Why You Should Learn HTML

Why You Should Learn HTML

by: Debra Hamer

Do you have a website or are you planning on creating a website in the near future? You owe it to yourself to at least learn some basic HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Even if someone else is creating and maintaining your website there are some basics you should know. What if that person is not available and you need to add or make changes to your website? I’ve always believed if you have a business, computer, website, or whatever, you need to know how it works. Don’t depend on someone else. Besides why pay someone else when you can do it yourself free of charge.
In this article I will explain some basic HTML formats for you. Believe me it will come in handy at one point or another. I, myself, have only learned some of the basics and I have been able to add, change, and make corrections on my own website by myself.
When you come across a website you like and would like to use a similar layout or text pattern, look at the page in HTML code. You can do this by clicking on ขViewข at the top of the screen, then choose ขDocument Sourceข or ขSourceข and you can see the page as a HTML document. If you are using AOL then right click on any area on the page without any text or images, then select ขView Sourceข. At first it will look like Greek to you but after learning some basic HTML it will start to make sense.
First you will need a word processor program such as Windows ขNotepadข or any other word processor you might have. You are working with simple text. You will need to save your document using the ขsave asข command and give it an html suffix, ex: Mynewdocument.html or Mynewdocument.htm (you can use either suffix html or htm).
HTML works in a simple, logical format. It reads top to bottom and left to right. What are used to set sections apart like bigger text, smaller text, bold text, underlined text are tags. Tags are commands. If you wanted a line of text to be bold you will place a tag at the point you want the bold text to start and a tag at the end of where you want the bold text to stop.
All tags start with the lessthan sign , always. What is between these signs is the tag or command. You will need to learn what tag does what. Let’s first learn the bold command. The following is an example of making your text bold. The tag for bold is ขBข. You can use uppercase or lowercase, it doesn’t matter. Here is an example:
Note: Due to the HTML codes in the article being formatted and possibly not showing up on the page in normal view I have replaced the signs with the bracket characters [ and ]. Just remember to use the signs and not the [ and ] signs in your document.
This is how it will look in HTML format [B]This text needs to be bold[/B]
Here is how it will look when converted to normal view – This text needs to be bold
Did you notice the slight difference in the ending tag? There is a slash / before the B. That means it is the end tag. Only the text between the start and end tags will be in bold. Now let’s add a twist by putting one of the words in italics.
This is how it will look in HTML format [B] This [I]text[/I] needs to be bold[/B]
Here is how it will look in normal view – This text needs to be bold
There are some tags that are an exception to the rule about having to have a start and end tag. You don’t have to have an end tag when using these tags. Here are some examples.
[HR] this command places a line across the page. HR stands for ขhorizontal referenceข.
[BR] this command breaks the text and jumps to the next line, like the return key.
[P] this command stand for ขparagraphข, it does the same thing as the [BR] command but skips a line.
Every page you create with HTML will need the HTML tag [HTML] which denotes it is an HTML document and the end HTML tag [/HTML] will be at the end of your document. The next tags will be your start Title tag [TITLE] and your end Title tag [/TITLE]. The title of your document will go in between these two tags. The title will show up in the title bar on your browser when you are looking at the page in normal view.
The following are some tags for Headings (there are 6 heading commands) and Font size (there are 12 font size commands):
[H1]This is Heading 1[/H1] – H1 is the largest heading
[H6]This is Heading 6[/H6] H6 is the smallest heading
So, by using H1 through H6 you can change the size of your heading. Same applies to your font size. You will use [font size =ข+1ข] through [font size=ข+12] and don’t forget your end tags!
You may notice that your text always starts at the left of the page. If you want your text to start in the center or to the right you will need to specify where you want your text to start. Here are some examples of aligning text:
[CENTER]Center this Text![/CENTER] your text will be centered on the page.
Center this Text!
To align to the right you need to set the text as a paragraph unto itself by using the [P] tag and adding an attribute to it.
[P ALIGN=ขrightข]Text here will align on the right of the page[/P]
Text here will align on the right of the page
Why did I put an end tag [/p] since the paragraph command does not require an end tag (remember exceptions to the rule?) Anytime you use an attribute tag, as in the above example, you will need to have an end tag, whether you’re using the paragraph command [P] or the return command [BR]. Using the [P] or [BR] command by itself does not require an end tag, but if you are adding an attribute then an end tag must be used.
Adding an image to your page would require the following tag:
[IMG SRC=ขimage.jpgข] you would replace ขimage.jpgข with your own image file. IMG stands for image and SRC stands for source. You’re telling your browser where to find your image file. Your image file could have a gif, jpg, or a bmp association.
Ok now let’s get a little more complicated and create a hyperlink on your document. This creates blue underlined words on the page that someone can click on and go to another location. An example is you’re creating a link to another website.
[A HREF=http://www.profitfromhomebiz.comก]Profit From Home Biz[/A] this is what in looks like in HTML code. Note you are adding a description of the link that will be underlined, see the example below.
Profit From Home Biz – what it looks like in normal view. When someone clicks on this link they would be taken to my website.
This is a very important HTML format for when you need to add links onto your webpage. You may already know or will learn that reciprocal linking is very important in promoting your website and obtaining a higher page rank with the search engines. Sometimes the HTML code is provided for you and all you have to do is ขcopy and pasteข the code into your webpage. Often it is not, so you have to figure out how to put the information into HTML code yourself. Just learning this HTML command has been a timesaver for me.
I hope this article has helped you learn some basic HTML and how it can benefit you. I know, I know there are HTML text editors out there you can use and they can do all of this for you. I have used a couple myself, but I still like to know how to do things on my own. I bet you do too! Sometimes it’s just faster and easier to do it yourself.
I’ve just given you some very basic formats in using HTML, but you can find a lot more resources and information about learning HTML on the internet. Just do a search and I’m sure you will be overwhelmed at what’s out there. To view this article with the correct HTML formats please visit www.profitfromhomebiz.com/articles.

About The Author

Debra Hamer is the owner of the http://profitfromhomebiz.com website where you can find lots of tips, tools and resources for starting your own work at home business. Visit her PlugInProfitSite at http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main4256 to have your own website setup and ready to go within 24 hours, complete with everything you need to start making a profit.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 30, 2004

by Debra Hamer

10 Great Search Engine Optimization Tools for Your

10 Great Search Engine Optimization Tools for Your Online Success

by: Milena Sotirova

The Internet promotion of every company is related to the search engine positioning of the site. The positioning is important for your books, products and services to be easily found online.

Search engine position is the place which a site takes in the search results for every search engine after performing search. The searches often are results of one or more words entered in the search bar. It seems simple to find where your site is by searching with the related keywords. For the search engine optimization being effective you need these keywords in your meta tags. If you want to check how it works, type for example กpromotionก in Google and Yahoo to find that http://www.promotionworld.com/ is on 2. and 1. position respectively (this may change at the time you read this).

Meta Tags How to create your meta tags

Meta tags are specific HTML tags that exceed their กwhat you see is what you getก functions to display content and serve as a mediator between the site page and the search engines, performed by their crawling robots.

The Title Tag is, as it can be assumed by its name, the site or page title that best describes the site content and purpose and contains of short phrase that can include the site name. It can be separated or not by colons but must include the words that describe the main functions of your site. When you write it, you can consider that the search engines will select your site in the search results more successfully if the metas contain the keywords you are going after in the search engine optimization.

MySite: MySite functions

Meta tags are easy to create with the PromotionWorldกs Meta tag generator that makes this task an easy one step effort to get the entire code the way it should be in the siteกs HTML code immediately after the tag.

To be sure that your meta tags contain the appropriate keywords that will lead you to the top of the search list you can try a little research using the Keyword suggestion tool. Here you can find what are the most searchable keywords related to your content and to include them in your meta tags. You can go back again and again to check and update your keyword list according to the search trends.

Search Engines How to submit your site

After your site is dressed with the meta tags, you are ready to go and submit it to the search engines. The Free Search Engine Submission tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=submit will automatically submit your site to more than 60 search engines, including the best known. Just follow the easy steps and you will get your site submitted and a detailed report about the submission process results displayed and send to you.

Search Position Where You Are

The positions of your site is easy to find using the Keyword Ranking Monitor http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=kwrank. This handy tool will quickly tell you the site ranking on Google. You can check the competitorsก sites as well to see where you are. To find out where your competitorกs sites are located you can look at the WebSite Location Tool.

The effective optimization is based on statistics and you can check up how your results change thru the time using the secure help of PromotionWorldกs Keyword Ranking Monitor. Your keywords and URLs are stored easily accessible with your user name and you can check the trends of any keyword search results displayed in well designed graphics. You can even select a keyword from the keyword suggestion list and import it into your keyword result table just by one click.

The most advanced search at all Google Datacenters can provide you with information about how your ranking is moving depending to which server the search inquiry is sent. This Google DataCenter Watch tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=dance can allow you to predict your keyword optimization efforts.

Links The secret of traffic

The links that are going to your site by other sites are important for your Traffic and Google PageRank. You can permanently check up your link status with this Backlink Tracker Tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=bklinks. Your link history will be stored and here you can find how effective your link exchanges with other sites are a technique of vital importance for your site online success. To check your Google PR now just go to the Google PR Tool http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=grank enter the URL and get the result.

Extras Convert your site traffic into money

There is a good advertising program that gains more and more popularity and becomes a materialized developer dream of earning just from the user traffic to the site. Google AdSense is designed to provide you the opportunity to provide to your users fresh related to your content links and to make you benefit from it without any effort. Using Google AdSense Tool you can see from here how the Google Adsense ads will appear on your site. Try this simple and attractive free tool to see the Google AdSense program diversity designed for your content.

If you already have a Google AdSense account you can easily monitor your AdSense data http://www.promotionworld.com/seotools/index.php?rdt=adsense_charts displayed in graphics and charts to get you an easy visual access to your campaign.

WebSite Gifts Count your visitors and make them happy

Your site content will be more accessible if you provide the users an option to search free thru your site pages. You can get this Free search for your site.

A good gift for your site is the Free Counter displaying the number of visits for your pages. Get this tool and set it on your site. If you have an idea of some different image you can send that or if you feel, you can prepare an image and send this to be included in the tool set. Be creative and make the other users appreciate your talent.

I hope that you enjoyed our touring thru the amazing tool land and you get even more ideas about how can you promote your site.

About The Author

Milena Sotirova is Editor of DevStart, Inc. She has publications on web promotion, search engine optimization and web hosting industry news coverage and analyses. PromotionWorld.com is one of the most popular sites for web promotion and contains tutorials, tools, articles and search engine news. Subscribe for DevStart Channel http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/

Send your feedback to [email protected]

You can reproduce this article on your website, or in your Newsletter provided that you include the resource box.

This article was posted on November 26, 2004

by Milena Sotirova

The Skinny on RFID

The Skinny on RFID

by: John Hanson

RFID is the abbreviation for Radio Frequency Identification. RFID is a method used to store and retrieve data using RFID transponders or tags. RFID tags have antennas that allow them to accept and respond to queries from the RFID transceiver. There are passive and active RFID tags. The difference between the two is that passive tags do not need an internal power source, but active tags do. RFID technology is already used in many technologies today. The future of RFID technology seems limitless as new ways to utilize its effectiveness are discovered frequently.

Passive and Active Tags

As stated before, passive RFID tags do not have an internal power supply. There is a minute electrical current induced in the antenna by the radio signal it receives. This small current is enough to power the tag to respond to the signal. Passive RFID tags have a very brief response because of their limited power. They are very small, and may be used in the future for medical purposes or, as some fear, tracking devices. Passive RFID tags can be embedded within the skin because of their small size. The smallest RFID tag in existence in 2005 was 0.4 mm by 0.4 mm. Passive tags have a read distance that ranges from 10mm to almost 6 meters. Passive tags are cheaper than active RFID tags and as a result are more commercially available. Active RFID tags have a longer range and larger memory capacity than passive RFID tags and may therefore be able to store a significantly higher amount of information. Active RFID tags may have a battery life of up to 10 years.

How it Works

In order to understand the uses, and potential uses, of RFID technology, one must understand the RFID system. RFID systems consist of tag readers, tags, edge servers, middleware, and application software. Having an RFID system will allow data to be transmitted by a tag, which is then read by the RFID reader and processed in accordance with the application’s specifications. Data transmitted can have information about the location of the tag, or specifics concerning the product tagged. Typical RFID systems have a small and inexpensive tag on a product. There is then an ขinterrogatorข which has a certain range in which to detect the RFID tag, activate it, and receive the response.

Current and Potential Uses

RFID technology is used in every day life. RFID tags are found in CD stores and in library books. When an alarm goes off because an item was not purchased or checked out, that is the RFID tag responding. WalMart has even used RFID tags on shipments to improve supply chain management. Other RFID tags are used to track trucks in shipping yards. More recently, RFID tags have been used in automated tool booth systems like the EZPass system on the east coast. Mobile gas also implemented RFID technology to allow customers to simply pull up to the pump, pump gas, and then leave without having to scan a credit card or pay a cashier.

RFID technology has great potential and is constantly being improved. RFID workers are constantly trying to improve the current usage in systems like EZPass. It was recently announced that the eastern states will be improving EZPass so that cars can move faster through the toolbooth (35mph rather than 5mph). RFID technology may also be used to monitor inmates, and potentially parolees. Some consumers worry as to citizen privacy invasions by the government. RFID technology is always growing, and the government may be able to use RFID to inspect citizens, or keep track of them. Currently, however, RFID technology seems to be limited to the innovation sphere. RFID technology has been utilized to make the lives of consumers easier and more efficient. Despite the qualms of some citizens, RFID has a very bright future.

About The Author

John Hanson enjoys writing about new technologies, especially RFID technology.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 19

by John Hanson

Search Engine Optimization Techniques

Search Engine Optimization Techniques

by: Milena Sotirova

Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by achieving a high ranking in the search results of a search engine (i.e. Yahoo, Google, etc.). The higher a website ranks in a search, the better the chance that a website will be visited. Most Internet users will not click through multiple pages of search results, so a high ranking in a search is necessary to direct more traffic to your website.

While a top listing is not guaranteed, there are a number of small steps that you can take to improve your chances of gaining a top ranking. We recommend the following 5 basic steps to produce a more desirable search engine listing:

1. Content Writing/Keywords

We’ve found that content targeting seems to be the most successful strategy. Search engines are beginning to use algorithms that identify the main themes of entire websites instead of just single pages. In order to create a main theme for search engine optimization, you must identify a focused group of keywords that exist on and are relevant to the content on most pages of your website.

In practical terms, if you’re writing an article, service description or sales copy for your website, focus on creating informative and interesting content, but factor in keyword phrases that are more likely to give you a better ranking with the search engines.

Key word selection can be a rather complex process as there are many different factors that come into play when search engines decide the ranking of your webpage and how well your keywords rank. You may wish to spend some time educating yourself about this process. A good rule of thumb is to choose 2 to 3 word phrases from content that appears throughout your website that you expect to have the greatest appeal to the visitors you want to attract. We suggest that you consult with other colleagues as your create your list.

2. META Tags

Meta tags are special HTML tags that provide information about a webpage, such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the pageกs content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices.

Meta tags should contain your basic content terms. We recommend that you do not use too many words (less than 25) and that you do not repeat keywords as this could cause the search engines to overlook your website. You can use Overture Term Suggestion Tool http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/adcenter/tools/index.jhtml to find the highest rated keywords.

We also offer a simple free Online Tool http://www.promotionworld.com/tools/meta.html to create your own meta tags. Once you’ve created your meta tags, you can use this Meta Tag Analyzer http://submitexpress.com/analyzer/to see how search engine robots analyze your web site. This data will help you to determine if your web content or meta tags need any changes. Please keep in mind that search engines avoid sites with multiple unrelated meta tags.

3. URL Submission

Once your website is complete, its time to submit your site to the search engines. We strongly recommend using Promotion World’s free search engine submission tool. It’s a terrific service that allows you to submit 10 URLs at a time and to receive accurate and descriptive results on the submissions. As you review the results, it’s likely that you will find some failed submissions. For the failed submissions, Promotion World provides information on how to submit your site manually.

4. Site Ranking

Search engine optimization doesn’t end with submitting your website to search engines. You still need to determine the popularity of your site and make any necessary changes. In order to check how your site is ranked, go to Alexa.com. If your site ranking is between 1 and 100,000, it has a solid ranking. If you are ranked over 100,000 or you’re just not happy with your site ranking, a popular way to increase your ranking is to trade links to your site with other sites. This typically works because external links are the main criteria for Google’s ranking and Google is being used by such powerhouses as Yahoo, AOL, Infoseek, etc.

5. Website Promotion

Your search engine optimization endeavors should always be reinforced by other forms of promotion and marketing. One way to do this is to use a newsletter to deliver useful and informative content that will drive visitors to your website. Other methods of promotion include online advertising, print advertising, a special promotion (i.e. chance to win a digital camera), surveys, and wordofmouth promotion through friends and family.

Website promotion is a crucial part of eBusiness. Success in sales is a numbers game and without serious web traffic you will not have the numbers you need to prosper.

About The Author

Milena Sotirova is the Editor of DevStart http://www.devstart.com/. To find more articles, tips and tutorials that will help you to find the best hosting and to promote your site, visit HostReview.com http://www.hostreview.com/ and PromotionWorld.com http://www.promotionworld.com/. Discover the secrets for your guaranteed traffic increase. Send to the author your feedback at [email protected].

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 24, 2004

by Milena Sotirova

Make The Search Engines Love Your Site

Make The Search Engines Love Your Site

by: Matt Colyer

Most webmasters have no idea on how to make a search engine friendly web site. If you are one of them this will all change by following these steps below.
1. Research keywords Before you start to build your web site you should research your keywords or your site may get hurt in the short term. Use the keyword research tool, use Overture to research the most popular keywords that are related to your site. Overture will show you how much traffic each keyword has got in the past 30 days.
2. Create a list of about 50 to 100 keywords that you can include within your web pages. After having completed the above research, you should have found the keywords that were searched on most frequently, but few competing sites.
3. Write a paragraph of at least 250, but better with 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Put your keywords within this text, but be careful because you could repeat your keywords to much and make sure the paragraph makes sense with all those keywords, remember visitors are more important then the search engines.
4. Optimize meta tags Meta tags have lost there touch with most search engines, but they still help! The most important meta tags are the keyword and description meta tags. Include your keywords within each of these meta tags. Your keyword meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page, but keep it short to about 10 to 15.
5. Title Tag The title tag is one of the most powerful onsite SEO at your disposal, so use it wisely. Put your most important keyword in the title close to the beginning as posable, keep it short and to the point.
7. Optimize your site size Too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down your server and cause slow loading times for your site. Slice large images into smaller pieces with a graphic editors. Also to long of pages and to much text will do the same.
8. Find backward links Web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for web sites that are compatible with yours. Write articles that are related to your site and submit them to sites like Articlecity.com.

About The Author

Matt Colyer is the owner of the Marhen.com Network which includes www.linkexchangeit.com and is a parttime SEO. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.

This article was posted on June 12, 2004

by Matt Colyer

CSS – Site Design Basics Part One

CSS – Site Design Basics Part One

by: Michael J Medeiros

When it comes to designing a Website, there are several modern programming techniques that can make the designer’s task much easier. Once the content and focus of the Website is decided, layout should become the focus of development. What fonts will be used for the various links and text? Which color will be used to make certain links more prominent than others? Most importantly, how will the designer ensure the entire Website has an isometric appearance? If used properly, CSS can accomplish those tasks, while reducing bandwidth and

increasing pageload timeframes.

WHAT IS CSS AND HOW CAN IT BE USED?

CSS is an abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheet. It can consist of several lines of text to control content appearance within a Webpage, or multiple pages within a Website. There are two common ways that a Style Sheet can be used. First, it can be added to the, ขhead,ข of each individual Webpage. A more efficient way to implement a Style Sheet, is to upload the file into a Directory on a Website, and utilize an include tag.

Posting the style sheet within the head of each page will increase the amount of bandwidth used and slightly affect the download speed of pages. This is dependent on the size of a particular site and the number of styles included on the CSS. If a changeofstyle is decided upon in the future, each individual Webpage will require editing, to affect the entire Website. For example, if a designer wished to apply a holiday theme around Christmas, he or she would need to edit the CSS on every page for the change to take affect.

In contrast, a CSS file can be uploaded onto a Host. Once uploaded, a designer can use a simple include tag, to call upon the style sheet. This methodofuse can reduce the amount of bandwidth used and increase speed times, as some visitors will have the CSS stored on their computers following the first page load. Additionally, it will make style changes much easier as only one file needs to be changes to affect all relevant pages within a given Website.

DEVELOPING A STYLE SHEET

Open any text editor with a blank page. Save the page as, something.cssข. If it was decided to upload the file for use, this will be the actual file uploaded. Additionally, a designer can copy and paste from this file, if it is to be included within the head of each Webpage.

Before beginning to add actual tags, consider how links should apppear and the various sections of the Website or Webpages. If a Style Sheet becomes sloppy, it will make the designer’s job difficult. Therefore, start simple and keep the CSS clean. The Style Sheet should begin with simple grouping. For example, all pages may be utilizing an identical header and left menu. If the text styles are going to be different, this could be are first two simple groups, along with link formats.

MANAGING HYPERLINKS WITH CSS

With our first two groups we can add five lines to the style sheet. These are (alphabetized) A:LINK, A:HOVER, A:VISITED, .head, and .leftmenu. With these five lines, we can control the appearance of links, visited links, mouseovers on links, the header of all pages, and the left menu.

Now we are going to add some basic variations to the text. After, A:LINK and A:VISITED,ข add a space then, ข{color: #004080}ข. Notice that no font attributes have been added. This is because we are going to utilize different fonts within the other tags. The only thing being changed on linked text is the color. Change the color to reflect the desired appearance. Note, this can be adjusted to personal preference.

ADDING THE HEADER AND MENU TEXT TO THE STYLE SHEET

Once the desired link colors are decided, the font attributes can be associated to the header and left menu. After the .head and .leftmenu, add a space then, ข{fontfamily: Arial, Helvetica, sansserif; fontsize: 11pt; fontweight: normal; texttransform: capitalize;}ข. To explain, we are specifying any area of text with the .head style will use one font (fontfamily), be a uniform size (fontsize), have a uniform weight (fontweight), and regardless of typing be transformed to capitals (texttransform). A modified version should be added to the left menu.

Here is how the CSS should currently appear:

A:link {color: #004080}

A:visited {color: #004080}

A:hover{color:ff3300}

.head ข{fontfamily: Arial, Helvetica, sansserif; fontsize: 11pt;

fontweight: normal; texttransform: capitalize;}

.leftmenu ข{fontfamily: Arial, Helvetica, sansserif; fontsize: 11pt; fontweight: normal; texttransform: capitalize;}

IMPLEMENTING THE STYLE SHEET

If it was decided to past the style sheet onto each page, add:

<STYLE TYPE="text/css"><!—

A:link {color: #004080}

A:visited {color: #004080}

A:hover{color:ff3300}

.head {fontfamily: Arial, Helvetica, sansserif; fontsize: 11pt;

fontweight: normal; texttransform: capitalize;}

.leftmenu {fontfamily: Arial, Helvetica, sansserif; fontsize: 11pt;

fontweight: normal; texttransform: capitalize;}

></STYLE>

to each page of the site that will utilize the Style Sheet. The style sheet should be placed between the <head> and </head> tags of the document.

If it was decided to upload the sheet and call upon the file on each page, add, ข<LINK href="http://links.mjmls.com/ name of the file" type=text/css rel=stylesheet>ข. Once again, this should be placed between the <head> and </head> tags. Change the link location to where the style sheet is located on the Web Host.

CALLING THE STYLE SHEET ON WEBPAGES

There are a variety of ways to call upon the different text attributes. This depends widely on site layout. If the site is designed using tables, we can simply specify the style for each cell, rather than each word. For example, the table code could appear as:

<table width=ข100%ข>

<tr>

<td CLASS=ขHEADข><a href=ขhttp://links.mjmls.comข>Home</a></td>

<td CLASS=ขHEADข>Next link</td> etc…

</tr>

</table>

As a standalone link, within the given Webpage, we can add the class tag to the Hyperlink:

<a href=ขhttp://links.mjmls.comข class=ขheadข>Home</a>

To modify an entire group of standalone text, the CSS tag could be added to the paragraph tag:

<p class=ขheadข>The entire paragraph of text is affected</p>

It could be suggested that calling the style tags are experimented with, prior to modifying an entire Website. By adding class=ขheadข or class=ขleftmenuข to various tags, a new designer will learn how the style tags can work, reduce the size of a Webpage, save bandwidth, and provide a uniform appearance throughout a Website.

In part two, we will demonstrate some other attributes that could be added to different tags and applying CSS to tables.

About The Author

Michael J Medeiros is the owner and founder of www.mjmls.com

Mjmls provides various advertising venues for businesses and individuals including a new Website Directory http://links.mjmls.com

This article was posted on February 21

by Michael J Medeiros

Using ‘title Tagsก With Your Web Links & Images

Using ‘title Tagsก With Your Web Links & Images

by: Martin Lemieux

Using ‘title Tagsก for your web links & images is an arsenal many companies fail to utilize when planning out their web site optimization.

These tags will help search engines to navigate through your information.In the last topic we talked about Meta Tags within your web site source code. We also discussed how important it is to use the same words in your content that you included within your meta tags.

Another tip for your to complete your web page optimization is to include title tags for your relavant images & web links.

Title Tags For Your Links: Performing this task will help search engines to determine what your links are about and what to expect. Title tags with your links also gives a user a description of what to expect!

Hereกs an example of this: Put your mouse over the > X

How to create a title for you link… If you already know how to create a link, all you or your web designer have to do is add a small amount of code before the link, like so…

Ex: ( Example Link )

Example Link

<a title=กExample Titleก href=กhttp://www.smartads.info/ก>Example Link</a>

The <a title=กIs were you add your titleก

Tip #2 When Considering Image Links:

When using an image for a web link to another page, give your image a name that is meaningfull to your service or product.

Ex.

Iกve linked the image button to this page called กUsing Title Tagsก

Iกve named the image button กusing_title_tags.gifก

The title of the image is: กUsing Title Tagsก

All of these steps will let the search engines know exactly what the image is about! Yes, I agree all these steps seem like a lot of work but in the end, when your sales are up, you won’t be thinking about how much work it took but how successful you have become.

Hereกs the code for that image…

<a href=กhttp://www.smartads.info/articles/se/using_title_tags.htmlก><img src=ก../using_title_tags.gifก alt=กUsing Title Tagsก height=ก24ก width=ก135ก border=ก0ก></a>

Notice how all these steps have given 3 กKey Phrasesก for search engines to look at to determine the meaning of the image.

( a href= ) The web link command to another page

( img src= ) Where to find the image and what itกs called

( alt= ) The title of the image

One Last Web Site Optimization Tip:

One last tip I want to include is about your กHeadingsก. It is said that the size of your heading will also help the search engine determine your rankings by looking at your headings for the page content. Try to use the command for your headings.

About The Author

Martin Lemieux

Smartads President

http://www.smartads.info

Affordable web site design & Web Site Marketing Tips

http://www.flyinggelatingames.com

ASES Affordable Search Engine Specialists

GOING TO PUBLISH THIS ARTICLE?

Send us a note of the location so we can add a link on our site to where you have used the article! http://www.smartads.info/contact

This article was posted on November 12, 2003

by Martin Lemieux

7 Necessities To Do Well In Google

7 Necessities To Do Well In Google

by: Mark Daoust

Search engine optimization is one of the most popular topics in Internet Marketing. The reasons are obvious. Search engines provide highly targeted traffic at a zero or very low cost. There are a lot of myths, debates, and disagreements over what is good Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We have decided to look at 7 principles that you should definitely follow when optimizing your site for search engines.

Use Meta Tags

You will certainly here a large number of people tell you that meta tags are not important and are useless. There is some truth to this, however, it is largely untrue.

Meta tags were first included in web pages primarily for search engines and directories. Meta tags are to be used as summaries as to what your website is about. Because they were good summaries and a logical way to identify and classify a website, search engines used meta tags in their ranking algorithms. This method was good in the early days of search engines and the Internet.

Unfortunately, everyone else figured out that by ขoptimizingข their meta tags, they could better their rankings. This optimization quickly turned into spam. Search engine technology developed and soon most search engines would remove meta tags from their ranking algorithms.

However, meta tags are still extremely important in SEO. You want your site to be easy for search engines to crawl. Meta tags are still used by spiders to make a quick assessment as to the nature of a website. Meta tags are also used to identify the author, the company name, various rules for the spider to follow, and a general rating for the spider. An example of the meta tags that you should have are listed below:

This describes what language and format the site is in. This would be different for an XML document or other formats.

Is this site up for only a short time? If so, let the engine know how long the information is good for.

Do you only have regional content, or should the whole world be opened up to see you?

Who owns the site, or who designed the site. This WILL help your rankings if someone does a direct search on your company name.

Obvious important copyright information.

This should be one or two sentences. Make them wellformed sentences…don’t use sentence fragments. Use a few of your desired keywords, but do not spam the sentences with your keywords.

Use anywhere between 615 keywords or phrases in this section.

Tell the search engine robot to follow all of your pages. This doesn’t mean that it will, it just gives them permission.

How often do you change your content? Once a day, once a month? Let the robot know this information, but be truthful!

Do you have an adult website? Make sure you indicate that here. If it is for the general public, then let them know that as well.

Meta tags, although not crucial to your ranking, are helpful for search engines. For this reason alone it is good to employ them on your website.

Use Properly Formed HTML

One of the biggest mistakes people fall into is that they use improper HTML on their sites. HTML is relatively easy to code. Well formed HTML is structured clearly and neatly. Poorly formed HTML includes open tags, closing tags out of order, minimal information when forming your tags, and errors that may not show up in a browser.

When a search engine spider visits your website, its task is to ascertain the information on your website and give it a grade. If you have poorly formed HTML on your website, you are making the task of the spider more difficult. Additionally, if you have poorly formed HTML on your website, the search engine may not consider your website to be the best candidate for your desired keywords as poorly formed HTML represents a lack of professionalism.

You should always follow a few rules when forming your HTML:

A. Close All of Your Tags

Every HTML tag has an open and a close tag, with the exception of a line break (). Do not leave tags hanging. For example:

This is my text

The problem with this code is that the person forming the code did not close out the tag. This means that it is still open.

B. Close Your Tags In Order

Although a minor issue, closing your tags in order creates better HTML. For example:

This is my text

These tags are closed out of order. You should always close the last open tag first.

C. Use ALT Tags on Images

A search engine does not know what an image looks like. Most spiders can figure a few things out about an image by its file name, but an ALT tag should tell a spider everything about that image. For example:

Properly formed HTML will make it easier for search engines to know what your site is about. The faster they can digest your information, the more they will digest.

Avoid Excessive JavaScript

JavaScript is a great tool to have. It can make your site interactive and provide better, stronger interfaces for your users. However, it should be avoided at all costs when implementing content.

JavaScript is different than most every other technology on the Internet as it is a clientside technology as opposed to serverside. The difference is simple. When a person views your webpage, if there is JavaScript, the JavaScript will be downloaded to that person’s computer and executed on their computer. If JavaScript were serverside, then the execution of the code would happen entirely on the server where the website is located.

Because JavaScript is a clientside language, search engine spiders are not able to read what they output. So, if you are trying to update your content frequently using JavaScript, the search engine will never know the difference.

JavaScript is still a great resource for forms, validation, and other parts of your page that are not crucial to the meaning of your page.

Avoid Dynamic URL’s

A URL such as http://www.anydomain.com/program.php?id=456&p=4 is not search engine friendly. Search engines have come a long ways in their ability to spider

URL’s such as the one above. In fact, you will probably be included in an index with that style of url, but it is not a friendly URL.

With the introduction of mod_rewrite, you can easily make dynamic URL’s into search engine friendly URLs. Mod_rewrite would give you the ability to make the above url into something that looked like this:

http://www.anydomain.com/program4564.html

Search engines will be more inclined to index this type of URL.

Don’t ขOverOptimizeข

There really is no such thing as overoptimization. Overoptimization is actually search engine spam. Search engines hate it when people spam them with keywords. A few examples of search engine spam. If you make your site sound natural, but form it around a central topic, you should obtain the perfect balance of keyword density on that page. If you do not, then you should rethink what your website is really about.

Spending all of your time making sure every Alt tag has your targeted keyword in it, or finding a way to include very small or close to invisible text so that you may spam a certain keyword, is a sure way to waste your time and ruin the appearance of your website.

Keep Content Fresh

Search engines LOVE fresh, new content. Constantly add new news to your website, new information, and change your front page. You do not need to change the look of your website, just the content on the front page.

Search engines are always trying to provide searchers with the most relevant, up to date information possible. A page that hasn’t changed since 2000 will not have as relevant content as a page recently published with updated information.

There is also an issue of pride with the search engines. Part of the search engine wars has been to see who can keep the freshest index. As a result, search engines such as Google take note of sites that change frequently. The more frequently your site changes, the more frequently they will come back and reindex your site.

Don’t Rely on SEO

This article has focused on some basics of SEO, but if there is one rule to follow in developing your website it is this: do not rely solely on search engines. There are plenty of ways to develop a steady stream of traffic to your website outside of search engines. Link exchanges, purchasing links, advertising, participating in online communities are great ways to build your traffic. Don’t be afraid to purchase advertising. If you have a great website, people will refer others to your website.

The lesson in all of this is that good search engine optimization stems from organized development, fresh content, and generally an attempt to develop a useful website for your visitors. If you do this, you will be surprised at how SEO really takes care of itself. Search engines are looking for welldeveloped, contentrich websites. Simply give them what they are looking for and let them worry about filtering out all the people who are attempting to ขtrickข them.

Copyright 2004 Mark Daoust

About The Author

Mark Daoust is the owner of SiteReference.com and TowerSearch.com. Add your site to TowerSearch to receive a guaranteed #1 position for free!

This article was posted on April 21, 2004

by Mark Daoust

Importance of Meta Tags Optimization

Importance of Meta Tags Optimization

by: Buniei Ahn

In this article, we simply talk about what Meta Tags are, their importance, the important Meta Tags and useful tips on how to optimize your Meta Tags for a better ranking with the search engines. กMeta Tag Optimization is an important aspect of your site optimization process. Careful handling can get you great Ranking Results ก What are Meta Tags?
Meta Tags are the information inserted in the area of the HTML code of your web pages, where apart from the Title Tag, other information inserted is not visible to the person surfing your web page but is intended for the search engine crawlers. Meta Tags are included so that the search engines are able to list your site in their indexes more accurately.
Using Meta Tags in HTML is not necessary while making your web pages. There are many websites that don’t feel the requirement to use Meta Tags at all. In short Meta information is used to communicate information to the search engine crawlers that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Infoseek and AltaVista were the first major crawler based search engines to support Meta keywords Tag in 1996. Inktomi and Lycos too followed thereafter.
Why are Meta Tags used?
Meta Tags were originally designed to provide webmasters with a way to help search engines know what their site was about. This in turn helped the search engines decide how to rank the sites in their search results. Making Meta Tags is a simple process. As the competition increased, webmasters started manipulating this tool through spamming of keywords. In turn most search engines withdrew their support to Meta keywords Tag, which included Lycos and AltaVista. From being considered as one of the most reliable and important tool, Meta Tags are now often abused. In the present day scenario a vital feature that the Meta Tags provide to the websites is the ability to control, to a certain extent, how some search engines describe its web pages. Apart from this, Meta Tags also offer the ability to specify that a certain website page should not be indexed.
Using Meta Tags, however, provides no guarantee that your website page would rank highly in the search engine rankings. Due to the rampant abuse and manipulation of the Meta keywords Tag by webmasters, most search engines don’t support it anymore.
Types of Meta Tags
The more important Meta Tags are discussed below in detail.
The Title Tag
The Title Tag is not a Meta Tag. However, since it’s a very important Tag, we thought it necessary to discuss it here. The Title Tag is an HTML code that shows the words that appear at the top title bar of your browser. The Title Tag is not displayed anywhere else on the page. It is these words or phrase that appear as the title of your page in the hyperlink listings on the search engine results.
The users inturn click on this hyperlink to go to your website from Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Therefore, the significance of the Title Tag is evident as all search engines use the Title Tag to gather information about your site.
The Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description Tag is an HTML code that allows you to give a short and concise summary of your web page content. The words placed in this Meta Tag, are often used in the SERP, just below the Title Tag as a brief description of your page. In the Search Engine Results Pages, after reading the Title of the page, a user goes through the description of the page and decides whether she wants to go to your site or not. It is therefore important that your Meta Description Tag is nicely composed describing your page offering while enticing the user to click on your listing.
The Meta Keywords Tag
Most search engines do not read the Meta Keywords Tag anymore. It is okay to ignore the Meta Keywords Tags. However, if you feel more comfortable using it, you can have about 15 important nonrepetitive keywords in this Tag, separated by commas.
Meta Robots Tag
The Meta Robots Tag gives you the ability to specify whether search engines should index that page or follow the links appearing on that page. However, there is no need for using Meta Robots tag if one is already using detailed robots.txt file to block any specific indexing.
The various commands used under Meta Robots Tag are:
Index: allows the spider to index that page.
Noindex: instructs the spider not to index the page.
Follow: instructs the spider to follow the links from that page and index them.
Nofollow: instructs the spider not to follow links from that page for indexing.
Note: Use only one of the above given commands.
If you have not specified any Meta Robots Tag on a page, by default, the spiders understand that the page and all the links appearing on that page are open for indexing. Therefore, it makes more sense to use this Meta Tag in case you don’t want certain parts of your web page indexed.

About The Author

Finding Your Home Business Niche

Copyright © Buniei Ahn, The Home Biz Guy

http://www.internetmarketpower.com

http://www.pluginprofit.com/main3666

[email protected]

This article was posted on June 09, 2004

by Buniei Ahn

Are You Getting The Most From Your Meta Tags?

Are You Getting The Most From Your Meta Tags?

by: Francisco Aloy

As any Web Business startup knows, creating a Website is a bunch of work! You have to bother with content, layout, graphics and HTML links, just to name a few. What about your Meta Tags?

Meta Tags are words that are placed in your web page to provide a title, description and keywords to the Search Engine spiders or crawlers. They are not visible to visitors. To see a sample, open any website and click กViewก on the menubar, and choose กSource.ก Youกll see the Meta Tags up top, within the Head section of the web page.

Most Search Engines will rank your site on how well your Meta Tags provide a description of the content of your web pages. Google is the exception; it also takeกs into account the number and quality of backward links to your website. Here lately, thereกs been differing opinions on the relevancy of Googleกs Page Rank system. Some experts don’t consider it accurate or necessary.

Yet and still, there are many other Search Engines and a further study of Meta Tags is in order. We are going to base our Meta Tags revision on a tool known as a word Frequency Counter. It counts and separates the words in a web page or document, giving you an idea of what words are used most.

Here are some Web based Frequency Counters:

http://www.mytranslate.com/wordfrequency.htm

http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/tools/word_counter.html

http://www.writewords.org.uk/word_count.asp

http://www.writewords.org.uk/phrase_count.asp

http://web4future.com/free/wordcount.htm

http://www.keywordcount.com/

Each one of the Frequency Counters above has different uses and qualifications. The Writewords counter has two flavors: word and phrase count. The Web4Future counter is Web based or a standalone download.

How to use them:

Copy and paste the content of the web page in question and see what the top word frequencies are. You can eliminate most articles and modifiers and concentrate on pure words. As an example: If your web page is about red and blue widgets, the words ‘red/blue/widgetsก should have the highest frequency.

A Word of Caution About Writing Content:

Use the Frequency Counters AFTER you write the web page content. Don’t allow word frequency to get in the way of your natural writing style. Do NOT attempt to hit a certain frequency percentage; youกll be penalized by many Search Engines for too much keyword usage.

In Closing

Though the word Frequency Counters are good tools for a quick check, nothing compares to laserfocused writing for good Meta Tags information. Let your writing flow naturally and stay concentrated on your subject keywords. If you do that, youกll find it easy to weave your keywords into your content and Meta Tags.

by Francisco Aloy

(C)2004 Francisco Aloy

About The Author

Francisco Aloy is the creator of The Newbie Business Guide.

Constructive and clear information for your new Internet Business.

To see more of Mr. Aloyกs articles, visit: http://www.newbiebusinessguide.com

This article was posted on January 12

by Francisco Aloy

Writing Search Engine Friendly Webpages

Writing Search Engine Friendly Webpages

by: Michael Lawrence

In order to tap the huge stream of targeted traffic an internet search engine can provide a website you need to master a few common sense principles when crafting your webpages.

You can rest assured no sites receive top search engine rankings by chance in competitive keyword markets. They spend time and money to acquire and maintain their search engine positioning. Targeting your keyword market precisely and applying the principles in this article will help you compete in any keyword marketplace.

When crafting your web pages for the search engines remember that a search engine spider is not human. They only read the html code for your website, they do not actually กseeก what your site looks like.

1. Use static html pages not dynamically generated web pages wherever you can. Some dynamically created WebPages are not indexable by the search engines. If they can’t index your pages you might as well not exist no matter how useful your website might be.

2. Use your main keywords in meta ขtitleข tag, meta ขdescriptionข tag, and meta ขkeywordsข tags,

3. Use your keywords in the first line of your web page ขbodyข and within ขheaderข tags throughout your html document. Use ขboldingข of keywords where appropriate. Using your keywords within bold and header tags makes them stand out as important. Also having them near the beginning of your web page is also an indicator of importance in the search engine’s eyes.

4. Use your keywords in img กaltก and link ‘titleก tags. These tags don’t show up as visible text but they can help give a search engine a better idea of what your link is about. Resist the urge to stuff a lot of keywords into these tags but definitely use them to your advantage and place a select few of your most important keywords in there.

5. Don’t use a lot of tables in your html. Use css style sheets to store webpage ขstyleข definitions if you can. Storing style information in Css reduces the overall size of your WebPages considerably allowing them to load much faster.

6. Don’t use a lot of outbound or affiliate links within your webpage. Keep your web pages focused on providing content first, not making money. . Search Engine’s don’t like WebPages that are just filled with affiliate links and banners. These pages have little or no content and do not score well because of this.

7. Maintain a high กvisible text: graphicsก ratio on your webpage. This is a similar idea to 6 plus your pages will load faster with less graphics on them.

8. Repeat your major keyword phrases near the end of your webpage in a sentence with the keywords bolded. Optionally place a short sentence in a header tag.

After you have created your webpage and applied these principles upload the page to your web host and visit the following URL to analyze your work:

http://www.webmastertoolkit.com/webpageanalyser.shtml

I have chosen this tool because it is very easy to understand and it is free. Use the suggestions this site provides and reedit your webpage. When you have the page optimized to your satisfaction visit:

http://www.submitexpress.com

and submit your webpage URL to the major search engines for Free.

Congratulations, you’re first กoptimizedก web page is on the internet and submitted to the major search engines. Get some rest, this is only the beginning of your adventure 😉

Copyright 2005 Cobrasurf.com

About The Author

Michael Lawrence is the webmaster for http://www.cobrasurf.com a free autosurf traffic exchange. He also publishes a web promotion related blog at http://cobrasurf.blogspot.com.

This article was posted on August 14

by Michael Lawrence

Tags

Tags

by: Sandra Stammberger

There is a new branch of the Web growing like a well organized storm cloud. This recent trend on the Web can be used to strengthen your presence with major search engines and reach an active audience that is highly interested in your content. Welcome to the world of กfolksonomyก and ‘tagging.ก

What is Folksonomy and Tagging?

Folksonomy is a combination of the words folks and taxonomy meaning กpeople classification management.ก This allows users some level of control over how the web is organized. One of the most popular tools of the folksonomy concept is tags. Tagging, in the context of this article, is the process of labeling a piece data with metadata.

Using Tagging

About The Author

Sandra Stammberger is the owner of Insider Scripts. At Insider Scriptกs programmers are working around the clock to develop affordable, powerful money making scripts that will help you drive traffic to your business. http://www.insiderscripts.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 03

by Sandra Stammberger