by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com
It's been a few years since my last article on getting your site noticed on Google, Tips on Improving Your Google Search Engine Ranking (Revisited). The situation hasn't changed much, and the article is still relevant today. However, over these years I have learned a couple more things about what to do and what not to do on your website with regards to your site's placement on the search engine results.
Hidden Text
Everyone knows that search engines (not just Google, but probably every one of them) frown on hidden text. Some people use hidden text to stuff keywords on their pages so that when people type those words on the search engine, your site will show, even though your page does not have any visible sign of those words.
I have never believed in hiding my keywords in hidden text or any of those cloak and dagger stuff, and hence I don't practise such things. Imagine my surprise, when one day, a few years back, I suddenly found my pages on thefreecountry.com receiving a Page Rank of 0 because of hidden text on the page. (See my other article on Google Page Rank if you don't know what Page Rank is.)
No, I did not compromise on my principles or anything like that. I did not try any underhand tactics to stuff keywords, etc. The reason is more prosaic.
At that time, I had partially converted thefreecountry.com to use CSS for its site design instead of the traditional and tags. In those years, there were still a few people using the old Netscape 4 which did not support CSS correctly. To accomodate those people, I tried to make my site degrade gracefully when it detected an old browser being used. I also put a message that contained the following text:
This page uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to control its appearance. Since CSS is poorly supported on old browsers like Netscape 4.X, you may notice numerous oddities in the appearance of the page. However, you should still be able to read the information and navigate using the links.
This text was enclosed in a box that was hidden from view if you were using a modern browser, but visible if you used Netscape 4. I used the usual methods of getting different browsers to load different stylesheets as mentioned in my article How to Use Different CSS Style Sheets For Different Browsers (and How to Hide CSS Code from Older Browsers).
Unfortunately, Google's spider detected that some text was hidden, and not realizing that it was also visible in other cases, automatically assumed I was employing some sort of skulduggery to get those keywords into its index. It then penalized my site accordingly.
When I realized that my attempt to help my visitors was going to cost my site's position in the search engine results, I immediately pulled the message, and its accompanying CSS, from the site. Visitors using old browsers would still be able to use the site, but they would not receive any friendly explanation.
Although the days of Netscape 4 is long gone, the lessons learnt from that incident is useful today. Undoubtedly many of you will not even dream of using keyword stuffing in hidden text and the like. However, as I found out from the above incident, Google's search engine robot is far from intelligent, and its hidden text detection algorithm can bite legitimate webmasters too. If it even senses hidden text, even for an innocuous purpose like mine, your site is history.
Some ways in which you might inadvertently use hidden text (possibly without knowing if you use third-party scripts) include the use of drop-down menus for site navigation and browser-specific tips for users (like in my case above). I'm fairly certain that the Google programmers keep refining their engine so that the more common use of CSS to hide text for harmless purposes like navigation menus (and so on) are recognized as benign, but if you are about to use hidden text for some fancy design gimmick on your page, you might want to test it out on some obscure page on your site to see if the Google robot chokes on it. After all, always remember your site's life depends on a robot, not a human. It may be obvious to you and other humans that the code is harmless, designed for some acceptable purpose, but a computer program can only follow a set of preprogrammed rules.
Getting Your Link to Appear on the First Page of the Search Engine Results
I get many queries everyday from new webmasters reading thesitewizard.com, asking me how they can get the link to their site to be shown on the first page of the Google search engine results. In fact, for some of them, getting their site to appear anywhere in the first few pages of Google's results would already be a victory.
If you are in a hurry to get your site noticed, and have a budget allocated for your site's search engine promotion, one instant way to get to the first page of Google's results page is to buy advertisements (called Google Adwords) on your keywords. Before you summarily dismiss this, read everything I have to say first.
Google's Adwords actually operates according to your budget - that is, you can spend according to what you can afford. It also allows you to place the adverts on precisely the keywords you would have wanted for your site in the search engine results. Unlike the normal search engine indexing procedure however, here you control the exact keyword which will trigger your site's advertisement and its prominence. Of course it comes with a price. But if you're doing a business, this is often the surefire way to get people to see your site in relation to something that they are searching for.
Many new webmasters I deal with don't consider this as a viable option, because it involves cash-outlay. I agree that if you are merely running a personal site or a hobby site that does not receive an income, advertising this way is probably out of the question. You should then work on applying the usual search engine promotion tips to your website and hope for the best in the long run. However, if your site is a business site that yields an income, you might want to calculate the costs and benefits to see if you might actually earn more this way. Treat your expenditure on the advertisements like all other business expenditure and calculate your return on investment (ROI). If you spend (say) 50 cents per click on your advertisement, and every 100 clicks gets you one person who spends $100 on your site, you would have made a profit of $50 every hundred clicks. This is income that you would not otherwise have made had you not advertised. Of course, as in all things, it's possible to go overboard and spend more than you earn. You might want to consider setting aside an budget for a month or two as an experiment, and adjust as you go along to see if this approach increases your profits. ( Bring targeted traffic to your site with Google AdWords )
Conclusion
Google is now, arguably, the most important search engine around. Knowing what you should not do and still survive Google, as well as learning shortcuts to getting an instantaneous good placement on Google's search engine results page, is now a very important part of website promotion.
Copyright 2006 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
Get more free tips and articles like this, on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, from http://www.thesitewizard.com/.
This article can be found at http://www.thesitewizard.com/sitepromotion/moregoogletips.shtml
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
More Tips on Google Search Engine Results Placement
How to Register Your Own Domain Name
by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com
If you have a web site, you should seriously consider registering your own domain name. A domain name is a name like "thesitewizard.com" or "thefreecountry.com", which you can use to refer to your website. Note that you do not have to be a company or organisation to register a domain name. Any individual can do it too.
Importance of a Domain Name
There are a number of good reasons for having a domain name:
* If you ever change your web host, your domain name goes with you. Your regular visitors or customers who knew your site name as www.thesitewizard.com (for example) would not have to be informed about a change of URL. They would simply type your domain name and they'd be brought to your new site.
* If you are a business, a domain name gives you credibility. Few people would be willing to do business with a company with a dubious URL like http://www.geocities.com/whatever/12345.
* If you get a domain name that describes your company's business or name, people can remember the name easily and can return to your site without having to consult their documents. In fact, if you get a good name that describe your product or service, you might even get people who were trying their luck by typing "www.yourproductname.com" in their browser.
* If you want good sponsors (advertisers) for your website, a domain name is usually helpful. It tends to give your website an aura of respectibility.
Registration Overview
Getting a domain name involves registering the name you want with an organisation called InterNIC through a domain name registrar. For example, if you choose a name like "mycompanyname.com", you will have to go to a registrar, pay a registration fee that ranges between US$15 to US$35 for that name. That will give you the right to the name for a year, and you will have to renew it annually for (usually) the same amount per annum.
Some web hosts will register it and pay for the name for free (usually only the commercial web hosts), while others will do it for you but you'll have to foot the InterNIC fees.
My personal preference is to register the name myself, so that I can be sure that I am registered as the owner, the administrative and technical contacts. Being the owner is vital - if someone else places himself as the owner (such as your web host), he can always decide to charge you for the use of the name later, and there is little you can do. The various contacts are less vital, but still play important roles. For example, the administrative contact's approval is required before a domain name is transferred out of a web host. If he/she cannot be contacted, the technical contact is used.
Although many web hosts suggest that you put them as the technical contact, you may prefer to keep yourself as one, so that when you want to transfer your name to a new web host, you don't have to wait for your old host to approve the transfer (apparently some have been known to take some time to do this, while unscrupulous ones have actually refused to do it).
Domain names disappear extremely fast. Many people claim that all the good domain names are gone. I doubt that - but it is probably true that most good domain names that are descriptive of products and services have been taken. If you want a domain name for your site, I suggest you act now, or face the anguish of having lost that name later. After all, US$35 (the price charged by the most expensive registrars) for a year's ownership of the name is pretty cheap when you realise that you're cornering a good name for your website.
Step By Step Instructions
If you want to register a domain name, here's what you need to do. Please read it all before acting.
*
Think of a few good domain names that you'd like to use. It won't do to think of only one - it might already be taken (it probably is!). You can find some tips on choosing a good domain name from my article, Tips on Choosing a Domain Name, at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/domainname.shtml
There's more to it than meets the eye.
*
Obtain from your web host the DNS IP addresses and names of their primary and secondary nameservers. Don't worry if you don't understand what these things mean. Just save the information somewhere. The information can usually be obtained from their FAQs or other documentation on their site, usually under a category like "domain name" or "DNS" or "domain name transfer" and the like. If you can't find it, email their webmaster. If you don't have a web host yet, all is not lost. Read on.
*
Get your credit card ready. This is a requirement of most if not all registrars. It will allow you to claim and get the domain name immediately on application. This is not an option (unfortunately).
*
If you already have a web host, you can just go to one of the registrars listed below and apply for the domain name. Be sure you have the information mentioned earlier.
*
If you do not have a web host, you can always use one of the registrars listed below that allow you to park your domain name at a temporary website specially set up for you. This way you can quickly secure your domain name before it's too late and still take your time to set up the other aspects of your site. Some of those registrars also provide you with a free email address at your own domain name, like sales@yourdomain.com.
List of Domain Name Registrars
There are numerous domain name registrars. Listed below are just a few, along with my comments, if I know anything about them.
* Domain names from Yahoo! only $1.99/first year - This well-known company also offers domain names at $9.95 per year. They currently (at the time this was written) have an offer for new customers of $1.99 for the first year for one domain only. The price includes the ability to manage your own DNS MX, A, CNAME records (useful for those who want to control every aspect of their web site and not leave it to their web host), email forwarding, domain forwarding (useful for people who have existing websites that they want their new domain to redirect to), and a starter page (good for those who just want to quickly get the domain name before someone else snaps it up, but don't have a website yet).
* 1&1 Internet Inc - This giant web host offers .com, .net, .org, .us, and .info domains at $5.99 per year (as well as other domains like .biz, .ws, .mobi, .cc, .tv at different prices). Included in the price are a free email account with up to 200 email aliases and a starter website builder. You also get free private registrations and the ability to set your own MX records (for your email).
* World's Largest Registrar - GoDaddy.com - This extremely popular registrar offers domain names for $8.95 (plus 25 cents) per year ($7.95 plus 25 cents if you transfer from another registrar). They have a web interface to manage your domains, free web redirection (where people who visit your domain will get transferred to another URL of your choice), free starter web page, free parked page or free "for sale" page, and an optional private domain registration where your domain is registered in the name of a proxy company. They offer .com, .us, .biz, .info, .net, .org, .ws, .name, .tv, .co.uk, .me.uk and .org.uk. Note that (as with all registrars) the exact price varies depending on which domain you are registering (for example some domain extensions are more expensive than others).
* Dotster.com - This fairly popular registrar provides fairly cheap domain prices (US$14.95 per domain), a convenient web interface to manage your domains, an optional privacy facility where your domain name is registered in the name of a proxy company, etc. They offer .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us, .ca, .tv, .name, .cc, .de, .sr, .md, .co.uk, .us.com domains, etc. If you're transferring a domain here from other registrars, the price is even cheaper ($8.95).
* Register.com - This domain name registrar has been in business for a very long time: they were one of the biggest around when I started my early websites. They charge $35 per year for .com, .net, .org, .biz, and .info domains. Country-specific domains are also available at varying prices, depending on the country.
Conclusion
Once you've decided, you should not procrastinate. I've lost more than one domain name by procrastinating (I lost the latest one by only one day). After all, at the price you're paying, it works out to be about US$3 a month if you're choosing the most expensive registrar. It is even cheaper, of course, if you use the other registrars (slightly more than $1 per month).
Copyright 2000-2005 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
Get more free tips and articles like this, on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, from http://www.thesitewizard.com/
This article can be found at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/registerdomain.shtml
HTML and CSS Validation: Should You Validate Your Web Page?
by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com
If you don't hang around webmaster circles, you may not realise that HTML validation and CSS validation are controversial issues with some people. This article discusses some of the positions taken in these discussions to provide some perspectives on issues that have come increasingly to the fore in web development. Hopefully, the article will also provide a practical method that overworked webmasters can use to improve their website.
Some Background Information: What does Validating HTML or CSS Mean?
For those who are unfamiliar with what validating a web page (ie validating your HTML or CSS code) means, it basically refers to using a program or an online service to check that the web page that you created is free of errors.
In particular, an HTML validator checks to make sure the HTML code on your web page complies with the standards set by the W3 Consortium (the organisation that issues the HTML standards). There are various types of validators - some check only for errors, others also make suggestions about your code, telling you when a certain way of writing things might lead to (say) unexpected results.
The W3 Consortium has its own online validator which you can use for free. It may be found at: http://validator.w3.org/
A CSS validator checks your Cascading Style Sheets in the same manner; basically, most will check them to make sure that they comply with the CSS standards set by the W3 Consortium. There are a few which will also tell you which CSS features are supported by which browsers (since not all browsers are equal in their CSS implementation).
Again, you can get free validation for your style sheets from the W3 Consortium: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
There are numerous other validators around, both free and commercial, focusing on various aspects of ensuring that your code will run trouble-free across browsers and platforms. You can find a list of free ones (including specialised validators like those that check your code for accessibility) from Free HTML Validators, CSS Validators, Accessibility Validators at http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmlvalidators.shtml
Note that validating your web page does not ensure that it will appear as you want in various browsers. It merely ensures that your code is without HTML or CSS syntax errors. Ensuring that your code appears correctly in different browsers require cross browser testing. You can read more information about how to do this even if you only have one computer from the article How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single Computer at http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/multiplebrowsers.shtml
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Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design
by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com
I was recently asked by a visitor to thesitewizard.com to take a look at her company's website, designed by a university student. I will not give the URL for that site, partly to protect the innocent, and partly because by the time you read this, it'll probably have been modified.
The site was heavy in its use of graphics with images adorning most parts of the page layout, to provide curved borders (to replace the sharp corners in enclosing boxes), different background images for different parts of the page, etc. It had a top navigation bar, driven entirely using JavaScript. The navigation bar mimicked the sort of menu bar you find in computer programs - there is a horizontal menu bar with different items listed. When you move your mouse over one of those items, the menu will automatically expand vertically. As you move the mouse cursor down the pop-up menu, the item beneath the pointer is highlighted. Click it, and you will be delivered to another page on the site.
In general, that site is typical of the kind of sites produced by newcomers to web design. It scores well in terms of prettiness and gadgetry (although only under one browser, it doesn't work well under other browsers), but fares dismally in terms of usability and search engine readiness. In fact, the reason my visitor wrote to me was because the website suffered a significant drop in the number of visitors after it was redesigned in its current form.
This article uses that site as a starting point for discussing some of the issues that a web designer needs to consider when creating a website that must exist and compete in the real world (as opposed to a site that is created merely to fulfill the course requirements of a school or university).
1. Appearance is Not the Most Important Issue
Over the years that I have dealt with newcomers to web design, it is my observation that they tend to focus excessively (and sometimes almost exclusively) on the appearance of a website. The site I mentioned earlier is a case in point: the designer tried hard to make the site look beautiful (and, if I may add, succeeded too - the site does indeed look pretty). However, as hard as it may be to believe (if you are a newcomer), appearance isn't the most important thing to look at when you are planning and creating your site.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that appearance is of no importance. Far from it. However, in this article, my intention is to address the excessive importance newcomers place on beauty. In fact, if you belong to the other extreme, discounting the value of the appearance of a website altogether, you might want to read my discussion of Two Common Web Design Myths at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/myths.shtml
Having said that, your site can still survive (or even thrive) if it is a plain-looking site like Google. This is not necessarily the case if you overlook the other important issues in web design.
2. Usability is Important for You to Achieve Your Purpose
All sites are created for a particular purpose. Some were created so that their owners can sell something. Others are information resources (like thesitewizard.com). Still others are designed to showcase their owner's talents (such as sites displaying the owner's resumes and portfolios).
The usability of your site is important to help you achieve that purpose. The basic question that you need to address when dealing with usability is: can your visitors easily access the information they need so that they can do the stuff that you want them to do? There are quite a number of things involved in this question.
1.
Information Availability
Is the information that your visitors need to make informed decisions available on your site? For example, before they can buy a product, they will want to know more about that product. A brief one-line summary about your product's features may work for your main page, but you will probably find that you get more buyers if you can provide a link to a page that gives a detailed list of features of each of your products.
2.
Information Accessibility
Not only must your information be available to your visitors, it must be easily accessible. A page that gives a detailed description of your products is not going to help your visitors if they have to work hard at finding it. In fact, my experience is that if visitors have to work at finding something on your site, they are not going to find it. Either put the information right under their noses, or put a link to it in that place.
3.
Navigation
A good navigational system for your website is crucial. A navigational system is one by which visitors can move from one page to another. For example, on thesitewizard.com, one way in you can access the main pages on the site is to use the navigation buttons on the left column of the page.
There are a few features to a good navigational system:
1.
If you are using a navigation bar or panel, standardize its location on all the pages of your website. Don't make your visitors feel as though they are embarking on a treasure hunt every time they reach a new page.
2.
In addition to your navigation bar or panel, provide short-cuts to places where visitors are likely to want to go. Don't force your visitors to have to go through your main page (or your site map) every time they need to visit another page on your site. In fact, put direct links in logical places - for example, on your "Products" page, you should have a links to your "Buy / Order" page as well as links to the pages with detailed information about individual products. Think like a visitor and ask yourself what are the things a visitor might want to know or do when he/she is at a particular page.
3.
A good navigation system must be usable by all your visitors. As a result, try to avoid things that are dependent on certain facilities or features being available. For example, don't make your menu dependent on a specific browser. If your menu is JavaScript-driven, make sure that you have an alternative facility available for people who do not have JavaScript enabled.
4.
If your site has a large number of pages, a site search engine will improve your site's usability. Not everyone mentally organises information the way you do. Hence a logical arrangement to you may not be logical to another person. Giving your visitors a way to search your web site will help them locate what they want. I discuss the use of a search engine for your site in my article How to Put a Search Engine On Your Site at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/searchengine.shtml
5.
It's always good to have a Site Map, unless your site has only a few pages. This allows people to have another route to the other pages on your site. It also helps search engines locate all the pages on your site, particularly if you use dynamically-generated links to your pages (like JavaScript-created links).
3. Search Engine Visibility is Your Site's Lifeline
As I mentioned earlier, the problem that my visitor faced when her site was redesigned was that it no longer appeared in search engine results even when relevant terms were used for searches.
The problem in her case was that her site relied exclusively on a JavaScript navigation menu. Apart from the links generated by the JavaScript menu, there were absolutely no other links on her site pointing to other pages within the site. Since search engines bots can't interpret JavaScript (at least not at this time, to my knowledge), they could not follow any links and could thus only index her main page. As a result, her pages were not listed in searches for her keywords (since only the main page was indexed), leading to a drastic drop in visitors.
This is a problem fairly easily fixed (for example, one way is to create a site map and add a normal link to it from the main page), but it illustrates one of the most important issues a real-world website faces: search engine visibility. If your site is not listed in the search engines, you're not going to be able to get many visitors, if at all. Without visitors, you're obviously not going to be able to achieve your purpose for the site.
Designing a site that is search engine ready is a lengthy topic, so I am not even going to try to address it here. If you are interested to know more, you can find some general principles for making your site search engine ready by perusing the articles listed on: http://www.thesitewizard.com/sitepromotion/index.shtml
Conclusion
This article is about the importance of factoring usability and search engine readiness into your web design. Usability is important because it improves the chances that your site will help you accomplish your purpose. Search engine visibility is crucial because without it, you will get few visitors. Plan with these two aspects in mind, even as you look into the appearance of your site, and your design will go far in helping you achieve the goals for your site.
Copyright 2004 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
Get more free tips and articles like this, on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, from http://www.thesitewizard.com/.
This article can be found at http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/usabilitysearchengine.shtml