December « 2009 « Common Sense Web Design | Chicago Freelance Web Designer Christopher Merrill

Archive for December, 2009

SEO Tools Are Your Friends — No, Really

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Many of my clients are hesitant to look at any of the substantial number of search engine optimization (SEO) tools available to them. Google Analytics, for one, can reveal a wealth of information to you, from what keywords are being used by people to find you, to which search engine or web site they were using when they came to your page.

Yes, a gmail account is required.

Most web hosting packages also offer free statistics-viewing software for each account hosted with them.

Also available online are software and tools – with names like the following:

meta-tag analyzer
rank checker
keyword analyzer
link popularity
keyword popularity
keyword suggestion
keyword density
page rank check

Don’t let these names scare you: they’re a lot more technical sounding than they really are.

Some web sites that contain some of these free online tools are:

http://www.seocentro.com
http://www.seochat.com

and of course there are many others. Keep in mind these are free tools, and no tool is likely to be 100% accurate.

In fact, it’s a good idea to consider a variety of tools when analyzing your web site statistics, so as to see overall trends, rather than exact numerical amounts. Then, once you’ve identified the trends, you make strategies for the future.

Posted in Marketing Your Website | 5 Comments »

Use the Flash Video Encoder to Optimize Online Videos

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

You may have experienced this while trolling the Web: you click on a link to an online video, and you have to wait, wait, wait until the video downloads to your computer before you can view it.

Videos in any format are large files — very large. Unless the video is optimized in some way, there’s an excellent chance that the video will take an eternity to download. You can upload the video to Youtube (an excellent idea for SEO), however, the quality of the video is likely to suffer.

A better solution is to use Flash’s video encoder to convert the file from Quicktime, Windows Media, or whatever the original format, to Flash so that you can achieve the maximum in quality with a minimum of download time.

You can also use Dreamweaver to format the look and feel of the video controls as they appear on your screen by accessing “Insert”, “Media”, and “Flash Video” to embed the appropriate code on the Web page.

Online videos can be a valuable tool in disseminating information about your product or services and can add to the visual appeal of your Web site, but unless the video is optimized for quick download, your users will likely be turned off by the slow download time, no matter how wonderful the video is.

Another word about online videos: less is more. A common mistake is to assemble an online video that is too long, or one that doesn’t get to the important point until well into the video, a point at which many users will loose interest. If you do assemble an online video, make sure that the video gets to the point of the matter immediately, so that the user is likely to receive the information you want to convey before turning elsewhere.

Tags: best file format for online videos, converting quicktime files, Flash video encoder
Posted in Advanced | No Comments »

Sizing Photos for Web Pages

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Here’s a big amateur web site give-away: photos that are too small.

A photograph on a web page should be displayed at a size that is large enough to allow the user to recognize and relish what has been pictured.

Take a look at the images that you have posted online: can all the important elements of the original be clearly seen on screen when posted on your web page? If not, then you should go back to the original image and resize it.

Here are recommended ranges:

600-700 pixels wide for large
250-350 pixels wide for medium
100-250 pixels wide for thumbnails

As for total file size (for quick downloading) here are some recommended ranges:

large: 60k
medium: 40k
small: 5k

Cropping may be necessary for images that contain a specific detail that must be recognizable on the screen.

Length considerations are important too. The image should fit within the screen vertically as well as horizontally. If the user must scroll in either direction (horizontally or vertically) to see the entire image, then the image dimensions should be reduced.

Posted in General Web Design Tips | No Comments »

The Sociable Plugin Makes Linking to Your Blog a Snap

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

If you look at the end of this particular blog entry (as well as all the other blog entries on this blog) you will notice a string of small icons that looks something like this:

Users can click on these icons at the end of a posting if they would like to link to your blog posting on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Sphinn, del.icio.us, Mixx, StumbleUpon and/or several of the other social networking sites available. In addition, the Sociable Plugin can insert an icon that makes it simple for users to print out your blog entry.

These icons were assembled into this blog through the use of the Sociable Plug in. Information regarding the Sociable Plugin can be found at:

Blogplay.com

Follow their instructions on how to install the plugin, and select the particular social networking plugins that you desire, and these icons will automatically appear at the bottom of each posting.

Learn more about the WordPress plugins.

Posted in Advanced | No Comments »

Style Sheet Problem with Chrome Browser

Friday, December 4th, 2009

With the Chrome browser I’m seeing something I’ve not seen before on any other browsers: when styles are inserted automatically by Dreamweaver into the header of the document, these styles may not read accurately when the page is viewed in the Chrome browser.

For this reason, it’s advisable to always control document styles through a separate CSS style sheet. The style.css file is then linked in the header of the code, something like this:

Avoid allowing any web authoring program to insert unwanted styles between the head tags. To be safe, always define every new style used in your html page on your corresponding .css page, rather than attempt to define the style within the body of the html page. It makes for cleaner code and friendlier search engines!