This article is about a personal issue I have regarding web programming and it is one not shared by everyone, however, have a read and see what you think.

I will give you a link to Youtube ….. nothing funny is waiting for you, no jokes or viruses, trust me. Here is the link – Youtube – have you clicked it?

So, what happened was that a new window popped open, you saw a ‘different’ website than mine and when you closed that new site – Youtube – I was still sat here.

Here is the other version – please press back arrow to come back for the rest of the article – so now visit this link again – Youtube

Hey, welcome back!

So, do you see the point of that experiment? What it means, for me, is that when I want to show someone something or point to a site I always leave my site open as a reference point so people don’t say “Now what was I looking at originally?”. If I am pointing to something that is final, such as a “Sorry I don’t have that information, here it is.” Then my link will be a normal one. Or if I am opening a page within this website it will be normal.

Here is how it is done. You will need to get to the code for the link, so open up the page in question where the link is sitting.

This is a normal link to Youtube (using the word ‘Youtube’ as, what is called, the anchor text). <a href="http://youtube.com">Youtube</a>

And here is the link to open a new window – <a href="http://youtube.com" target="_blank">Youtube</a> – as you can see it is the addition of target=”_blank” that did the trick.

There you have my point of view on linking to other sites and a brief look at how to do some basic coding.

Your content is what the search engines crawl through and determine what your site is about. So, for example, with 20 well written articles containing your chosen keywords on the topic of car stereos the search engines know instantly the area your your ‘expertise’.

Also, it is your potential customers or site visitors that are interested in your content. They will want to read informative, up-to-date and unique articles.

It is now, after mentioning the above two scenarios, that they start to merge together.

Due to the fact that your website has a constant flow of information being added to it – articles, videos, photo galleries, Twitter and Facebook updates, etc – the search engines say “Hold on, this is no spamming website. These guys are putting in some effort, they must be for real”. Then your content starts drawing in more visitors (both new and regular readers) and your site becomes popular which feeds the search engine ‘fire’ some more “Wow, these guys are getting lots of hits, they must be good, let’s put them higher in the results”.  And because you are higher in the results more people visit …..and so on and so forth.

An important point to note.

Above we mentioned these following terms to describe your content and we will now look at them in depth -

Well written – the search engines don’t like spelling and grammar mistakes, neither do your visitors (I guess this site is a failure then, ooops!).

Informative – if you are going to write about a new car stereo then actually write about it, not just say “It has been released!”.

Up-to-date – you will not attract visitors by writing about old news. Check out these alerts and keep current.

Unique – search engines do not give you credit for ‘duplicate content’, so don’t think you can create a huge awesome website by copying and pasting. Quoting other peoples work is fine but there is a line which you shouldn’t cross.

Chosen keywords – a general rule is that your chosen keyword should be mentioned three times within the article and the article be at least 300 words long (this is called keyword density). This is a huge generalization but it is a good place to start until you get the hang of it.

Sometimes writing articles and newsletters can be a drain on your creativity and you’ll get a ‘writers block’. Also, how on earth are you to know what is happening within your market when there are four of you running a small company with no time to spare? As usual the internet is brimming with solutions.

The first, and most heard of, is Google Alerts. That’s right, Google will mail you with news of anything that becomes newly available on the ‘net.  All you do is enter in the ‘keywords’ you want to be alerted about (new products, your competitors, travel news, a popstar, etc) and then choose from a few options regarding the incoming email and that is it.

Next is Yahoo Alerts – this is the exact same service as Google’s but Yahoo has a different way of finding information (an algorithm) so some of the alerts may differ.

Then, finally, we have an alert service that scours the world of social media (for example Facebook, Twitter and services where individuals create the flow of information). Social Mention leaves no service untouched whilst listening out for your alerts. This image sums up their service nicely.

I know what you are thinking “But I don’t want any part of all this ‘army’ nonsense, I just want to sell my products and live happily ever after”. Well I now say “Rubbish” and if you want to learn a few tips on how to succeed please read on.

The gloves are off!

Newsletters – if your competitors have newsletters then sign up for them to learn what they are up to. Special offers, new products or services, etc. Read between the lines of the newsletter, is it well written, knowledgeable, is it a generic newsletter template that has just been thrown together.  Does it look like they give a damn? Your newsletter will be exactly what theirs isn’t.

Social Media - if they have Twitter or Facebook, etc, then sign up for them. In social media people talk too much and they talk from the heart. Keep your eyes open for a Tweet that gives a hint of a future product release that shouldn’t have been mentioned (you could use that opportunity to get onto the search engines first with clever use of your own content publication) or maybe a Facebook entry mentioning a move to a new address (again, you could target the product or service for that location in advance with your own content, so even though they have just moved there you already are above them for that locality in the searches).

Hire them - if they offer a service, hire them! Are they professional, do they wear a uniform, is their vehicle a normal one or a dedicated company vehicle. Interrogate the worker who is providing the services on the following things – are they busy, where does he work the most, what services is he doing the most, what is morale like within the company …. I’m sure you get my point here. Use the information gained to help structure your own marketing (especially after hiring all of the competition above you in the search results).

Visit them - if they have a premisses that is open to the clients (such as a shop) then pay them a visit. Start by noticing products, new releases, offers, etc, then get chatting to the staff. “This Panasonic XYZ looks good but have you guys got the ABC in just yet?”. To see where I’m going with this section re-read the above paragraph. Once chit chat has gone past their product/service then move onto some of the more crucial stuff that might give away things to help you in your battle for search results.

Strip their site -go through their website and strip it down to its bare SEO – learn how their search engine optimisation has gotten them to where they are in the search engines. To save time use ‘ctrl U’ to view each page’s meta tags. See image below -

This is called a page source code - you are not doing anything illegal by viewing it!

Viewing  the entire SEO of a website is a large task but if you do it right you will find areas of optimisation that they haven’t covered – things like Product A hasn’t been adequately done, or, they failed to mention they provide services in such town (don’t forget, we are talking SEO here, not how they physically advertise or what is seen on their website, this is all behind the scenes. This is information for you to use to get you ahead of them in the search results).

There are also many free tools that help you in your quest to know thy enemy, however I haven’t found one that ticks all the boxes. Give them a try -

• SEOmoz
• SEO Chat tools

Remember – do not spend too much time learning about your competition when you could be making your own website/company better, with the end result being a higher place in the search engines!

Well, it doesn’t have to be this way. Compare the following two images, the first is one of the ways you would enter your server to retrieve files, which then need working on with code editor. The second photo is of the administration area of a WordPress website (a content management system) and it shows a different picture altogether.

Or, would you prefer  ……..

Despite a glaring difference between the two styles of website construction the supposed winner out of the ‘two photo race’ above is not a clear one. A good web developer will weigh up your company’s online needs and be able to suggest a development method. You can even end up with a ‘static’ section of the website with highly technical coding achieving certain results and then, still part of your whole site, you have a CMS attached as well. This set up is common when lots of content is being published and the company staff can manage that themselves.

However, if you are a small company, requiring a simple online presence, and you have a member of the team who likes to play around with technology then setting up and managing a CMS like WordPress or Joomla yourselves is a realistic situation.

But there is a little problem that is becoming bigger and bigger. It is the issue of camera resolutions. The average camera today can take a photo big enough to cover a small coffee table! What this means is that you have your photo of your new product you are selling and you upload it to your website, then you view it. What happens now is that most websites that handle imagery will shrink the photo but as the page loads it will load a ‘coffee table sized’ photo but show the photo at the size you specified. Or, your photo will be displayed in a small ‘area’ but, again, the whole photo will be downloading onto the page.

Let’s make the above paragraph simple. Pages will take longer to load, some of them will be horrifically slow. You will take up heaps of room on your server and if your website is image heavy then you could exceed your memory quota just on images.

Some important notes on slow page loading times. One thing that will happen is that visitors to your site will not wait for the page loading – I don’t, I get fed up and think the company must be unprofessional!  Also, Google and the other search engines don’t wait for slow pages either! They have to crawl billions of web pages so they only dedicate a tiny amount of time to a page before they move on.

So, we have a problem, let us now look at the solution. And… the solution is ‘image resizing’.

• Some software that comes with the camera you have might have resizing capabilities.
• There are many programs that can be downloaded from the ‘net. Some of these are free but they keep asking you to buy the main product to ‘unlock’ additional features.
• Then there are also graphics manipulation programs like Adobe, Paint Shop Pro and Gimp that all can alter image dimensions to a certain degree of quality.

I use a free program call VSO Image Resizer 4.  It is a nice little package but there are some negative reviews about it due to its lack of various features. It’s free ….. what more do you want?

Here is where you can officially download it from – VSO I R 4 – and there is also a positive review of it as well.

Luckily for you inquisitive folks out there ….. and inquisitive you must be …… there are tools, for free, you can use to monitor your website traffic.

One of the most well known, most used and most written about is Google’s very own Google Analytics.

Here are the basics (I say basics because I can devote an entire website to the use of this free program).

Once you sign into the Analytics website, using a Google account (free), you will then state the name of your website and some minor details and then on completion you will be given a snippet of code.

With this new code you must put it into the original code of every page you want to be monitored. If you are using a content management system like this website does (I use WordPress) there are tools to use that will do all the work for you. Unfortunately, if you have a big website with many pages, then you must do it manually.

Once the code is inserted Google then crawls your site and recognises the correct location of the snippet…… then the fun begins.

Below is just a tiny sample of what can be done through the Google Analytics dashboard -

This is not the only analytical program on the internet. There are many alternatives out there, some of them are free and some ask for a fee for extra services they offer.

A project I was involved in was the cataloguing of every laptop on the market and their specifications.  After signing into Elance I wrote a very thorough job description and posted the project.

Bids come in like an auction but you can check out the bidder’s profiles, past projects, personal websites, etc.  Once you have chosen your ‘worker’ (mine was in India and spoke excellent English.  I have also used people in Croatia, Russia and USA) the funding for the project goes into ESCROW. This means the money will only be released when all parties are happy.

Here is an older project I got help for -

The amount of work that can be carried out just by carefully managing your Elance workforce is truly amazing and at very very competitive prices. Look at the list below for the categories available with the numbers of work providers listed.

And that above list grows immensely when you break them down into sub-categories.

Treble the size of your work force with the click of a mouse – elance.com

You see, your website selling car stereos is now online and in the search engines alongside many thousands of other sites selling car stereos.

To test if your customers can find you try searching for two things – one is your brand name ‘stereos-r-us’ and the other are the terms that you would like people to find you with, these are called ‘keywords’. Keeping with our ‘stereos-r-us’ theme you would expect keywords such as -

• panasonic car stereos
• best mp3 car stereo
• car stereo under 100 pound

Whilst reading this article open a new browser and think up of the search terms or keywords that you would like people to use to find you (be creative) and then look down the search results to see where you are, make a note of your position for each term. If you are not on page one try up to page five.

So, where did you appear?

If you were not as high as you had hoped ….. or not even found, then we now go into the realms of Search Engine Optimisation ….. and let battle commence, for your competition is also playing the game.

The following subjects pop up during those private moments – car, house, private island, yacht, helicopter, space tourism – and each one is examined by you in great detail.

Let us look at the subject ‘Yacht’ whilst I am having one of those moments – which is about every 15 minutes!

I’ve not been on many yachts but I have already decided on the ‘style’ of my yacht and it is one that is modern. When you go down bellow it resembles more a plush apartment than a traditional nautical vessel. So in my daydream of immense wealth I own a Hanse 630e.

And, after a hard day under sail, this is where I want to sit, cracking open a cold one!

Here is a sneak preview from topside as well, quite a looker!

Help needed!

If you look at the next photo of the 630e head on. What is happening with the head sail? What conditions are they sailing in for it to be chaffing against the stanchions and rail like that? I have seen this on other yachts as well, why would manufacturers not address this? Thanks for any feedback because at the moment I am £3.46 closer to getting one but this is holding me back a little.