HOME | FEATURES | NEWS | NOTW |

FEATURES

How do I get more people to visit my web site?

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation

The more people that visit your website, the more possibilities there are for sales and a larger turnover of business. It's that simple. The problem is: there are more than a billion websites on the Internet and it's easy to get lost in the crowd.

There are two primary ways people will load up your website in their browser. They'll type in your URL directly (having read it somewhere, like in your advertising or on your business card), or, more often than not, they'll come to you via a search engine (e.g. Google) - but they'll only find your website if it's ranked high enough.

When searching for something, a search engine will often spit back a list of results that numbers into the millions. Even searching with several terms (thereby narrowing the search parameters), can still produce a list that runs into the hundreds of thousands.

If your website isn't in at least the top 100 results, it's unlikely anyone will be visiting.

So, how do I get a higher search engine ranking?

You can get higher up a list of search results through Search Engine Optimisation - by optimising your website for the search engines.

Search engines continually spider the Internet, collecting and updating information about websites, which they index and add to their vast website-databases. Not surprisingly, search engine companies are highly secretive about the algorithms they use to rank pages - to prevent people using tricks to skew results in their favour.

The one thing you can be sure about is: search engine spiders will examine your website's pages, both their content and their metatags.

Content - Is your website information rich?
Make sure the written content of your webpages is clear, concise, on-topic, and kept up-to-date.
Metatags - Are your metatags relevant?
Metatags are blocks of text - title, description, keywords - that don't display on the page, but are hidden in the code "underneath". Make sure your metatags accurately and succinctly reflect your website's content.

Description This should ideally be 1-3 concise sentences describing your business, its location, the services you offer and/or the products you sell.

Keywords This should be a comma-separated list of words and phrases that relate to your business.

Is there optimisation software I can use?

A good CMS (Content Management System) should have some form of SEO tools built in, or at least available as a plug-in module.

A good SEO programme will enable you to thoroughly analyse your website (keyword frequency, and so on), and suggest ways to fine tune it for spidering by search engines.

An SEO programme should also offer some facility for comparing your site to those of your competition - if your competitor's website is ranked higher than yours, the programme should enable you to determine why.

Category: Features
Filed: 2008-11-10 09:49:46 by Stephen

Will Silverlight dim the Flash light?

Silverlight is a free plug-in from Microsoft that will display interactive media content (graphics, animations, and video) in a Flash-like manner inside a web browser.

Flash-like is the key point. Microsoft is going head-to-head with Adobe's Flash Player in an effort to put a dent in Flash's near ubiquitous market dominance. Remember: Flash is no longer bundled with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (as of IE7).

Silverlight supports progressive download and play of content, and with good bandwidth, video will start playing nearly immediately, with little or no dropout or degradation. Additionally, video will be rendered at 720p high-definition quality (DVD quality).

Silverlight is cross-platform and cross-browser. It will run on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems, and in most major web browsers. And importantly, there is a performance consistency across all systems and browsers.

For the end user, Silverlight is another on-demand, easy to install plug-in (under 2 MB). For developers, Silverlight offers an alternative to Flash and a new set of tools in the design toolbox.

www.microsoft.co.nz/silverlight

Category: Features
Filed: 2008-11-07 11:01:12 by Stephen

Google Chrome

Chrome is the latest entry in the web browser market - read that as web browser war. Mozilla has lately released Firefox 3, and Microsoft has introduced a beta of Internet Explorer 8.

Chrome is from Google. It's not designed to be merely another browser, but according to Google's publicity, a serious rethink of what a browser does and how it works.

Features include a single box for input (both web addresses and search items), resizable text areas, tab browsing with crash control (one tabbed window can't crash the others), stripped-down and intuitive controls, and more screen space for browsing.

And it's fast. Chrome runs on a specially created JavaScript engine. It's appropriately named: V8.

Another unique feature is incognito mode. Activating this function opens a new, "incognito" browser window - a window that leaves no history of sites visited or trace of cookies received.

The beta of Google Chrome (Windows only at the moment) is available for download now.

So, after search engines, email clients, and now browsers, what's next for Google? Oh yes, that's right, the mobile phone.

www.google.com/chrome

Category: Features
Filed: 2008-11-07 10:23:44 by Stephen

More Articles: 1 2 3




Web Magazine brings our readers useful and enlightening information. Our goal is to keep you up-to-date and informed with the latest in Internet trends and Web news.





Search Engine Marketing

Interspeed

 


©2008-2010, All Rights Reserved, Interspeed Web Solutions   |   TERMS OF USE   |   PRIVACY POLICY   |   CONTACT