High Priorities for Great SEO

January 11th, 2009

Write Great Content » I’ve worked with many web clients who want their site to be ranked high in the search engines, and want people to be able to find their site by searching for all sorts of keywords, problem is they don’t want to put in the work of writing good content (or pay a professional to do the writing). If you’re content isn’t good, your SEO won’t be good either. Period. And don’t just copy-and-paste from a competitor’s site with good rankings, your content needs to be unique.

Keep Content Fresh » Sites with newer content are often viewed as more relevant and reliable. Take advantage of this and keep your content up-to-date and relevant.

Choose Your Keyword Phrase Wisely » Too many people want to treat keywords and SEO like shooting a shotgun just hoping something will hit. I like to tell our clients to be very specific and choose just a very specific few keyword phrases to concentrate on first for just the homepage. Make certain that keyword phrase is popular (but not too popular – You’ll get more pageviews from a less popular keyword when you’re on the first page of the search engines, than from a super popular keyword that you only make it to page 50 of search engines.), describes what you are actually selling/advertising, and is something people would actually search for.

Use Your Keyword Phrase In Your Page’s Title » The title tag is one of the most important tags on your entire Web page. Placing your keyword phrase in the title tag is very important to get that phrase into the search engines and get your site ranked higher.

Use Your Keyword Phrase In Your Page’s Headings and Links » After the title tags, the Heading tags (<h1></h1>, <h2></h2>, and <h3></h3>) and links are the next most important tags in your web page, respectively. Both of these sets of tags have higher visibility than the rest of the surrounding text, and also more influence on your site’s ranking.

Use Your Keyword Phrase An Appropriate Amount » What is an “appropriate amount” you might ask? Well, the ratio of your keywords to the rest of the text on your page is called the keyword density. Keyword density should be between 3 and 7% for your primary keyword phrase and 1-2% for any secondary keywords or keyword phrases. So make certain to repeat your keyword phrase, but not excessively.

Self-Submitting PHP Tell-A-Friend form

January 6th, 2009

Want to put a “tell a friend” form on your website so visitors can easily tell their friends about your site?  Below is the code for a self-submitting PHP tell-a-friend form (which could also easily be adapted as a standard contact form).

Simply change “domain” to your website URL, and paste the code where you want the form to appear on your site.  Your may also want to customize the message displayed to the user after they submit the form (near the bottom of the code).

<?php
if (!$_POST['tellafriend']) {
$frm = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
?>
<form name=”tellafriend” id=”tellafriend” action=”<?php echo $frm; ?>” method=”post”>
<table border=”0″ cellpadding=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ width=”260″>
<tr>
<th colspan=”4″>Tell A Friend</th>
</tr>
<tr height=”4″>
<td colspan=”4″></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=”10″></td>
<td>Your Name:</td>
<td><input type=”text” name=”yourname” size=”20″ /></td>
<td width=”10″></td>
</tr>
<tr height=”4″>
<td colspan=”4″></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Your Email:</td>
<td><input type=”text” name=”youremail” size=”20″ /></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr height=”4″>
<td colspan=”4″></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=”10″></td>
<td>Friend’s Name:</td>
<td><input type=”text” name=”friendname” size=”20″ /></td>
<td width=”10″></td>
</tr>
<tr height=”4″>
<td colspan=”4″></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Friend’s Email:</td>
<td><input type=”text” name=”friendemail” size=”20″ /></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr height=”4″>
<td colspan=”4″></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td colspan=”2″>Add A Personal Message:</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td colspan=”2″><textarea cols=”26″ rows=”8″ name=”comments”></textarea></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td colspan=”2″><input type=”hidden” name=”tellafriend” value=”tellafriend” /><input type=”button” name=”send” value=”Submit” onclick=”tellverify();”></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr height=”4″>
<td colspan=”4″></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
<?php
} else {
error_reporting(0);

$siteaddress =”http://www.domain.com”;
$sitename = “Domain.com”;
$adminaddress = “tellafriend@domain.com”;
$date = date(“m/d/Y H:i:s”);
$headers = “From: tellafriend@domain.com <tellafriend@domain.com>”;

$name = $_POST['yourname'];
$email = $_POST['youremail'];
$friendname = $_POST['friendname'];
$friendemail = $_POST['friendemail'];
$comments = stripslashes($_POST['comments']);

// Gets the IP Address
if ($REMOTE_ADDR == “”) $ip = “no ip”;
else $ip = getHostByAddr($REMOTE_ADDR);

ini_set(“SMTP”,”mail.domain.com”);
ini_set(“smtp_port”,”25″);  //could also be 26
ini_set(“sendmail_from”, “tellafriend@domain.com”);

if ($comments) {
$comments2 = “Your friend $name also wanted to say: \n  $comments”;
}

mail(“$friendemail”,”Your friend $name thought you might be interested in this site”,
“Greetings $friendname, \n
Your friend $name ($email) found our website, http://www.domain.com, and thought you may be interested in it.

$comments2

Logged Info :
——————————
Using: $HTTP_USER_AGENT
Hostname: $ip
IP address: $REMOTE_ADDR
Date/Time:  $date”,$headers);

mail(“$adminaddress”,”Tell a friend”,
“Name: $name
Email: $email
Friend’s Name: $friendname
Friend’e Email: $friendemail

Logged Info :
——————————
Using: $HTTP_USER_AGENT
Hostname: $ip
IP address: $REMOTE_ADDR
Date/Time:  $date”,$headers);

echo(“message to display on website here”);
};

?>

Javascript: Print Page button

January 6th, 2009

here’s a very simple javascript to place a link on a webpage to facilitate the user’s printing of that page:

simply paste the code below where you want the button to appear:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”JavaScript”>
<!– Begin
if (window.print) {
document.write(‘<form>Click Here To ‘
+ ‘<input type=button name=print value=”Print” ‘
+ ‘onClick=”javascript:window.print()”> This Page!</form>’);
}
// End –>
</script>

Javascript: Display Random Text from a list

January 5th, 2009

Did you ever want to display a random text from a pre-populated list?  Maybe you wanted to randomly display a client testimonial from a list of 10… well, here’s the script you need.

place the following code in the head of your document (somewhere between the <head> and </head> tags):
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”../scripts/rotate.js”></script>

now, place the following code in the body of your document, where you want the random text to be displayed:
<script language=”JavaScript”>
<!–
document.write(r_text[i]);
–>
</script>

then, create a javascript document named rotate.js with the following code:
var r_text = new Array ();
r_text[0] = “random text 1″;
r_text[1] = “random text 2″;
r_text[2] = “random text 3″;
r_text[3] = “random text 4″;
r_text[4] = “random text 5″;
r_text[5] = “random text 6″;
r_text[6] = “random text 7″;
r_text[7] = “random text 8″;
r_text[8] = “random text 9″;
r_text[9] = “random text 10″;

var i = Math.floor((r_text.length)*Math.random())

and edit the texts.  You can add or delete as many lines of random texts as you wish and they will automatically be included.  Then save it in a subdirectory named “scripts”.

That’s all you need!

The Time is Now!

November 13th, 2008

The bad news: the economy is down, the stock markets are down, housing markets are down, and unemployment is up.

The good news: There’s not a better time to start your own business!

That’s right, with the economy slumping and people losing jobs left and right, there’s not a better time to start your own business and jumpstart your own income potential. 
Read more »

Creating a simple javascript Popup Div

October 20th, 2008

Sometimes you want to create a div in your document that opens a pop-up window that shows another webpage, but that isn’t actually another browser window.  The code below will do just that for you in a simple manner.  You can change the page that shows in the popup by simply changing the “src” from “http://google.com” to whatever page you want to display.

place the following code in the body of your html page:

<div class=”popUp”>
<iframe src=”http://google.com”></iframe><br>
<button onclick=”this.parentNode.parentNode.removeChild(this.parentNode);”>
Close
</button>
</div>

place the following code either in your css style sheet, or between <style></style> tags in the head of your html document:

.popUp { position: absolute; top: 1000px; left: 200px; text-align: center; padding: 5px; border: 1px solid black; background: white; }

place the following code in the head of your document:

<script>
function createPopUp(popUpCode) { var div = document.createElement(‘div’); div.innerHTML = popUpCode; document.body.appendChild(div.firstChild); }
</script>

ChildImpressions.com

October 20th, 2008

ChildImpressions.com is an html-based website, with it’s formatting layed out with tableless css.  There are a few flash elements – the hands at the top, the menu bar, and the rotating quotes on the right.

This is another simple site, with a clean design, that is meant to be a key marketing piece for the business as well as informative.

Choosing the Right Web Hosting Company

July 28th, 2008

Before you can establish your web presence, you are going to have to choose a web hosting company (unless you have the technical skills to host the site yourself that is). With the plethora of web hosting companies out there today, the choices can be daunting and since the comparisons are rarely apples to apples, choosing the proper hosting company for your needs can be a daunting task.

One of the first questions you will need to figure out is what features and content you want on your site, and how much maintenance those features and content require.
Read more »

Some Simple Web Acronym Clarification

July 1st, 2008

Hello All,
today I thought it would be useful for some to simply break down some of the acronyms thrown around in the web design and web development world…
Read more »

SEO Warning Signs – ways to avoid the wrong contractor

June 29th, 2008

With so much emphasis put on internet advertising these days, it’s no wonder that companies are willing to spend big dollars (and i do mean BIG dollars) to get their sites ranked at the top of searches on all of the major search engines. To do this organically (without pay-per-click advertising) is a detailed science, and is quite labor intensive and time consuming. For the novice and experienced web owner alike, the task of getting ranked high can seem daunting, and that is why many site owners choose to leave the job to the pros. But how can you know which pro is the right one, and which one is just scamming you?
Read more »