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Search Engine Optimization Design Guidelines
In the harsh world of search engine optimization, if you’re not first, you’re last!!!
In the Search Engine Optimization 101
tip, we looked at the need and importance of Search Engine Optimization
(SEO). In this tip, we’ll look at some design guidelines that’ll help
search engines find, index, and rank your website efficiently. The goal
is to be ranked in the first page results.
Pre-requisite to SEO
Optimizing websites for search engines only makes sense after you’ve
designed the site for high usability. This is because website visitors
scamper from poor user experiences. Therefore, ensure your website provides a great user experience before you decide to optimize it. Read the Usability 101 and Usability 201 tips for more information on how to make a website usable.
Guideline 1: Create a Site Rich with Information
People visit your website for a service. As part of this service, there
is information transfer that occurs. To search for a particular service
or information, people type in criteria in a search engine. This
criteria are called keywords. The search engine then locates websites
that contain the keywords you have specified. Let’s take an example.
Suppose a person is looking for a closet light. She might type keywords,
such as Closet Light, Fluorescent Closet Light, or 6” Fluorescent
Closet Light. The search results for each of these keywords is
different, as shown below.
Closet Light
AMP Font
Viewer
The other
day, I received an e-mail from a reader, asking if there was a
program that would allow for a quick look at all of the fonts on
their system, without having to open a big program such as MS Word.
I started looking around and I happened upon a great free download
that does just that! It's called AMP Font Viewer
and it's very simple to install and use. Just install the program,
open it and you'll be good to go!
Here's what
it looks like:
Above the Table
Have you ever created
a table in MS Word at the beginning of a document, only to find that it
was a mistake? I mean, since you began the document, you've probably redone
the layout and some of the text just has to go above that table.
But, of course, you're
learning the hard way that MS Word isn't going to cooperate very easily.
Every time you try
to get to the top of the document (that is, above the table), you end
up in the first cell or with an entire column highlighted.
No matter what you
do, you're stuck in that table!
You can get the text
below the table, but there's just no getting above it!
Or is there?
Don't give up on that
table just yet. And by all means, don't delete it to start over!
Try this quick little
trick to get to the top.
Use the key combination
of Ctrl + Home and then (after releasing the keys),
hit the Enter key.
Voila!
You've got a line
above your table, with no starting over or frustration required!
Disable Minimize and Maximize Animations
I'm
a stickler for functionality, and although bells and whistles are nice
to look at, if they don't do anything to increase the performance of my
computer, I don't want 'em!
For example, Windows
7 has a neat shrinky/growy animation whenever you minimize or maximize
a window, but does it really help anything?
Nope.
