other pages on your web site. The search engines give you bonus points for doing this.

Alt Tags
If you do use images be sure to fill in the alt tags, although these do not have very much emphasis as they use to due to keyword stuffing by many web developers.

Good luck with your SEO

-=Smitty=-

 

 


Oct 18 2008

Marketing your web site – part 1

Tag: Web Marketingadmin @ 8:00 am

Want to market your web site?

Most people think that if you build a web site people will come. I have spoken to people that believed this. Owning a web site is like owning a business. You need to do something to market and promote it.

Here are my thoughts that can help you realize your marketing avenues. First, you need to review your website for the following:

1) Content – Content is the most important step in getting your business noticed. You need to have information that people are searching for in relation to a product or service. I would use at least 250 words per page. As far as search engines go, the more content the better. You want to keep the web page readable by your audience, so too long is not a good thing. It may turn off your readers if it’s about 10 pages long! Try to add 1 page per month and update the information on your main page as often as you can.

2) Menu Layout – Be sure that the web site has an easy to use menu system. I have found that text based links have an advantage over graphics based hyperlinks. You can perform mouseovers with both graphics and text based hyperlinks, but text based hyperlinks carry more weight because the search engine spiders can read them more easily. Hyperlinking also tells the spiders to read those links as well. Graphic based hyperlinks may not have the alt tags (the text description) to gain any relevance. Even if the alt tags have text, the alt tags seem to have less importance because too many web sites like to keyword stuff the images in the alt tags.

3) Web page layout – Balance your graphics and text on a web page. Try to have your layout look professional. You should look at other web sites to get ideas before a single minute is spent building the web site.

4) Web page loading – Keep in mind, that if your web page takes too long to load, then you need to review what size your images are and if you really need them. All the images need to be optimized (reduced in sized yet still look good), all the code needs to be checked to see if there are any problems as well.

5) Do you have your contact information on every page? You don’t want to visitors hunting for your contact information. You should have at least your phone number, company name, address, city, state and zip code on every page. E-mail addresses are important, but due to all the e-mail harvesters out there, which will send you tons of spam, I would recommend an encrypted e-mail link or a well developed form page (one that will accept information from your web site only).

6) Hyperlink keyword phrases in your page to other web pages in your web site. This is called interlinking. The search engine spiders look for links connecting your web site and if you use the keywords to hyper link you can increase the likelyhood that these links will be found in the search engines. Highly recommended.

7) If you are using CSS or JavaScript, create separate files and add those files to the web page. Sometimes the different search engine spiders have issues with CSS and JavaScript. They can actually block the spider from seeing your whole web site.

8) Be sure that your web site is W3C compliant http://validator.w3.org/ . Search Engines are getting more sophisticated. The websites that have less errors in the html code seem to do better in ranking than those that have errors.

9) Check your grammar and spelling. Again, the search engines are getting smarter as they evolve in their algorithms. It has been rumored that search engines are using spell checkers and can also check the basic sentence structure.

10) If you are collecting information or have a contact form consider having a privacy page. A privacy page tells the user what you will do with their contact information. Obviously, you want to protect all customer contact information.

Check back for part 2
Until then – good luck in your SEM

-=Smitty=-

 

 


Feb 09 2007

Website Marketing in Broward

Tag: General Web Newsadmin @ 8:59 am

Website Marketing is made up of many techniques to get your website in front of the masses. Since our firm is located in Broward County Florida, we look at marketing from a South Florida perspective.

  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Search Engine Submissions
  • Link Research
  • Pay Per Click Campaigns

Additional techniques to help rankings

  1. Add a Blog
  2. Use Testimonials
  3. Write articles
  4. Create a News page about your company or the field you are in
  5. Press Releases
  6. Add more content on a regular basis – use 250-350 words per page
  7. Clean up the HTML code reduce errors and warning
  8. Assign a keyword phrase per page

Think about it. Whether  you have a brand new web site or one that has been around for several years, you need to keep up with the changes in the search engines and how they reward websites that follow the rules.

—Smitty—