July 7, 2008
10:26 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Since I inundate myself with code on a dailly basis - be it procedural or declarative - it is quite alarming when I realize that many Web designers and developers are still using simple HyperText in error.
One of the prime mistakes I see rather often is the misuse of the hierarchical header tags. These header elements are referenced by the h1 through h6 tags and have the ability to separate your pages content into contextually relevant chunks thereby also giveing your code more linguistic meaning.
Of most importance from a search engine optimization perspective is the h1 tag, which serves as a document's on-page title. The title tag, aptly named, is used rather to supply the document's title in its meta-data. Given the nature of titles, you should only declare one h1 per page.
As headers are hierarchical in behavior, the next header tag you should use after your h1 is an h2. This will target a more contextually specific page division.
When increasing specificity after an h2, use an h3. If you were moving onto the next topic that was more or less within the same scope as your h2 - you would then use another h2 for the next content division.
Think of the proper use of headers as analogous to skimming through a big novel or technical book. You have one title, a few parts, and within those parts you have the chapters. Since Web copy on a given page does not exceed very long lengths (typically), you shouldn't have the need to go past the h3 tag when drafting your markup.
Back to our analogy: book title -> h1; book "parts" -> h2; book chapters -> h3.
I provide a more detailed example of how to properly use HTML headers in "SEO How-To: Using Hierarchical Headers." Also, I discuss header usage outside the scope of Web copy body text (using headers for headlining sidebars, navigation, etc.).
Jeffrey Olchovy is a Web developer, designer and marketing strategist.
10:07 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
On July 14, 2008, Outsell Inc., projected that companies will spend over 105 billion dollars on online advertising - well over the $98.5 billion projected for TV, Radio and Movie advertising budgets combined. It should be noted however, that these figures also included the cost of Web site development, contstruction and maintenance - and in my opinion, rightly so.
The Internet, just like TV, Radio and Movies is also a platform for advertising. However, it shouldn't only be treated as such. Yes, a successful business Web site needs to consider the finer points of online marketing when contracting its construction, however, the finer points of online marketing is essentially creating a Web presence that is loaded with informative content, unique applications and aninteractive user experience that will send your competitors into the backseat of your industry.
So, yes. The Internet is more than a platform for advertising. It is an extension of our physicial world which also has a marketing mechanism. Craving out your company's top spot in this virtual or digital landscape by keeping innovation in mind will automatically fuel the marketing component.
I originally spoke about this topic on blog that relays information for the medical industry. You can read the original entry here at "Online Advertising Will Surpass TV, Radio and Movies."
Jeffrey Olchovy is a Web developer, designer and marketing strategist.
09:53 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Not a week goes by where I don't - somewhere - make mention of the importance of having a blog installed on your primary domain. See, just having the ability to add content to your Web site without contacting your Web master (if you currently don't have a content management system), is worth the trival five-minute installation alone. And if you think you have the motivation to post entries on a regular basis, even better.
Search engines crave new content - there is no doubt about it. If you are adding three blog posts per week to your site, you are essentially keeping the spiders crawling on a continual basis. By doing this, you are also adding three good pages of content to your domain (excluding tag, category, archive pages - which should be included in your Robots Protocol). Adding these pages beefs up yet another metric used to calculate your position in the SERPs.
What I like to do, when runnning short of creative ideas for blog entries, is to find the latest breaking news for a landmark topic in my related industry. I then sum it up in a meaty post and give my two cents on the exposition. To add more reputability, I'll add on some anchors to external resources, information, etc. The sooner I get this entry out, the sooner I have the chance to have journalists scrape my entry itself or I'll have a better chance of ranking for a soon-to-be popular keyword phrase. This keyword phrase will be the topic of the original news source that will undoubtedly have a great amount of people searching for it when it makes the national news. Even if the queries die out after the original source article loses popularity I'll have gained some pretty impressive visibility in the long run as well.
I seem to write about this on a weekly basis, and I hope there are a few out there who are heeding this advice.
You can read more about this technique at "Marketing This Season's Fad Procedures" where I flesh out the above with a medical-industry-specific example and at "Physician Blogging Revisited: Keeping with the Times" - the formal entry that inspired me to relay this topic on Fast Company.
Jeffrey Olchovy is a Web developer, designer and marketing strategist.
03:55 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
If there are any late approaching developers who are just getting their feet wet with proper declarative markup, they may find themselves running back to table based coding quicker than they expected. Most browsers handle CSS quite differently from each, and when working with such temperamental on-page elements like HTML forms, many developers start running for the hills.
Using nested tables for forms, however, is semantically incorrect. According to the W3C, if you are not marking up tabular data, you should not be using table based markup.
Floats are a convenient way around such problems, yet their correct implementation requires knowledge of cross-browser CSS targeting - if you want them to behave the right way.
For example, if you were to float an item in a parent container, you are essentially removing bespoke from the flow of the document. What happens next is that the parent container will collapse, essentially losing its intended layout.
The easiest way to fix this problem is to use an easy-clearing or clear-fix method that will expand the collapsed float.
For my preferred method of fixing such problems (and this works in every browser - even their legacy versions), navigate over to "I Still Ain't Afraid of No Floats: Part II" at my ITKnowledgeExchange Blog entitled "Taming the Wild Wild Web."
Jeffrey Olchovy is a Web developer, designer and marketing strategist.
04:02 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
I recently started guest blogging at ITKnowledgeExchange under a column called "Taming the Wild Wild Web." Ill give a formal introduction to the column here only because I'll be discussing largely the same topics and development best practices I do here:
Taming the Wild Wild Web will focus on the importance of
developing sites by keeping Web standards in mind. Great attention will
be paid to front-end coding practices using advanced XHTML and CSS.
Learn to create effective user experiences by utilizing progressive
enhancements with Javascript and how to implement and integrate
back-end code to simplify and demystify the abstractions laid over the
Internet. The relative importance of utilizing Web standards to promote
search engine optimization, accessibility and usability will also be
covered in great detail.
For my maiden-post, I covered the importance of the correct usage of floats when styling your Web documents.
However, when doing so, I had to make a distinction between designers and developers to further my thesis.
This got me thinking about the real difference between the two and has inspired me to write a length article about the topic at hand. So, as I do see more community interaction on this domain than any other, I'd like to open the question up for user feedback:
What is the difference, to you, between Web designers and developers?
03:55 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
After my analogy between LEGOs, Play-Doh and CSS (see "A Bettery Way for Organizing CSS"), I'll go out on a further limb and compare the best practices for URL canonicalization with what the Catholic Church has been doing since the Second Vatican Council.
So like church canon, your URLs need to point to definitive and unique sources if you don't want to get caught up in a duplicate content filter on the major search engines.
I explain the analogy in further detail on the flexible philosophy with my URL Canonicalization, the Catholic Church and Your Web Site entry, but on Demystifying the Web I'll save you the reading and provide you with the SEO best practices:
If your site is hosted on an Apache Web server, you want to set up .htaccess files to make sure all URL requests point to either a www or non-www version of your domain. We also want to fix the problem of trailing slashes and default document redirects. Both of these things will shave off your typical duplicate content problems on new domain installations.
Follow the steps in my URL canonicalization entry after you create an ASCII encoded file called .htaccess in your root directory.
Oh yeah, this does not apply to those who are hosted on IIS servers unless you have software that imitates Apahce's mod_rewrite functions.
03:41 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
I shouldn't have to say this, but I'm going to.
Title tags are extremely important when determining a page's position in the search engine results pages!
Again, I repeat, in bold face:
Title tags are exremely important when determining a page's position in the search engine results pages!
Ok. With great attention and care should you craft the title of your Web documents. They carry huge semantic meaning as they are a component of the page's meta-data - that is, the information about the page itself.
With this being said, the title tag is the first place you want your targeted keyword appearing and as close to the beginning as possible at that.
A good heuristic to follow is keeping the length of the title to about 65 characters or less as that will typically be the cut off size for most major search engines.
But forget the search engines for now. The title of your page is what is going to attract your visitors. Well, this and anchor text, but how often do your get to control outside sources' anchor text?
So, when you craft your title, design it with tabloid-like headlines in mind. Grab the reader's attention. Go check out the front-page of Digg and scan for titles that begin with "[Company Name here] - Our News." I'll save you the time. You won't find garbage like that on the front-page.
Again, engage the reader and use your targeted keyword.
For more about crafting good titles, check out the original entry I wrote "From Title Tags to Traffic: Trapping Topical Web Visits."
03:30 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
What do those three have in common?
Everything and nothing.
I recently wrote about my preferred way of organizing CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and unlike the other articles on the topic, I'm not talking about organizing your code after you complete it - you know, like tidying up indents and sticking flags all around. I mean, yes, you do this as you write but to what extent?
See, I'm going for organization during the property and value declaration process. Now this is a topic I have yet to see get exposure.
I look at it from the following perspective - using a mass style reset or not.
So if you were to take a blob of play-doh from a container and begin to make a, say, flower. What do typically always do with your blob before anything else?
That's right, roll it out into a big, honking tube.
And that's what I'm saying we do when we transponse HTML code to CSS. We always go about designing our end product with a sequential, ordinate production sequence that largely relies on the display property.
So, when I write my code, I see the following design patterns occuring:
I declare my display property. If they inherit the correct style, I forego it. But after that I typically go for the larger and positioning and outerbounding properties that determine the ultimate on-screen placement.
Then we worry about font, color, and all the decorative hoop-la.
Enter our LEGO relation.
If I were to ask you what the best determinents were for deciding where any given LEGO block would best fit on a board what would you say?
And remember we are talking about fit, first and foremost.
Would it be the color? No. The decorative sticker label on its face? No. It's size? Getting warmer. It's shape? Bingo.
So, usually once we have the display, margin and padding, positioning, etc., down we can declare the other intricacies like color, font and background images.
While this philosophy doesn't apply to every line of code you'll be transforming, it's a great pattern that I noticed and the analogy I see with LEGOs and Play-Doh makes work fun again.
I orginally wrote about this philosophy of development for the blog entry entitled "A Better Way for Organizing CSS."
03:05 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Google recently announced that it was able to now crawl through Flash Web sites. Hog wash.
Well, not really. I'm sure that they have no problem extracting data, but for someone not in the know about optimized HTML code - there's no way in hell that text stripped from Flash can retain the semantic meaning found within good development and strong coding practices.
So, verdict is in, this news release from Google is very, very slanted and subjective.
Aside from that first point, Flash Web sites are typically composed of one page and, often times, rely on a call to an external Javascript or JScript file. These caveats are still recipes for search engine optimization failure!
Before Flash Web site owner's rejoice, they best still think about getting themselves a nice clean coded XHTML/CSS Web site.
I just started implementing Flash-imitating imagery which takes advantage of Scriptalicious/Prototype and JQuery Javascript Frameworks. I get the same emotional response from viewers as Flash and (yeah, there are fancy effect limitations, but..) all that content is parsed and able to be read by the major search engines. Bonus.
For the orginal write up I did about this news release see: Optimized Web Design Doesn't Mix with Flash.
02:55 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Today marks the relauch of my Fast Company blog.
For the past two months I have had the single focus of promoting my Advanced Marketing for Cosmetic Surgeons Blog, however as I have extended my guest blogging and personal writing/development/designing duties into other areas, I feel compelled to discuss them as well.
I feel good about this relaunch, if only for the reason that it has now become a broader application of everything Interweb.
I felt many a time when writing relays of posts for cosmeticSEO that all of those search engine optimization and search marketing techniques really applied to any business interested in generating a higher online visibility.
With that being said, welcome to all those who are interested in such topics! And, I mean, who isn't?
I hope you enjoy the blog's new focus and let's now Demystify the Web.
