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Check a website with complete set of tools

6th February 2012 |

Checking a website to make sure it is at peak performance is an essential component of web design and running an online business. However, if you go to check a website you’ll discover you need to use a range of tools and services from a cross-section of different suppliers; so it can be cumbersome and take time. There are, however, some tools which will provide a comprehensive analysis of your website all in one convenient place.

Check a website from a marketing perspective

To check a website for how well it does in terms of marketing you need to use the Marketing Grader from the HubSpot stable of tools. With Marketing Grader you can get a host of information on how well your site is doing and you are also given precise instructions as to what you need to do in order to improve your score.

However, as good as the all-in-one marketing testing that HubSpot can do with your website, there are still plenty of other things you need to check to ensure that your website is working well. These include load times, the reliability of your server and how rapidly your traffic is growing.

Great set of tools to check a website

A great set of tools which performs all these functions – and many more – can be found at Stat My Web. This site has a full range of testing which can be done individually, or by typing in your domain name at the top of the page you can run a battery of tests to check your site.

Stat My Web

True, you can find the tools in Stat My Web in some obvious places, like Alexa, but they are all available in one page and produce one simple report. In other words, Stat My Web provides convenience.

Not knowing the details provided on places like Stat My Web or at Marketing Grader means that you are trying to run your website in the dark. Having analytics data from something like Google Analytics only gives you half the picture. You need to check a website for a host of other factors not covered by analytics software. Using Stat My Web and Marketing Grader means you will have a great deal more information so you can boost your online presence more efficiently.

And one other thing – you can use these tools not only to help your own business but to check a website from a competitor…!

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Google to penalise ad-heavy websites – is your website at risk?

15th November 2011 |

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, announced at the PubCon conference that ad heavy websites might be penalized in the near future. What exactly are ad heavy websites and is your own website at risk?

What did Matt Cutts say at the conference?

Matt CuttsMatt Cutts said that Google was testing algorithms that determine how much content is available above the fold on a web page. He warned that websites that have ads that obscure the content could get in trouble.

You should ask yourself if your website visitors see the content of your website or if there’s something distracting or annoying on the page.

Google is serious about eliminating these pages from the search results

Google’s Panda algorithm update already focused on low quality pages that were created around ads. Matt Cutts’ announcement suggests that Google is working on more algorithms that remove these pages from the search results.

What is an ad heavy web page?

An ad heavy web page is a page on which it is difficult to find the actual content. A typical ad heavy page can look like this:

You should not do it like this

What does this mean to your website?

If it’s hard to find the actual content on your web pages, you should redesign your website. Make it easier to find the content of your web pages and do not plaster your pages with third party ads.

Google is serious about eliminating spam and low quality pages from the search results. If you want to get lasting high rankings, only use ethical search engine optimization methods. Optimize your web pages with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer to make sure that Google gets what they want on your web pages and try to improve the backlinks of your website.

 

Article by Axandra SEO software

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Flash pages still won’t get high rankings on Google

31st August 2011 |

Some webmasters prefer to have a pure Flash website because they can look very impressive. Although Google can index Flash content to some extend, it is very unlikely that a Flash page will get high rankings on Google.

What’s the problem with Flash pages?

Flash content cannot be indexed by search engines. If your website is a pure Flash site, then you can be sure that search engines won’t be able to see 95% of your website content.

Google has several official statements regarding Flash content:

“Search engines are text based. This means that in order to be crawled and indexed, your content needs to be in text format. [...] Any content you embed in these files should also be available in text format or it won’t be accessible to search engines. [...]

We recommend that you use rich-media technologies like Flash primarily for decorative purposes, and instead use HTML for content and navigation.”

“Make sure that your site has a reasonable, seamless experience for visitors without Flash.

This may involve creating HTML-only equivalents for your Flash-based content that will automatically be shown to visitors who can’t view Flash.”

Adding your content in the noscript tag won’t help

Theoretically, adding your web page content in the noscript tag on your web pages should make sure that search engines get the right content. Unfortunately, Google’s John Mueller indicates that this doesn’t work anymore:

“One of the problems with noscript is – as others have mentioned – that it’s been abused quite a bit by spammers, so search engines might treat it with some suspicion.

So if this is really important content, then I wouldn’t rely on all search engines treating your noscript elements in the same way as normal, visible, static content on your pages. If this is ‘just’ for comments, then that might be worth considering.”

What does this mean to your website

If you want to get a reasonable amount of visitors through search engines, don’t use Flash and other multimedia elements for the main contents of your web pages:

  • Only use Flash for decorative purposes.
  • The navigation of your website should use regular HTML a href links. Do not use fancy JavaScript or Flash navigation menus. Most search engines cannot parse them.
  • The main content of your web pages should be available as simple text.

Use the free search engine spider simulator in IBP to find out how search engines see your website. If the spider simulator does not show the content of your web pages, it might be time to redesign your website.

Use the Top 10 Optimizer in IBP to make sure that Google finds your website relevant to the right keywords. IBP is a popular SEO software tool that helps you to get first page rankings on Google and other search engines for your keywords.

Article by Axandra SEO software

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Google says that valid HTML code is a quality signal

28th July 2011 |

Webmasters are not sure about the importance of valid HTML code. Some think that it is very important while other say that it doesn’t matter. Last week, Googlesaid that valid HTML code is a quality signal:

“Why does validation matter? There are different perspectives on validation—at Google there are different approaches and priorities too—but the Webmaster Team considers validation a baseline quality attribute. It doesn’t guarantee accessibility, performance, or maintainability, but it reduces the number of possible issues that could arise and in many cases indicates appropriate use of technology.

valid HTML code

While paying a lot of attention to validation, we’ve developed a system to use it as a quality metric to measure how we’re doing on our own pages. Here’s what we do: we give each of our pages a score from 0-10 points, where 0 is worst (pages with 10 or more HTML and CSS validation errors) and 10 is best (0 validation errors). We started doing this more than two years ago, first by taking samples, now monitoring all our pages.”

What is valid HTML code?

Most web pages are written in HTML. As for every language, HTML has its own grammar, vocabulary and syntax, and every document written in HTML is supposed to follow these rules.

Like any language, HTML is constantly changing. As HTML has become a relative complex language, it’s very easy to make mistakes. HTML code that is not following the official rules is called invalid HTML code.

Why is valid HTML code important?

Search engines have to parse the HTML code of your web site to find the relevant content. If your HTML code contains errors, search engines might not be able to find everything on the page.

Search engine crawler programs obey the HTML standard. They can only index your web site if it is compliant to the HTML standard. If there’s a mistake in your web page code, they might stop crawling your web site and they might lose what they’ve collected so far because of the error.

Although most major search engines can deal with minor errors in HTML code, a single missing bracket in your HTML code can be the reason if your web page cannot be found in search engines.

If you don’t close some tags properly, or if some important tags are missing, search engines might ignore the complete content of that page.

How can you check the validity of your HTML code?

Download IBP and select the HTML validator in the “Tools” menu. Enter the address of a web page and you will see how many errors the page contains.

Although not all HTML errors will cause problems for your search engine rankings, some of them can keep web spiders from indexing your web pages.

Valid HTML code makes it easier for search engine spiders to index your site. Checking the HTML code of your web pages only takes a few minutes but it will have a major impact on the accessibility of your web pages

Article by Axandra SEO software


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How to Stop Visitors From Leaving Your Website in Three Seconds

30th May 2011 |

By Marcus J Miller

When you approach a company offering web design packages, one of the first things you should consider is how you are going to prevent people from leaving your website straight away once they have arrived. You can do all the marketing and promotion that you want to, but at the end of the day, if people visit your site and don’t like what they see then you will lose business and sales.

Clear Navigation

This is where a good designer of web design packages can really make a difference. The navigation of your website is one of the most important factors to consider because if people visit your site and can’t find their way around then they will leave within seconds.

The general consensus is that people should be able to find what they are looking for within a couple of clicks, so make sure you find a web designer who will make the site easy to navigate to keep people there for longer.

Attractive Design

The design of your website is one of the first things that people will notice when they land on it. A dull, unattractive site is very easy to dismiss, and if people don’t like what they see then they will find it all the easier to leave your site.

A good web designer should have the relevant skills to create a solid, clean and original design which makes your website stand out from the rest and keeps people intrigued to explore the site further.

Powerful Headings

If people don’t find exactly what they are looking for as soon as they arrive then you can bet that they will be gone before five seconds is up. One of the best ways to make sure that they hang around long enough to find out more is to use powerful headings which grasp their attention and pull them in.

The best headings are the ones that offer a benefit to the reader such as the promise of a solution to a problem that they are facing. If you provide them with this promise in the heading then you can help to make a real difference on how long they stay on the site.

Useful Content on Every Page

If you manage to create compelling headings then you should follow this up with content to match. Don’t promise something in the heading that you don’t deliver on in the content, because visitors will soon see that there is no substance and will disappear.

Use your content to provide valuable information, answer questions, help your visitors and provide them with advice. This will stop them leaving too quickly and will keep them on the site longer, as well as building trust, all of which will help you to make more conversions.

Don’t Lose Your Visitors

By focusing on the above areas you can make a real difference to your website and encourage people to stay for a lot longer. If you fail to provide your visitors with good reasons to stay then they will leave, simple as that.

A good designer of web design packages will help you with the navigation and design, and then you can either focus on the content yourself or hire a content writer to sort it out for you. Either way, make sure that you have all the elements in place and you can expect people to hang around for longer making them more likely to convert.

Marcus Miller is a website designer and Internet marketing expert with more than ten years experience building and promoting websites.

Marcus’s current venture is Web Design & SEO Packages – a new way of buying and promoting a website for your business at an affordable, fixed price.

If you want more than a website and want a way to promote and build your business online, then give Marcus a shout: ten.segakcapngisedetisbewnull@sucram

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marcus_J_Miller
http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Stop-Visitors-From-Leaving-Your-Website-in-Three-Seconds&id=6301690

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