SEO and CSS

one of the #1 things a new webmaster or designer can do for his/her site is to know who your target customer is.  If you don’t know who your target is you can not even begin to put together a good layout or navigation, or really anything at all for your website. How can you do any of these things without knowing who you are trying to attract?

With this in mind, we will assume that you have your target firmly centered in your cross-hairs, and we will go over the top 10 things you need to look at for SEO.

1) Title tag - this has got to be at the top of the list, because it’s at the top of your page! usefull keyword rich titles are important.  If you just have the default “home” for a title you will have a hard time with the search engines.

2)Meta-tags - this, according to some is not as important anymore, but I belive the keyword tag, and the discription, geo, and content tags are still VERY important.

3)Layout - how is your site layed out?  What is the first thing a search engine going to read on your page? Your navigation, or your content?  A lot of SEO experts are going to right side navigation beacuse of this question….I think it is a better way of doing things for just this reason.

4)Flash- Great stuff —- in moderation.  If the whole site is in flash, the search engines won’t see anything except the code for the plugin, get board and leave. your content NEEDS to be readable by the bots.

5)Navigation -  K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) if your visitors can get confused on where to go, it’s a sure thing the bots will too.

6)Content - YEAH! more more more, and keep it updated.

7)Links -if your are talking about the newest CSS designing techniques, link to articles about CSS designs. (shows you want to be relivent to this term)

8)Directories - Are you listed in places like DMOZ?  There are some good diretoies out theer that don’t cost an arm and a leg, link love is needed to help raise you in the all mighty search engines eyes.  This is one way of starting this step of your proccess.

9)Articles - Do you write articles? Either in blogs, or places like News Vine?  Great way to get out there in the public eye.

10)LINKS! - like the directory idea in #8, links are the moast important thing in the search engines eyes.  The more sites that link to yours the better, but you want them to be quality links not quantity.  If you have 1000 sites linking to you, but they have nothing at all to do with your subject matter, they will help a little (maybe even hurt if they just appear over night).  But 50 GREAT links about related matter and you will get more out of it.  This is the hardest thing to get done, but doing it right will give greater results than giving your web addy to a FFA ( Free For All) link exchange.

Hope this helps someone out there at least

Shannon

Tampa website Design

Read The Full Story…

The one thing that has bothered me the most about CSS design is the lack of standards. (W3C doesn’t count, or maybe they do!)  I know what your saying “W3C has the standards set!”  This is true, but nobody seems to follow it.  Sure FireFox is just about the best at it, unfortunately too large a percentage of users are in I.E. still.  This presents a problem.  To fix the CSS on your site to work on all browsers, you need to hack this, and hack that, in order for it to work.  The following are a couple of ways to get all browsers to center your content without hacks. Read The Full Story…

Is it right for a webmaster to decide who gets to see your website?  If you own a business and want earn more customers though your web presence, and someone was able to effectively cut your customers off from you, whould you be mad?

In todays market that would be suicide for your business.  If you don’t have a contract with your web hosting company, and your webmaster, about this you could be in trouble.  Most people don’t understand that the webmaster has access to the server your are hosted on, and can ban I.P.s from accessing your web site.  In a normal world this would be bad business.  There are webmasters that do this, because they are not happy with an individual or company, or are scared of the compition.  So scared, in fact, that they start cutting of access to YOUR website so THEIRcompition can’t see you.

As they start cutting off I.P.s, one mistake and they can cut off whole ISPs, there by cutting off ALL the potential customers being serviced by that ISP.

How do I stop this?

This is the easy part.  Make sure you have a contract to safe guard your business interests in this matter.  That simple.

Most webmasters have enough ethics, not to do such things, but some don’t.  Better to be on the safe side, and make sure.

Shannon Smith

SilverFlame Designs

Tampa Website Design

I think this asks it all!  As a small business owner, you need to be Very customer related.  Are you?

We have all fallen into the routine of making or web site copy geared toward selling ourselfs and our product.  While this in itself is not a bad thing, we tend to forget the customer in this.  They are why we are here!  We need to tell them how we can help them solve that pesky little problem of thiers.

I myself realized I was doing just what I preach against.  My website SilverFlame Designs is being re-worked as I type this to re-align the content to focus on my customers, and how I can help them with thier problems, not push for their business. 

“WHAT!” you say? “Don’t you want business?  You need to sell product to live!” True enough, I do.  First I have to help my customers understand what it is they need, and how I am able to help them get it.  Sometimes all they need is a push in the right direction, not a 1/2 hour long sales pitch.  I’ll bet my last nickel that if I help a customer get something that helps them, they will be back when they need something again to see what help I can give them.  This time it will be a service I DO provide.

 I have serveral customers like this already.  They come back and ask questions all the time, and I answer the best I can, or turn them on to someone that can answer better.  They ALWAYS remember this, and pass my name along to that “friend” that needs my services.

The end comment I have on this is an “Old Saying”  “What goes around, comes around” or better yet “you have to give, before you can get.”

CSS techniques I use all the time | The Montoya Herald this is a real good look at some of the problems with CSS and how to address them.

» Before you go Vista: Advice from nine experts | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

CSS Rounded Corners ‘Roundup’ | Smiley Cat Web Design

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without | Smashing Magazine this one rocks

3d-Palace one of the BEST 3d work shop site on the net today!  Go check them out.