Hungerford Web Design Blog

It has started as a bit of an experiment really and also as a way of listing some of the links I use for others but to be honest, I am already about 5mins away from deleting it……our new directory.

It’s a third party script (which is Ok, not great - but ok): LINK REMOVED

Don’t bother bookmarking it as it probably won’t be there long:

• What’s the point in another directory? Well for me it was to be able to personalise it to the things “I” think are interesting or important for the readers of this blog and users of our site.
• Why not use the blog? Well, I’ll be brutally honest that I was being selfish. I wanted to see what impact it would/could have from an SEO point of view - big mistake! I’ll go into why in a few days…it’s going to take me that long to sort it out.

I genuinely thought it might be a good idea to create a really well set up directory with areas specifically for SEO, web development, accessibility and security but all I can see now are listing problems, spam, management overhead and a whole heap of hassle.

I wasn’t expecting the directory to suddenly sprout 5m links and propel the site to pr10 but I did want to see if I could attribute any positive trend to it once it had become semi-established…..all I have now is a whole heap of respect for somebody who makes a living from running a directory.

In short, if you consider creating a directory………..step slowly away from the keyboard, walk towards a wall and bang your head against it - it’ll be less painful in the long run!

R.I.P directory (for now)

Following on from our previous SEO tips for beginners:
SEO for beginners Part 1
SEO for beginners Part 2
SEO for beginners Part 3
SEO for beginners Part 4
SEO for beginners Part 5
SEO for beginners Part 6
SEO for beginners Part 7

I decided to start doing a bit more for those who are more tech-savvy and will understand a bit more of what’s going on.

There are some staple things which I think are worth repeating:

• Your site should have a clear structure and hierarchy
• Ideally you should be using text links. If that is not possible then every page must be reachable from a text link
• Produce a sitemap detailing all of your pages, either dynamically or manually.

All of the above is also useful in creating an accessible site for disabled users or those with difficulties. If you are a business in England then you should also be aware that you may have legal obligations towards creating accessible sites.

Most if not all search engine spiders can parse text only (I’m not talking about image crawlers like google image bot). To understand how a search engine sees your site, you need to see i in the same way that a search engine would.

By far and away the most well known text-browser is Lynx. You can download Lynx and view the Lynx website if you wish. I will refer to Lynx throughout this article. If you are using something else then please just take it for granted that I refer to whichever text browser you use.

Installing Lynx:
Lynx doesn’t come with a pretty installer so it’s a bit of a manual fudge to install it. So long as you are comfortable moving and editing files it really should take under a minute. If you are not techie then don’t worry, just take your time and follow these steps (Taken from the Lynx installation doc):
1/ Make a folder on your C drive called lynx_w3
2/ Unzip the contents of the lynx_v283.zip file into that folder
3/ Make a shortcut to lynx.bat and place it on your desktop
4/ Double click the shortcut. Lynx will open with google.com as the home page.

Using Lynx:

This version is set up with google.com as the home page. Use the down cursor
to navigate to the search box, then type in your search terms.
Links are shown in blue. The links will change to red as you cursor past
them. Press enter or right cursor to follow the link.

Summary of the main Lynx commands:

Down cursor: scroll down page.
Up cursor: scroll up page
Right cursor: follow a link
Left cursor: Go back to the previous page
Press G to type in the address of a page.

Lynx is installed, what next?
Take a look at your page in Lynx, how do you think it looks? Here we are looking at our Hungerford Web Design and Development website Click the image to go view full size:

As you can see, everything displays pretty well. If you are running a Macromedia Flash site or using loads of funky JScript to produce your content you will see a VERY different layout. Your site will not be read properly by search engines. Use the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)

I appreciate this is a pretty short article, I’ll be expanding upon it as we move forward. In the meantime, following these tips, you should find your site displays well to disabled users and search engines alike:

1. For important text that you want a bot to read and index, use plain text not images
2. Try to avoid javascript where possible, it has a place but content generation is definately not it
3. Create standards based sites, they are usefull in development as well as post-production
4. Flash is EVIL!
5. Ensure all of your links are valid and displaying the correct text
6. Try to keep the number of pages down, don’t create a page fo the sake of it (This is arguable as the importance of a site could be factored by pages indexed). I believe quality over quantity will keep your visitors coming back and prompt people to link you
7. Where you are using variables (page.php?nocss) avoid using them for links where possible (or provide an alternative) whilst google now indexes dynamic links, not all search engines do.

Firstly I would like to make sure we are all singing from the same page. What is a breadcrumb?

Home > Blog > Post

Breadcrumbs are a navigational trail. It shows users what category or section of your site they are in as well as an easy way to traverse your site.

The usefulness of breadcrumbs can vary. On a small site with 5 pages I would argue that they are not particularly useful. On a site with many sections or areas of information they can be invaluable.

Why are they useful?

From an SEO point of view they can be extremely useful for ensuring that your category areas are listed as well as the actual page. From the point of view of an accessible user with sight difficulties they can give context to your page where images are not available (likewise for users with text-only browsers). Additionally they are often preferred over static menu bars.

The simplest way to implement a breadcrumb system is from the ground up. All sections of your site are within their own directory. For a car sales site this would be similar to the following:

index.html
/carsales/
/carsales/index.html
/carsales/carsforsale.html
/carsales/carssold.html
/servicing/
/servicing/index.html
/servicing/prices.html
/servicing/booking.html

etc etc.

In this example our breadcrumb would look like this if we were on the servicing page:
Home > Servicing
If we then looked at the prices page it would look as follows::
Home > Servicing > Prices
If our user then wanted to navigate from the prices page back to the main serving page they would simply click the “servicing” link between Home and Prices.

Doing this manually can take some time……my next post will be a way of automating this so that the links are created dynamically. For a huge site, automating it can make a big difference. If your site is fairly small you may wish to just manually create the breadcrumb trail. To see an example of breadcrumbs you can view our main site: Hungerford Web Design