Basic Design Principles Part 2 – by: Kelly Paal

Tone and Texture

This specifically applies to drawings more than photography, but tone and texture are very important. Tone refers to shading of light and dark on an object and texture is the visual and tactile surface characteristics of an object.

Here’s a list of things that affect the tone and texture of an objects appearance.

1. The direction from which the light is coming. (Left, right, above, behind, or below.)

2. The intensity of the light. (Candlelight or sunlight.)

3. The type of light (Light from the setting sun or flash.)

4. Objects standing between the light source and your subject or object. (Light passing through a thin fabric.)

5. The color and texture of the object. (A fuzzy blanket looks a lot different than a piece of granite.)

Light and Shade

Light always travels in a straight line and depending on the location of the light the object or subject can look dramatically different. To understand this principle get a roll of film a light source, a lamp, an object or a family member. Take a series of photos of your subject start with the light source at twelve o’clock take each successive photo moving the light source to each position on the clock. When you look at your photos you will be amazed at how different your subject looks in each image. This exercise is great for anyone wanting to understand how light changes the look of a subject.

Shade

Shade or shadow and more commonly known as contrast is the degree of difference between the light and dark areas. An image with very black blacks and very light whites has high contrast. An image that is mostly shades of gray has low contrast. Contrast is determined by the intensity of the light source. Adjusting the contrast can help you create a very realistic image or a fantastic one.

If you have some specific questions please visit my Photography and Design Forum at: http://kellypaalphotography.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/index.php and post your question there.

About The Author Copyright 2004 Kelly Paal Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. She owns her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design. kellypaa@kellypaalphotography.com

Basic Design Principles Part 1 – by: Kelly Paal

There are some very basic design principles that are important to know whether you’re a graphic designer, web designer, or even a photographer. Certain very basic design principles apply to all artistic fields and are necessary for the artist and valuable information for the consumer.

Line (s)

The world we live in is three dimensional but when we try to represent that world in art we use lines, a very simplistic way of trying to represent the three dimensional world around us. But by knowing how to use lines in art we can make a very good sometimes great representations of the world around us.

Lines of Direction

Horizontal, a horizontal line usually represents a feeling of rest or relaxation, think of a puppy asleep on the floor. That is a horizontal line. Stability is also conveyed through a horizontal line, think of a table or a large building.

Vertical, a vertical line usually brings to mind strength and sometimes action. Think of a tall tree, its strong vertical line shows strength. A vertical line can show action especially when it’s compared to a horizontal line.

Diagonal, a diagonal line always suggests movement. Imagine a football player running if you draw a line from the top of his head to his heel you will see a diagonal line. Diagonal lines always get our attention for the action they imply.

Curved, a curved line can suggest many things. The curved line of a sagging roof can indicate weakness and a curved line of a dancers arm can indicate gracefulness.

Remember lines convey thoughts and feelings and every line you use in your design helps to convey your message.

Shape (s)

Lines form shapes and from those shapes we get positive and negative shapes, or spaces.

Positive shapes are always the objects in an image or design. It’s important to pay attention to your positive shapes their size, placement, and their balance in reference to:

Negative shapes, these are always the shape formed from the space around your object.

By paying attention to the balance of your positive and negative shapes you can make sure that your designs or images have good balance.

If you have some specific questions please visit my Photography and Design Forum at: http://kellypaalphotography.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/index.php and post your question there.

About The Author Copyright 2004 Kelly Paal Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. She owns her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design. kellypaa@kellypaalphotography.com

Don’t Get Fooled by the Web Hosting Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing! – by: Kai Virihaur

When looking for a good web hosting provider to look after your website, it is easy to get confused. There are thousands of companies around, and they compete fiercely for your attention. Some are good, some are wolves …

Are you looking for web hosting? If you want to set up a personal website, or a modest commercial one, you are probably in the market for an inexpensive shared hosting plan. Those entry-level plans may cost $5-10 per month, and often boast very generous features for that modest prize. However, the strong competition often causes the companies to oversell, and then have difficulties living up to their promises. And how do you go about telling the good ones from the bad?

Maybe you go to one of the many web hosting review sites. Those places may offer extensive listings of various web hosting companies and their features; which is certainly helpful. But be aware of the fact that these review sites are out there to make money by referring new customers to the hosting companies! Therefore, they tend to praise those companies that pay them the best.

I used to be naive about these things, trusting the review sites. That was until I began some serious research on the subject myself. Were they really so good, those much-praised web hosting companies? Soon, I was able to uncover large amounts of customer testimonials that told a different story.

It became clear that several very large and well-known web hosting companies had surprising amounts of negative customer ratings against them. There were many angry customers that related stories about incompetent or non-existent customer support, billing disputes where the company kept charging ex-customers after they had cancelled their accounts; and more.

One may say that any company with many customers is likely to have a few that are hard to please. But in these cases, there were scores of reviews, and the majority was negative! Since certain hosting companies are known to prosecute those who have criticized them in public, I will not mention any names here.

In conclusion: I advice anyone looking for a reliable and honest web hosting provider to be very careful and not put too much trust in the web hosting ratings commonly found at hosting review sites and similar places. Also be aware that the customer feedback published by the web hosts themselves on their sites is of course filtered – and may even be faked.

About The Author Kai Virihaur I am a researcher, an artist, and a web developer. On my website, www.TheHostingFinder.com, I have gathered some information on the good type of web hosts – the kind that has a majority of happy and satisfied customers. I hope this may be of some help to people looking for good web hosting.

Screen Scraping Your Way Into RSS – by: Dennis Pallett

Introduction

RSS is one the hottest technologies at the moment, and even big web publishers (such as the New York Times) are getting into RSS as well. However, there are still a lot of websites that do not have RSS feeds.

If you still want to be able to check those websites in your favourite aggregator, you need to create your own RSS feed for those websites. This can be done automatically with PHP, using a method called screen scrapping. Screen scrapping is usually frowned upon, as it’s mostly used to steal content from other websites.

I personally believe that in this case, to automatically generate a RSS feed, screen scrapping is not a bad thing. Now, on to the code!

Getting the content

For this article, we’ll use PHPit as an example, despite the fact that PHPit already has RSS feeds (http://www.phpit.net/syndication/).

We’ll want to generate a RSS feed from the content listed on the frontpage (http://www.phpit.net). The first step in screen scraping is getting the complete page. In PHP this can be done very easily, by using implode(file(“”, “[the url here]“)); IF your web host allows it. If you can’t use file() you’ll have to use a different method of getting the page, e.g. using the CURL library (http://www.php.net/curl).

Now that we have the content available, we can parse it for the content using some regular expressions. The key to screen scraping is looking for patterns that match the content, e.g. are all the content items wrapped in <div>’s or something else? If you can successfully discover a pattern, then you can use preg_match_all() to get all the content items.

For PHPit, the pattern that match the content is <div class=”contentitem”>[Content Here]<div>. You can verify this yourself by going to the main page of PHPit, and viewing the source.

Now that we have a match we can get all the content items. The next step is to retrieve the individual information, i.e. url, title, author, text. This can be done by using some more regular expression and str_replace() on the each content items.

By now we have the following code;

<?php// Get page$url = “http://www.phpit.net/”;$data = implode(“”, file($url)); // Get content itemspreg_match_all (“/<div class=\”contentitem\”>([^`]*?)<\/div>/”, $data, $matches);

Like I said, the next step is to retrieve the individual information, but first let’s make a beginning on our feed, by setting the appropriate header (text/xml) and printing the channel information, etc.

 // Begin feedheader (“Content-Type: text/xml; charset=ISO-8859-1″);echo “<?xml version=\”1.0\” encoding=\”ISO-8859-1\” ?>\n”;?><rss version=”2.0″  xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”  xmlns:content=”http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/”  xmlns:admin=”http://webns.net/mvcb/”  xmlns:rdf=”http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#”>	<channel>		<title>PHPit Latest Content</title>		<description>The latest content from PHPit (http://www.phpit.net), screen scraped!</description>		<link>http://www.phpit.net</link>		<language>en-us</language><?

Now it’s time to loop through the items, and print their RSS XML. We first loop through each item, and get all the information we get, by using more regular expressions and preg_match(). After that the RSS for the item is printed.

<?php// Loop through each content itemforeach ($matches[0] as $match) {	// First, get title	preg_match (“/\”>([^`]*?)<\/a><\/h3>/”, $match, $temp);	$title = $temp['1'];	$title = strip_tags($title);	$title = trim($title);	// Second, get url	preg_match (“/<a rel=’external nofollow’ href=\”([^`]*?)\”>/”, $match, $temp);	$url = $temp['1'];	$url = trim($url);	// Third, get text	preg_match (“/<p>([^`]*?)<span class=\”byline\”>/”, $match, $temp);	$text = $temp['1'];	$text = trim($text);	// Fourth, and finally, get author	preg_match (“/<span class=\”byline\”>By ([^`]*?)<\/span>/”, $match, $temp);	$author = $temp['1'];	$author = trim($author);	// Echo RSS XML	echo “<item>\n”;		echo “\t\t\t<title>” . strip_tags($title) . “</title>\n”;		echo “\t\t\t<link>http://www.phpit.net” . strip_tags($url) . “</link>\n”;		echo “\t\t\t<description>” . strip_tags($text) . “</description>\n”;		echo “\t\t\t<content:encoded><![CDATA[ \n";		echo $text . "\n";		echo " ]]></content:encoded>\n”;		echo “\t\t\t<dc:creator>” . strip_tags($author) . “</dc:creator>\n”;	echo “\t\t</item>\n”;}?>

And finally, the RSS file is closed off.

</channel></rss>

That’s all. If you put all the code together, like in the demo script, then you’ll have a perfect RSS feed.

Conclusion

In this tutorial I have shown you how to create a RSS feed from a website that does not have a RSS feed themselves yet. Though the regular expression is different for each website, the principle is exactly the same.

One thing I should mention is that you shouldn’t immediately screen scrape a website’s content. E-mail them first about a RSS feed. Who knows, they might set one up themselves, and that would be even better.

Download sample script at http://www.phpit.net/viewsource.php?url=/demo/screenscrape%20rss/example.php

About The Author Dennis Pallett is a young tech writer, with much experience in ASP, PHP and other web technologies. He enjoys writing, and has written several articles and tutorials. To find more of his work, look at his websites at http://www.phpit.net, http://www.aspit.net and http://www.ezfaqs.com

The Benefits Of Outsourcing – by: Raymond Walsh

The year 2005 is expected to be the year of “outsourcing”.

In case this word is new to you, then prepare yourself to the fact that this will be the buzz word of 2005.

Outsourcing is the act of exporting jobs to 3rd world countries, for the benefit of saving on production and administration costs.

The most popular form of outsourcing to this day is IT outsourcing, and the most popular countries where you can outsource IT jobs to are Romania and India.

For example: your firm is spending a lot of money hiring programmers to do some programming tasks and software writing that do not need special skills. You decide to cut costs by exporting these jobs to India, and let the same tasks be done by professional Indians instead of Americans, because their labor rate is a lot lower. This would easily save you money, sometimes up to 80%, that you can spend on other primary jobs (e.g: marketing).

Outsourcing does not only help you save money, but also gives you that push needed to walk and extra step towards winning the competitive market.

Brian Taylor, CEO of Comfosoft Inc. says that outsourcing to India helped his company “save more than $23,000 per month on software programming and debugging. There are a lot of talented Indians who can do the same job without getting paid a 5 figure number.”

Today, and in the world of “online business”, and to make things even easier for you, SupportUniverse.com (http://www.supportuniverse.com) has launched a new marketplace where programmers meet recruiters. All you need to do is post your project and let skilled workers around the world compete to bid on delivering the best work for the lowest cost and the shortest period of time. You can then select the best offer.

Although some people oppose the idea of outsourcing, the fact is that it is spreading like fever and it is becoming more and more “mandatory” for those who want to succeed in the internet world.

About The Author Raymond Walsh, CEO of “Business 4 Pleasure”, and monthly printed newsletter targetting small and medium sized businesses.

The Secret Benefit Of Accessibility Part 1: Increased Usability – by: Trenton Moss

Web accessibility has so many benefits that I really do wonder why such a large number of websites have such diabolically bad accessibility. One of the main benefits is increased usability, which according to usability guru, Jakob Nielson, can increase the sales/conversion rate of a website by 100% and traffic by 150%.

At which point you must surely be asking, “So if I make my website accessible its usability will increase and I’ll make more money out of it?”. Well, not quite. An accessible website is not automatically more usable but there are many areas of overlap:

1. Descriptive link text

Visually impaired web users can scan web pages by tabbing from link to link and listening to the content of the link text. As such, the link text in an accessible website must always be descriptive of its destination.

Equally, regularly sighted web users don’t read web pages word-for-word, but scan them looking for the information they’re after.

Link text such as ‘Click here’ has poor accessibility and usability as both regularly sighted and visually impaired web users scanning

the paragraph will take no meaning from this link text by itself. Link text that effectively describes its destination is far easier to scan and you can understand the destination of the link without having to read its surrounding words.

2. Prompt text assigned to form input

In order to make forms accessible we need to assign the prompt text to its form item. THis is especially useful when done with checkboxes and radioboxes, as the text becomes clickable too. Checkboxes and radioboxes are small and pernickety for even the steadiest of hands so by increasing the clickable region everyone benefits.

3. Large chunks of information divided up

There are a number of techniques that can be taken to increase the usability for visually impaired users, who have to listen to the information on each page and try to remember it. By structuring information into small, manageable groups, enhanced usability for these users can be achieved.

Methods to accomplish this can include using sub-headings to break up body content, grouping form items with the fieldset command and using lists. Breaking down groups of information is obviously highly useful for sighted web users too, as it greatly enhances our ability to scan the screen quickly.

4. Site map provided

Site maps can be a useful accessibility tool for visually impaired users as they provide a straightforward list of links to the main pages on the site, without any of the fluff in between. Site maps are of course useful for everyone as they provide us with a way of finding pages quickly and help us visualise the structure of the website.

5. Simple and easy language

>From an accessibility point of view, this one’s important for people with reading and/or cognitive disabilities and site visitors who’s first language isn’t the one you’re writing in. From a usability point of view, well, it helps everyone. Reading from computer screens is tiring for the eyes and about 25% slower than reading from paper. As such, the easier the style of writing the easier it is for site visitors to absorb your words of wisdom. Wherever possible shorten your sentences. Use, ‘apply’ instead of ‘make an application’ or ‘use’ instead of ‘make use of’.

6. Consistent navigation

Having consistent navigation across pages is also important for maximising accessibility to people with reading and/or cognitive disabilities, but again everyone benefits. Each time you visit a new website it takes you a few seconds to adjust to the unique layout and user interface of that page. Well imagine if you had to do that every time you follow a link to a new page!

By having a consistent interface across a website we can instantly locate the navigation and page content without having to look around for it. In reality, most sites do have consistent navigation across most pages. The main culprit for falling foul of this guideline is the homepage, which some websites structure quite differently to the rest of the site. By having a consistent interface across the entire website we can instantly locate the page content without having to look around for it.

7. No unannounced pop-ups

For web users utilising screen readers pop-ups can be a real accessibility nuisance. Screen readers read out the content of whichever window is on top of the others. Pop-ups display over the top of the main website so will always be read out first. For visually impaired users this can be frustrating as they may not realise that what they’re hearing isn’t the ‘real’ website.

So, pop-ups are bad for accessibility. As for usability, well I’m sure you hate pop-ups as much as I do. Many toolbars, such as the Google toolbar, now come packaged with a pop-up blocker so allow you to surf the web without the irritation of new windows popping up.

8. CSS used for layout

CSS-based sites are generally have a greater ratio of content to HTML code so are more accessible to screen readers and search engines. Websites using CSS for layout can also be made accessible to in-car browsers, WebTV and PDAs. Don’t underestimate the importance of this – in 2008 alone there’ll be an estimated 58 million PDAs sold worldwide (source: http://www.etforecasts.com/pr/pr0603.htm).

As well as improved accessibility, CSS-based websites have one large usability benefit: increased download speed. Broadband isn’t as widespread as you may think. In the UK for example, just one in four web users are hooked up to broadband (source: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/intc0504.pdf) so improving the download speed of your web pages could provide a great usability advantage over your competitors.

9. Transcripts available for audio

One group of web users with special accessibility needs that doesn’t get much press is hearing impaired users, who need written equivalents for audio content. Providing transcripts is in fact highly beneficial to all users. Many of your site visitors probably can’t be bothered to wait for your 3Mb audio file to download and start playing. They may prefer just a quick outline of what’s contained in the audio content.

By providing a transcript, broken up by sub-headings and with the key terms highlighted, non-disabled site visitors can skim through it and get a general idea of the content. They can then make a more informed decision about if they want to wait for the 3Mb audio file to download.

10. Screen flickering and movement avoided

Some epileptic web users must be careful to avoid screen flicker of between 2 and 55 Hz. Web users with reading and/or cognitive disabilities and those using screen magnifiers will struggle to keep up with scrolling text (if you do have scrolling text be sure to provide a mechanism to stop it).

In addition to being a bad idea for accessibility, neither flickering nor scrolling text are good for usability either. The former can be distracting when you’re trying to read something and you see flashing out the corner of your eye; the latter isn’t good either as you have to wait for the content to slowly appear. When you see scrolling text do you usually bother to stop what you’re doing so you can read it as it gradually materialises? Or do you ignore it?

The other disadvantage of scrolling or changing text is that you might see something you want to click on, but before you know it it’s gone. And now you have to wait 30 seconds for it to re-appear again!

Conclusion

With all this overlap between web usability and web accessibility there’s no excuses for not implementing basic accessibility on to your website. Outside of the ethical argument there are many reasons to make your website accessible, one of the main one being that its usability will be improved. No one can argue with that.

About The Author This article was written by Trenton Moss. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility – so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible – http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability – by: Trenton Moss

A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don’t realise is that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors.

Ultimately this means more people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. But are search engine optimisation and usability compatible? Aren’t there trade-offs that need to be made between giving search engines what they want and giving people what they want? Read on and find out (although I’m sure you can guess the answer!)…

1. Keyword research carried out

Before you even begin building your website, you should carry out keyword research to identify which keyword phrases your site should target. Using publicly available tools such as Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com), you can discover which keywords are searched for the most frequently and then specifically target those phrases.

Doing keyword research is also crucial for your site’s usability. By using the same keywords in your website that web users are searching for in search engines, you’ll literally be speaking the same language as your site visitors.

For example, you might decide to target the phrase, “sell toys”, as your website does in fact sell toys. Keyword research would undoubtedly show you that web users are actually searching for, “buy toys” (think about it – have you ever searched using the word, “sell”, when you want to buy something?). By placing the phrase, “buy toys” on to the pages on your website, you’ll be using the same words as your site visitors and they’ll be able to find what they’re looking for more easily.

2. 200 word minimum per page

Quite simply, search engines love content – the more content there is on a page the easier it is for search engines to work out what the page is actually about. Search engines may struggle to work out the point of a web page with less than 200 words, ultimately penalising that page in the search rankings.

In terms of usability, it’s also good to avoid pages with very little content. A page with less than 200 words is unlikely to contain a large amount of information, so site visitors will undoubtedly need to click elsewhere to find more detailed information. Don’t be afraid to put a reasonably large amount of information on to a page. Web users generally don’t mind scrolling down anymore, and provided the page provides mechanisms to aid scanning (such as employing sub-headings – see point 6 below) it shouldn’t be too difficult for site visitors to locate the information that they’re after.

3. 100kb maximum HMTL size

If 200 words is the minimum page content size, then 100kb is the maximum, at least in terms of HMTL file size. Anything more than this and search engines may give up on the page as it’s simply too big for them.

A 100kb HMTL file will take 20 seconds to download on a 56k dial up modem, used by three in four UK web users as of March 2004 (source: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/intc0504.pdf). Add on the time it takes for all the other parts of the page to download, such as images and JavaScript files, and you’re looking at a highly un-user-friendly download time!

4. CSS used for layout

The website of Juicy Studios (http://www.juicystudio.com) saw a six-fold increase in site visitors after switching from a table-based layout to a CSS layout. Search prefer CSS-based sites and are likely to score them higher in the search rankings because:

• The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines
• Important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document
• There is a greater density of content compared to coding

Using CSS for layout is also highly advantageous for usability, as it leads to significantly faster download times.

5. Meaningful page title

If you know anything about search engine optimisation you’ll know that search engines place more importance on the page title than any other attribute on the page. If the title adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about.

A meaningful page title also helps site visitors work out where they are, both within the site and the web as a whole. The page title is the first thing that loads up, often quite a few seconds before the content, so a descriptive, keyword-rich page title can be a real aid to help users orientate themselves.

6. Headings and sub-headings used

Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings (in theory at least) summarise the content immediately below them.

Headings are also incredibly useful for your human site visitors, as they greatly aid scanning. Generally speaking, we don’t read on the web, we scan, looking for the information that we’re after. By breaking up page sections with sub-headings that effectively describe the content beneath them, scanning becomes significantly easier.

Do be sure not to abuse heading tags though. The more text you have contained in heading tags within the page, the less importance search engines assign to them.

7. Opening paragraph describes page content

We’ve already established that search engines love content, but they especially love the first 25 words or so on each page. By providing an opening paragraph that adequately describes the content of the rest of the page (or the site if it’s the homepage), you should be able to include your important keyword phrases in this crucial area.

As web users, whenever we arrive at a web page the first thing we need to know is whether this page has the information that we’re after. A great way to find this out is to scan through the first paragraph, which, if it sufficiently describes the page content, should help us out.

8. Descriptive link text

Search engines place a lot of importance on link text. They assume that link text will be descriptive of its destination and as such examine link text for all links pointing to any page. If all the links pointing to a page about widgets say ‘click here’, search engines can’t gain any information about that page without visiting it. If on the other hand, all the links say, ‘widgets’ then search engines can easily guess what that page is about.

One of the best examples of this in action is for the search term, ‘miserable failure’. So many people have linked to George Bush’s bio using this phrase as the link text, that now when miserable failure is searched for in Google, George Bush’s bio appears top of the search rankings!

As web users, we don’t generally read web pages word-for-word – we scan them looking for the information that we’re after. When you scan through text you can’t take any meaning from the word ‘click here’. Link text that effectively describes its destination is far easier to scan and you can understand the destination of the link without having to read its surrounding words.

9. Frames avoided

Frames are quite an old-school technique, and although aren’t as commonplace as they once were, do still rear up their ugly head from time to time. Using frames is one of the worst possible things you could do for your search engine ranking, as most search engines can’t follow links between frames.

Even if a search engine does index your pages and web users find you through a search engine, they’ll be taken to one of the pages within the frame. This page will probably be a content page with no navigation (navigation is normally contained in a separate frame) and therefore no way to navigate to any other page on the site!

Frames are also disadvantageous for usability as they can cause problems with the back button, printing, history and bookmarking. Put simply, say no to frames!

10. Quality content provided

This may seem like a strange characteristic of a search engine optimised website, but it’s actually crucial. Search engines, in addition to looking at page content, look at the number of links pointing in to web pages. The more inbound links a website has, all other things being equal, the higher in the search rankings it will appear.

By providing creative, unique and regularly updated content on your website, webmasters will want to link to you as doing so will add value to their site visitors. You will also be adding value to your site visitors.

Conclusion

Optimising your website for both search engines and people needn’t be a trade-off. With this much overlap between the two areas, you should easily be able to have a website that web users can find in the search engines, and when they do find it, they can find what they’re looking for quickly and efficiently.

About The Author This article was written by Trenton Moss. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility – so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible – http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

The Secret Benefit Of Accessibility Part 2: A Higher Search Engine Ranking – by: Trenton Moss

An additional benefit of website accessibility is an improved performance in search engines. The more accessible it is to search engines, the more accurately they can predict what the site’s about, and the higher your site will appear in the rankings.

Not all of the accessibility guidelines will help with your search engine rankings, but there are certainly numerous areas of overlap:

1. ALT descriptions assigned to images

Screen readers, used by many visually impaired web users to surf the web, can’t understand images. As such, to ensure accessibility an alternative description needs to be assigned to every image and the screen reader will read out this alternative, or ALT, description.

Like screen readers, search engines can’t understand images either and won’t take any meaning from them. Many search engines can now index ALT text though, so by assigning ALT text search engines will be able to understand all your images.

2. Text displayed through HTML, not images

Text embedded in images appears pixelated, blurry and often impossible to read for users utilising screen magnifiers. From an accessibility point of view this should therefore be avoided.

Search engines equally can’t read text embedded in images. Well, you can just give the image some ALT text, right? Unfortunately, there’s strong evidence to suggest search engines assign less importance to ALT text than they do to regular text. Why? Spammers. So many webmasters have been stuffing their ALT tags full of keywords and not using them to describe the image. Search engines have cottoned on to this form of spamming (as they eventually do every form of spamming) and have taken appropriate action.

3. Descriptive link text

Visually impaired web users can scan web pages by tabbing from link to link and listening to the content of the link text. As such, the link text in an accessible website must always be descriptive of its destination.

Search engines place a lot of importance on link text too. They assume that link text will be descriptive of its destination and as such examine link text for all links pointing to any page. If all the links pointing to a page about widgets say ‘click here’, search engines can’t gain any information about that page without visiting it. If on the other hand, all the links say, ‘widgets’ then search engines can easily guess what that page is about.

One of the best examples of this in action is for the search term, ‘miserable failure’. So many people have linked to George Bush’s bio using this phrase as the link text, that now when miserable failure is searched for in Google, George Bush’s bio appears top of the search rankings!

4. Website functions with JavaScript disabled

JavaScript is unsupported by about 9% of web users (source: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2004/November/javas.php), either because they’ve turned it off (for example to prevent pop-up adverts) or because their browser doesn’t support it. Many forms of JavaScript aren’t accessible to web users utilising screen readers.

Search engines can’t understand JavaScript either and will be unable to index any JavaScript-driven content. Perhaps more importantly, they’ll also be unable to follow JavaScript-driven links. You may really like the look of your dropdown menu but search engines won’t if they can’t access certain pages on your site because there aren’t any regular links pointing at them.

5. Alternatives to Flash-based content provided

Flash, like JavaScript, isn’t accessible to many users, including those using screen readers. Equally, search engines can’t access Flash so be sure to provide equivalents.

6. Transcripts available for audio

Hearing impaired users obviously require written equivalents for audio content to be able to access it. Search engines too can’t access this medium, but transcripts provide them with a large amount of text for them to index.

7. Site map provided

Site maps can be a useful tool for visually impaired users as they provide a straightforward list of links to the main pages on the site, without any of the fluff in between.

Site maps are also great for search engines as search engines can instantly index your entire site when they arrive at the site map it. Next to each link you can also provide a short keyword-rich preview of the page. All links should, of course, be made through regular HTML and not through JavaScript (see 4. above).

8. Meaningful page title

When we arrive at web pages the first thing that appears, and the first thing that visually impaired users hear, is the page title. This latter group of web users don’t have the privilege of being able to quickly scan the page to see if it contains the information they’re after, so it’s essential that the page title effectively describes the page content.

If you know anything about search engine optimisation you’ll know that the page title is the most important attribute on the page. If it adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about.

9. Headings and sub-headings used

Visually impaired web users can scan web pages by tabbing from heading to heading, in addition to tabbing from link to link (see 3. above). As such, it’s important for accessibility to make sure that headings are correctly marked up by using h1, h2 etc.

Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings describe the content immediately below them. Make sure you use the heading tags properly and don’t abuse them, as the more text you have contained in heading tags, for example, the less importance search engines assign to them.

10. CSS used for layout

Screen readers can more effectively work through the HTML code of CSS-based sites as there’s a greater ratio of content to code. Websites using CSS for layout can also be made accessible to in-car browsers, WebTV and PDAs. Don’t underestimate the importance of this – in 2008 alone there’ll be an estimated 58 million PDAs sold worldwide (source: http://www.etforecasts.com/pr/pr0603.htm).

Search engines also prefer CSS-based sites and are likely to score them higher in the search rankings because:

• The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines
• Important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document
• There is a greater density of content compared to coding

Conclusion

With all this overlap between web accessibility and search engine optimisation there’s no excuses for not implementing basic accessibility on to your website. It’ll give you a higher search engine ranking and therefore more site visitors.

About The Author This article was written by Trenton Moss. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility – so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible – http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

How Web Design Can Affect Search Engine Rankings – by: John Metzler

Uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when promoting your site on the search engines. From a basic 3 page brochure site, to a corporate site with hundreds of dynamically generated pages, every web site needs to have certain design aspects in order to achieve the full effects of an SEO campaign. Below are a few points to take into consideration when building or updating your web site.

1. Size Matters.

The size of a web site can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Search engines love content, so if you have only a few pages to your site and your competitors have dozens, it’s virtually impossible to see a top page ranking for your site. In some cases it may be difficult to present several pages of information about your business or products, so you may need to think about adding free resources for visitors. It will help in broadening the scope of your web site (which search engines like) as well as keep visitors on your site longer, thus possibly resulting in more sales.

2. Graphics-Based Web Sites.

While web sites that offer the visitor a more esthetically-pleasing experience may seem like the best choice for someone searching for your product, they are the most difficult to optimize. Since search engine robots cannot read text within graphics or animation, what they see may be just a small amount of text. And if we learned anything from point #1, that will not result in top rankings. If you really must offer the visitor a site jam-packed with graphics, or even a Flash experience, consider creating an html-based side of your site that is also available to visitors. This site will be much easier to promote on the search engines and your new found visitors will also have to option to jump over to the nicer looking part of your site.

3. Dynamic Web Pages.

If most of your web site is generated by a large database (such as a large book dealer with stock that is changing by the minute) you may find that some of your pages do not get indexed by major search engines. If you look at the URL of these pages you may find that they are extremely long and have characters such as ?, #, &, %, or = along with huge amounts of seemingly random numbers or letters. Since these pages are automatically generated by the database as needed, the search engines have a tough time keeping them up to date and relevant for search engine users.

One way to combat this problem is to offer a search engine friendly site map listing all your static pages just to let them know that yes, you do have permanent content on your site. A good internal linking system also helps in this case because if search engines see links going to and from these dynamic pages, they may index and assign them decent PageRank values. The link popularity of your site may carry more weight in this case as well, so if you can’t offer as much static content as your competition, make sure you have an aggressive link campaign on the go.

4. Proper Use of HTML.

There is quite a bit of sub-par web design software out there. Word processors usually have a way to create HTML documents which can be easily uploaded to a site via ftp. However, in many cases the code that the search engine robots see is mostly lines and lines of font and size formatting, not actual relevant content. The more efficiently written web sites usually achieve higher rankings. Our choice for web design software is Macromedia Dreamweaver, as it is an industry standard. It also makes using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) a breeze, which can drastically cut down on the amount of text formatting in HTML code.

And there are some no brainers too. Web sites with abnormal amounts of hyperlinks, bold or italicized text, improper use of heading, ALT, or comment tags can also expect to be thrown to the bottom of the rankings.

5. Choosing a Domain Name.

The golden rule to web development of any kind is to keep your visitors in mind above all else…even search engine optimization. When choosing a domain name, one should pick either your business name (if you are making yourself known by just your name, ie. Chapters or Kleenex brand tissues) or a brief description of your products. Domain names can always help with search engine optimization, as it is another area of your web site that important keywords can appear. Exclude long-winded domains such as www.number-one-best-books-on-earth.com as no one will ever remember it and it will be hard to print on business cards or in print ads.

If you need to change your domain name for any reason, you obviously don’t want to lose your existing rankings. An easy way to do this, and one that is currently supported by most search engines, is the 301 redirect. It allows you to keep your existing rankings for your old domain name, while forwarding visitors of that site to your new one virtually seamlessly.

6. Using Frames.

Just don’t, it’s that simple. Frames are a thing of the 90’s (and in the Internet world that is eons ago) and are not even supported by some search engines. The ones that are able to index your site through frames will most likely frown upon them. Whatever you are trying to accomplish by using frames can usually be done with the help of PHP includes or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Some browsers are not frames-compatible, so there’s the danger of some visitors not being able to see your site at all. Bookmarking of individual pages within a frame becomes difficult without lengthly scripts being written.

7. Update Your Information.

Not only does information printed two or three years ago look badly on your organization when it is read by a visitor, it is also looked down upon by search engines. Web sites that continuously update and grow their web sites usually experience higher rankings than stagnant sites. When the trick to SEO is offering visitors the most relevant information, you can bet that the age of web pages is taken into consideration by search engines. Consider creating a section of your site devoted to news within your organization, or have a constantly updated resources area.

Many shortfalls of web sites can easily be attributed to designers who just don’t keep the user or search engines in mind. Search engine algorithms are quickly improving to try and list the most user-friendly sites higher, given that the content and link popularity are there to back it up. So first and foremost, know your target market and make your web site work for them before focusing on search engine optimization. If you build it (properly), they will come.

About The Author Copyright John Metzler of Abalone Designs, November 2004. This article may be freely distributed if credit is given to the author. Abalone Designs is a family-run Search Engine Optimization firm in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Visit www.abalone.ca for a free personalized analysis of your web site. john@abalone.ca

Give Your Website A Chance – by: Elizabeth McGee

I often wonder how serious people are when it comes to their websites. I thought that most everyone knew that the phrase “Build it and they will come” no longer applies on the internet but I’m not sure how many people really believe it.

I look at sites everyday as part of my sales strategy and I can’t tell you how many of them violate the obvious elements of good website design and submission.

What even amazes me more is that they can’t figure out why they don’t get sales or visitors.

Do yourself a favor and attempt to apply the following tactics to your site. They won’t cost you a thing except a little time and effort to apply them.

** About Page **

Always include an about page on your site. Don’t be afraid to tell your story and let people know who you are and how you arrived where you are.

Opening yourself up and letting people know who you are adds an element of trust. It exposes your personality, capabilities and knowledge. All factors that let your readers know you are genuine.

** Include all your contact information **

Let your visitors know that you are available. Encourage questions, email and phone calls. Include your name, address and phone number. If you can, it’s also helpful to place a photo on your site. Familiarity is key and it can add one more link in the ladder of trust.

** Headlines **

Create compelling headlines. Peak the interest of your readers. This is your chance to grab their attention and incite them to read on.

Don’t be flashy or obnoxious. Simply tell it like it is. Capture their attention with descriptive, informative words. Get your readers involved in your information. Ask questions. Make them think.

You might be surprised to learn that just one compelling headline can bring instant sales almost overnight.

**Create your meta tags **

This is the first place I look when people tell me they aren’t getting visitors. I often see sites that have no title or description tag or the tags don’t follow the suggested guidelines for proper setup.

Here’s an example of how the tags might look for a site that sells hummingbird feeders:

Hummingbird Feeders: Shop For Hummingbird Feeders Online

You will need to do this for each page of your site. Each page needs to have it’s own set of tags. I also recommend focusing on one keyword per page, two at the very most. Too many keywords can confuse what your page is about.

Always make sure that your keywords are scattered throughout your text as well, however don’t sacrifice good content for nonsense. Your text should be easy to read and should not sound redundant. Make your pages at least 250 words.

** Testimonials**

Solicit feedback from buyers you’ve had. Ask them to write a small testimonial that you can place on your site. This goes a long way to help convince your visitor that your products and services are sound.

** Linking **

Reciprocal linking is a common and effective tactic for obtaining search engine status and page rank but it’s also the most time consuming. It requires making contacts, following up with contacts and updating your website.

While reciprocal linking is an excellent way of establishing page rank it’s not the only way. Page rank can also be established by submitting your site to directories, writing articles and setting up blogs.

Don’t underestimate the power of website links. Take the extra few hours a day and get your site noticed.

** Offer Guarantees *

Always offer your products with a guarantee. This is often the extra boost a buyer needs to make the purchase.

A good site will offer 100%, no-questions-asked, money-back guarantees. People rarely take advantage of such guarantees but it’s this statement that may tip the scales in your favor.

** Submit Your Site **

Last, but not least, don’t neglect to submit your site to the search engines. Many of them are no longer free but the fees are nominal and worth the expense. Google still offers a free submit and it’s easy, simply type in your URL address, however make sure your meta tags include a title and description tag first.

For the free search engines I don’t recommend using automated submissions. Submit them yourself taking care to compose accurate titles descriptions and keywords.

About The Author Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted tools, enhance customer service, build confidence and increase sales. You can visit Elizabeth’s sites at: http://www.pro-marketing-online.com http://www.homenotion.com