Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of creating a web site so that it ranks well for particular keywords or search terms related to the site’s business within the “organic” or naturally occurring search results of major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.
A key advantage of a high natural search engine ranking is that your site can get visitors from the search engines 365 days a year without any cost to you. It’s like getting a full-page ad in the telephone Yellow Pages under the category of your choice indefinitely. Historically, search engine users have perceived higher ranking sites to have a higher degree of credibility and have been more likely to visit them before lower ranking sites. (more…)
My Twitter feed brought this article on Outspoken Media to my attention. And while it and the source of its inspiration read like some kind of business blogger throwdown, they do raise some important points about the changing face of SEO. This is what I’ve gleaned. (more…)
With the constant advancements in web design, I’m stunned to see how often I still come across examples of “old fashioned” thinking. Such terms as Web 2.0, CSS, progressive enhancement, AJAX, and the Semantic Web (to name a few) have evolved beyond niche concepts into public consciousness. And yet I still come across sites employing antiquated frame- or tables- based layouts, ones employing clunky Javascript rollover or dropdown menu effects, or even gaudy animated GIFs. Seeing this on a dated layout badly in need of a redesign is one thing; but these still happen in what are clearly relatively new designs. And I’m witnessing a similar occurrence in the SEO realm. (more…)
The debate among top-tier Content Management Systems is a well-documented one. Proponents and opponents alike will weigh in about a chosen application’s ease of installation, customizing options, extensibility, templating systems, and so on. In Open Source circles, this has largely been a three-horse race between Joomla!, Drupal, and Wordpress. Chances are, if you were to aggregate all discussion about these top three CMS options, you would discover it to be mostly a dead heat; one system would excel at a given feature, while another would be the best at a different feature. (more…)
Modal windows are by no stretch new technology. And their usage on the web becomes more and more prevalent seemingly by the day. Yet at the same time, there are still so many more opportunities to put the tech to use. Including the chance to optimize pages.
And What are Modal Windows?
There’s a chance you haven’t heard of them. Or maybe you’ve heard of them called something else, such as “lightboxes” or even “Web 2.0 pop-ups”. Traditionally when clicking on a link or image, you would expect to be taken to another page, or a window or alert message would pop up onscreen. With modal windows, you stay on the same page, and the new content will display in an overlay of sorts. You may get visual cues, such as the screen darkening around the window, or the window itself animating, but the function is mostly the same.
One of the great things about this technology is that it’s readily and freely available to anyone who’s a little code-savvy and suitably motivated. Modal window plugins are found in the form of packages containing a handful of javascript and css files, and are usually quite well documented and supported. Some of the more widely implemented examples of such plugins include Lightbox2, Fancybox, Lightwindow, and Thickbox. (more…)