Ever wondered if websites need to look exactly the same in every browser? Well the world renowned front-end developer and author Dan Cederholm answers the question on a new domain:
http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/
You have to love the length of the domain name!
Technorati Tags: CSS, Web Standards, Interesting Website, Dan Cederholm, Simple Bits, Areeba
Recently my site clocked up 32,000 Spam comments. Yes that is correct, 32,000 in just over a year! Spam is the bane of my existence. Why do people do it? It must be working!? Surely not, I don’t need a Rolex watches, diet pills or to increase my credit limit.
AARRRRHHHH!!!!
n a side note, I don’t think I have ever used so many exclamation marks in a post! How about some more for good measure!!!
Down with Spam. Up with good quality content!
Technorati Tags: Spam, Website, Blog comment spam
After needed an animated loading .gif image for a recent Ajax application I did some quick Google searching and came across a fantastic site: http://www.ajaxload.info/
Ajaxload allows you to generate your own animated Ajax loading images with a few simple click. Starting from a number of animation templates you can then choose a background and foreground colour for your new loading .gif. After 30 seconds of playing around, see some of my examples below:
Fantastic, yet simple. This is the way all websites you should be, well done Ajaxload.
Technorati Tags: Ajaxload, Ajax, Interesting websites, images, animated gif
Links, links everywhere! But where, why? Hang on, who?
Link building is an important part in any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy. In an attempt to make a website seem more popular with search engine spiders it is important to gain quality inbound links to your website.
OK, but what is popularity? Simply put, link popularity essentially describes how popular a website is based on the number of links from other sites pointing to it. For example a site with 100 inbound links is seen to be more important than a site with 10 inbound links.
OK so now we have quantity, what about quality? The quality of the link is much more important than the quantity of links. A few good quality links can increase your websites search engine positioning much more than a huge amount of poor quality links. A quality website will have to following attributes:
Avoid artificial link farms and web rings as search engine spiders will place no importance on these types of inbound link. As a general rule, if a link is not created to be read or followed by humans, the link will be considered spam.
A great place to start gain quality and relevant inbound links are website directories. Website directories provide a topical and categorised list of links. The Strongest Links website goes one step further by creating a list of website directories ranking them on the quality of link they will provide you.
Next comes the social websites like Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Technorati, MySpace and reddit which provide an easy way to create some user generated content (i.e. content generated by you, the user) with links to your website or a particular page /post on your website. These social websites generally have a lot of traffic and a high page rank which can filter through to your website with each link that you create, not to mention all the extra eyes you will have on your website.
It is a black art trying to gain quality inbound links to a website, one that I will forever be wrangling with. If you have any insights, suggestions or funny stories please let me know.
Technorati Tags: SEO, Interesting sites, link building, website directories, social websites
Recently while I was at work pondering what the most semantically correct way to markup a set of search results I realised that Google is 1) smarter that me and 2) rules my life. I can’t stop using Google products from Google Analytics, Google Reader, Gmail, Google maps, Google Earth, Google Trends to even the good old Google web search. One would be forgiven to think that Google is the Internet! Whenever I have a problem at work I open up Google and type in the a search phrase on the problem I need to solve. Then in under a second, bingo, there it is the answer to all my problems. No I do not work for Google, I just love their search engine and yes I do spend a lot of time on the internet.
All this got me thinking; ‘Wow, Google has some very impressive features’. So I decided to put together a list of some of the more handy Google specific search features.
As you can see Google has some very impressive features that makes sure it stays number one in the search engine market. One can only dream of what they will come up with next. But for those of us who can’t wait it is always worth a sneak peak into the future at Google Labs to see the latest Google prototypes that have not quite hit the prime time.
Happy Googling!
Firefox is an extremely flexible browser allowing users to control preferences through an easy to use menu system. The Firefox homepage even goes as far as labeling the browser ‘fully customizable to your online life’. More than just the simple configuration Firefox also allows you to control its inner secrets with the advanced preferences of about:config.
But hang on, this sounds complected and prone to bugs I hear you exclaim. But no no, the Firefox developers have made it easy. To get to the advanced configuration simply type ‘about:config’ into the Firefox address bar. This will show a list of configuration options each with its name, status, type and value. You can also use the filter field to narrow down only to the entries which match your keywords. OK so now we know how to get to the advanced configuration, following are two configuration options that I found extremely useful.
Firefox has built in spell checking, however by default they only come up on textareas. This can prove to be problematic, as I have found on many occasions as I have had to edit the titles of my blog posts after they have gone live. To overcome this and force Firefox to spell check inputs as well as textareas once on the about:config page filter by:
layout.spellcheckDefault
Then double-click on the item in the list and change the value to 2.
Firefox has a strange feature called ‘Prefetching’ that downloads pages that it thinks you are going to click on. Very weird, I don’t know how it thinks it can work this out, but to save your CPU and bandwidth turn off this behavior by going to the about:config page and filter by:
network.prefetch-next
Then double-click the item in the list and change it to false.
Happy customising!
Technorati Tags: Web, Firefox, customisation, web browser
I recently had a large bout of spy ware on my PC, which consequently left my computer paralysed and unable to connect to the Internet! This can be kind of frustrating when you are a web developer: there is only so much I can do on my localhost.
Fortuity, after countless hours spent trying to debug the situation I remembered that Windows XP has a feature called System Restore. System Restore automatically backs up registry and system files whenever you install new software or drivers. System Restore returns your computer to an earlier time (called a restore point) without causing you to lose recent work, such as saved files, history and favourite lists. What’s more, all changes made by System Restore are completely reversible, what more could you want.
To find System Restore go to your start menu then: All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore.
Technorati Tags: Windows XP, System Restore, spy ware
Directory Critic is a fantastic resource of website directories, featuring over 3900 search engine friendly website directories. Directory Critic breaks down the website directories into a number of categories, including free, paid and deep linking enabling a website owner to effectively target relevant websites when creating a link building campaign.
Website directories provide a good way to promote your website, creating exposure and traffic while building relevant inbound links. Directory Critic harnesses this power and is a must do for all good website marketing and SEO campaigns.
Technorati Tags: Directory Critic, SEO, link building
The new version of Google Analytics has launched and wow is it impressive. Showcasing an intuitive interface with drag and drop functionality, Google has taken its website statistics application to the next level. Showcasing large amounts of data in a easy to understand manner is the main advantage of Google Analytics.
Why would you bother with any other website statistics application when there is Google Analytics. Whats more, it is free!
Technorati Tags: Google, Google Analytics, website statistics, SEO
With all the hype surrounding Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) you would be forgiven thinking that you need a degree in computer science to optimise your website for the entire gamut of search engines. Fortunately this is note the case! As long you follow some simple rules you too can come up number one on Google.
At my day job many clients ask if they should use a Search Engine Optimisation company. I always suggest to be very careful with SEO companies especially if the company is offering ‘guaranteed number one position’ or ’submission to 1000 website directories’. What I always suggest to do first is to write meaningful and unique content for your website and then do some basic search engine optimisation yourself. By using valid and semantically meaningful HTML code with good content you will be well on your way to achieving a good search engine ranking.
It is often said that content rules the web and this is so very true. You can have a perfectly optimised and professionally built website, but if you don’t have content there is nothing for a search engine robot to index. Writing good and relevant content is the most important part of any search engine optimisation strategy. When writing the content for you website try to think what would someone actually type into a search engine to find what you are writing about. Once you have worked out these keywords or keyword phrases you need to try and mention them as often as possible, consequently making your content more relevant to those terms. Updating your website with good keyword dense content regularly will do two things to help your site:
Following on from writing good keyword dense content I believe is the second most import part of search engine optimisation - writing good page titles. Much the same can be said about writing page titles as about writing content; it must be both relevant and keyword dense. One basic mistake often made is to have the same page title for each website page, this makes it extremely hard for both users and search engine robots to distinguish between each of your website pages. It is especially important to write good page titles as they are displayed prominently in search engine results. Because of this a website page title must be relevant while also enticing the user to action your website by clicking on your link.
Building your site with semantic and meaningful HTML is essential. Using clean and lightweight HTML code will reduce your content to markup ratio, while also structuring your code in a meaningful way for the search engine robots. Start building your website by thinking about the content and how it should be presented without styles. For example, use h1 to h6 elements to mark up headings and ul’s to markup list elements. Then use progressive enhancement of CSS, JavaScript or Flash to add style and functionality to your website leaving your HTML code as it was intended.
Many search engines find it hard to follow links where the URL has an appended query strings on the end. Google says that it follows up to two Get variables, however, it is much better to avoid them whenever possible. A solution to this is to use Apache’s mod_rewrite functionality to enable you to add keywords into the URL while also providing indexable links.
A comprehensive link building strategy is essential to a search engine optimisation, often however, this proves to be the hardest part of the process. One good place to start to find inbound links to your website are directories such as Dmoz and Yahoo!. Directories provide topical text links to your website which are seen as a vote to the importances of your website.
There are some arcane web development techniques that should be avioded to help maintain your search engine ranking. Some of the horrible old web development techniques include:
By avoiding some of the old web development techniques your website will be in good stead to be fully indexed and placed high on search engine results.
While everything I have mentioned in this article is neither new or groundbreaking for any SEO consultant or good web developer, it is an easy way to save money on a search engine optimisation company while increasing your websites search engine visibility and search engine ranking. One word of caution however, this is not an instant process, it takes months, even years to get the right mix of content, HTML structure and inbound links.
Technorati Tags: SEO, search engine optimisation, website optimisation
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