Webmaster Tips

Webmaster Tips (Helping Make Your Page More Appealing)


Diversify your content

Most pages focus on a specific topic, but it's useful to diversify the activities and information on your site that support that topic. Think about including contests, games, reference materials, downloads or other appealing features that inspire people to spend time on your site and tell others about it.

Register with search engines

Search engines such as Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) and Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com) are just two of hundreds of search engines on the Internet. A search engine is a resource for Internet surfers to type in a few keywords and have any number of qualifying sites listed as a result. You can visit the search engines separately or use a free service such as Add Me! (http://www.addme.com). (Tip: When using services like Add Me!, register significant pages on your site separately and skip over the search engines that require much more than the initial information.)

Include a keywords section in the heading of your HTML

Search engines work by comparing keywords to what the user is looking for. Many engines will "spider" your site looking for the appropriate words to identify your site. To optimize that process in your favor and increase the likelihood that your site comes up often in search engine inquiries, place a statement similar to the one below in the section of your HTML.

<meta name="keywords" content="activision,adam,amiga,apple,arcadia,atari,colecovision,commodore, electronic arts,epyx,genesis,imagic,infocom,intellivision,jaguar,lynx,macintosh, mattel,microsoft,m-network,konami,namco,next,nintendo,odyssey,playstation, pong,probe 2000,processor,project x,saturn,sega,sony,spectravision, starpath,synapse,telstar,texas instruments,vm labs,xonox">

Update your site regularly

No one likes to shop in a store that never gets in new products. The same thing goes for a Web Site. Change material frequently while retaining the overall look and feel so people get comfortable navigating your site.

Don't be too gaudy

Feel free to include animated .gifs and colorful graphics, but don't go overboard. Too many graphics will make your page too long to load and enjoy.

Don't be too simplistic

Sites that appear too simplistic are no fun to spend time with. Add pizzazz and make good use of graphics, color text and animated .gifs.

Encourage interaction

Make it easy for people to contact you and be responsive when they do.

Link each other

Determine criteria, then review other links that meet those criteria and post them on your site in an easily accessible place for surfers to find them. Let the Webmasters of the links know that you have linked them and encourage them to add links to your site also.

Don't steal images

There's nothing to be proud of if your site is full of images or sounds stolen from other sites. Create your own multimedia, purchase royalty-free material or ask for components that you feel you need from other sites and clearly indicate the source. A hobby full of thieves is not an honorable one.

Stick with facts and clearly state opinions

Build a trust with your visitors by researching the information you publish. Whenever speculating or sharing an opinion, let people know that is what you are doing.

Evangelize your site

Participate in newsgroups and freely mention whenever there is relevant information to be found on your site. Have business cards made up that promote your site. Hand them out freely and post them in public areas where handouts are welcome. (Grocery Stores often have bulletin boards for this purpose). Have return address labels printed that include your URL. Tailor your e-mail software to automatically add the site URL to your signature.

Assessing Hits to your page(s)

Assessing hit quality is quite a difficult task. By checking your logs (corporate clients only), you should be able to tell if visitors get past the main page or not. If the visitor stops at the main page, then rate them 0. If they visit 1 other page, rate them 1, and 2 other pages gains a 2. Using this method, you should be able to work out your average "hit quality score". It is this that you should be aiming to improve, not your total hits. Of course the number of visits your site gets is still important, so you should work out views of individual pages and average them across your whole site, so that your hit count is more balanced.

Remember the older browsers

Having the latest java applets and Shockwave animations might make your site very interesting, but to some people, who have an older web browser, the page will provide nothing at all. If you want to get your information across, it is best to give an option for the people using the oldest style of browser. This means including a "plain text" page. It may not look very pretty, but in the larger scheme of things, it won't take up very much space, and you will be providing something for those older browsers.

Not everyone has a high speed connection

When you look at your page online, it downloads very quickly. However, not everyone who goes to your site will have the same connection speed that you do. Large graphics, sound files, animations and video are something to be used sparingly. Someone with a slow connection may just move on to another page. Offering alternatives will give them a chance to see the information you are trying to present. For example, using a thumbnail of a picture, that when clicked will show the larger picture.