Posts Tagged ‘CSS’

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Buying software is so 1999. I mean seriously, who wants to buck up and spend upwards of $500 on an office suite when you have bills to pay and lattes to drink. Plus, with everyone’s exciting New Year’s resolutions in full swing, saving money may be even more appealing. Enter the world of free web-based software and open source software. This list is obviously not comprehensive, nor authoritative, however, these ten programs are the ones I found most useful during 2007.

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I’m a generally pretty reasonable guy. I can usually adapt and amend myself for the better good of the world. But lately, I’ve become quite nasty towards our little friend, Internet Explorer. The delinquent browser lacks any integrity and forces me to spend countless hours trying to adapt my coding to fix. Did I mention I hate Internet Explorer?

Reasons SEO’s Hate Internet Explorer:

1. It is not a standard-compliant browser. Microsoft has set its own ’standard’ with IE.
2. CSS rendering- it doesn’t happen. IE needs very specific (non-valid) commands within your CSS to render properly.
3. No addons are available. With Firefox, users have a huge amount of customization with Firefox extensions.
4. It’s a Microsoft product. Ok, I’m not completely against all MS products, but seriously: who uses IE?
5. It doesn’t like certain types of code and will crash. Don’t believe me? Check out this post on SEO 2.0.

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I began my career in SEO as a marketing student, not a programmer. During the past few months, however, I feel like I’ve jumped headfirst into the world of HTML, CSS, and PHP and have learned quite a bit. Only recently did I realize I may not be the great man I’ve always thought as I starting coding a .htaccess file.

For those like me who haven’t always been coders, adjusting a site’s .htaccess file is like doing a bit of open heart surgery with no training. It can be a scary testament to one’s SEO day or even career. The file is essentially a gateway to an entire site - it provides the ability to configure and customize a site. But unlike my forgiving friend HTML, one little mistake in one’s coding in a .htaccess file could result in an entire website flipping offline.

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Everyone is a dummy. Ok, maybe not everyone, but for those like me who aren’t the greatest programmers in the world simple solutions can be desirable. Being an SEO usually means dealing with both on and off page techniques to garner greater search rankings, and all too often my dealings with on page programming have garnered feelings of frustration and confusion. By no means do I consider myself a programmer, I simply want to make adjustments to rather difficult sites.

Enter the cheat sheet.

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Wow, I really meant to post this on Wednesday night but just didn’t get back to the hotel in time … and then there was the last day of sessions to attend so I didn’t get to finish and post on Thursday either … alas, there will be two posts today from moi. In the one about Thursday’s sessions I anticipate a final wrap up for the week.

Wednesday’s sessions: Local Search Marketing Tactics, Mobile Search Optimization, SEM Pricing Models, and B2B Tactics.

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Social Media Track, Thursday 9:00 - 10:15 AM
SMO: Social Media Optimization

Moderator: Detlev Johnson, Director of Consulting, Position Technologies
Todd Malicoat, Independent Search Marketing Consultant, stuntdubl
Neil Patel, Co-Founder, ACS
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz

Todd Malicoat started with the hooks that can be used to attract attention. He then went on to provide some excellent title tips. You want good titles and be sure you keep your stuff focused. Todd says to make it “magazine good” and link out quite generously to other bloggers. A new twist on an old idea is a great way to get exposure.

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Fundamentals Track, Tuesday 4:45 - 6:00 PM
Successful Site Architecture

Moderator: Barbara C. Coll, CEO, WebMama.com
Matthew Bailey, President, Site logic Marketing
Derrick Wheeler, Senior Search Strategist, Acxiom Digital

Of all the sessions today this is the one I am most looking forward to. I believe site architecture is one of the most important aspects of SEO. Actually, it’s about making your site search engine friendly… SEO comes later but you can’t SEO effectively without being search engine friendly first. Barbara Coll pointed out a site that she said has the best site architecture she’s ever seen. I took a quick look and, um, well, respectfully disagree. I saw a number of things that were not very search friendly. But maybe she doesn’t get on the web much!

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I’ve been spending quite a bit more time recently working with some of our “classic” optimized pages. Essentially, I’ve been analyzing what we’ve done in the past, trying to evaluate what’s worked and what hasn’t.

There are a few key measures that I analyze when benchmarking a site:

1. Keyword ranking reports are my first stop. Analyzing how a site is doing over a period of time can help me to figure out where improvement may be necessary in our SEO campaign.

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During the design phase of building a website all too often we find that the end result is really nothing more than what somebody decided “looked good”. In some cases it’s a combination (or compromise) of what a handful of individuals have determined to be “good enough”. What many fail to realize is that web design and visitor usability go hand in hand.

How the site is developed, along with the underlying coding structure, plays a significant role on whether your site meets the usability requirements of your audience. Below are a number of individual elements that must be considered in every website design. While each plays a minor role over the total usability of a website, together they add up to be much more than the sum of their parts.

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