Optimizing Web Sites
Optimizing Websites in a World of Better Search Engines
In the past two years we have visited thousands upon thousands of Websites. We have analyzed these Websites in a quest to find out whether Websites optimize or not for search engines and whether the optimization efforts result in favorable position within search results.
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Does Every Website Need to Be Optimized for Search Engines?
Search engine and content optimization is all about performance. Search engine optimization involves maximizing the number of visits a Website gets from search engine listings. Therefore the answer is relatively straight forward.
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Attitude Change towards Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization and content optimization once were topics that few respected, but that has changed. One of the main reasons for that change is the way the search engine industry has evolved.
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Do B2B Websites Optimize Content for Search Engines?
Search engine optimization has been exercised for a very long time. It is not an exact science since the nature of the major search
engines is to constantly change algorithms used to display search results. Therefore, the science of search engine optimization
always depends on algorithms that are usually protected from the eyes of curious Webmasters.
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Content Optimization: Do Bloggers Optimize?
Content is the text of a Web site and any information that can be of value to its visitors including multi-media and interactive content. The content that primarily affects Web site's findability is the text, the letters, words and sentences of a Web site. Making all the pieces of a Web site maximize findability and provide information of highest possible value for its visitors is probably the ultimate goal of content optimization.
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Site Speed Matters: Making Business Blogs Load Faster
In the past few years, Web page load time has gained more attention and the techniques available to perform load time optimization. Load time of Web site will undoubtedly be a topic closely watched in the coming years among those running and maintaining Web sites.
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Title Analysis: Expressing Web Page Content in Few Words
Is the Title the most important part of a Web page? Is it more important than the content the Web page holds? The best answer to these questions is; it depends. The title of any Web page is important, that is a fact, but how important depends primarily on the intentions, a Web site owner has for the Web page.
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Blogging with Words: Page and Text Size
There are photo and video-blogs that publish multi-media content instead of text, but many of these blogs have textual content
as well. The content of the typical business blog as we know it is the text it contains, the main ingredient. A search for a
keyword or phrase with the major search engines frequently contains results with blogs. It is a fact that for years search engines
have been deeply in love with blogs.
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Textual Content and Readability
At this moment in time the main content of any Web page is the textual content. There are certainly Web sites having multi-media
content as the centerpiece and main attraction. However, the primary way to describe a Web site, index it and present it to the World is
via textual content in one form or the other. That is why the written text is very important at this moment in time.
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Inside HTML Tags: A Semantic Meaning
HTML tags mark up a text document for Web publishing. The browser takes care of interpreting those tags and determines how the HTML document should look. The browser even tries to make sense from HTML document that use incorrect tags or tags not properly used or closed. However, there are other things to consider in addition to having HTML document display properly in a Web browser.
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Faster Loading Shops: Web Page Size Analysis
Making Web pages load as fast as possible should be top priority for all webmasters without regards to Web site's size or type
of content. Making Web pages load fast increases positive user experience. The user gets quicker response and might become more
likely to view additional pages and return more often, but there are more things to consider which is of no lesser importance.
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Performance Gains with Image Optimization
Content optimization tasks involve either textual content optimization or graphical content optimization. Decreasing document size and trimming Html code to the point that it has effect on Web page load time and overall Web site's performance is probably an option most Webmasters look at in their optimization efforts.
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Interweaving Link Code, Text and Words
It is very easy to override content on a Web page with links. Web users can have a hard time reading and differentiate between Web page elements with excessive number of links and with excessively long link text. Interface design principles such as Web user's prior knowledge and experience can play a big part in creating the correct combination of links and text.
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Faster Web Pages: Storage and Bandwidth Savings
The world has turned cost effective. Reading the news it is almost as if all businesses, worldwide, are cutting costs. Bandwidth and disk storage is a commodity. Most small and medium-sized Web sites with moderate traffic can get affordable deals on hosting and bandwidth. While saving bandwidth and storage space is probably not a make or break for these Web sites it can nevertheless add to the bottom line.
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Textual Content vs. Html Code
A common structure of a Web page is a top with a logo and important site-specific links, link bars on the left or right and somewhere in the middle is the textual content. This structure is on countless number of Web sites. This structure does not guarantee that visitors easily perceive a Web page structured this way even though its design follows known standards and user interface guidelines.
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Web Page Title in Textual Content
The next Web page element we look at in relation to the Title tag for the general and prominent search engine position samples is the actual text of Web page. Assuming the Title tag contains Web page's most important keywords and keyword phrases then it is common sense to make sure these words and phrases are part of the actual content, which in turn should reflect what the Title tag text suggests.
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Optimizing CSS Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading style sheets (CSS) have become the standard in controlling the look and feel of Web sites. Using CSS on Web pages including the selectors, helps Web designers control each element of a Web page down to the smallest details.
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Optimizing and Indexing XML Documents
XML documents contain their own markup language. It is difficult to write software that understands all XML documents. That is the reason why we rely on standards when exchanging certain types of information via XML. This includes RSS for distributing, exchanging feeds with Web site related news and information, and for publishing XML-sitemaps that help search engines index Web sites
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Optimizing the Title Tag
Assuming that a Web page has a content that has an indexing potential with the major search engines then the single most important part of that Web page is the Title. This is not only the opinion of this Web site's webmaster, but also the opinion of many. There is wealth of knowledge available on the Web about this single Web page element.
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Findability of a Web Site and Its Content
Findability is a fascinating word. It emphasizes the goal of every publicly accessible Web site. If a Web site has findability then it is likely to have Web users visiting it. Findability is a concept often associated to the search engines of the Web. If a Web user finds a Web site in search engines and has a good position among search engine results then it is findable and has findability, but that is only one piece of the puzzle.
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Refactoring and Reusing HTML Documents
Fast loading Web pages and Web pages that are easy for other computers, including search engine spiders, to access and retrieve information from are more likely to enjoy success with search engine marketing.
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HTML Headings: The Bigger Reality
The headings (H1...H6) in its original and default form range from very large to smaller. In the early days of the Web, it was terrifying to visit a Web page that had H1 heading. It was almost as terrifying as seeing the blink that followed the first version of Java Script, but that is a different story.
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Using HTML H1-H6 Headings
The header tag (H1...H6) is a tag of many disguises. It has by default certain size, but it does not always appear in that form. It has a special role in the structure of HTML Web pages, but Web designers do not always apply the header tag to that role. This may sound confusing, but so are many things in HTML.
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Faster Loading Web Images
We have previously discussed Web page speed optimization and how optimizing the HTML code and especially images can improve Web page loading time. The reason is very straightforward. According to our study, images are more than threefold the size of HTML markup source code.
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Fast Loading Web Pages
Making a Web page load as fast as possible in the user's browser window should be on top of every webmaster's priority list. It does not matter whether the hosting environment is a dedicated server or a shared account. Everyone can optimize Web pages for speed. The results are often rewarding.
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Page Optimization with the ALT Attribute
You can use the ALT attribute in many different ways, for your Web site's good or bad. How long should ALT attributes be? What should the ALT attribute describe? Should you apply the ALT attribute to all images or only few? These are perhaps the most common considerations a webmaster has regarding the ALT attribute.
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Optimizing Content with the ALT Attribute
Oftentimes the ALT attribute can help in enhancing Web site's findability. It can also emphasize important keywords and phrases. In case you did not know the ALT HTML tag is an attribute associated with the IMG tag, which itself is a tag that marks up images on Web pages.
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